TV Ennui: Are Viewers Totally Content, or Just Really Averse to Change?

There's a great collection of stories in today's NY Times, focusing on efforts to change the way we watch TV (online and in our living rooms.) The overall message is that viewers are either pretty happy with the cable/broadcast/satellite programming that finds its way into their living rooms, and that most media companies (except Sony) have pretty much given up trying to produce original shows for the Web. There's also the obligatory piece about 3-D TV.

Links to the stories below, along with a short excerpt from each one:

- Sony's Bet on Sticking With Web Shows

Sony Pictures Entertainment has continued to pour money into Crackle.com, ordering Web shows that cost up to $1 million each. Why is Sony still betting so big? For one, it thinks it has hung around long enough to learn important lessons about consumer psychology when it comes to the Internet. But Sony also has a potential ace up its sleeve when it comes to funneling Crackle video to TV sets.

Analysts point out that Crackle could become the primary entertainment channel for Sony’s PlayStation Network, a fast-growing video service that pumps games and online content into the living room via PlayStation 3 consoles.

- Crowded Field for Bringing Web Video to TV

Start-ups and tech giants alike are offering what they say are easy ways to pipe shows and movies to a TV, hoping to win over people who might want a cheaper or more diverse alternative to cable and satellite service.

These companies have a lot of convincing to do. Most people do not have the tech-savviness to tackle the hardware and software setup that these products often require. And the companies are not able to offer access to many shows and channels that are on traditional pay TV, nor bundle services like phone service and Internet access at a discounted rate, as TV service providers do.

- TV Makers Predict a Bright Future for 3-D

If all goes as analysts predict, 3-D TV could account for half of all television sales within five years.

So far, 3-D TV is a sliver of the overall market, accounting for about 2.5 percent of new television sales in the United States in the last quarter, according to a survey by the market researcher iSuppli.

- Plenty to Watch Online, but Viewers Prefer to Pay for Cable

These are confusing times in the living room. The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of “cord-cutting” — a term that has come to mean canceling traditional pay TV and replacing it with programming from a grab bag of online sources.

But so far Americans are not doing this in any meaningful numbers. “Nor is there any evidence of it emerging in the near future,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of Leichtman Research Group, which studies consumer media habits.

- DIY TV: How Are You Watching?

Everything I watch is from various online sources, or is viewed at the apartment of a generous friend or at one of the bars around New York that hold screening parties for popular cable shows.

Although we’re still in the minority, some like me are cobbling together a patchwork way to watch our favorite primetime and cable TV shows without ever signing up for Comcast or a similar provider.

Notes and quotes from the PGA's 2010 "Produced By" conference

It was a real treat to be invited to speak at the PGA's "Produced By" conference this weekend; I was on a panel moderated by Emerging Cinemas' Ira Deutchman called "Smashing Windows: DIY and the New Hybrid Distribution."

I took some notes throughout the day Saturday on things that struck me as worth remembering, during panels on transmedia, digital cinema, "The Simpsons," and the producer's role. (I had to fly home Saturday night, so didn't stick around for the second day of the conference.) The subtext of most of the sessions I went to was this: we acknowledge that new stuff is happening and new technologies are emerging...and we know audiences want to interact with content in new ways...but it's unclear how we'll make anything approaching decent money in this new world.

I got a chance to ask noted producer (and onetime United Artists chief) David V. Picker whether he felt worried or energized by the changes technology is bringing about. "I'm curious," Picker said. "No one knows how they're going to make their money back. No one has figured it out." But it seems obvious, he added, that "you just can't keep making $100 million movies."

Picker moderated a panel of producers talking about the relationship between producer and director. (The panel was supposed to feature Brian Grazer and Ridley Scott, but both were mysterious no-shows. Not too eager to dwell about "Robin Hood," maybe?)

Larry Gordon, who produced "Die Hard" but also "Water World," said that anything can happen to a project (mostly bad) as you're trying to package together the screenplay, actors, and director. "You're not shooting until you're shooting," Gordon said.

Gordon said a lot of a producer's job is "protective work," mentioning that he once had to battle to keep Paramount executives from firing an actor on one of his films that they deemed unfunny. (The actor was Eddie Murphy, and the film "48 Hours.")

