The York-led 3D FLIC research project celebrated its official launch April 23 at Cinespace Film Studios in Toronto. York professors Nell Tenhaaf, Laurie Wilcox from the Centre for Vision Research, and Ali Kazimi took part in the event’s program.
The Hollywood Reporter covered 3D FLIC’s launch April 23:
After losing traditional Hollywood film and TV shoots to rival U.S. states like Louisiana and New Mexico, the Ontario provincial government is looking to lift its local production sector by luring 3D flicks and 2D-to-3D conversion work up north.
In the wake of “Avatar,” the Ontario Media Development Corp. on Friday unveiled a two-year $1.4 million 3D Film Innovation Consortium (3D FLIC) to expand Toronto’s 3D film expertise.
OMDC president and CEO Karen Thorne-Stone said her agency, which markets the province as a film location in Hollywood, is looking to build out Ontario’s 3D infrastructure to entice Los Angeles producers with next-level 3D projects to complete.
Jim Mirkopoulos, vp operations at Cinespace Studios, a major Toronto facility, said he is talking to major studios about shooting their movies in the city, and then remaining here to convert 2D content to 3D at partner Creative Post’s 3D stereoscopic post facility.
. . .Nell Tenhaaf, associate dean of research at York University, and the 3D FLIC project leader, said little research has been done into how audiences react to misaligned objects in 3D projection, or the illusion of depth, all of which may produce occasional nausea.
“We want to understand how the brain interacts with 3D film so we can make the experience as good as it can possibly get,” she said.
Tenhaff added the practical solutions discovered by Ontario academics will be put into locally produced postproduction technologies and 3D film production processes to better attract Hollywood and other foreign producers to the province.
The project was also covered in the Hindustan Times April 25:
Forget Avatar, it was just the tip of an ice cube. The technology that James Cameron’s film is credited to have breathed life into has been around in some way or the other since the 1890s, when a 3-D moviemaking process was first patented in Britain. Over the next century came technologies that failed on the cost-benefit scale. What Avatar did was to show the marketing possibilities of 3-D – marking the second coming of the old magic. Much of these must have been in the works for years. What has brought about their releases now?
The spread of digital projection and better camera technology helped. But there’s surely more to the momentum. A few weeks ago, the Delhi-born Ali Kazimi, a professor at the Centre for Film & Theatre in York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, started on a $1.4-million interdisciplinary project to research 3-D cinema. “A project this size cannot be started overnight…but the funding fell in place after the success of Avatar.” Now everyone is playing for the 3-D effect, said Kazimi.
Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– York University’s daily e-bulletin