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Non-Tech : IMAX 3D-the wave of the future -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sonyNchair who wrote (90)	11/19/1998 4:47:00 AM
From: George Sepetjian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 170

Here's what IMAX has in store for the future. If one of the next decade's more interesting technological breakthroughs pans out, the result may be a surge in the popularity of movies made when computers were still room-size devices. Brad Wechsler, chairman and co-chief executive officer of Imax Corp., a Mississauga, Ontario, company that makes technology for giant-format films, predicts that computing tools will soon exist to convert any conventionally shot film into 3-D, Imax, or even 3-D Imax, an eye-popping combination already showing in theaters. Mr. Wechsler says Imax's research-and-development wing is pondering techniques for taking two-dimensional 35-millimeter films and blowing them up into Imax's towering eight-story images and 3-D stereoscopic pictures. He's confident the technology will be ready in a decade -- maybe sooner. "It's really a function of digital-enhancement tools and computing power," he says. "What you're doing is you're sort of stretching images in space and interpolating data." The upshot for Imax could be profound: Its current library of about 140 Imax movies could suddenly expand to include the greatest treasures of the cinematic canon, a key development for a jumbo medium that hasn't produced any masterpieces. "I think a film like 'Lawrence of Arabia' would look exquisite in Imax 2-D," says Mr. Wechsler, who also puts "The Wizard of Oz" on the short list of films he would most like to see in Imax. Studios, too, might be agog over the possibilities: What better gimmick is there for getting audiences to turn out for a film-classic revival? Critics, of course, will disagree: If Ted Turner colorizing "Casablanca" agitated cineastes, Imax inflating Dorothy and Toto to the size of buildings sounds like grounds for a holy war. Mr. Wechsler, though, says he won't treat purists' concerns lightly.