3D movies sidebar

11 July 2008 08:02am

Journey To The Centre of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser, is the first full-length, live action feature film shot in digital 3D.

Gone are the days of wearing red and green spectacles while watching dated looking video clips of people surfing or riding motorbikes which are supposed to look like they're leaping out of the screen to hit you on the end of the nose.

3-D film technology is now much more sophisticated and ready to wow the world.

We take a look at past cinematic efforts which aimed to have some depth.

:: Jaws 3-D (1983)

Dennis Quaid starred in this second sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1975 Oscar winning classic Jaws. It tells the terrifying tale of blood-thirsty great white shark infiltrating a water park and causing havoc.

The film used Stereovision to get its 3-D effect. The technology was founded in the 70s by director/inventor Allan Silliphant and optical designer Chris Condon. They developed a different 35 mm single-strip format, which printed two images squeezed side-by-side and used an anamorphic lens to widen the pictures through polaroid filters.

:: Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003)

This sequel to the Spy Kids movies starred Sylvester Stallone as an evil toymaker who creates a hypnotising video game. The superhero children go into the game to disable it, then get stuck and are forced to battle their way out.

Instead of the layered film reel of 3-D films gone by, we had entered a digital age. Films could be shown in Imax - a film format which allows images to be bigger and higher-resolution.

The camera system used the latest HDTV video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3D: Game Over.

:: The Polar Express (2004)

This was Imax's first full-length, animated 3-D feature.

Starring the voice of Tom Hanks, this is the story of a young hero on Christmas Eve who boards on a powerful magical train that's headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus's home. What unfolds is an an adventure which follows a doubting boy, who takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole. During this ride, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery which shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe.

:: Deep Sea 3D (2006)

Narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, this was an Imax 3-D digital documentary about sea life. The film explores the wonders at the bottom of the ocean and the creatures who inhabit it.

:: Beowulf (2007)

Based on the ancient epic poem, this was a revolutionary and spectacular animated film which was also shown in Imax 3-D. It starred Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich but while they acted out the scenes, it was shot using the same technique as The Polar Express and so the version of them we see on screen are actually animations.

© The Press Association