James Cameron used to be 3D cinema's greatest advocate; a director whose 2009 3D epic Avatar, the second highest-grossing movie of all time, created the stereoscopic boom that we still live with today. But now? “There was a time,” he says, “around '04 when I was a strong proponent of the development of 3D theatres and I presented them to cinema owners as an opportunity not only to see new films in 3D but to go back and convert classics as well. I was really just trying to get screens out there. I never dreamed that conversion would actually take the place of native stereoscopic production, which unfortunately it did. There came a point where I just kind of had to tell everyone, 'Conversion is not the way to go! Don't do conversion!'”
Cameron's core problem with the state of 3D is a common one — that, by most cynical movie studios, it is considered an afterthought; that “shovelling the 3D conversion off to other people in post-production,” without a director's input, to fit a tight production schedule, “can't conceivably be done well. It can be done passably. And that's what you get: passable 3D.” Cameron's preference, unsurprisingly, is that 3D is woven into the film-making process. But failing that, he says, conversion can be done to a high quality; a theory that he put into practice in 2012 with the 3D conversion, and $343.6 million-grossing re-release, of Titanic. It's a success that he's hoping to repeat, and improve upon, with his 1991 sci-fi classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day — re-released in 3D on August 29. “No spoilers,” he says, “but the Terminator still dies at the end.” Overseen by Cameron himself, Terminator 2 was converted into 3D by nearly 1,000 artists over the course of six months; a collaboration between Cameron's own production company Lightstorm, and 3D conversion house Stereo D, who also worked on Titanic.
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“Titanic was a steep learning curve,” he says, “but we're now at a level which is approximately equivalent to what it would be if we shot it native. The only real possible stumbling block is the actual design of the shots themselves, as they were baked into the negative 26 years ago. And fortunately for me and my tastes, I'm always so focused on depth even before I started being a stereo film-maker. I was always moving the camera, and working on wider lenses, and working with foreground, mid-ground, background, compositions in such a way that they actually make very good 3D shots, with the exception of a few long-lens shots that don’t lend themselves as well to conversion. But for the most part, I would say my particular cinematic style does lend itself very well to conversion. Even though I never dreamed such a thing was going to be taking place with the movie back in 1990. It’s just kind of how I see the world.”
Before Terminator 2 could be converted to 3D, however, the original 35mm negative had to be scanned and then restored in 4K — meaning that the re-release will be visually sharper, both in quality and colour, than the version released in 1991. “It took a lot of work to clean up all the scratches and dirt and the photo chemistry issues on that original negative,” he says. “I even got Adam Greenberg, who was the director of photography, to come back and help me colour-time it. Adam is 80 now but his eye for colour is just as finely calibrated as it ever was. He said, ‘I remember we had a problem with the cyan in these shots, so we need to put more cyan...’ and he was right!” Although nowhere near the levels of, say, George Lucas, the re-release also allowed Cameron to tinker with certain elements through CGI; such as a continuity error during the tow truck chase sequence, where a windshield pops out and smashes on the ground, only to appear intact in the next shot. This restoration, he says, has less to do with messing with the original, and more to do with offering audiences something beyond 3D.
“Is there a business case for taking a 26 year old movie and re-releasing it in 3D, when 3D is the only thing that's new? Because I don't think people go to see movies because they're in 3D anymore; in the same way they don't go to see movies because they're in colour anymore. There was a period of time in the late 50s where you picked a movie because it was in colour — that was a big deal. And there was a period of time in the mid-2000s, around the time Avatar was coming out, where people went to see movies because they were 3D. It sounded like a big deal. And rightly so, in the same way now colour is not remarkable. I think the big draw for the average person would be more, 'I only know this film from video, I've never seen it in the theatre. It seems like the kind of movie one should see in a theatre.' So it's almost the theatrical experience is a bigger draw than the 3D.”
The novelty of stereoscopic cinema may be fading — the 3D US box office in 2016 was down eight per cent from 2015; and 3D’s share of America's total box office gross dropped to just 14 per cent last year, down from its peak of 21 per cent in 2010 — but Cameron's faith in its future remains strong. “I think we have a long way to go until it reaches its full potential,” he says. “I think high dynamic range cinemas like the new Dolby cinemas can show us what that next level looks like in that cinematic experience. Because where we’ve been challenged the whole time is in light-levels. And if you don’t have strong light levels, then putting on the glasses is simultaneously taking away and adding to the experience. My motto is that 3D should always be adding value; not taking away with one hand and giving with the other. A lot of people just don’t like watching a darker movie. And the second you have to grade a film for three-and-a-half foot-lamberts, you’re already compromising your dynamic range drastically. Your highlights and your shadows just pull together so much at those low light levels. So the new laser projection systems are so good and so bright. And you can get the full 17 or 15 foot lamberts through the glasses which is just stunning. If you haven’t seen it, you should.”
There were reports recently that Cameron was developing his Avatar sequel, due for release in 2020, to be shown in glasses-free 3D — which isn't true. “I don’t think that’s a near-term technology,” he says. “Someone could walk through the door tomorrow having cracked it... but someone could also walk through the door tomorrow with a warp drive.” Still, he maintains: it is the future of 3D — especially if the technology has any hope of surviving in the home. “Once we get 4K and HDR out of our system, we can circle back on 3D for broadcast. But what we can’t ask people to do, in the home, is wear glasses. They’re just not going to do it. But if you look at the linear progression of technology, I think glasses-free home display up to whatever size you want, probably 80-100 inches, is possible now. And it’s going to come to market in greater volume as the price point comes down.”
Cameron is, of course, a technophile. He speaks in reams of dense, technical jargon; he talks of technology as through it was the deep-sea, and he the explorer; if he wasn't spending the next nine years making Avatar movies, Cameron says he might have spent it experimenting with the possibilities of virtual reality. But his thoughts on the future of cinema, of what it will look like in the next ten, 20 or 50 years, are remarkably simple.
“If I had to guess,” he says, “the future of cinema is just going to look a lot like cinema. Maybe that’s just my failure in imagination but I think there’s only so many ways to improve what we’re doing right now with that group experience. In an age of so much content so readily instantaneously available and our ability to multi-task — I think that it's a sacred church you go to to park your mind, not deal with all those externalities, and just take in a linear narrative and let it wash over us and take us somewhere. And that’s called a movie theatre. And I don’t think that’s gonna change. Maybe I’m just getting high on my own supply here, telling myself what I want to hear, but I see no evidence to the contrary right now. We’ve never had a point in human history where we’re more distracted, connected, disconnected — and cinema isn’t going anywhere. It’s as healthy as it is for the last 20 years, if not more so.”
Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3Dis in cinemas from August 29
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
