Jason KingInterview with Jeffrey Katzenberg on the Future of 3D Film and Monsters Vs Aliens
March 31st 2009 05:37
Category: No Category
Interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg on the Future of 3D Film and Monsters Vs Aliens
It's not every day you get invited to interview one of the big wigs of Hollywood, one of the head of the Jewish Mafia of the film world. A man that eats people like me for snacks and who is basically an animation god. Jeffrey Katzenberg (born December 21, 1950 in New York City) is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as studio chairman at The Walt Disney Company, and for producing the DreamWorks animated films Shrek, Shark Tale, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Bee Movie, and Kung Fu Panda. Although to me more famously he is responsible, while producing for Disney, of making things like the small films The Lion King, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. He is also responsible for his crusade to make 3D animation and 3D film making the standard approach to film making and like he says the new frontier. Like black and white went to colour so should all film transcend to 3D. And after seeing his latest animation masterpiece, Monsters V's Aliens it is quite possible to believe this man when he says this can happen.
The review of the film Monsters Vs Aliens will follow in the next few days but let me start by saying it is quite possibly the best 3D animation ever made and is miles ahead of all its competition. Dave and I also had the pleasure of interivewing the director of the film Conrad Vernon and his interview will follow in the next couple of days also. One small tidbit about the director is that besides directing he also does everything on animations including voices and he was the uber cool voice of the cookie man from the Shrek films. Yay him. But I digress.
For the interviews it was myself, Dave, Rob - our GURU handler from Network and Paramount REP, plus our more regular partners in group interviews Matt from Matt's Movies (I can't find a link that works - will update when I do) and Geoff or more known as Big Geoff from CineFools.com
We were told that Jeffrey is not as fun as Malin Ackerman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan from The Watchmen and that he is very serious and determined behind his goals. So talking about crack and erections was out (damn). He arrived looking very smooth wearing clothes that equalled about 4yrs of my salary and an attitude to match. From the start we all felt uncomfortable but perhaps we were all in awe at what this man has accomplished. Mr Katzenberg's attitude could be put down to jet lag or the fact he thought talking to bloggers could be a total waste of time. But we did get some good information out of him and it was a pleasure to meet him.
Rob: Why take the B movie route and take B Movie and take B Movie Aliens and B Movie monsters? Where did that idea come from originally?
Jeffrey: From Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman – you know they love those 50 kind of tacky monster movies and so it was really their idea to take those characters and reinvent them for the 21st Century and turn them into heroes. So their idea was pretty clever I thought.
Matt: 3D is going to be used in a couple of feature films – Monsters V Aliens, Avatar – how do you think it will be embraced by audiences?
Jeffrey: I think pretty great, I mean, how did you guys feel about it?
All of us: Great, Loved it!
Jeffrey: You know you’re movie fans and you go to the movies all the time and everyone seems to react the same way, which is when you see a new presentation platform it’s so exciting. And you know we are at the beginning of what is going to be incredible evolution and innovation in terms of what 3D means and the tools today are so much more exciting in terms of both making and delivering it in the movie theatre and it’s only going to get better from here. You know this is the beginning of a new era and you know, not the end of it. So I find it quite thrilling and I think it’s a chance to bring people back to the movies who had stopped going because it wasn’t that special anymore so everything about it to me is pretty amazing.
Geoff: So why 3D – why do you think people will rush back into 3D?
Jeffrey: Because it’s better, it’s more immersive way to arrr, tell a story, it enhances the feelings and emotions and sort of amplifies everything. The images are stronger, the feelings are stronger and therefore I think the connection of the audience to the movie is stronger. You know, it’s a little bit like saying “why colour?” Colour creates all of those things and enhanced feelings and a way to expand the tableau of what we are making and seeing and its incredible innovation. Most definitely the most exciting thing that has happened in my career.
ME: Can you see any hurdles left before every film is made in 3D?
Jeffrey: No. It’s not a popular opinion by the way, it is mine and I think we will go through a couple of years of debate where I think there will be some controversy about whether all films are better in 3D. Should more small intimate dramas be made in 3D so I think you will see a fair amount of debate about it but to me it’s similar to the debate that went on when colour was coming out.
