Until recently, 3D was relegated to the realm of kitsch thanks to a steady stream of films and TV broadcasts that focused more on the effect than the story (Jaws 3D, anyone?). The glasses looked kind of silly, and watching it could give you a headache. But with the advent of digital filmmaking, a growing number of companies have developed tech that makes the process of making and watching 3D material much easier. The talk of a revolution in the moving image has begun anew.

3D films have evolved from anaglyphic (where pairs of images are rendered in two different colors, then overlapped and viewed with colored glasses) to stereoscopic 3D, in which the action is shot with two lenses that mirror the distance between a pair of eyes. New camera and post-production advances specifically for the 3D set are arriving just as a new wave of 3D features, ranging from U2 3D to the recent box office-topping Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds, are storming through cinemas enabled to show 3D films. And good news - the glasses are cooler too.

"A lot of the old problems with the 3D pipeline got cleared away by digital capture, post and projection," says Mark Horton, strategic marketing manager at Quantel, a UK-based company that has developed several post-production solutions for 3D work. "The bit that was left was how someone could see what they were doing while they were doing it." Now, directors and editors can view dailies in 3D and edit in stereo or, if they prefer, in 2D and rapidly conform the cut to 3D. In the past, fast 3D edits could wear heavily on the viewer, but recently-developed depth balancing, overseen by stereographers, allows fast-paced edits such as those in U2 3D, the first live-action film shot entirely in digital 3D.

Bluerock editor Olivier Wicki spent 18 months cutting the U2 project, starting in New York, then heading to Burbank's 3ality Digital, the 3D production company behind the film. The steepest part of the learning curve for him was "studying the footage and understanding it. We had endless meetings where we'd discuss what would be comfortable for the eyes and what would preserve the environment [on screen]."

According to 3ality Digital CEO Sandy Climan, the aim of companies like his is to make the process of working in 3D both more intuitive for filmmakers and production companies keen to introduce a third dimension to their work, and less of a special effect. "A number of the reviews noted that we didn't use the 3D effect to hit you over the head or really distract you," he says.

Conversely, @radical.media director Dave Meyers wanted to hit people over the head with the effect in his new video for Missy Elliott, "Ching-A-Ling/Shake Your Pom-Pom". In the promo, billed as the first 3D music video, Elliott and her gaggle of dancers perform most of the action in a single setting. Missy makes the most of the 3D effect by wagging a finger and a baseball bat into the zoom lens.

Working with 3D camera specialists Pace and 3D-enabled post house FotoKem, Meyers says the biggest challenge he had with the shoot was budgetary. "[The 3D] sucked up maybe a little less than half the budget," he says. "So I was back to being as creative as I could with what I could find in the parking lot."

That ingenuity is also in evidence in Santiago Caicedo's short film "Galaxy", produced by Paris' Mikros Image. Opting to create a low-budget stereoscopic film in HD, Caicedo and his crew rigged two small HDV cameras to his Vespa and filmed his journey through the Parisian streets, interweaving it with animations produced in After Effects and Autodesk 3ds Max. He made three edits (one for the left eye, one for the right and one to mix both), a process that can consume considerable time and money. "It's like making three films in one," he says.

But with stereoscopic TVs emerging on the market and test stereo broadcasts already airing in Japan, China and Korea (and possibly Europe this year), one can expect interest, and the number of projects, to rise. As for its commercial applications, the general consensus is that 3D could be just as viable for the right spot as for sports, concerts or films. While Coke tried it with mixed results in 1989 for a Super Bowl spot, the tech advances behind the scenes and in the home entertainment market might make it the right time to try again. "One thing that will help kick it off is having stereo that's well-shot, well-edited and well post-produced," says Horton.

@radical.media http://www.radicalmedia.com
3ality Digital http://www.3alitydigital.com
Bluerock http://www.bluerockny.com
Mikros Image http://www.mikrosimage.fr
Quantel http://www.quantel.com