Film Ireland Online

Don’t call it a gimmick. A new wave of animated features is using stereoscopic 3D to create sophisticated, fully immersive storytelling environments. Niall Kitson gives an in-depth report.

Who would have thought the next step in big-budget computer-generated animation would involve resurrecting a conceit so beloved of small time B-movies? Released in cinemas last March, DreamWorks’ Monsters vs Aliens was more than a mash-up of creature features and Red scare flicks. For a generation weaned on Shrek, Toy Story and Finding Nemo, the stereoscopic 3D film represented a culture shift where, instead of having to recoil from a screen that hurled projectiles at every opportunity, the audience was virtually invited to come closer to the world of the story, to reach out and touch the characters and leave behind the constraints of the fourth wall: a viewing model based not on antagonism but immersion.

The critical reaction to Monsters vs Aliens may have been so-so but a gross of $200 million in the US alone has been enough to make it a rallying point for stereo 3D, joined this year by the likes of Henry Selick’s delicious gothic fantasy Coraline and Robert Zemeckis’ forthcoming A Christmas Carol. And let’s not forget the small matter of Disney•Pixar’s latest, UP, the first animated feature to open the Cannes Film Festival. With the debate now centred on the speed rather than the possibility of rollout, proponents are claiming stereo 3D has been refined to the point of being the next revolution in cinema, after sound and colour. With the right content, they may be right.

Polar opposites
Cynics argue the resurgence of stereoscopic 3D features – especially animated features – is little more than a fad, another example of hucksterism on the part of Intel and hp to shift more workstations, and for studios to marvel at their own creations. To an extent this is true. The return of stereo 3D as a mature technology has been a cause célèbre for studio ideologues and manufacturers for years (Philips has had a line of consumer HD 3D TVs ready to go since 2006), an example of technology for technology’s sake.

In any case, audiences were used to it as a draw only in theme parks and, occasionally, TV. Having a ‘made in 3D’ badge on a poster hasn’t been much of a selling point since the life was strangled out of it by ailing horror franchises in the 1980s. And if the films didn’t give you a headache, the glasses certainly did. Of the small number of titles released between then and the early part of the noughties, most of the animated content amounted to little more than short (less than an hour) IMAX presentations, while their live-action counterparts strayed into sci-fi and even softcore territory.

It’s such problems of ‘perception’ that made animation, with its tightly controlled production process and younger (i.e. less discerning) audiences, the perfect laboratory for exploring further possibilities and new markets for the concept. An expensive gamble maybe – one US commentator estimating additional production costs of $15 million per picture – but the pay-off is the chance to indoctrinate an entire demographic and, at an artistic level, celebrate the kind of fine detail animation can deliver over live-action movies.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 129.