Douglas Wick, producer of "Gladiator" and "Working Girl," said that "creative alchemy [mentioned in the title of the panel] is an interesting topic, because it rarely occurs. A good movie is a miracle. There are so many ways things can go wrong." Producers, he added, are called upon to solve every imaginable problem that comes along.

Bruce Cohen, producer of "Milk" and "American Beauty," said that Spielberg told him on his first producing gig that the producer's job is to "get the director's vision up on the screen." Cohen said that is a "great mantra to start from," but that it's also important to figure out where a director may need help — on creative issues, sticking with the budget, or organizational stuff, to "keep them from getting in their own way."

Cohen had some funny stories about being reluctant to give notes to Tim Burton while he was shooting "Big Fish." He observed that Burton "paces back and forth very fast on the set, which makes it impossible to have a conversation with him, which is the point."

Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment moderated a panel on transmedia storytelling, with an impressive group of execs that included "Avatar" producer Jon Landau and "Battlestar Galactica" producer David Eick. Gomez mentioned that the PGA is forming a think tank on transmedia.

Gomez started by showing some slides to explain his view of transmedia. Some of the benefits: transmedia can create intense loyalty, long-term engagement, lifespan extension (of the property, not the viewers, I presume), a desire to share the experience with others, and increased revenue.

Landau talked about writing Pandorapedia, a "definitive version of the world" of "Avatar," by getting a dozen people in a room for a few days. That helped others who were building content related to the film.

Cary Granat of Bedrock Studios talked about the way Walden Media has created educational programming for school kids around movies like the "Narnia" series and "Holes," through a program called "Reel Thinking."

Larry Tanz of Vuguru mentioned "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers," intended to start on the Web and then move to TV.

Landau was asked why there weren't more transmedia tentacles extending from "Avatar." He said they'd pitched some that Fox hadn't wanted to fund. "Trying to get a big studio to embrace new ideas is never easy," Landau said. "No one ever got fired for not trying something."

"All these extensions cost money," said Tanz. "And not all of them generate money. You may only be paid for the TV show of the movie... Some of the pieces can be liabilities on the balance sheet."

Transmedia needs to come from an authentic place, Eick cautioned: "Once the audience starts to feel manipulated, you're dead... and maybe not just the off-shoot, but the mothership, too."

The panelists were honest about the current state of transmedia: it can still be hard to figure out where to invest to actually generate good returns (whether that means ticket sales, TV viewers, or game buyers/subscribers.) "It can be hard to understand if webisodes actually have any impact on box office," said Granat, but he pointed to Disney's recent "Tickets Together" experiment in selling advance tickets to "Toy Story 3" on Facebook as something that may point in an important new direction.

Landau agreed that embedding transactions into media, whether virtual goods or ticket sales, is likely the future. He also suggested that some of the spending studios do today on traditional TV and print advertising might be better invested in transmedia projects.

Granat added, "The big studios are not going to continue [investing in transmedia] until they understand the metrics."

But Granat mentioned an interesting transmedia example toward the end: Disney's decision to create a Broadway version of "The Lion King." The studio took a risk in hiring Julie Taymor to reinterpret the film, and wound up creating a stage franchise that has since surpassed the movie in revenues by playing for years in theaters the world over (at a much higher ticket price than the film, of course.)

During a session on "Digital Cinema and You," Cinedigm Entertainment executive Michele Martell trotted out some stats about the industry. Of about 39,000 movie screens in the U.S., 8,400 have digital projectors today, and 3,700 can show 3-D content. Of 100,000 screens worldwide, 15,000 are digital, and half of those can show 3-D, she said. Also, she referred to a survey that found that one in four Americans say they plan to buy a 3-D TV. (But when?)

On 3-D television broadcasts, Fox Sports exec Jerry Steinberg said, "It is still a technology in search of a business model. People will have to pay extra at home, or for theater tickets." But Steinberg is a believer that it'll happen: "What 3-D does for sports is recreate the experience of being in the premium seats, and we as an industry haven't sold that yet." He said his expectation is that 3-D TV, just like high-def, will be an 8 to 10 year transition. "We're two years into it," he said.

Jonathan Dern, a Cinedigm executive and a long-time producer of animated TV shows and movies, said, "I don't intend on producing anything from now on that isn't in 3-D. [That way,] you have an archive that is the future."

