USA Today got a chance to chat with filmmaker James Cameron who filmed the unannounced Black Eyed Peas concert with 3D cameras in New York's Times Square on Wednesday night. Cameron dropped a few interesting news tidbits, including information on the 3D release of Titanic, a possible extended cut rerelease of Avatar this Fall, more critical comments on how Hollywood is doing 3D wrong, and his thoughts on authorship of older catelog titles.
Fox is targeting Spring 2012 release for the 3D version of Titanic, to coincide with the "100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship."
He's hoping to release Avatar on 3D Blu-ray in Fall 2010 but says that might get pushed as they are considering rereleasing the film in theaters during that time. Exhibitors think they have "left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table" by moving the film out of theaters to make room for Disney's Alice in Wonderland. "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." Cameon has said previously that the planned DVD release will contain five or six minutes of fully finished, theatrical-release-quality deleted scenes and 15 more minutes of footage that was removed early on and thus contains rough computer generated imagery and effects.Of course, if they could get the cash to finish that footage for a rerelease, the film could include up to 21 more minutes of new footage. Sounds like a great idea to me.
Cameron says to "do it right", that it should take six months to a year to convert a film to 3D in post production. He mentions the 3D conversion of Clash of the Titans is taking eight weeks. He says that Hollywood is ignoring "the fact that we natively authored the film in 3D, and decide that what we accomplished in several years of production could be done in an eight week (post-production 3D) conversion." Cameron warns that "if people put bad 3D in the marketplace they're going to hold back or even threaten the emerging of 3D. People will be confused by differences in quality. ... Because the audience doesn't know the difference — when they put on the glasses on, they don't know if the problem is in the glasses, the TV or the actual way in which the stereo space is managed by the producers of the film."
Cameron says the converted process is "never going to be as good as if you shot it in 3D" and calls the result "sort of 2.8D." But he isn't totally against post production 3D of existing film catalog titles as long as it's "done well" and "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."
You can read the whole interview with Cameron on USA Today.
