Geekscape

On Wednesday night Samsung pulled out the big guns in its push to market its new 3D television sets. The Black Eyed Peas gave an unannounced concert in New York's Times Square, and the event was filmed in 3D by none other than Avatar director James Cameron. He's arguably the man who has done the most to elevate 3D to new heights.

Following the concert, Cameron sat down with USA TODAY to talk all aspects of 3D, including its potential in the home, converting Titanic to 3D, and the possible availability of Avatar 3D on Blu-ray. Check out the link below for the full inteview, but here's the most relevant parts of the conversation:

Q: Should the existing film catalog be converted to 3D?

A: If it's done well.  I think it should be driven by the artist. If Star Wars gets converted into 3D I think George (Lucas) should do it. If Terminator gets converted into 3D, I should do it.

Q: How about an older movie, such as The Wizard of Oz?

A: That gets into an interesting area. At that point the people that own the library have the right to do it, particularly if they own the rights to all media.

At least in the near term, that it won't be economically feasible to start converting old episodes of MASH to 3D because it won't look good. If you use some automated process or some cost-effective process for that type of programming its going to look like crap. It's like colorization looked like crap.

Q: How do converted films look?

A: It's never going to be as good as if you shot it in 3D, but think of it as sort of 2.8D.

Q: How long does it take?

A: They're converting Clash of the Titans in eight weeks. But I'm guessing six months to a year to do it right. We're targeting spring of 2012 for the release (of a 3D version of Titanic), which is the 100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship.

Q: When is Avatar coming out in 3D on Blu-ray?

A: We're not officially announcing it right now but I'm hoping for fall. The wildcard is that we might be re-releasing the movie this fall.  It's kind of gotten stomped out (in theaters) because of Alice in Wonderland. The word we're getting back from exhibitors is we probably left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table as a result. The question is the appetite still going to be there after the summer glut of movies. We're going to assess that. We're talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative.

Source: content.usatoday.com