In our panel on "DIY and Hybrid Distribution," I tossed out what I've found to be four essential truths of the new media world producers are living in: "Distribution is free. Choice is infinite. Demand is instant. Noise is unprecedented." You can either develop strategies to address those shifts, or you can try to ignore them. (I've found that many studios and more established producers are doing the latter.)

"Simpsons" writer-producer Tim Long moderated a panel of his colleagues, including "Simpsons" creator James L. Brooks, that was a hoot, as you might expect. They talked about some of the guest stars with whom they most enjoyed working (Michael Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Mr. T) and some with whom they had problems (the late Gary Coleman apparently didn't want to say "Whatchu talking about, Willis?" on his episode.) They agreed that Conan O'Brien is one of the funniest people they've ever met, seeking to entertain anyone who'll make eye contact with him, at any moment. They said that the reason that Homer and Marge have stayed together after so many years is that the sex is great. (Apparently, this is Julie Kavner's explanation of the secret of their marriage.)

"The show is a labor of love, but it's also a labor of work," said "Simpsons" executive producer Matt Selman. More seriously, he added, "we try to cram the maximum amount of awesomeness" into every episode.

I only caught the end of Mark Cuban's conversation with LA Times reporter Dawn Chmielewski, but he made the comment that "if anything, the studios have gotten more power [over the past few years], not less."

He also talked about the EBIF standard for developing interactive applications on TVs, and said that as new Internet-enabled cable boxes crept into American homes, we'd start seeing more applications layered onto TV shows, like the long-heralded ability to click your remote and buy an outfit that a character is wearing, or dive into more data about a documentary. Cuban said that there are already about 20 million cable boxes deployed that support the EBIF standard.

So those are my notes. You can read tweets from the conference here, and hopefully the PGA will post audio or video at some point.

What's Next for 3-D Cinema

Two big stories today on the new wave of 3-D releases...

I like the one in USA Today best. But there's also this Wall Street Journal piece.

A few good data points from the USA Today piece:

Of North America's nearly 40,000 screens, about 2,000 will be 3-D capable in time for Monsters— thousands less than [DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey] Katzenberg predicted last year.

That means fewer chances to charge an extra $3 or more a ticket to see the atomic-age-inspired romp in all its extra-dimensional cheesiness — a premium that audiences have been glad to pay in the past for such movies as 'The Polar Express' and 'Journey to the Center of the Earth.' 'Monsters vs. Aliens' also will be available in standard 2-D on multiple screens at about 1,400 locations.

Katzenberg thinks that is enough to cover the $15 million or so the process adds to a film's budget as well as make a profit, especially given the recent surge in theater attendance. But he seems less concerned about whether 'Monsters,' budgeted at an estimated $165 million, conquers the box office than he is about 3-D taking over the planet.

Almost every movie would benefit from being 3-D, the way nearly every movie benefits from being in color," he says, though the format has been best served by animation so far. "When James Cameron comes forward with 'Avatar,' it will mark a whole new era of live-action films. When other filmmakers see what he has done, they will want to use it."

The WSJ piece misses the point that eventually, with 3-D displays in the home, that will create a nice "aftermarket" for all these 3-D movies the studios are making.

Last Week, This Week: CES & Sundance

1. A few last things worth reading about CES...

- Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talks about how his company's future hinges on integrating Netflix's streaming movie service into lots of new TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

- This NY Times piece summarizes some of the big trends from CES last week, including 3-D at home, Palm's new social networking phone, and Net-connected TVs.

- Variety colleague Ben Fritz and I were blogging last week from CES. I just posted some audio clips of a conversation I had with four studio home entertainment execs and some remarks that Jeffrey Katzenberg and John Lasseter made during the Sony keynote last Thursday.

2. Sundance starts this Thursday. The Journal offers a look at some of the films getting early buzz, and predicts a lukewarm year for acquisition action. The Salt Lake Tribune also has a look at what's different about this year's fest. Robert Redford seems perfectly happy to have a low-key year: "What might be a positive is that if there is less hoo-ha, less of a circus atmosphere," he tells the paper, "there will be more tendency to focus on what it is that we're really about, which is the independent filmmakers and the quality of the work."

