TeleMedia Strategy
The Bleeding Edge of Disruption

Over the last months I have been observing from afar what a lot of ‘experts’ are calling the next ‘revolution in the entertainment industry’, but I can’t help thinking that we have been here before!

As the drive for cinema audiences becomes more competitive in the entertainment industry we are seeing studios and distributors trying to differentiate themselves in this media space and attract people to the Cinema. One interesting example of this is the re-emergence of the 3D film.

The 3D genre has been around almost as long as movies themselves.  Would it surprise you to know the first attempt to commercialise 3D was back in 1922? The film was called ‘The Power of Love’ so this is not new. We have had resurgences of these phenomena in the early 1950 and then in the 1980 but none of these attempts to drive us to watch films through the bespectacled focus of 3D Glasses has worked up thus far.

In the whole history of 3D presentations, many ways to convert existing 2D images for 3D presentation have been tried, but none have survived. However with combination of digital source material and cost effective digital post processing a new wave of conversion products are now available and we may see the ‘3Ding’ of many old favorites on our screens again.

We are now seeing multiple films produced in 3D through different techniques such as InTru 3D and IMAX features filmed with the Reality Camera System. Some recent examples of this are ‘Monsters v Aliens’ from Dreamworks Animation’s (presented through what they term the first ‘InTru 3D) and ‘Jonas Brother’: The 3D Concert experience which is a Disney Digital 3D and in IMAX3-D release. So the studios are getting behind this indeed.

DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg expects there to be 12 to 18 3D feature films by 2010.  So is this going to catch on?  The authors view is that although digital distribution and digital projection systems enable this type of innovation, it is playing at the edges of the media and is one way of getting the audience to the Cinema rather than watching at home.

There are some attempts to create a 3D home market but this is difficult and would require you to effectively have two copies of the film on one disk (something we are not equipped for yet) or use a set of anaglyphic paper glasses--the kind with blue/red or green/red lenses—which are included with the DVD case.  Not for me I am afraid.

This is another example of driving us, the audience, from a ‘broadcast media’ to a ‘narrowcast media’ recipient, where different formats and channels are segmenting the audience into small focused channel groups and the overall audiences for each of  these techniques is in fact narrowing!

So back to my original question 3D or not 3D?….Not 4 me, see you in the next edition.

By Paul Morrissey,

Paul Morrissey is highly seasoned telecommunications business technology professional with over 26 years of senior experience in the international telecommunications environment. Mr. Morrissey has funded and sold numerous companies over the past fifteen years in the Data/Telecommunications environment including but not limited to Data Centres, and Technology Managed Services businesses. Over past five years has worked closely with many of the new carries both in the wireless and wire-line environments and with the UK MOD in developing a data centre centric hosted secure systems approach for operations within the MOD UK estates. Mr Morrissey also conducts high level strategy engineering/business consulting engagements for client on private basis.

 Mr. Morrissey is also Chairman for Tubedale Films Ltd an independent film production company base in the UK which he runs with his brother David Morrissey as well as Stagereel Limited a Digital TV Production company based in the UK. In these roles he is instrumental to the development, delivery and storage of Media content in the Hosted Service environment. Mr Morrissey was a founder and CEO of the Data Centre business Digital Haven plc, a European second tier Data Centre company between 1999 and 2002. Awarded a Fellowship of the Institution of Engineering and Technology in 1998 he is a member of the Project Management Institute and a Microsoft Certified Professional.