Make Way for 3-D

This article originally appeared in the MIPTV 2010 issue of TV Kids.

 

Digital animation and 3-D just seem to go together. First, if you happen to be among the millions who donned 3-D glasses for a screening of Avatar in recent months, you saw a lot of it—CGI video in the movie and a lot of 3-D trailers for upcoming animated movies from DreamWorks Animation and Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios.

 

Then, at about the mid-point of Avatar’s run as number one at global box offices in January, the Consumer Electronics Show convened in Las Vegas and the hot topic there was 3-D, too. Multiple manufacturers announced that they would be selling TV sets and DVD players with 3-D capability this year.

 

That’s the kind of confluence that makes people in the children’s animation business sit up and take notice. It’s not a “perfect storm” by a long shot, though. There’s a big piece still missing. In the U.S., ESPN and Discovery have unveiled plans for 3-D channels for sports and documentaries, respectively, but none of the major kids’ broadcasters have followed suit. In the U.K., BSkyB is putting up a 3-D service, but so far it’s aimed more at sports fans watching in pubs.

 

Although most kids’ animation makers aren’t converting to 3-D production yet, most of them are thinking about 3-D, many are planning for it and a few are already working on it with future broadcast in mind.

 

Further into 3-D than most independent animation houses is HIT Entertainment in London. “HIT has been very interested in 3-D for quite some time,” says Lenora Hume, HIT’s executive VP of programming and production. “When I joined, in 2006, one of the first things we did was a 3-D test. We did a tiny 30-second piece with Bob the Builder in our own production facilities, and we did one for Pingu. At a company summit in 2007 we showed those. That was to get the company thinking about 3-D in the future.”

 

Hume, who went to HIT from The Walt Disney Company, sees 3-D much like the transition to high definition, which HIT adopted in 2006 even though there was little demand at the time.

 

“You knew it was the way of the future,” she says. “Some TVs out there are already 3-D ready. It’s something that HIT will do, providing it’s not significantly increasing our costs, so that we are on the leading edge.”

HIT’s first 3-D project, though, is not for television. The company is working with the Los Angeles-based SD Entertainment on Bob the Builder and the Roller Coaster, a 10-minute movie for Legoland theme parks.

 

Also jumping into 3-D animation is Cyber Group Studios in Paris. “We’ve been looking very seriously about putting 3-D into our shows,” says the chairman and CEO, Pierre Sissmann. “We are in the advanced stages of production on one series and parts of a movie in 3-D.”

The movie is Ozie Boo! The Magic Shell, based on Cyber Group’s popular preschool CGI series Ozie Boo!, which features a group of cuddly penguins. Because the 75-minute movie is aimed at preschoolers, who may not have the patience for a full-length feature watched through glasses, the film is only partially 3-D. “The scenes we’ll do in stereoscopic vision are the eight songs in the movie,” Sissmann says. “They are about a minute each and they convey a very different feeling.”

 

Cyber Group is also in production on a series with 3-D elements that mixes animated characters with actual scenery from U.S. National Parks, called Tales of Tatonka. “We figured it would be interesting because of the style of animation and the richness of the background,” Sissmann says. “The series will be delivered next year. We’re doing it to gain some kind of experience in handling the technical tools and see what kind of artistic impression we can deliver to our audience. When we deliver the series, out of the episodes there will be a few 3-D images.”

 

Sissmann acknowledges that there is zero demand for 3-D series, but still thinks it’s time to start producing them. “I think it’s important for us as producers to gain some kind of insight on how to produce with this technology, for the future. We have to be ready,” he says.

 

The Paris-based Moonscoop Group is just beginning to dabble in 3-D, according to Bill Schultz, a co-CEO of Moonscoop U.S. in Los Angeles. “We are working on something that will require us to do some trailblazing,” he says. “We’re just at the beginning of the process. We’re working on a theatrical trailer that will run in the fall, a 30-second short featuring characters from the Wild Grinders. The property is already established, but it’s a 2-D flash property. The goal is to make it stereoscopic 3-D. It hasn’t been done. All the stereoscopic 3-D that’s been done has been CGI. We’re not even thinking ahead to television for it.”

 

Schultz places himself at the beginning of the learning curve on 3-D, examining such issues as possible headaches caused by extended use of the glasses. “I’m looking at it from a content perspective and I think there is definitely a value added for the consumer when they can see something in an impactful 3-D,” he says.