3. And one more link... this NY Times piece is interesting because it is yet another article that suggests that the global credit crunch is slowing down the deployment of digital cinema and 3-D projection technologies to theaters.

CES Trends: Net-Connected TVs and Home 3-D

Judging from a bunch of news stories that appeared this morning, two big trends for this year's Consumer Electronics Show are TVs that have a built-in Internet connection for downloading or streaming video (these have been present at CES for several years.... but consumers may soon actually start to purchase them) and 3-D content in the living room.

The trend toward Internet-connected TVs seems to favor Netflix, which has been making deals with several TV manufacturers; it also has the potential to slow sales of Blu-ray DVDs.

Some links:

- LG Adds a Direct Internet Link to a Line of HDTVs

- Blu-ray's Fuzzy Future (What will digitally-delivered content to do Blu-ray disc sales?)

- Internet-Ready TVs Usher Web Into Living Room

- Animators Envision 3-D TV at Home

- Taking 3-D to a New Dimension: The Home

3-D Gets 'Bloody'

What do you think.... will Lionsgate's 'My Bloody Valentine 3-D' help or hurt the deployment of digital 3-D equipment?

The New York Times wrote today about the mid-January release:

If “My Bloody Valentine 3D” is a success — and with a modest budget of about $20 million, success is easily within reach — the next big thing in horror could be at hand, said Joe Drake, the co-chief operating officer of Lionsgate and the president of the studio's motion picture group. “We see 3-D horror as financially lucrative and creatively exciting,” he said. “We want to break some new ground here in R-rated fare.”

...For studios like Lionsgate that focus almost exclusively on young moviegoers, the rush to 3-D technology is an attempt to adapt to the demands of the texting-while-driving-while-eating crowd. Teenagers and young adults, crucial to the health of movie exhibition, are increasingly unaccustomed to sitting still for two hours in a theater, studio executives say.

“I was excited to pursue the 3-D element because it feels really fresh and unique,” Patrick Lussier, who directed the “My Bloody Valentine” remake, said. “It’s visually stunning and a new way for this audience to experience a film but isn’t painful in the way some of the old 3-D films were, where they just rammed stuff in the audience’s face.”

The last time I talked with James Cameron about the spread of 3-D cinematography, he did express some worry about "down-market" 3-D releases. "Hopefully [3-D] doesn’t fall into that ghetto where it used to live, with 'Friday the 13th' or 'Jaws 3,'" he said.

Sports Fans: See the BCS Championship or NBA All-Star Game in 3-D

In January and February, you'll have a chance to see two live sporting events in 3-D, at digital cinemas around the country. Cinedigm Entertainment (formerly known as AccessIT) has the info. The BCS Championship happens on January 8th; the NBA All-Star game on February 14th. Cinedigm has a list of all the theaters that will carry the games.

Thanks to 3ality Digital for sending along the press release.

Monday Links for Your Reading Pleasure

- The Wall Street Journal offers a round-up of technologies changing the way we watch movies, from BD Live to iTunes to holograms to in-store DVD kiosks.

- Bloomberg News says that the continuing credit crunch will likely slow the deployment of 3-D projection technology in U.S. cinemas.

- The New York Times assesses two new video search technologies from VideoSurf and Digitalsmith. Both use facial recognition software to try to determine who is appearing on screen.

- Last week's 3-D broadcast of an NFL game didn't go off sans snafus, according to Wired News.

- Filmmaker Rob Spence is installing a camera in his eye socket, to replace the prosthetic eye he has previously worn.

Invite Only: NFL's 3-D Demo This Week

Too bad that sports fans can't buy tickets to see Thursday's game between the Raiders and the Chargers in 3-D. It's for invited guests only.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The several hundred guests at the three participating theaters Dec. 4 will include representatives from the NFL's broadcasting partners and from consumer-electronics companies. The event will be closed to the general public. Burbank, Calif.-based 3ality Digital LLC will shoot the game with special cameras and transmit it to a satellite. Thomson SA's Technicolor Digital Cinema is providing the satellite services and digital downlink to each theater, and Real D 3D Inc. will power the display in the theaters.

This isn't the first time the NFL has participated in a 3-D experiment. In 2004, a predecessor company to 3ality filmed the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. When Sandy Climan, 3ality's chief executive officer, shows the footage, "people crouch down to catch the ball," he says. "It's as if the ball is coming into your arms."

