'Journey' to 3-D

You'll still need to slap on special glasses to get the full effect, but a new film aims to envision a bright three-dimensional future

Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcher- son, and Anita Briem in "Journey to the Center of the Earth." (sebastian raymond/new line cinema)

Moviegoers checking out next week's 3-D update of the Jules Verne classic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" will get their share of popcorn spectacle - maybe not the jumbo bucket, but a medium with extra butter, anyway. Kids especially should respond to the highlights: Whoa, duck - prehistoric flying fish! Look out, that T-rex is charging right at us! Hey, there's star Brendan Fraser (in a nod to vintage 3-D silliness) spitting toothpaste right in our eye!

What audiences probably won't realize is that the real trick "Journey" is attempting is to make 3-D technology more of an immersion experience, rather than merely a showy, gimmicky one. Besides being a family-friendly summer diversion, the film is a test run for what's being touted as the big reveal of next-generation 3-D: director James Cameron's sci-fi event movie "Avatar," due in December 2009.

"Journey" is the first live-action non-documentary feature to be shot completely using the Fusion System, a versatile 3-D camera rig engineered by Cameron and cinematographer Vince Pace to record with greater artistic control than traditional equipment. Technical partners for the better part of a decade, Cameron and Pace did some earlier R&D for the rig on the director's underwater IMAX documentaries "Ghosts of the Abyss" and "Aliens of the Deep" - which, like "Journey," were produced with Boston-based Walden Media.

Fusion's goal is to capture imagery with photorealism - to make viewers feel that they're being pulled into the movie, rather than having the movie artificially pop out at them. Or, to put it another way, to create legitimately transporting entertainment, and not just rehash the kitschy thrills of the paddle-ball gag in 1953's Vincent Price creepfest "House of Wax," or shark-gnawed limbs floating off the screen in 1983's "Jaws 3-D."

During a recent publicity stop in Boston, Fraser and "Journey" director Eric Brevig recalled some of the benefits yielded by the new system in the filming of their movie. Fraser pointed to a quiet interior scene in which his misfit Boston scientist struggles to convince a prospective Icelandic trail guide that Verne's tale wasn't fiction. The movie's conceit: The novel was secretly a real-life guidebook, one that Fraser and his teenage nephew (Josh Hutcherson) urgently need to use to track the boy's missing father.

"I didn't realize it until I saw it on screen myself, but the audience feels like they're sitting at that kitchen table in a little log cabin with them," says Fraser, his eyes widening slightly at the notion. "The movie does have big moments when things jump off the screen and delight or scare you. But you're also right there even in the more still moments."

"The intimacy of the camera is important, because we're not making a theme park movie or a documentary," adds Brevig, a rookie filmmaker known for his work as a visual effects supervisor on "Total Recall" and "Pearl Harbor," among others. With traditional bulky 3-D cameras, he says, "the problem is it's hard to move around, and you can't get in close to an actor, because it casts a shadow. But when the actors are rappelling down a cave wall, I want the camera scraping the surface. When Josh is tearing up, I want you to feel like you could reach out and touch his face."

"That'll be the real accomplishment, at the end of the day, for the medium," says Pace, speaking by phone. "Because right now, most people walk into one of these movies and say, 'Oh my God, it's in 3-D! But it's got no story line or character development.' There's a disassociation with the audience."

Hollywood seems primed to join the Cameron camp in trying to remedy that disconnection, judging by the attention the industry has increasingly given 3-D in the last couple of years. Compared to "Journey" or "Avatar," animated releases such as "Monster House" and "Beowulf" are a different proposition technically, and those recent Hannah Montana and U2 concert movies, while shot with Fusion rigs, are something else entirely.

Still, they've all helped establish 3-D's importance as a value-added (and premium-priced) theatrical draw, one strong enough to lure back viewers from increasingly sophisticated home entertainment systems. Even a less heralded release such as last year's "Meet the Robinsons" benefited from 3-D treatment, earning nearly a third of its $25.1 million opening weekend gross on 3-D screens - just 581 of them, out of some 3,400 screens total.

DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg has become another of 3-D's vocal proponents, announcing plans to release all of the studio's films in the format, beginning with March 2009's "Monsters vs. Aliens," and including the next "Shrek" installment in 2010. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are collaborating on a 3-D performance-capture project featuring the Belgian comic strip character Tintin. George Lucas has hinted at plans to re-release the "Star Wars" saga, adding dimension to the imagery in the same way that IMAX does digital 3-D enhancements on films such as "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Director Robert Zemeckis ("The Polar Express," "Beowulf") returns with next year's Jim Carrey vehicle "A Christmas Carol" for Disney. For the tween set, a Jonas Brothers concert movie is on tap. And the Fusion System gets another tuneup with next summer's live-action "Final Destination 4."

There's a more mundane reason for Katzenberg and other cheerleaders to grab a megaphone. With the cost of outfitting movie theaters for current digital 3-D projection said to be as much as $100,000 per screen, theater owners have been upgrading at something of a deliberate pace. While there are now about a thousand 3-D-ready screens domestically, the studios are pushing for 3,000 to 5,000 by next year. DreamWorks already shifted its "Monsters vs. Aliens" release date to avoid a booking conflict with Fox's "Avatar," which at the time was slated to open just a week later.

Meanwhile, who knows to what degree a wider audience might be put off by wearing funny glasses, which are still a necessary accessory, the medium's various advances notwithstanding? "Journey," like the majority of recent 3-D releases, will also play at standard 2-D multiplexes, so an alternative is available.

Real D, the projection system being used for "Journey" in 3-D venues, employs polarized glasses that are a far cry from the red-and-blue anaglyph specs of old, but the company's website still feels compelled to reassure the moviegoing public that they're comfortable, lightweight, and "a lot like sunglasses." Glasses-free technologies making use of lenticular, angular, and prismatic displays are in the works, but remain a thing of the more-distant future.

For Brevig, Fraser, and the rest of the cast and crew of "Journey," the future arrived two years ago, when production began on the set in Montreal. "The cameras were being calibrated up until a week before we started using them," Fraser says with a laugh. "It's a science, but it's not a perfect one yet. That was part of what made it so exciting."

Apparently they came close enough for studio work, though: Cameron used "Journey" as a de facto sales tool; he visited the set with Fox executives and received their green light for "Avatar" shortly thereafter.

Says Brevig, "It was important for Jim to show them, you know, 'Look how easy it is to make 3-D movies. [Why,] there's Eric - he's doing it right now!' But I do think that once directors and audiences get used to it, and don't feel like it's a gimmick, it'll become like surround sound or any other cinema tool. It makes scenes so compelling, it'll be a ubiquitous choice."