DAVE: There doesn’t seem to be any consideration in moving computer 3D generated films into mature adult orientated territory. Could you offer us any reason as to why?
Jeffrey: What do you mean?
DAVE: For example R rated animated films
Jeffrey: I don’t know of any R rated animated films
DAVE: No there hasn’t been any
Jeffrey: Oh you are asking me why there hasn’t been any R rated animated movies – I have no idea. They don’t interest me. I am interested in making animated movies for everybody and an R film by its very definition is for a segment of the audience. There are obviously many people who can’t go and see an R rated film. It’s not by choice. So, I don’t know, it’s not that interesting to me.
Matt: The 3D format works so well for Monsters V Aliens, could you see it work for a deep drama as well?
Jeffrey: I think the Queen in 3D would be brilliant
He actually got laughs out of us here
Jeffrey: But again, you know, I have a very aggressive point of view about it and it’s like asking me if I think movies are better with sound. I think all movies are better with sound. It’s like asking me if all movies are better with colour. Of course there were great films made in black and white but I think colour movies are more engaging, more immersive, more emotional, more relatable with the colour and lighting and things that you can do with technicolor and the answer is yes. And I can’t imagine why, other than rarely someone wanting to make a movie for some storytelling means – I mean Steven Spielberg made Schindlers List and it was nearly a black and white movie and it was very much an artistic choice that he was doing in terms of that film and how its images ruled the film and how colour comes to it at very small ways for more strategic story point telling. That was the design of the movie so you can do the same thing with 3D, you can dial it up and down, and that’s what is so amazing about it. The technology today, the filmmaker is 100% in control.
Geoff: So you’ve basically done so much in your career but this is so revolutionary. Are you nervous? What major hurdles do you think 3D will have?
Jeffrey: I was nervous but I am not now because I think the final result was as good as I hoped. Sometimes there are things where I have expectations and we don’t meet them. You know I have very high expectations for everything we do and we don’t always achieve those. In this case (MvA) the 3D meets the expectations that I had hoped for and that I had expected when we made a decision three and a half years ago to do this. And enough people have seen the film in the correct presentation of it and everybody reacts the same way. You know some people liked the movie and some people loved the movie but they all come away blown away by the 3D presentation. I think the disappointment is there are not as many theatres showing 3D as I anticipated when we started out a couple of years ago. And certainly not as many as I thought there would be a year ago before we went into a pretty severe financial meltdown in the United States. This has genuinely slowed it down.
DAVE: Just building on the economic situation in what sort of ways has it effected the development of 3D technology?
Jeffrey: Just the number of theatres – it cost about $100000 (US) to convert a screen and you take that across 40000 screens and its many billions of dollars and the financing is just not available at the moment. There will probably be about 2000 screens available in 3D for this. When I kind of got on the bandwagon about this in a big way about a year to a year and a half ago I thought there would be twice as many by now. But it’s enough that it’s a proof of concept. We’ll know whether there’s wide interest and appeal on a national basis and on an international basis with 55 screens here (AUS) out of about 350 screens and it’s enough to give people a good taste of it. You know the movie has to stand on its own as a standard film and the one thing that 3D can’t do is make a bad movie good. And it’s not a substitute for a good storytelling in any fashion, shape or form. And we have worked as hard to make Monsters V Aliens an entertaining movie in whatever format you see it in. If you want to see it in a super high end presentation you can but it stands on its own and I think it is of the quality of other Dreamworks animated movies.
ME: Can you see the technology of glassless 3D coming in the near future?
Jeffrey: Near is relative, it’s called Autostereo and it’s possible in very small devices. It doesn’t work for larger screens. The larger the screen the harder it is for Autostereo to work but you know the science is there some point it will become practical and we will se glassless 3D in our lifetime I just don’t know if it will be 10yrs or 20yrs from now. And just to let you know – I plan on being around for 20yrs (he got more laughs).