The Hollywood Reporter adds:

The test will serve as a proof of concept for the possiblities of 3-D televised sports in the home because several consumer 3-D ready displays will be used.

"This broadcast will be an exciting test of how 3-D could affect fans' experience in the future," said Howard Katz, the NFL's senior vp broadcasting and media operations.

On the way: 3-D audio?

I wish I could've heard this demo at the SMPTE Technical Conference in LA this week: 3-D sound. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "The 3-D sound system at the Mann [Chinese 6 Theater in Hollywood] is a ring of 380 speakers, set six inches apart, around the wall of the auditorium." (More on the technology is here.)

Fans of history will recall that Disney's original theatrical release of 'Fantasia' used 54 speakers. The equipment costs were deemed too expensive back in 1940...and so that sort of ultra-surround-sound didn't take off.

Will it be different this time around? I'm sure the speakers are less expensive these days...but Iosono, the company trying to commercialize the new technology, will have to convince theaters to make the investment, and persuade studios to record and mix the sound in their new format.

Challenging... but I totally support any attempt to improve the quality of the theatrical experience.

Sony Will Offer 3-D Adapter for its 4K Digital Projectors

One of the drawbacks of Sony's high-res 4K SXRD digital cinema projectors has been that there has been no way to use them to show 3-D content.

That'll change in 2009, when the company will offer an adaptor for its 4K projectors that allows them to show 3-D content (albeit at 2K resolution.) Here's the press release, some coverage from the Hollywood Reporter, a piece on Sony Insider, and a blog post on Engadget HD. No word yet on price.

On the Web, no 'Seinfeld' yet ... Paul Schrader on What Happens Next ... More 3-D Screens at Small Theater Chains

- The New York Times ran a story Sunday and another this morning about original Web video content. The message of both, when read together, is that there hasn't yet been a 'Seinfeld'-like hit on the Web yet, but lots of people are trying.

On Sunday, Brian Stelter wrote:

...[P]roducing Web content may be easy but profiting from it is hard. While a small number of writers, producers and actors are making a living with webisodes, they are still a long way from establishing the form alongside television and feature films. The newfound industry lacks clear business models and standardized formats.

And so far, it also lacks audiences. Ask most average media consumers what Web shows they watch, and the reaction is likely to be a blank stare. If they have heard of webisodes at all, it is probably in the context of “Quarterlife,” a Web series that leapt to TV and flopped spectacularly in the ratings in February, or “Prom Queen,” an online drama backed by Michael Eisner, the former chief of Walt Disney.

Then today, Mike Hale reviews several Web series, including 'Gemini Division' with Rosario Dawson, and Stephen King's N., which exists to promote a new book. About 'Gemini,' he writes:

...[P]erhaps because of the cost of hiring a known actress like Ms. Dawson, the execution is lacking. The actors are pasted on top of static photo images of hotel rooms and Paris landmarks, and very little animation has been done beyond the annoying use of graphics to indicate that we’re actually watching video transmissions from Ms. Dawson to a friend back home. It’s like watching “Sin City” or “300” without the digital effects, which — need I say? — were just about the only reasons to watch those movies.

So what do you think, will the hits come from the big guys, or the independents?

Someone from Gen247 Media e-mailed me last week to point me to 'Deleted: The Game', a "Web TV show that promises to blur the lines between fantasy and reality by drawing viewers into an interactive game." Their budget is "next to nothing," I'm told, and they shoot act-by-act, which allows them to incorporate audience input. Characters are available for viewer interaction on sites like MySpace, Facebook, or via chat. Viewers can win prizes, or a chance to do a cameo on the show.

- Karina Longworth has the world's best job. She was out at Telluride this past week, and offered up some notes from a panel called "Snip Snip: Are Cutbacks in Film Distribution and Criticism Affecting Quality Filmmaking?" Here was the section I found interesting:

“Technology is leaving behind much that we are fond of,” [screenwriter & dirctor Paul] Schrader warned. “I personally believe that movies are a 20th century art form, and they’re basically over.” Several times over the course of the session, Schrader expressed enthusiasm for short-form episodic work made on low budgets for small screens. Referencing the rise number of “professional” media makers who have jumped to the webseries format, Schrader announced that he’s currently planning a film that would exist in a couple of different versions: one feature designed for arthouses, and one “X-rated” version, cut into 12, 5-minute episodes, for viewing on cellphones and/or on the web. Schrader’s not planning to go this route because it’s lucrative, but because it’s what he sees as our inevitable future. “There’s [currently] no money in it, but it’s much better to gore the ox than to hold the ox that’s being gored.”

