Q. What’s the difference between the 3-D of the old days and digital 3-D?
A. Old anaglyph 3-D used two film projectors with colored lenses running at 24 frames per second. Since two projectors were used, it was often difficult to keep them perfectly synchronized. Digital 3-D uses only one polarized image from one projector running at 144 frames per second.
As a tech-savvy audience of the 21st century, consumers are constantly seeking to get deeper inside the world of the entertainment they watch. It’s the video game generation, so it’s not enough to see — we’ve got to experience. We’ve got HDTV. We’ve got surround sound, and of late, a long-established enhancement is getting a serious re-vamping to make interactivity effortless: 3-D projection in every local theater.
“If you compare the Real D image to the anaglyph image from 50 years ago, it’s really like night and day,” says CEO of Real D Technology Michael Lewis. “It’s like comparing the space shuttle with the Wright Brothers.” Since the creation of 3-D anaglyph technology in the 1950s, 3-D has gone in and out of popularity. However, with the new digital platform Lewis’ company has created, movie studios are seeing an opportunity to increase their slagging ticket sales. The enhanced experience allows theaters to charge an additional $3-$5 on the ticket price and the numbers show that the public is willing to ante up.
“What we’ve found on the 10 films we’ve released [in Real D 3-D is] that those films have done about three to four times better than the same film in 2-D,” says Lewis. With over 40 films slated to be released in 3-D over the next two and a half years, Real D is in the process of updating a total of 8,000 screens worldwide, providing an average of three to four 3-D screens in every multiplex across the country. As Lewis says, “It’s the future of where cinema is going.”