Matt: And can you see 3D leaving the cinema and entering the home theatre experience?
Jeffrey: It will but it will be different in that what makes 3D specifically as powerful as it is in the movie theatre is that it hits your peripheral vision so what that means is if that’s a 40inch television you need to sit 40 inches away to get the full 3D impact. People don’t sit 40 inches away from their TV set. It’s not how we watch and it’s not how our living rooms and family rooms are set up. Second thing is that you need to be in a fully dark environment in order for 3D to give you the purest and the highest resolution to it. The more light there is in a room the more diminished the effect of 3D becomes like a room like this is a disaster (we are sitting in a Park Hyatt room with views of the Opera House). Just one light out of a ceiling would have a tremendous impact on diminishing the impact of 3D. People don’t have blackout rooms in their homes. 3D will be driven in a home first and foremost by games and sports and I think it will be a long time before it can compete with a movie.
Geoff: Last time you talked you mentioned that Dreamworks will be going into games and there is talk the James Cameron will be going into games with Panasonic so are Dreamworks working towards the gaming area?
Jeffrey: Our movies are adapted to game platforms, we have a partnership with Activision & THQ so there the ones that actually build our games for us so it’s not something we do ourselves.
DAVE: A lot of 3D animated films tend to follow a formula and since Kung Fu Panda and this (MvA) Dreamworks seem to be ahead of the curve. How do you guys keep your work fresh, especially when you have 3 or 4 yrs production?
Jeffrey: You know I think it’s about coming up with great ideas and I think it’s taken us a long time to get comfortable with a what a Dreamworks animated movie idea is. And I feel like we are kind of in our groove right now and the movies we are making now are super cool movies and cool ideas. Some of it is coming from our film makers and some of it is coming from our development staff that have gotten really good at this. Ideas that are in the works today from a company that’s got very very strong and I think people today love working on them. And that’s how you actually attract the best people. You get the best artists in the world by making the best movies. In the animation field today I think people in general are pretty excited about coming to work.
ME: Are Australia and other parts of the world keeping up with roll out of 3D technology with the States?
Jeffrey: Yes, Some places ahead of it. Some countries are jumping on it pretty fast man (I must be the cool guy 
. But as a percentage of screens Australia is probably ahead of the states. China is definitely ahead, the UK is very aggressive about 3D, installs in France are starting to pick up speed. Some places are slower, Italy, Germany a little slower.
Matt: Monsters V Aliens is pretty heavily influenced by the B monster movie, do you have a favourite B monster film?
Jeffrey: I am going to go with Rodan
Matt: Can you explain why Rodan?
Jeffrey: I don’t know, I liked that big bird flying around. It was pretty cool.
Geoff: I’m sorry, back to the 3D, my brother wanted to know this but you’re wearing glasses, is it best to take your glasses off, wear contacts or put the 3D glasses over the top?
Jeffrey: Well I wear glasses and if I was wearing contacts it probably would be more comfortable wearing one pair of glasses over contacts as opposed to a pair of glasses over glasses. I have no problem sitting in the cinema wearing the Real D glasses over my glasses. You know their lightweight, their fairly comfortable but pretty quickly people will start to have their own 3D glasses because eye glass companies will start manufacturing glasses for 3D theatres.
Matt: So will they just transition when they come into the theatre?
Jeffrey: Yes
DAVE: Can you explain bring a single scene of Monsters V Aliens into a full 3D end product.
Jeffrey: If you’ve got a couple of hours…. Every single way from when a story board artist draws a scene they now need to think about the Z axis and to think about the dimensionality of how they are framing a picture and then every step along the way there are a set of 3D tools and everyone in the studio has to work in 3D, so the next thing that would happen would be layout, you know, the cinematography of the scene. That’s done with great pre-vis tools that we now have and which they actually have virtual cameras and virtual rooms which we build and virtual stand in characters so the director can come in with the layout team and preview how they will be moving through a scene you know like that rolling scene of coming down the stairs, we actually have a motion capture room with a physical virtual camera they can use and move through a room and see how it’s going to work and animators have to think in 3D because now suddenly every dimension of a character can be revealed in shot. It’s across the board; even sound guys have to think in 3D. It’s like one day everyone in the studio had to start speaking Russian. All our work stations are 3D capable; our editing suites are 3D capable. Avids are no 3D capable so it’s pretty much across the board.
