MWC: Jon Landau on the iPad and the 3D film industry
Hollywood big-hitter Jon Landau talks to us about the iPad and the future of 3D mobile devices
by Mark HattersleyFew Hollywood big-hitters carry as much weight as Jon Landau. As the film producer of Avatar and Titanic he`s the man behind two of the biggest movies of all time and is arguably now the most powerful producer in Hollywood.
We caught up with Jon Landau at the Mobile Word Congress show in Barcelona, where he was helping to promote MOFILM, a competition site that aims to encourage filmmaking to a new generation of aspiring filmmakers.
3D worlds
As producer of Avatar it`s reasonable to assume that Jon knows his way around 3D. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Landau is an evangelist of 3D film-making, and is convinced that 3D is the future for all video screens, including handheld devices such as the iPad. "We see our lives in 3D, so why not see our entertainment in 3D as well?" he said.
"3D is not an excuse to make a movie," says Landau. "I see it as the cherry on top. But I think it is going to become ubiquitous."
Landau also says that now anybody can create professional-quality 3D effects as the video recording technology used in Avatar was regular Avid video-editing software. "We shot the left and right eye and put them on two different tracks in the editing suite," he says.
Landau also seems to think that desktop interfaces are aiming for a 3D look and feel. "If you look at a computer display, it has this fake 3D effect with windows stacked on top of each other," he said, adding that it would be better to have a full 3D interface.
3D glasses often put punters off 3D, but Landau thinks that the problem lies not with glasses themselves, but with the types of glasses. "We have to look at glasses as an opportunity. people wear sunglasses at the beach. It`s not a problem – it`s what you do when you get there."
The glasses themselves could be part of the personal mobile process, perhaps by having them act as digital tickets and payment devices at movie theatres, he said.
"Ultimately we will get rid of glasses but not in the near term." says Landau. He thinks we`ll see 3D without glasses in mobile devices before film theatres. "I`ve seen demonstrations where you create a hotspot," says Landau. This hotspot (essentially the point where you know a person is standing) enables you to project a 3D image for that person.
And because this hotspot is easiest on a mobile device that is held in front of you, he sees it coming first to mobile devices before it even comes to televisions. "It`s more difficult in a auditorium with three or four hundred people," says Landau.
Read the whole story here: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsId=28669
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