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Next in: Cinema

Seeing triple

While manufacturing, retail and travel industries are hurting, the entertainment business is still betting on spending its way out of recession. And the loudest of the whistles and bells being dangled in front of popcorn-munchers is the new generation of 3D films, which use motion-capture animation technology. JPMorgan Chase is leading the investors, plunking down $1bn to upgrade 20,000 cinemas to 3D capability. And big names are clamouring to fill screens. 

Next summer James Cameron unleashes Avatar, his first film since Titanic in 1997. Cameron has said that the delay in producing Avatar – in which a band of humans battle against the population of a distant planet – was because the technology was not advanced enough. Unlike previous performance-capture systems, where the digital environment is added after the actors’ motions have been captured, Cameron’s new virtual camera allows him to observe on a monitor how the actors’ virtual counterparts interact with the movie’s digital world in real time and direct the scenes just as if shooting live action.  

Other technological innovations includes a small, individually made skull cap with a tiny camera attached to it, located in front of the actors’ face which collects information about their facial expressions and eyes, which is then transmitted to the computers. Besides a real-time virtual world, the team is also experimenting with a way of letting computer generated characters interact with real actors on a live- action set while shooting live action. 

Steven Spielberg and Lord of The Rings director Peter Jackson were clearly impressed with the potential when they visited the set. The directors are teaming up for a trilogy of 3D animated films based on the Belgian comic strip Tintin, using Jackson’s proprietary “photorealistic” digital technology. Jackson’s high-tech workshop, WETA, has already spent €25m developing performance-capture technology to make the boy journalist, his dog, Snowy, and the rest of the characters come alive. The bulk of that seed money came from Paramount Pictures. Meanwhile, Steven Soderburgh recently announced his intention to make a 3D rock ’n’ roll musical based on the story of Cleopatra and starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Hugh Jackman. The mind boggles.