3ality Technica to launch 3D content fund to boost 3D TV
Steve Schklair is the Founder and CEO of the Burbank based company and, like other 3D rig manufacturers, believes 3D television is essential for the growth of the 3D industry as a whole. 3ality purchased Element Technica last year to form 3ality Technica. The company’s stereoscopic systems are currently being used on The Hobbit,Prometheus, The Great Gatsby and Stalingrad 3D– the first Russian film to be picked up by IMAX of which Steve Schklair will be 3D producing. BSkyB also use 3ality Technica rigs for a lot of its live 3D sports coverage on Sky 3D. ...
Steve Schklair: Let’s start with the premise that 3D TV content creation is not growing quickly enough to support a large mainstream audience. Obviously there are pockets of active production such as BSkyB and what is happening in China, but from a global view there is not enough content. From a US centric view there is even less. The large one-off sporting events such as World Cup and Olympics are fantastic and need to exist, but they alone are not enough to shift the market toward 3D television. From a 3ality Technica point of view, the content that is vitally necessary is episodic television. And not just trial episodes, but entire seasons so that there is something new to watch every week, and this something happens to be the favourite show of a very large audience.
3ality Technica has a strategy to help deal with this. We have raised the beginnings of a “3D Delta Fund”, which is a fund that can be used to cover the cost differential between an episodic show shooting in 2D and one that would shoot in 3D. With this fund, there are episodics that can now start shooting in stereo at no additional cost to the show. There are two main laws in episodic production that cannot be violated and to some extent are tied closely together – Time and Budget. 3ality has proven time and time again on episodic show tests and on the features that are using our systems, that it is completely possible to shoot 3D on a 2D schedule. So we maintain the law of Time. With the fund we are able to cover the budget differential so the law of Budget can be adhered to.
The fund also includes any additional post production costs for the 3D version, but since the 3ality Systems shoot accurately enough for the material can go to air immediately, we are comfortable doing this because we know there will be no unknown costs to fix alignment and geometry problems in post. The fund will even cover the costs of visual effects in some shows, although for complex effects we are recommending that they be done in 2D and converted to 3D. We are making this as uncomplicated as possible, and request no rights to the 3D version. All we ask is that it goes to air, and we can help with the plan for 3D distribution.
Other strategies 3ality has for television is to continue developing better software and image processing algorithms to make it less expensive and improve the image quality for 3D shows.
3D Focus: Is the 3D television production side of your business growing or declining?
Steve Schklair: The television production side of the business on a worldwide basis seems to be growing, but this year we can thank the recent mandates in China for that. In some territories it is static, but as a whole it is growing. ...
3D Focus: Is it time to accept 3D TV is not going to transform the television landscape as expected?
Steve Schklair: Not at all. Its time to accept that the path is going to be one of slow steady growth. And it probably will not be lead by a US broadcaster. Or maybe not even by a European broadcaster. ...
3D Focus: Has 3D yet to be fully creatively exploited?
Steve Schklair: Absolutely not. Although it will be much further down the road with the release of the Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, Spiderman, Prometheus and a few other shows we have worked on. That’s actually one of the most exciting aspects of working in 3D today. There is an opportunity to help develop a new language for storytelling. Opportunities such as this do not come along too often.
See the full, lengthy interview here: