Lucas To Redo Star Wars In 3-D

Warlock7 writes "You might have thought that it was going to all be over on May 19 with the release of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Well, not so fast. It seems that George Lucas is planning to re-re-release the Star Wars films in a new 3-D format. There are also several other directors that are interested in this new technology and they are trying to get theaters to install new technology to allow the showing of their films in the new 3-D format [req free reg]."

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Filmmakers hawk new 3-D technology DAVID GERMAIN Associated Press LAS VEGAS - After a brief incarnation in the early 1950s and a short-lived revival in the 1980s, 3-D movies are now getting serious consideration among filmmakers who want to send images leaping off the movie screen and into the audience. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and "Titanic" director James Cameron were among those promoting a new digital alteration that converts two-dimensional movies into 3-D. Theatergoers still have to wear those familiar cardboard glasses with red-and-blue cellophane, although backers of the new technology say it doesn't cause the eyestrain common with past 3-D efforts. Lucas said he hopes eventually to release all six of his "Star Wars" movies in 3-D format that can be shown in regular moviehouses, not specialty theaters such as IMAX. "It looks better than the original, to be honest with you," Lucas told theater owners Thursday at their annual ShoWest convention. Developed by In-Three Inc. of Agoura Hills, Calif., the new technology involves converting a movie into two slightly offset images, one for each eye. The special glasses trick the brain into perceiving the picture as a single image. Unlike some 3-D systems that require two side-by-side film projectors, In-Three's system operates with a single digital projector, the filmmakers said. A snippet of "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones" converted to 3-D was screened, and the images showed remarkable depth in a scene where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi pursue an assassin in a flying vehicle. While the filmmakers all have an interest in releasing old movies in 3-D and shooting new ones in the format, they also tried to sell theater owners on digital systems to replace film-reel projectors that have been the standard for a century. The digital projectors can be inexpensively modified to handle 3-D, they said. "I can't shoot in a lesser format," said Cameron, who is filming the science-fiction adventure "Battle Angel," in 3-D. "I believe that 3-D is absolutely the future. ... They'll have to pry my glasses out of my cold, dead fingers."

Re:Is it Safe?

[Jaguar777]

I remember this crushing migraines those blue/red 3D glasses left me with. However this works, I hope they've really tested it. It's all good clean fun, until you realize it screws up your eyes like the Opti-Grab and people sue Lucas, Cameron and the theaters for all they've got.

Here is a Peter Jackson quote from TFA. :)

"Forget the old days of wearing the red and blue glasses and the eyestrain. All of that is behind us now. These new active glasses that you're wearing and seeing 3-D with are a breakthrough in technology."

Titanic in Space

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way this would get accepted as a submission so I'm posting it here:

From the imdb.com [imdb.com]:

George Lucas has described his final Star Wars movie, Episode III -- The Revenge of the Sith, as "Titanic in space." Speaking to the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, Lucas said that the new film was "not like the old Star Wars ... This one's a little bit more emotional." Later, Lucas was asked by the Associated Press whether fans would accept a film so different from the old Star Wars. "I feel that I've made the movie the best I can and it turned out the way I wanted it to be, so I'm happy," Lucas replied. "I never try to anticipate what the world's going to think or even worry about whether they're going to like it or not. That's not my job, to make people like my movies. They either like them or they don't. That's completely out of my hands."

Weird Al reference

[ArmedLemming]

Hmm strange I don't see any posts linking the story title to the department...

Nature Trail to Hell was the last (and best IMO) track on Weird Al's "In 3D" album!

"Coming this Christmas to a theatre near you......."

"Acrive Glasses"

[Patermater]

"...These new active glasses that you're wearing and seeing 3-D with are a breakthrough in technology." "Active glasses" or shutter based glasses are not new. They shutter each eye so the right or left eye will see one side while the other eye's view is blacked out. It happens quickly enough and does create 3D but it DOES cause bad headaches after about 20-30 minutes of use. These have been available for some time now on computers. I even had a pair when I had an Amiga computer. Last time I saw 3D that didn't give me a headache was using Polaroid lenses in the frames. No flickering, no headaches and very clear 3D in full color.

Re:Here's another idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Jackson is the LAST example you should be citing as someone who stays "faithful to the story."

Need I even say: Elves at Helm's deep? Stupid Arwen subplots? The list is quite long. He stayed pretty faithful in "Fellowship", but the rest of the movies were just stroking his ego. Tolkien he ain't, and his horrid mangling of the plot seriously impacted the movies (for someone who has read the books).

Re:3D

[dschuetz]

Anyone have any information on how these 3d films are different from past attempts at 3d? Do you still wear glasses?

