After recently announcing that his next two movies would definitely be a second, and then a third, film in the Avatar series, James Cameron took the stage at Blu-Con (the Los Angeles based convention focusing on the current state of Blu-ray Disc, and the emerging technologies that will shape its future), to talk about the releases of his latest blockbuster; Avatar; the future of 3D movies, and the attempted Harry Potter post-production conversion.
Warner Bros announced some time ago that the latest Harry Potter movie; Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part I; would be released in 3D, yet failed to shoot the film in 3D, attempted a post-production conversion, and couldn’t get a satisfactory result in the allotted time, leading them to call of the 3D release as they didn’t want to keep Potter fans waiting to see the film, and had made what Cameron classes as a big “mistake.”
Cameron said that the studio was “making the same mistake” that it had with Clash of the Titans (2010), and insisted that “you can’t do a good conversion of a two-hour movie, with high quality, in a few weeks, like they tried to with Clash”, and that although he didn’t want to “throw that movie under the bus”, everyone who saw it “realised that it was a point at which people had gone too far.”
On the other hand, he does believe that post-production conversion can work, as not only has he been testing the water with his planned 3D re-release of Titanic, but asserted that”post conversion should be used for one thing and one thing only; which is to take library titles that are favourties, that are proven, and convert them into 3D, whether it’s Jaws, or E.T., or Indiana Jones, or Titanic.”
Cameron also said that while Warner “threw a bunch of money trying to convert Harry Potter, it simply didn’t work”, and that “if you want to release a movie in 3D” you have to “make it in 3D”; something he believes will soon become a necessity; as broadcast networks begin airing sporting events, and regular programming, in the format, it will be “the coffin nail” in post-production conversion.
However, he still believes that 2D will remain dominant for a few years; as “we still don’t have enough cameras” capable of filming 3D; but once we pass the last threshold, get enough cameras, and “get to auto-stereoscopic [watching 3D without glasses], it’s going to be the way we watch all of our media”; something he believes could be a reality in “eight to ten years.”