ME: What’s Dreamworks' goal for the future, will you be looking at making all your animations in 3D?
Jeffrey: You know I think so, you look at how things have gone in the last 15yrs, everyone is saying “wow – look at how great the hair is” and “look how good the water is” so I think we are through with that stuff now. I think we can pretty much do anything and I think the next few years we will start to be impressed with the immersiveness of the experience and the impact of 3D. That’s where we are going to see the greatest amount of creative change.
Matt: You previously compared the transition of 2D to 3D with the change from Black and White to colour. Can you see some classic films being given some 3D components like Ted Turner did with his black and white films to technicolor?
Jeffrey: You know what; I haven’t seen it yet in a way I have been comfortable with. I was never comfortable with black and white films being colourised. I didn’t think they looked very good. I thought they looked kind of cheesy. But two companies are working very hard now about conversion and in the same way we built all kinds of tools that nobody has ever seen or used in order to create 3D well they’re working pretty hard in creating tools in converting to 3D so you know, I don’t want to bet against them it’s just we haven’t seen anything yet that makes us comfortable with it. You know both Toy Stories are being converted in 3D and they’re the crown jewels of the Disney Company and they are spending a lot of money to make sure that it’s quality product. I look forward to seeing what they are doing and I am not the least bit sceptical about it I just haven’t seen it. You know George Lucas is looking at converting the entire Star Wars series to 3D and ILM is as good at this as anybody in the world. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.
There were goodbyes and thankyous and we went on our way. Massive thanks from Dave and myself to Jeffrey, Network PR (especially Rob) and Paramount for the opportunity.
It's not every day you get invited to interview one of the big wigs of Hollywood, one of the head of the Jewish Mafia of the film world. A man that eats people like me for snacks and who is basically an animation god. Jeffrey Katzenberg (born December 21, 1950 in New York City) is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as studio chairman at The Walt Disney Company, and for producing the DreamWorks animated films Shrek, Shark Tale, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Bee Movie, and Kung Fu Panda. Although to me more famously he is responsible, while producing for Disney, of making things like the small films The Lion King, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. He is also responsible for his crusade to make 3D animation and 3D film making the standard approach to film making and like he says the new frontier. Like black and white went to colour so should all film transcend to 3D. And after seeing his latest animation masterpiece, Monsters V's Aliens it is quite possible to believe this man when he says this can happen.
The review of the film Monsters Vs Aliens will follow in the next few days but let me start by saying it is quite possibly the best 3D animation ever made and is miles ahead of all its competition. Dave and I also had the pleasure of interivewing the director of the film Conrad Vernon and his interview will follow in the next couple of days also. One small tidbit about the director is that besides directing he also does everything on animations including voices and he was the uber cool voice of the cookie man from the Shrek films. Yay him. But I digress.
For the interviews it was myself, Dave, Rob - our GURU handler from Network and Paramount REP, plus our more regular partners in group interviews Matt from Matt's Movies (I can't find a link that works - will update when I do) and Geoff or more known as Big Geoff from CineFools.com
We were told that Jeffrey is not as fun as Malin Ackerman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan from The Watchmen and that he is very serious and determined behind his goals. So talking about crack and erections was out (damn). He arrived looking very smooth wearing clothes that equalled about 4yrs of my salary and an attitude to match. From the start we all felt uncomfortable but perhaps we were all in awe at what this man has accomplished. Mr Katzenberg's attitude could be put down to jet lag or the fact he thought talking to bloggers could be a total waste of time. But we did get some good information out of him and it was a pleasure to meet him.
Rob: Why take the B movie route and take B Movie and take B Movie Aliens and B Movie monsters? Where did that idea come from originally?
