BIFCOM heralds 3-D's new era

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Exhibition Feature

Delegates at the BIFCOM locations market in Pusan were told that stereoscopic 3-D cinema has entered a new era. But they also heard that governments need to help the industry in Asia and that "we are at a delicate stage."

There has been "explosive growth" in the exhibition sector in the past two years as cinemas have been first digitised, then prepared for 3-D. And Asia, which lagged the US and Europe, has done some catching up. Kang Jin-mo (강진모), team leader at Digital Cinema Korea, said that the number of 3-D screens in Korea has climbed from 45 at the end of 2008, to 129 at the end of 2009 – as complexes got ready for Avatar – to a forecast 480 by the end of this year. That would be 25% of all South Korean theatres.

Kang described the five years before Avatar as full of "chasms," a period when digital conversion was taking place in cinemas, there was poor standardisation and the virtual print fee model was not fully available. In the next five years he predicts screen numbers will reach 80% and that new content such as live events and sports will sit beside feature film in multiplexes that are increasingly becoming multifunctional leisure centres.

The downside of the new normality is likely to be that 3-D itself will not be enough to attract audiences to a film. As the number of 3-D films being released is increasing, opening week box office figures for those films are dropping.

New Zealand-based cinematographer Richard Bluck, whose credits include Lord of the Rings and Avatar, said that technical progress continues to be made. He said that 3-D films are becoming easier to make and easier to watch.

But, speaking in the week that Harry Potter producers cancelled plans to make the final instalment of the franchise in 3-D, Bluck urged the industry to focus on quality. "Creatively, we are at a very delicate stage. We need to make good 3-D films. The audience needs to grow up with it. Directors need to play with the language of 3-D."

Kim Sang-il (김상일), 3-D team leader at broadcaster SBS called for more government finance of the 3-D sector in Korea. But he also detailed the wide range of production and distribution experiments being conducted by Korea's public and private TV companies. He also suggested that with 3-D "we are now returning to how things should be viewed."

Chung Yoon-chul (정윤철), a film director currently in post production on sci-fi melodrama Alpha Centa Uri, said that after having made a stereoscopic film and spent so much time watching 3-D TV monitors he is now dissatisfied with conventional TV displays. "I've simply got used to it," he said.

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