 

Steven DeNure, the COO of DHX Media and the president of DECODE Entertainment, says his company is developing some new projects and debating whether to do one of them in 3-D. “We haven’t budgeted it out, though,” he says. “It has to be a business decision. Unless there is somebody willing to pay a premium for a show in 3-D then probably from the production point of view it doesn’t make a lot of sense. What broadcasters do will dictate what we do. They’re our customers.”

Genevieve Dexter, a partner and the commercial director at CAKE Entertainment in London, has taken notice of the “meteoric rise” of 3-D in the cinemas, but questions how much demand there will be for 3-D kids’ television. “At the moment everybody is still trying to find an HD market for children’s animated and live-action programs on television,” she says. “We all shoot in HD but we don’t get much call to deliver in HD.”

 

What CAKE is doing is beginning to assess the cost of going back into the elements of some existing shows to upgrade them to 3-D. “We have started to analyze the cost of transferring some of our existing shows into 3-D to be able to offer them to 3-D channels in the future. We’re in the process of trying to cost that.”

 

For now, CAKE is not considering development of any new 3-D series, Dexter says. “We’re putting our efforts much more into multiplatform entertainment than into stuff that there may or may not be a demand for.”

 

Nor is Amberwood Entertainment taking the plunge just yet. “It’s definitely on our minds, but we have yet to strategize how we’re going to go about doing it,” says Craig Young, Amberwood’s VP of production. “We’d love to be one of the front-runners with it. We have several productions that would lend themselves quite well. RollBots has a lot of characters zooming around on these roller-coaster-type tracks. It would lend itself perfectly to 3-D.”

 

The general consensus at this early stage of development is that 3-D animation doesn’t require totally new skills or massive investments in personnel, equipment or software.

 

Jonathan Dern, a co-founder of SD Entertainment, which developed the 3-D animation in HIT’s Bob the Builder Legoland movie, says it’s very important to understand 3-D before you deliver it. “Once you do, it’s not rocket science. It is the future; it’s really important for my company that we embrace it and take the lead in producing in 3-D.” He pegs the incremental cost increase at 10 to 15 percent.

 

Cyber Group’s Sissmann says it’s “not difficult, just different. For a director of a series or movie it presents more challenges, but it’s exciting because it’s a new way to create. It does have a cost, which is not massive. At this point we estimate it at 10 or 15 percent on top of what we are spending.”

 

Moonscoop’s Schultz sees the cost similarly. “3-D will be more expensive because you will be rendering the same image twice,” he says. “Rendering can be a time-consuming, expensive part of the process. When we went from standard to HD it probably added 10 to 20 percent to the cost. The increase to 3-D could be comparable to that, unless there’s some new plug-in that does it automatically.”

 

DeNure at DECODE says CGI animation, already commonly called 3-D but not of the stereoscopic variety, is the simplest medium in which to do true 3-D. “Doing 3-D computer animation is probably the easiest, because it’s all done in a virtual world anyway,” he says. “There’s a way to create those layers you need to create a 3-D show.”

 

Canada’s Nerd Corps Entertainment has set itself up as a leading provider of 3-D CGI animation. “It’s just something that we felt would give us a strategic advantage when we were starting the company eight years ago,” says Chuck Johnson, co-founder of Nerd Corps and its senior VP of production. “We wanted to try and create a scenario where we weren’t just any other animation studio on the block. At the time we started, 3-D animation was not considered to be the best new thing. The broadcasters had found some failures early on and at the time 3-D was not necessarily the shining star of the industry. We wanted to come in and prove that it could be done better.”

 

With series like Storm Hawks and League of Super Evil, Johnson says, Nerd Corps found that it could “manipulate the process, the pipeline, to create something that was reliable and quite different. 3-D animation has in the past employed a process of overdoing everything. Layering on more detail, more complexities, and it really takes a surprising amount of creative control to [stop] yourself from overdoing it. We took a lot of principles from classical animation and other art forms and really put those into the pipeline and found ways to make it viable long term.”

 

Hume points out that HIT’s internal 3-D demonstration films were done when Bob the Builder and Pingu were both stop-motion properties but that the current CGI animations are more amenable to 3-D. HIT is one of several animation houses thinking about upgrading existing animation to 3-D where possible. “Those files exist,” says Dern, referring to the HIT properties. “If you separate them and put them into two eyes, and you have the expertise, you can go back into those digital files and dimensionalize a library. Even 2-D animation looks pretty cool in 3-D.”

One unanswered question about 3-D animation is which age groups can appreciate it. Amberwood’s Young doesn’t think younger preschoolers will sit still for a show viewed through glasses. “Trying to get a three-year-old to sit with a pair of glasses on probably is not going to happen,” he says. “But kids are very sophisticated these days. From about the age of five I can see it being somewhat appealing to them, definitely a novelty. I can see 5 to 11 eating that up and being mesmerized by it.”

