3D Films Suffering From Dearth of Screens, Says Sony Pictures’ Cookson

The number of films Sony Pictures will release in 3D will depend on the number of available 3D screens, Chris Cookson, president of Sony Pictures, told us at a 3D tech seminar at Sony America headquarters in New York. He noted that in 2009, Sony’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” had to be pulled “earlier than we would have wanted” because “Toy Story” was hitting 3D theaters a few weeks later and there were a limited number of screens available. Sony’s “Priest,” which released nationwide Friday, will face a similar challenge, Cookson said, when Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” debuts in theaters May 20. “I wish we had more screens, but it’s getting better,” Cookson said, estimating that 20 percent of cinemas in the U.S. are 3D-ready.

While Sony maintains its position on “telling the story” rather than delivering “gimmicky” in-your-face 3D, director Scott Stewart, on hand to discuss the conversion of “Priest” from 2D to 3D, said that’s a balancing act because consumers who go to the expense of seeing a 3D movie expect a certain degree of 3D effect. That’s in contrast to the philosophy at the Sony 3D technology center in Culver City, Calif., where filmmakers and cinematographers are urged to play down the “gotcha” aspects of 3D and use it as a tool to enhance the movie’s story. “Avatar” and “Nightmare Before Christmas” were two examples of films that achieved that feeling, Stewart said, by “bringing you into a world as opposed to a lot of stuff poking you in the eye."

Now that “Priest” is finished, Stewart admitted, “it’s interesting to see we do have some stuff that comes out and pokes you in the eye,” he said, saying there’s not a lot of it. “I didn’t want you crossing your eyes and getting a headache and thinking about [the 3D] too much,” he said. Directors just want the audience “to be in the movie,” Stewart said, but they're feeling more pressure to deliver eye-popping 3D effects. “At “Avatar” you really did feel like you were looking through a window at another world and there wasn’t a lot of gimmicky 3D,” he said. But where early digital 3D audiences gave 3D a “bad rap” for giving viewers headaches with objects popping off the screen, he said, as more 3D films come out, “the pendulum is swinging back.” More consumers are demanding more for the premium 3D experience, he said, saying, “I spent more for the ticket so I need more things flying at me.'”

Buzz Hays, executive stereoscopic 3D producer at Sony’s Technology Center, compared the trend to the early days of surround sound when directors wanted surround sound to be used sparingly and not to distract viewers from the story. “People would see a speaker on the wall and insist on hearing something come out of it even if it was just two people talking,” Hays said. Stewart said just as directors don’t want the audience to turn and look at a speaker, but to feel immersed in a movie instead, “that’s what I want to achieve in 3D."

"Priest” had already been shot in 2D when Stewart and cinematographer Don Burgess discussed the conversion. When production on the film began, there were a lot fewer 3D rigs available. Now, the technology in digital 3D rigs is so advanced “you'd want to shoot with them even if shooting in 2D because of their incredible sensitivity to low light, high-resolution, and wide dynamic range,” Stewart said. Cinematographer Burgess was “nervous” when he and Stewart initially viewed the first third of the conversion “because it’s a big deal to turn over your photography to hundreds of people who are re-authoring your movie visually,” Stewart said. Burgess was so “gobsmacked” about the results that he called the director of the next movie he’s working on, a science-fiction title, to suggest shooting a hybrid version because even the converted content he had just seen was compelling, Stewart said. “When the great cinematographers working today are shooting digitally, you know we've reached the tipping point ‘cause they're usually the last to go,” he said.

Stewart highlighted several situations where 3D enhanced scenes in “Priest” including foreshortening of distances and frames within frames. He showed a few clips from the movie including a scene where the protagonists were entering a dark prison looking straight across a long hallway that passed through several planes. Various layers of depth were apparent and it added an almost palpable sense of realism to the scene.

Going in to the conversion for “Priest,” which took six months, Stewart didn’t know what to expect. In early testing, he was concerned about “the miniaturization effect” he had seen in some 3D movies where he felt like he was “looking at a miniature in a box.” Worried about desert scenes that were intended to look “sweeping and vast,” he was pleasantly surprised to find that the addition of 3D enhanced the effect of scale he was trying to achieve. “It did feel bigger,” he said, while talking scenes “felt more intimate.” He was also concerned about how the conversion would turn out with scenes that had weather, dust, smoke and ash. In a dark scene with flashlights, the beams “had volume, which is really difficult to do because it’s semi-transparent,” he said. In the end, everyone was pleased, he said. “We could have stopped anywhere along the way if we had wanted to,” he said, “but it was great."

Stewart took care during the process not to be “too gimmicky” and not to “push depth so far that you'd be physically exhausted from the movie.” To ensure that, scenes were “deeper and shallower” in some spots, and they adjusted cutting at times. Scenes with fewer than eight frames “we just left in 2D because you can’t perceive it in 3D anyway,” he said. “It would give you a headache."

When asked his advice to other filmmakers regarding 3D, Stewart said, “Cameras are so good now you should shoot in 3D.” There are certain cases where conversion will be appropriate, he said, so he sees a hybrid model being the norm. Shooting in 3D will become the way to go because “those cameras are so great and they're getting a lot more in low light photography” which will change how films are shot at night, he said. “Shooting candlelight with no noise is exciting,” he said. Stewart “absolutely plans” to author his next film natively in 3D.