3D Film Innovation Consortium
Globe and Mail by GUY DIXON. Friday, Jun. 10, 2011
An image from U2 3D, directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington.
Remember the heady days of 2009, when James Cameron’s 3-D movie Avatar hit the jackpot to become the highest-grossing film of all time? Along with Coraline and Up, the film convinced the industry that 3-D was the next big thing, whether for feature films or home television.
But a credibility gap has emerged about 3-D’s potential to be the ultimate box-office draw.
Doubters see a wake-up call for Hollywood in the relatively soft demand among North America audiences to pay extra to see the 3-D version of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. And then there’s the lighthearted backlash: Amazon.com now sells 2-D glasses, which intentionally eliminate the 3-D effect for those “tired of paying for 3-D movies and getting nothing but a headache.”
So is the shine really off 3-D? Catherine Owens directed 2008’s U2 3D, which sought to convey the grandness of a U2 concert on film and was billed as the first live-action digital 3-D film. She has since become one of the few directors known internationally as a 3-D specialist. (“Once you’ve worked in 3-D, it’s very hard to let go,” she says.) She will be among the guest speakers, along with German director Wim Wenders, himself a fan of 3-D filmmaking, at the International Stereoscopic 3D Conference being held at Toronto’s York University from Saturday to Tuesday.