Jeffrey: From Conrad Vernon and Rob Letterman – you know they love those 50 kind of tacky monster movies and so it was really their idea to take those characters and reinvent them for the 21st Century and turn them into heroes. So their idea was pretty clever I thought.
Matt: 3D is going to be used in a couple of feature films – Monsters V Aliens, Avatar – how do you think it will be embraced by audiences?
Jeffrey: I think pretty great, I mean, how did you guys feel about it?
All of us: Great, Loved it!
Jeffrey: You know you’re movie fans and you go to the movies all the time and everyone seems to react the same way, which is when you see a new presentation platform it’s so exciting. And you know we are at the beginning of what is going to be incredible evolution and innovation in terms of what 3D means and the tools today are so much more exciting in terms of both making and delivering it in the movie theatre and it’s only going to get better from here. You know this is the beginning of a new era and you know, not the end of it. So I find it quite thrilling and I think it’s a chance to bring people back to the movies who had stopped going because it wasn’t that special anymore so everything about it to me is pretty amazing.
Geoff: So why 3D – why do you think people will rush back into 3D?
Jeffrey: Because it’s better, it’s more immersive way to arrr, tell a story, it enhances the feelings and emotions and sort of amplifies everything. The images are stronger, the feelings are stronger and therefore I think the connection of the audience to the movie is stronger. You know, it’s a little bit like saying “why colour?” Colour creates all of those things and enhanced feelings and a way to expand the tableau of what we are making and seeing and its incredible innovation. Most definitely the most exciting thing that has happened in my career.
ME: Can you see any hurdles left before every film is made in 3D?
Jeffrey: No. It’s not a popular opinion by the way, it is mine and I think we will go through a couple of years of debate where I think there will be some controversy about whether all films are better in 3D. Should more small intimate dramas be made in 3D so I think you will see a fair amount of debate about it but to me it’s similar to the debate that went on when colour was coming out.
DAVE: There doesn’t seem to be any consideration in moving computer 3D generated films into mature adult orientated territory. Could you offer us any reason as to why?
Jeffrey: What do you mean?
DAVE: For example R rated animated films
Jeffrey: I don’t know of any R rated animated films
DAVE: No there hasn’t been any
Jeffrey: Oh you are asking me why there hasn’t been any R rated animated movies – I have no idea. They don’t interest me. I am interested in making animated movies for everybody and an R film by its very definition is for a segment of the audience. There are obviously many people who can’t go and see an R rated film. It’s not by choice. So, I don’t know, it’s not that interesting to me.
Matt: The 3D format works so well for Monsters V Aliens, could you see it work for a deep drama as well?
Jeffrey: I think the Queen in 3D would be brilliant
He actually got laughs out of us here
Jeffrey: But again, you know, I have a very aggressive point of view about it and it’s like asking me if I think movies are better with sound. I think all movies are better with sound. It’s like asking me if all movies are better with colour. Of course there were great films made in black and white but I think colour movies are more engaging, more immersive, more emotional, more relatable with the colour and lighting and things that you can do with technicolor and the answer is yes. And I can’t imagine why, other than rarely someone wanting to make a movie for some storytelling means – I mean Steven Spielberg made Schindlers List and it was nearly a black and white movie and it was very much an artistic choice that he was doing in terms of that film and how its images ruled the film and how colour comes to it at very small ways for more strategic story point telling. That was the design of the movie so you can do the same thing with 3D, you can dial it up and down, and that’s what is so amazing about it. The technology today, the filmmaker is 100% in control.
Geoff: So you’ve basically done so much in your career but this is so revolutionary. Are you nervous? What major hurdles do you think 3D will have?
Jeffrey: I was nervous but I am not now because I think the final result was as good as I hoped. Sometimes there are things where I have expectations and we don’t meet them. You know I have very high expectations for everything we do and we don’t always achieve those. In this case (MvA) the 3D meets the expectations that I had hoped for and that I had expected when we made a decision three and a half years ago to do this. And enough people have seen the film in the correct presentation of it and everybody reacts the same way. You know some people liked the movie and some people loved the movie but they all come away blown away by the 3D presentation. I think the disappointment is there are not as many theatres showing 3D as I anticipated when we started out a couple of years ago. And certainly not as many as I thought there would be a year ago before we went into a pretty severe financial meltdown in the United States. This has genuinely slowed it down.
