Fly Me to the Moon is the first film created as a 3-D experience for 3-D release only. All images © 2008 nWave Pictures nv.

In a year filled with computer-animated blockbusters featuring elephants, pandas and robots, a low-budget CGI feature -- even one made in 3-D -- starring three adolescent houseflies runs the risk, just like its tiny protagonists, of being overlooked.

That prospect doesn't dampen Ben Stassen's enthusiasm. As co-founder of nWave Pictures, Stassen has directed eight of the 38 IMAX shorts screening in museums and science centers around the world, and served as producer on several others. Now nWave (together with production partner Illuminata Pictures) is out to crack the feature animation market with Fly Me to the Moon, its first full-length effort, which is also directed by Stassen.

"3-D is the second revolution in the history of cinema," claims Stassen, "the first one being the transition from silent films to sound." He distinguishes his movie from previous 3-D CGI efforts like Chicken Little and Monster House, which he says "were re-rendered [after the fact] to add another eye, but their script, pacing and direction were all done for 2D. Fly Me to the Moon is the first film created as a 3-D experience for 3-D release only."

It's a move that restricts the film's potential distribution to the still relatively small number of theaters equipped for 3-D projection, but Stassen isn't worried. According to the film's production notes, a quarter of a million people view nWave's IMAX films every day, even though they're only shown at museums and science centers. With its three young, winged protagonists, and its meticulously re-created dramatization of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Fly is guaranteed a long, long afterlife as an IMAX attraction in those non-theatrical venues.

Stassen takes pains to distinguish his use of 3-D to provide an "immersive experience" from the in-your-face seltzer bottle and paddleball gags that doomed the technique in the 1950s. "We get rid of the window around the story. Instead of bringing the story to the audience, we transport them into the middle of filmic space. When you watch a 2-D film, you react rationally with your brain and emotionally with your heart; with 3-D, you add the physical component -- that's truly the power of 3-D cinema.

"Let me tell you an anecdote. In my first 3-D movie Encounter in the Third Dimension, the main character is looking at the camera -- at the audience -- the entire film. I've seen the film many, many times, and I swear every time he asks for a volunteer, a kid in the audience raises his hand. They're physically present in the film."

The use of 3-D in the film provides an "immersive experience" for the audience, who are transported into the middle of filmic space.

The film's production notes explain that the "window" constraining the 3-D effect is eliminated by arranging the virtual lenses observing the scene parallel to each other, rather than angled to provide a converging view as is more commonly the case. "When the cameras converge, both eyes see the same image at the screen-plane level," Stassen says in the notes. "Whatever is behind the plane will be in perspective and whatever is in front will be coming off the screen. When you project this, the right eye and left eye have the same image of the screen plane [making whatever is in the foreground of the shot look like a flat cut-out floating in front of the background]." By comparison, Stassen's parallel cameras create the illusion of three-dimensional objects floating over the audience.

Stassen says that the arrival of digital projection systems that can be easily upgraded for 3-D is behind the technique's resurgence. He adds that his movie can be projected via any of the 3-D systems currently in use. After warning that how the various systems work can get "a little technical, so don't push me," he runs through their differences:

• RealD requires what Stassen calls "a gizmo" known as a "Z screen" in front of the projector to create "circular polarization" -- and a silver screen in front of the audience to complete the 3-D effect;

• Dolby 3D (using German technology called Infitec) is based on dividing light wavelengths into two parts to generate a separate image for each eye;

• Nu Vision, also known as XpanD, uses glasses containing an electronic shutter in sync with the projector to alternate the frames reaching each eye;

• and IMAX's 3-D projection system makes use of "linear polarization" and, like the 3-D movies of the 1950s, requires two projectors working in tandem.

Fly Me to the Moon was animated at nWave's Belgium studio, using off-the-shelf Maya and RenderMan software with a few proprietary plug-ins, and Fusion for final compositing. Stassen estimates the movie's budget in the $25-30 million range, all self-financed -- "not a huge amount by Hollywood standards, but a huge stack of money for us."