While attending an exclusive meeting at Dolby today, we were treated to a series of movie trailers using their latest 3D technology. There was a good collection of animated fare like Toy Story 3, and the latest Avatar movie. But what completely caught us off guard was a long clip of Star Wars. In 3D. So yes, we can confirm that footage of this actually does exist. And it looks stunning.
However, before all you Star Wars fans go out and exclaim "FINALLY! Star Wars coming to 3D!" we should note that this was not representative of a larger initiative to make Star Wars 3D. It was in fact, a demo put together by 3Ality Digital, to impress on George Lucas. To date, George has not given any sign that he's interested in embracing this new visual tech. One of the biggest challenges of converting a classic movie like Star Wars into 3D is that it is an expensive and laborious process, costing as much as $50K to $100K per minute of footage. Not sure what the big deal is... George is sitting on a pile of money, I'm sure.
The footage we saw was pretty impressive, and brought new life to a rather dated film which came out over 32 years ago. The scenes we saw were from the intro, when the Star Wars logo zooms in. Princess Leia is attempting to elude capture by a Imperial Destroyer, as we saw laser zoom by our head. Right when her ship is captured and the Stormtroopers cut through the door, we see Darth Vader enter the scene, and his billowing cape looks impressive in 3D. The 3D effect of R2 D2 was also very well done, as the surface of his chrome down had dimensional articulations I never noticed before. I think what made this work was that the 3D effects weren't intrusive, unlike some some 3D films which constantly bombard you with highly skewed perspectives of things flying in your face.
Dolby is pretty confident that their 3D technology is now the best on the market, because their technique separates the colors for the 3D visual effect before the image hits the lens, which greatly eliminates any potential degradation of picture quality. This "demo" was shown in Dolby's 3rd floor theater, renown for its sound fidelity environment. The subwoofer system, as an example, is connected to beams that go under the floor of the theater, so that no matter where you sat, you can feel the bass rumbling everywhere. The walls also open up, so that you can adjust "the blankets" that hang in the background, to determine the level of sound dampening you want in the room. Let's just say that the viewing environment was as good as it could get.
While there is still no official word of an Star Wars 3D movie coming down the pipe, based on what we saw, George Lucas has be el loco to not seriously consider this technology.