DAVE: Just building on the economic situation in what sort of ways has it effected the development of 3D technology?
Jeffrey: Just the number of theatres – it cost about $100000 (US) to convert a screen and you take that across 40000 screens and its many billions of dollars and the financing is just not available at the moment. There will probably be about 2000 screens available in 3D for this. When I kind of got on the bandwagon about this in a big way about a year to a year and a half ago I thought there would be twice as many by now. But it’s enough that it’s a proof of concept. We’ll know whether there’s wide interest and appeal on a national basis and on an international basis with 55 screens here (AUS) out of about 350 screens and it’s enough to give people a good taste of it. You know the movie has to stand on its own as a standard film and the one thing that 3D can’t do is make a bad movie good. And it’s not a substitute for a good storytelling in any fashion, shape or form. And we have worked as hard to make Monsters V Aliens an entertaining movie in whatever format you see it in. If you want to see it in a super high end presentation you can but it stands on its own and I think it is of the quality of other Dreamworks animated movies.
ME: Can you see the technology of glassless 3D coming in the near future?
Jeffrey: Near is relative, it’s called Autostereo and it’s possible in very small devices. It doesn’t work for larger screens. The larger the screen the harder it is for Autostereo to work but you know the science is there some point it will become practical and we will se glassless 3D in our lifetime I just don’t know if it will be 10yrs or 20yrs from now. And just to let you know – I plan on being around for 20yrs (he got more laughs).
Matt: And can you see 3D leaving the cinema and entering the home theatre experience?
Jeffrey: It will but it will be different in that what makes 3D specifically as powerful as it is in the movie theatre is that it hits your peripheral vision so what that means is if that’s a 40inch television you need to sit 40 inches away to get the full 3D impact. People don’t sit 40 inches away from their TV set. It’s not how we watch and it’s not how our living rooms and family rooms are set up. Second thing is that you need to be in a fully dark environment in order for 3D to give you the purest and the highest resolution to it. The more light there is in a room the more diminished the effect of 3D becomes like a room like this is a disaster (we are sitting in a Park Hyatt room with views of the Opera House). Just one light out of a ceiling would have a tremendous impact on diminishing the impact of 3D. People don’t have blackout rooms in their homes. 3D will be driven in a home first and foremost by games and sports and I think it will be a long time before it can compete with a movie.
Geoff: Last time you talked you mentioned that Dreamworks will be going into games and there is talk the James Cameron will be going into games with Panasonic so are Dreamworks working towards the gaming area?
Jeffrey: Our movies are adapted to game platforms, we have a partnership with Activision & THQ so there the ones that actually build our games for us so it’s not something we do ourselves.
DAVE: A lot of 3D animated films tend to follow a formula and since Kung Fu Panda and this (MvA) Dreamworks seem to be ahead of the curve. How do you guys keep your work fresh, especially when you have 3 or 4 yrs production?
Jeffrey: You know I think it’s about coming up with great ideas and I think it’s taken us a long time to get comfortable with a what a Dreamworks animated movie idea is. And I feel like we are kind of in our groove right now and the movies we are making now are super cool movies and cool ideas. Some of it is coming from our film makers and some of it is coming from our development staff that have gotten really good at this. Ideas that are in the works today from a company that’s got very very strong and I think people today love working on them. And that’s how you actually attract the best people. You get the best artists in the world by making the best movies. In the animation field today I think people in general are pretty excited about coming to work.
ME: Are Australia and other parts of the world keeping up with roll out of 3D technology with the States?
Jeffrey: Yes, Some places ahead of it. Some countries are jumping on it pretty fast man (I must be the cool guy 
. But as a percentage of screens Australia is probably ahead of the states. China is definitely ahead, the UK is very aggressive about 3D, installs in France are starting to pick up speed. Some places are slower, Italy, Germany a little slower. Matt: Monsters V Aliens is pretty heavily influenced by the B monster movie, do you have a favourite B monster film?
