The industry’s leading 3D stereographer and camera designer/builder, Vince Pace, says he has “serious concerns” about how quickly 3D is being applied to movies and TV shows without the proper amount of research and understanding.
“We’re selling that to the public and it won’t work,” the CEO of Pace HD told hundreds of industry filmmakers in attendance at the latest day-long 3D University program of the International 3D Society, this one in partnership with the Producer’s Guild of America held at the Zanuck Theater on the lot of 20th Century Fox Studios on Saturday, Dec. 4. Pace said it’s not enough to slap the 3D label on a movie just to try to get moviegoers to pay a premium on their movie ticket, which could soon backfire.
Pace, who created the pioneering Fusion camera system with James Cameron for “Avatar,” was one of many high-profile speakers. Others included Rob Hummel, new president at Legend 3D; Jeffrey Silver, producer of “Tron: Legacy”; Robert Neuman, stereoscopic/layout supervisor on “Tangled” at Walt Disney Pictures Animation; and Buzz Hayes, executive stereoscopic 3D producer at Sony Technology Center.
<Story continues below the following video highlights of Pace and all those noted above.>
“We need good content on that screen,” Pace said. “To put up bad content and use the excuse that it was cheap to put up there isn’t going to sell this medium for the future. I do have serious concerns of how quickly it’s moving along. We’re only in the beginning of understanding what it takes to make a 3D film successful, not just dimensional. That’s where we’re stuck at right now. We just apply dimension to it and we’re done. There’s storytelling techniques; there’s transitions. It’s just not dimensional for us.”
In addition to 3D Society president Jim Chabin, who introduced the program with industry statistics such as the global market growing to nearly 20,000 3D screens out of about 100,000, other speakers and moderators included Rob Engle, 3D visual effects supervisor for Sony Pictures Imageworks; Brian Gaffney, VP, general manager at Technicolor; Steve Gaub, co-producer/post-production supervisor on “Tron: Legacy”; Rick Gordon, owner of large format movie company RPG Productions; Jon Karafin, manager of production oeprations and VFX line producer at In-Three, Inc.; Lenny Lipton, president of Oculus 3D; Doug Merrifield, executive producer of “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never”; John Niccolard, head of digital production at Fotokem; Art Repola, EVP, VFX, post-production at Walt Disney Studios; and Michael Tronick, editor on “The Green Hornet,” Jonas Brothers 3D” and “Hannah Montana 3D.”
— By Scott Hettrick