- RealD and the Cinema Buying Group, which represents smaller theater chains looking to transition to digital cinema, announced that they're going to bring 3-D to about 1,000 screens. Sarah McBride explains:

The independent-theater owners "want to remain competitive, and they want to accrue the benefits" that come with 3D, said Michael Lewis, chairman and chief executive of RealD.

...Theaters tend to charge a premium for 3D tickets, often $2 to $5 more than regular tickets. That means movies that run on 3D screens can boost theaters' and studios' bottom lines. During opening weekend for this summer's "Journey to the Center of the Earth," 3D screens took in almost four times the revenue of 2D screens showing the movie.

Excerpt from 'Inventing' in Digital Cinema Report

Nick Dager edits one of the most respected sites that focuses on digital cinema, Digital Cinema Report. The September "edition" of the site includes a new excerpt from Inventing the Movies, which I adapted especially for Nick's site. It covers the many false starts of the digital cinema revolution...from predictions in the 1940s and 1950s that digital cinema was right around the corner... to efforts by Pacific Bell, George Lucas, and Texas Instruments in the late 1990s...to the present day, when we still haven't hit the digital cinema "tipping point."

A snippet from the beginning of the excerpt:

When did the digital cinema revolution begin, and who started it?

A handful of Hollywood soothsayers were predicting the imminent arrival of digital cinema in the middle of the 20th century. In 1949, the independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, who’d helped to launch three Hollywood studios (Paramount, MGM, and United Artists), anticipated the development of video-on-demand systems that would allow movie fans to view the movies they wanted to see at home, as well as methods for delivering a movie electronically to thousands of theaters, saving the studios the cost of making film prints.

A few years later, in 1954, Albert Abramson, a CBS television engineer, published an article titled, “A Motion-Picture Studio of 1968.” In it, he sketched out how digital cinematography and a film-free distribution system would work: movies would be shot with electronic cameras, and then “sent by radio-relay or coaxial cable to the theaters. Five or fifty theaters in an area may be receiving the same program. An area may cover the whole state, a county, or just a large city. But no theater is shipped the actual picture tape.” Abramson also expected that by 1968, a new generation of electronic cameras would be totally self-contained and cordless – capable of capturing 3-D imagery and transmitting it wirelessly back to the production center.

Monday Links: MovieBeam Sold, Blu-ray Interactivity, 'Journey' Dazzles in 3-D

- Can anyone explain this? An Indian company is buying Moviebeam, the movie-delivery-over-the-airwaves-set-top-box, for an undisclosed sum. They're promising to invest $100 million to re-start it, delivering both Hollywood and "ethnic" content to consumers. Moviebeam was started in 2005 by Disney, then re-started in 2006 with an assist from Cisco Systems and some other investors. Then it was sold to the Movie Gallery, a rental chain. Last December, it was shut down. Through it all, there has never been any word on how many customers Moviebeam has managed to acquire.

- Disney is experimenting with Blu-ray's interactive features in a new release of 'Sleeping Beauty,' according to the NY Times. Friends can chat with one another while viewing it separately, and the text will appear on the screen...or play trivia contests... or record video messages that will pop up during the movie. But these Internet-dependent features only work in a sub-set of Blu-ray players which support 'BD Live.'

- 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' wasn't the top new movie for this past weekend, but it performed quite well in theaters where it unspooled in 3-D, according to the NY Times. Brooks Barnes writes:

...[T]here were hints buried deeper in the box-office returns suggesting that 3-D is well on its way to becoming a force at multiplexes. Auditoriums screening the movie in 3-D sold more than three times as many tickets as those showing the standard version. About 57 percent of the total gross for “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” based on the classic Jules Verne tale, came from 3-D screenings.