Most likely, you'd still wear glasses, yes. Let's remember the two aspects to 3-D photography: 1) getting 3-D information in the first place (usually with multiple cameras), and 2) delivering that data to the eyes (usually by somehow targeting each eye with a different image).

There are a few other ways to do 2, mostly relying on odd tricks like image "jiggling" (which works, sort of, but isn't that great). Generally, 3-D relies on parallax comparisons made possible by each eye seeing a slightly different image. In order to do that, we need some way to target each eye with a unique image. Some "autostereoscopic" methods use wire or lenticular screens (you see that sometimes in 3-D movie posters). Most systems use glasses. Originally they used red/blue glasses, but that didn't scale well with color films. Then the industry moved on to polarized filters, but that required the viewer hold his head pretty close to straight (if you tilted your head too far to one side, the images would blur and then swap). Polarizing lenses with circular polarization helped minimize some of that. Current "state of the art" uses high-speed LCD shutters in glasses synchronized to the film projector or TV, which shows the right image first (with the left eye blocked by a shutter), then the left image (swapping the shutter to the right eye).

There's also "one lens" systems that rely on an odd optical trick I can't even begin to explain (been a while since college physics), but it has the effect of making objects in motion *in one direction* appear closer to the viewer, while objects at rest or moving the opposite direction appear farther away. This has been used in "3-D Roller Coaster!" videos hawked in mail-order catalogs, and I think was even used to promote a Rose Bowl parade some years back.

Anyway, that's all just the delivery problem. The tougher side is the content problem. Lucas only filmed his movies with a single lens, so there's no parallax information that can be used to provide 3-D images. If the films were *completely* computer generated (like, say, The Incredibles), then it'd just be a matter of rendering it once, then telling the computer "shift the camera left 3 inches" and render again. (has pixar actually done this? it'd be cool. :) )

So with only one image to choose from, how do you "create" depth information? One way that I've seen in the past is to use motion and/or focus artifacts to "guess" at 3-D location in the frame. That is, if something moves in front of another thing, then it's reasonable to assume it should be shown forward in the frame. Or if something's slightly off focus (foreground or background), then you can also assume it's in a different depth plane, and shift it accordingly. I actually saw "Lost In Space" processed with something like this technology, and while it was interesting, it basically sucked.

Why? For one thing, no matter how smart, the extrapolated depth cues are always just guesses. Unless you work the film manually, scene-by-scene (and even frame-by-frame), there will be problems with consistency with the derived depth information. Also, with a two-camera system, each "eye" not only sees slightly different images, but they see images with slightly different *content*. That is, it's not enough to simply shift an X-wing left or right, but one eye needs to see a little something more where the X-Wing was moved out of. Automated processes (in the past) couldn't do this.

Now it's possible that with advances in technology, it's finally possible to consistently guess at object depths, and to fabricate reasonable hidden information. As I said, it's not worked well in the past, but in the past, it's been attempted by hucksters and snake-oil salesmen and sold to gullible third-tier theme park movie houses (I saw the aforementioned Lost in Space about two miles from Walt Disney World,

For the web-deficient

[generic-man]

Domo-kun [corrupt.net] is a children's TV show character. The joke doesn't have anything to do with "fanboy," but rather with this well-known mangling [plus613.com] of this image [oralse.cx] (safe for work).

The patent, in case anyone is interested...

[richardtallent]

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,686,926.WKU.&OS=PN/6,686,926&RS =PN/6,686,926

The main patent is #6,686,926 (linked above, this incorporates an earlier patent). Another related patent they have is #6,515,659.

In short: someone manually draws lines around each object and scoots it over for the right eye, background-cloning the gap. Their software assists in adjusting the object placements from one frame to the next, saving what would otherwise be a monumental task. Their "shift" algorithm is capable of assigning a bump-map-like distortion so the objects have a natural curve rather than being sprite cut-outs.

Side-note: to get a similar effect (for a few minutes at least), watch a movie with a pair of cheap sunglasses with one glass removed.

Re:9 Episodes...

[c_monster]

The fact that, other than Star Wars, every creative act he's been involved in has been an unmitigated piece of crap sort of supports this.

...except Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was another case of Lucas hitting the mark by retelling an old adventure story.

Re:Please Say It Ain't So

[jedidiah]

Under George's direction, ILM and Dykstra did infact invent the motion control camera. If you're not aware of this then you have no real background in this area and no real basis to tell anyone anything.

ILM was the first dedicated motion picture effects house. ILM invented or improved on technology as needed.

Now 2001 represents the absolute pinnacle of pre-SW effects. What George and ILM did was to set the minimum standard to that level (and higher) and enable everyone else to achieve it.

Motion control allowed an effects shot to be seamlessly composited and only limited by the tech of analog film compositing.