VIDEO WORLD PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS By PaulBerliner There’s a very hot trend in the world of digital cinema these days, and that “something” is 3D. Technically, it’s the process of simulating three-dimensional stereoscopic images on a two-dimensional surface. But artistically, it’s the latest and greatest ticket in movie entertainment. Animated or live-action films made with 3D technology are drawing big crowds, and the films are enjoying longer runs in theatres. The number of 3D releases is skyrocketing, and for good reason — 30 percent of the movie screens are suddenly generating 70 percent of the revenue — and the big studios are sitting up and taking notice. In the next few moments, I’d like to provide a little background on 2D (two-dimensional) digital cinema and then dive deeper into 3D. Specifically, how the technology grew up, how it works, where it’s going — and how it might impact our rental and staging business. A Refresher Course in Digital Cinema VW At the theatre level, digital cinema is the next wave in projection technology, and little by little, theatres across the nation are changing from film to digital. You still have big mongo screens, big lenses and popcorn in the lobby — but the movie content is played back from a server, rather than from a film reel. Gone are the sprockets, film gates, scratches on the print and the projectionist sleeping through the reel change cue. The colorimetry is gorgeous, and at the hundredth screening, the “print” looks identical to its first screening. (It ain’t a print, of course — it’s a huge multi-gigabyte motion JPEG file.) Films can be produced in the traditional manner or produced using an entire digital workflow, but the release version is delivered to the theatre on a hard drive or via satellite — not in a giant film canister. All of this is made possible by the wizards at Texas Instruments (TI), based on their remarkable DLP® (Digital Light Processing) technology. (Visit www.dlp.<strong>com</strong> for the scoop). The DLP chips are the optical semiconductors with millions of on-board micromirrors that actually tilt towards (or away from) the projector’s light source. They’re used in everything from conference room projectors to large-scale events projectors. But for digital cinema, the difference is projector brightness, amazingly high security for the projector and the server and the native resolution of TI’s DLP Cinema® chip — 2048 by 1080 pixels. If you’ve heard about “2K” digital cinema projectors, the derivation is the quantity “2048” itself — the number of horizontal pixels in the image. A “4K” projector is yet another beast and perhaps, the topic of a future column. The Big Three VW TI has licensed only three projector manufacturers to use the DLP Cinema chip: Barco, Christie and NEC. To guarantee quality and uniformity, each manufacturer’s projector has to adhere to a very strict set of specs set forth by Digital Cinema Initiatives, LLC (DCI), a joint venture created in 2002 by the major studios. DCI <strong>com</strong>pliance is like the Good Housekeeping seal for digital cinema projectors and in particular, the specs set Anaglyph glasses used in the 1950s created the illusion of depth. Digital technologies use polarization, a colorwheel method, and “passive” or “active” lenses instead. high levels of security and encryption that keep the movies secure and protect the studios’ intellectual property. If you’d like a little light reading this weekend, visit www. dcimovies.<strong>com</strong> and enjoy the tech talk. Based around the big three, an entire host of cottage industries have sprung up, creating the peripheral equipment that’s necessary for the digital cinema workflow. There are <strong>com</strong>panies making digital cinema servers, image processing gear that allows exhibitors to re-purpose their digital projectors for additional revenue, workflow asset management programs and even the gadgets that make 3D possible. Into the Wayback Machine, Sherman VW Up until a few years ago, digital projection was strictly 2D. But the propellerheads in the back rooms of the big three’s engineering labs kept on scheming — hearkening back to the industry’s early experiments with 3D. Perhaps, they thought, digital projection might be the key to the revival of 3D! Depending on which site you visit, there are a few conflicting stories about the origin of 3D, but one of the best sources is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_film). It has a very scholarly article on the history of 3D and the various production techniques. In a nutshell, way back in the late 1890s, a British filmmaker filed a patent for a dualprojector 3D process — one projector for the left eye’s image and one for the right. Lots of tinkering occurred over the next 20 years with little success, until September, 1922. That’s when the first confirmed 3D film (The Power of Love) was shown to a paying audience in Los Angeles. Reviews were underwhelming at best, and the film has apparently been lost forever. Fast-forward through the 1930s and 1940s, during which time Polariod filters were first used to produce separate images for the left and right eyes in order to simulate 3D. Yet the genre still remained a novelty. During the 1950s, the so-called “golden era” of 3D, movie studios jumped into the game with a passion. New techniques were tested and many successful 3D films were released, from <strong>com</strong>edy to sci-fi to drama, including perhaps the campiest film of the entire genre, Creature from the Black Lagoon. Superimposed Colors VW The 1950s was also the era of those ubiquitous anaglyph glasses — the ones with red and cyan lenses. The films were created using two superimposed contrasting colored filters (one for each eye), and the colors were offset laterally to create depth. When the film is projected, the anaglyph glasses separate the left and right images by canceling out the filter colors, and your brain does the rest by putting the stereoscopic illusion together. The technique is still in use today on a very small scale, because new technologies have taken over the task. From the 1960s through the 1990s, 3D films faltered, revived and faltered again, not necessarily because of the content, but primarily because of the difficulty in synchronizing two mechanical projectors. Way back then, there was no SMPTE time code or DMX protocol to assist with synchronization. That Darn Chicken VW Enter digital cinema, and one of the major hurdles fell away. Dual projector synchronization was suddenly moot, because based on server playback, you simply feed two digital projectors from one source, and there’s nothing mechanical to get in the way. But the larger task remained — how to make a 2D digital cinema projector play 3D films, and what new technologies could be employed? Do you still need two projectors, or could it be done with one? More importantly (for the studios), how can we make some big bucks with this? Meanwhile, behind the scenes, legions of propellerheads continued to hack away at the challenge, and suddenly, several new projection technologies and projector “addins” emerged, some based on polarization and others based on a color-wheel method (and may the anaglyph scheme RIP). And because the need for separate left and right images did not go away, a new industry was born for 3D glasses, some with “passive” polarized lenses and others with “active” lenses that are actually synchronized to the projector. Then, circa 2004 and 2005, armed with new tech, the 3D industry got a major kick start with 3D Imax films such as The Polar Express and big-budget digital cinema productions such as the blockbuster, Chicken Little. These wonderful animated films, perhaps more than any other factors, proved that both the technical and financial models were sound, and that money could be made with 3D. Since that milestone, the list of 3D releases (both animated and live action) has grown exponentially, and the technology has improved dramatically. Sure enough, there’s U2 and Miley Cyrus in beautiful 3D. Clearly, the medium is not without its drawbacks, but the technology in the projection booth is transparent to the average viewer in the theatre. Stay Tuned, and Meanwhile … VW In part 2 of this column, I’m going to get seriously hi-tech. I’ll explain the five current third-party methods that turn a 2D digital cinema projector into a 3D digital cinema projector and explain why light output is still king. In partnership with the big three manufacturers, these cutting-edge thirdparty <strong>com</strong>panies have designed some remarkable peripherals, all of which are driving the industry’s increased revenues (even in our down market). In the meantime, get out there and see a 3D film — it’s an experience not to be missed. Paul Berliner is president of Berliner Productions in Davis, Calif. He can be reached at pberliner@plsn.<strong>com</strong>. 44 <strong>PLSN</strong> OCTOBER 2009
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