 

HIT and SD are both doing research with advisory groups on the subject. “A good proportion of our library is preschool,” Hume says. “We are always cautious about doing things that are age-appropriate for our audience. With the Bob the Builder movie we wanted to make sure we weren’t going to terrify a child. You have to be careful about how you use the 3-D, and I believe we were very sensitive to our audience and that this 10-minute film is age-appropriate and works for a preschool audience.”

 

Cyber Group’s Ozie Boo! movie is also aimed at preschoolers, which is why the 3-D elements are short and tied to musical numbers. “You can’t put glasses on the eyes of preschoolers for 90 minutes,” Sissmann says. “So people who do 3-D movies have to be careful which audience they direct it to. Eight, ten, twelve years old and up, there is no problem. We think it will enhance the movie.”

 

DeNure sees the sweet spot for kids’ 3-D audiences in the 7-to-12 range. “We’re thinking it’s not going to be important in preschool,” he says. “In terms of the older, boys’ action-adventure or action-comedy genres, 7 to 11 or 7 to 12, there would probably be high interest. We think less so for live-action tween-, teen-targeted shows, but that remains to be seen.”

 

But the real question still on the table is whether the whole concept of 3-D television will catch on and become part of the mass viewing experience.

 

There are many true believers. Sony, which is partnering with Discovery and IMAX on a 3-D channel, says that in its fiscal year starting in April 2012, 3-D televisions will make up 30 percent to 50 percent of its sales.

 

Similarly, Samsung Electronics America, DreamWorks Animation and Technicolor have formed a global partnership for the delivery of a complete 3-D home-entertainment package this year. DIRECTV says it will launch three U.S. 3-D channels in June, offering pay-per-view events and movies, video on demand, and a variety of free sports, music and other entertainment. At the same time, skeptics question whether consumers are ready, in a tight economy, to shell out money for another high-end display and DVD player just a few years after HD sets and Blu-ray gained traction, and they wonder how the glasses will be accepted.

 

And more specifically to animation, no plans have been announced for a 3-D kids’ channel. Cartoon Network says 3-D animation is on its radar, but it’s too early to identify any projects or airdates. Disney says it has no plans for 3-D on Disney Channel or Disney XD.

At Nickelodeon, meanwhile, “The buzz around 3-D at the moment is big,” says Steve Grieder, the executive VP of Nickelodeon and program sales for MTV Networks International. “Nickelodeon is committed to developing breakthrough creative across all the mediums and technologies that kids and families are excited about—so we’re absolutely working on plans to enter the 3-D space shortly. It’s such an exciting phase, and I know our shows will translate phenomenally well into 3-D.”

 

Many others in the animation community agree it’s coming. “I worked 12 years at Disney and they’re always thinking five or seven years ahead,” Sissmann says. “It starts with market penetration by the manufacturers of TVs. Let’s talk around Christmas four years from now and look at the sales. I think we’ll be in a different economic cycle; the recession will be over. The first things are going to come from the big broadcasters. It’s moving very fast in the cinema. I think, on the television side, we’re three to five years behind.”

 

Hume calls Avatar the catalyst that will drive 3-D television. “SD and HIT were rolling along on a fairly aggressive plan, and it seems everybody is interested now,” she says. “It seemed a novelty prior to Avatar, but now people are looking at it differently. I think people will be asking about it at MIPTV.”

 

Amberwood’s Young expects to see animators pitching 3-D shows in the next couple of years. “It’ll take someone with a great series idea with broadcaster backing,” he says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if in the next year or so Amberwood starts planning a project with that in mind.”

 

CAKE’s Dexter remains somewhat doubtful. “3-D television does seem quite a way away. In addition there is quite a bit of skepticism about the application of 3-D TV to the children’s area. I think it’s applicable for event television for older children, but I can’t see anybody sitting down and watching it with specs. I can see it for event programming on television for animated features. People will want to experience the same thing when they buy the DVD that their friends experienced in the cinema.”

 

But Dern from SD, who calls himself a zealot on the subject, says it is coming: “Sooner than you think. Anybody who’s seen a 3-D movie in the last year will feel cheated if they don’t see it in 3-D in the home, once it hits the downstream. Just like standard def to high def, there will be a break point, whether it’s in three years or seven years. It’s a natural progression. Studios are investing billions. When Warner Bros. announces that the next two Harry Potters are going to be in 3-D, the wave has been set. Ultimately the technology will come along and you’ll be looking at a glasses-free environment and 3-D as the standard.”