In comparison, 3-D screenings of “Beowulf,” the computer-generated picture that opened last November, generated just 28 percent of its opening-weekend gross. (“Beowulf” was available in 3-D on slightly fewer screens.)

D Cinema Finger-Pointing

What's this all about?

Warner Bros. is accusing theater owners of dragging their feet in the deployment of digital cinema equipment. (True - the biggest chains, including Regal and AMC, have yet to get serious about installing digital projectors.)

And the National Association of Theater Owners is accusing Warner Bros. of being slow to commit to the financial terms that will support future digital cinema roll-outs. (Probably also true... studios are notoriously stingy about how much they will pay for a film print, or how much their will pay as a "virtual print fee," which is essentially a toll for sending a digital movie to a digital projector, which helps pay for the cost of the equipment.)

Earlier this year, Jeffrey Katzenberg had also accused theaters of being slow in their shift to digital. DreamWorks, of course, is getting ready to introduce its first 3-D movie in 2009, 'Monsters vs. Aliens.' (Warner Bros. is the distributor for this month's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth.')

The studios, I suspect, are now feeling the complexity of releasing movies in both film and digital formats -- and probably won't start seeing real cost savings until digital distribution hits a certain volume level. That's why they're negotiating so hard on what they'll pay as a virtual print fee for this second wave of d cinema installations.

'Journey to the Center of the Earth' Hype Begins

'Journey to the Center of the Earth,' starring Brendan Fraser, opens next Friday, and there are already some articles showing up touting its use of the Fusion camera system developed by James Cameron and Vince Pace. It's based on the Sony HDC digital camera, and it was used for the recent 'Hannah Montana' 3-D concert film.

The Boston Globe writes:

"Journey" is the first live-action non-documentary feature to be shot completely using the Fusion System, a versatile 3-D camera rig engineered by Cameron and cinematographer Vince Pace to record with greater artistic control than traditional equipment. Technical partners for the better part of a decade, Cameron and Pace did some earlier R&D for the rig on the director's underwater IMAX documentaries "Ghosts of the Abyss" and "Aliens of the Deep" - which, like "Journey," were produced with Boston-based Walden Media.

Fusion's goal is to capture imagery with photorealism - to make viewers feel that they're being pulled into the movie, rather than having the movie artificially pop out at them.

Cameron has been talking up the system for a few years now. In my last chat with him in 2006, we talked a bit about traditional cinematographers getting comfortable with 3-D cameras. "There's always resistance to change," Cameron said, "because people can't parade themselves as the world's greatest expert. But some people like challenges -- they like to push themselves and test themselves. What haven't you done yet? That's the only interesting thing to be doing. That's what gets me up in the morning."

On the set of 'Journey,' Pace told me, it was possible to review dailies or rehearsals in 3-D, if necessary, on a 25-foot screen. That's cool.

Oddly, Vince Pace's Web site makes no mention of the camera at all... but there is a separate single-page Web site for the Fusion camera.

Cinematical assesses the 3-D elements of 'Journey.' Slashfilm has an early take praising the 3-D effect, but snarking about everything else. VFXworld talks about the film's 3-D production pipeline.

The LA Times offers a PDF document from Real D showing the planned 3-D releases for 2008, 2009, and beyond. A dozen are expected next year...

In-Three Will Dimensionalize 'Dawn of the Dead'

Neil Feldman of In-Three sends a note this week with news that his California company just got the green light to "dimensionalize" its first feature, George Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead.' (In-Three uses custom software to turn movies shot in 2-D into 3-D.) According to The Hollywood Reporter, the project should be completed this year.

"We have been busy significantly speeding up, lowering the cost, and improving both the quality and capability of our proprietary Dimensionalization process for converting 2D content into 'perfect 3D,' Feldman writes.

Of course, dimensionalizing 'Dawn of the Dead' is a slightly lower-profile project than doing 'Star Wars: Episode IV,' a 3-D clip of which was shown at ShoWest in 2005... but isn't it always the B-movies that gamble first on new technologies?

How 'Crystal Skull' Almost Didn't Have a Digital Release

Variety's Pamela McClintock writes today about the continuing spat over whether the digital 3-D roll-out is proceeding quickly enough. But there's an interesting aside in it about the plain old 2-D digital release of the new 'Indiana Jones' movie.