Jeffrey: I am going to go with Rodan
Matt: Can you explain why Rodan?
Jeffrey: I don’t know, I liked that big bird flying around. It was pretty cool.
Geoff: I’m sorry, back to the 3D, my brother wanted to know this but you’re wearing glasses, is it best to take your glasses off, wear contacts or put the 3D glasses over the top?
Jeffrey: Well I wear glasses and if I was wearing contacts it probably would be more comfortable wearing one pair of glasses over contacts as opposed to a pair of glasses over glasses. I have no problem sitting in the cinema wearing the Real D glasses over my glasses. You know their lightweight, their fairly comfortable but pretty quickly people will start to have their own 3D glasses because eye glass companies will start manufacturing glasses for 3D theatres.
Matt: So will they just transition when they come into the theatre?
Jeffrey: Yes
DAVE: Can you explain bring a single scene of Monsters V Aliens into a full 3D end product.
Jeffrey: If you’ve got a couple of hours…. Every single way from when a story board artist draws a scene they now need to think about the Z axis and to think about the dimensionality of how they are framing a picture and then every step along the way there are a set of 3D tools and everyone in the studio has to work in 3D, so the next thing that would happen would be layout, you know, the cinematography of the scene. That’s done with great pre-vis tools that we now have and which they actually have virtual cameras and virtual rooms which we build and virtual stand in characters so the director can come in with the layout team and preview how they will be moving through a scene you know like that rolling scene of coming down the stairs, we actually have a motion capture room with a physical virtual camera they can use and move through a room and see how it’s going to work and animators have to think in 3D because now suddenly every dimension of a character can be revealed in shot. It’s across the board; even sound guys have to think in 3D. It’s like one day everyone in the studio had to start speaking Russian. All our work stations are 3D capable; our editing suites are 3D capable. Avids are no 3D capable so it’s pretty much across the board.
ME: What’s Dreamworks' goal for the future, will you be looking at making all your animations in 3D?
Jeffrey: You know I think so, you look at how things have gone in the last 15yrs, everyone is saying “wow – look at how great the hair is” and “look how good the water is” so I think we are through with that stuff now. I think we can pretty much do anything and I think the next few years we will start to be impressed with the immersiveness of the experience and the impact of 3D. That’s where we are going to see the greatest amount of creative change.
Matt: You previously compared the transition of 2D to 3D with the change from Black and White to colour. Can you see some classic films being given some 3D components like Ted Turner did with his black and white films to technicolor?
Jeffrey: You know what; I haven’t seen it yet in a way I have been comfortable with. I was never comfortable with black and white films being colourised. I didn’t think they looked very good. I thought they looked kind of cheesy. But two companies are working very hard now about conversion and in the same way we built all kinds of tools that nobody has ever seen or used in order to create 3D well they’re working pretty hard in creating tools in converting to 3D so you know, I don’t want to bet against them it’s just we haven’t seen anything yet that makes us comfortable with it. You know both Toy Stories are being converted in 3D and they’re the crown jewels of the Disney Company and they are spending a lot of money to make sure that it’s quality product. I look forward to seeing what they are doing and I am not the least bit sceptical about it I just haven’t seen it. You know George Lucas is looking at converting the entire Star Wars series to 3D and ILM is as good at this as anybody in the world. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.
There were goodbyes and thankyous and we went on our way. Massive thanks from Dave and myself to Jeffrey, Network PR (especially Rob) and Paramount for the opportunity.
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Comment by Wilson Pon
Health 2 Know
Adventure Toes
Techno Stuffs
boxing sound
Business Rope
Fun Places 2 Travel
Keep it up the good works, dude!
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Comment by rix
Comment by Morgan Bell
Science News
Deep Pencil
Business News
Movie Train
Artist Quirk
im glad you are getting some great people to interview Jason
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Morgan - thanks heaps, it's pretty exciting.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by Anonymous