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It was about 10 minutes into Robert Zemeckis' computer generated epic Beowulf that I really began to appreciate the value of the latest 3D movie technology.
A drunken King Hrothgar hurled a handful of coins down a table. The gold discs seemed to fly through the theatre screen
at my face, making me jump. There were plenty more moments like that in this gory retelling of the Dark Ages folktale.
Members of the audience at Wellington's Reading Theatre, which is equipped with Dolby 3D filtering technology for its projector, were given a pair of plastic glasses on the way into the movie, for which a $1 surcharge on the ticket was added.
With the red and green-tinged glasses, the 3D effect was most obvious in the action scenes when the deformed figure Grendal was on his murderous rampage, or Beowulf was slaying sea serpents or dragons.
But it also added subtle touches, such as the fantastic continuous shot early that zooms back from Hrothgar's noisy mead hall to Grendal's miserable cave.
Overall, I was impressed. There was a little bit of haze around the edges of the screen at times and I went a little cross-eyed during a couple of high-motion scenes, but it was an immersive experience and the 3D added to enjoyment of the movie.
3D technology in cinema has come and gone in waves since the 1950s, but this latest push may have some real sticking power.
"Hollywood's in a panic right now," says Dolby cinema product manager Jeff McNall, who I met at Dolby's headquarters in San Francisco in September. "A lot of directors are saying 'I'm the king of 3D'. There's a big rush to get this out like there's never been before."
That's because the theatre-going audience is dwindling as the internet, an ever-increasing collection of TV channels and fancy LCD TV screens capable of playing high-definition content are keeping people in their lounge rooms.
The movie studios are looking to 3D to get audiences excited about going to the theatre and are spending big bucks to shoot with 3D cameras.
James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar, which is being worked on by Weta Digital, is expected to be one of the biggest 3D productions ever mounted. Cameron will use a new digital 3D camera system, known as Fusion, which he helped develop with camera expert Vince Pace.
While 3D has potential for everything from live sports events - the NBA used Pace's 3D cameras to film some basketball games to great effect, to animated and live action movies, the 3D glasses are necessary for the meantime.
Dolby's suppliers spent a year designing the curved lenses viewers need to see the images. There are 50 layers of filters on each lens and the glasses cost US$50 (NZ$64) per pair.
Still, there are plenty of tech companies trying to come up with 3-D systems that don't require the thick-rimmed spectacles. There's also a move to apply the technology to TV screens for use in the home.
At a trade show in Berlin this year, Philips displayed a 42-inch LCD TV that showed 3D video to the naked eye. The filtering process required to create the 3D effect meant a good deal of the image resolution was lost, and the 3D effect was only visible when you stood directly in front of the screen.
But it was an impressive effect. There's still a fear the tendency for some 3D images to make the viewer go cross-eyed and feel nauseous will turn audiences away from the technology - even at this advanced stage in its development. But McNall says Hollywood is learning how to edit 3D movies to avoid this.
Whatever 3D technology comes to dominate, it seems Hollywood has its heart set on displaying some of its movies in three dimensions. The challenge now is getting theatre chains and the movie-going public to buy into the 3D vision.