McClintock writes:

There was an outcry among theater owners earlier this year when Par suggested it wouldn't supply digital prints of Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," because Spielberg wanted the movie played only as film on 35mm screens. Filmmakers including Spielberg sometimes balk at having their movies shown in digital when they were shot on film.

Not providing a film like "Crystal Skull" on digital would slight theater owners who have made the conversion, according to exhibs. Theater owners have long argued that there's no reason to make the transition if the product isn't there.

Par changed its position and will be releasing digital prints of "Indiana Jones." Exhibs aren't entirely mollified, though, since digital prints will go only to those houses where all the screens are digital. If there's a mix of screens in a theater, that theater will get only a film print.

Who's Frustrated Now? Katzenberg.

In the early 2000s, it was director George Lucas who was persistently peeved at how slow theater-owners were to install digital cinema equipment; he wanted more screens to show 'Attack of the Clones' and 'Revenge of the Sith.' ('Phantom Menace' was shown on just four digital screens as a test, in 1999.)

Now, in the latter part of the decade, it's DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who is frustrated at how slow big multiplex operators have been to install 3-D digital projection gear. From Variety:

"In the last 30 days, things have not progressed as well as I had hoped, expected and, quite frankly, been committed to, by all the parties involved," Katzenberg said in response to an analyst's question. "It's ongoing as we speak literally now, but in terms of getting the big three (exhibitors: Regal, Cinemark and AMC) on board and actively moving forward, I feel as though things have dragged along, and it's been pretty disappointing."

Tensions are simmering on both sides of the issue, as the major studios and the top three circuits try to hammer out the size of the "virtual print fee" that studios will pay to distribute their pics digitally, which would be used to defray the costs of digital projector installations.

Katzenberg is hoping there will be 5000 3-D capable screens in the US by next March, when DWA will release 'Monsters vs. Aliens.'

A Few Monday Reads: Piracy, Cameron, Blockbuster, and Digital Cinema Fees

- The NY Times has an interesting piece today that suggests that piracy is moving from NYC street corners to the Internet. (This may be in part due to a big enforcement initiative by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.) Eric Taub writes:

Since December 2003, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg started an initiative to stem the trade in bootlegged and counterfeit goods, [NYC enforcement agent Shari] Hyman has “seen a huge decrease in illegal DVDs being sold in buildings.” In a February sweep, the organization checked out three buildings and 32 storefronts for bootlegged DVDs, and found none.

But New York may not be the best barometer of piracy. Worldwide and on the Internet, video piracy remains rampant. The movie industry has devised new ways to fight piracy, and has pushed for antipiracy laws and run ads to discourage pirates.

Besides pirated DVD copies of first-run films, copies are also available online for illegal downloading, mainly through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. High-definition camcorders, some not much bigger than a cellphone, can copy films from a movie screen with little loss of detail.

- James Cameron shares a lot about what he's learned about shooting in 3-D in this e-mail interview with Variety's David S. Cohen. It's full of juicy observations, advice, and opinions. A snippet:

COHEN: Right now, 3-D is pretty much being used for films that have some spectacle in them, whether it's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" or "U2 3D"; nobody's talking about using it for domestic dramas. But there are people wondering whether it will actually enhance the impact of character-driven stories. What are your thoughts on how 3-D changes the experience of watching actors act?

CAMERON: I plan to shoot a small dramatic film in 3-D, just to prove this point, after "Avatar." In "Avatar," there are a number of scenes that are straight dramatic scenes, no action, no effects. They play very well, and in fact seem to be enhanced by the stereo viewing experience. So I think this can work for the full length of a dramatic feature. However, filmmakers and studios will have to weigh the added cost of shooting in 3-D against the increased marketing value for that type of film.

- Blockbuster wants to buy Circuit City for more than $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Why? Blockbuster's CEO wants to create a company that can sell digital and physical media, and also the devices you need to play it on ... "an $18 billion global retail enterprise uniquely positioned to capitalize on the growing convergence of media content and electronic devices," CEO Jim Keyes wrote in a letter.

- Studios and cinema owners are wrangling over the fees studios will pay each time they deliver a digital file to a theater. (Known as the "virtual print fee," this helps theater owners --or a third-party that installed the digital projector and server -- defray the cost of the digital equipment.)