Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

Making movies special and making going to the movies special have long been the fuel of movie magicians, transforming the passive experience of watching a movie into the exhilaration of immersion.

Surround sound enveloped the audience, making it a true multidimensional experience. It also brought the natural experience of hearing into the theater. Yes, the audience is listening. And we are listening to the audience.

In digital production, we have two kinds of 3D… 3D graphics, which are two-dimensional illusions of depth, and stereoscopic 3-D that adds the sense of depth by mirroring the perception of left and right eyes.

Both added significant dimension to our work. 3D effects and animation essentially transformed the kinds of characters, models and images that can be created. It enabled convincing integration between live-action and digital effects. And it transformed both game and animation production.

What is exciting today is that we can build on this experience with 3D imagery and add the stereoscopic element to truly draw our audience into the movie. It is the visual equivalent of surround sound and, when done well, can be as natural as its sonic sister.

Dimension. Consider the word. In its simplest terms it is a measurement of something in one or more directions such as length, width and height, coordinates in space and time. Interestingly, it also addresses the distinctive qualities of something, its artistic quality or the level of reality.

Dimension, in many respects, is what digital production is all about. It the best instances, we expand the filmmaker’s palette enabling the telling of stories and introduction of characters otherwise unimaginable. As the audience becomes increasingly sophisticated, the bar is consistently raised for us to deliver movies that truly engage their interest and imagination.

This is what is really, in my opinion, at the heart and soul of the stereoscopic 3-D renaissance. This is not our parent’s 3-D experience, a date night novelty.

The watershed event was The Polar Express. For many the 3-D IMAX experience proved to be a remarkably different movie. It was the first time that a mainstream long-form narrative movie played in stereoscopic 3-D on the enormous IMAX screen. Something remarkable happened when you took the faithful interpretation of Chris Van Allsburg’s story and drew in the audience. Suddenly, the audience was not watching the movie as much as they were experiencing it.

While the box-office performance of The Polar Express surprised many, the audience experience was no accident. From the very first test to the final frame output, we took great care to insure that we optimized every image for stereo viewing. We believe that the audience is being sold a premium experience when they are invited to see a movie in 3-D stereo and we believe that we owe it to the audience to take the necessary care to insure that we deliver on that promise. Just as digital production is not as simple as point and click, the production of quality 3-D stereo is not as simple as running the 2-D flat version through an image processor and magically producing a great product. For this reason, we established a dedicated team and resources at Imageworks to produce stereoscopic 3-D versions of our films in the format of the filmmakers’ choice. We take this business, and our responsibility to it, seriously.