TITANIC Goes 3D But LORD OF THE RINGS Movies Stay The Same.

I attended the Visionary Panel in Hall H, the event that was worth my time because 2 great filmmakers Peter Jackson and James Cameron were there to basically pick each other’s brain. The moderator did a great job of interviewing both directors, asking them top notch quality questions.

Jackson and Cameron talked about how they met. They talked about the projects they’re currently involved in respectively, Jackson promoting Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 and Cameron promoting his upcoming mega 3D extravaganza Avatar. It’s funny how some people would still mistake it for that other Avatar cartoon series that M. Night Shyamalan turned into a movie and retitled it The Last Airbender.

Anyways, it was exhilarating to finally know what went on inside Jackson and Cameron’s heads, each of them expressed slightly different but complimentary philosophies on performance capture and the use of that technology. Cameron said that as soon as he saw Gollum in the second LOTR Movie, he knew then that the technology had arrived that would allow him to make AVATAR.
You should’ve been there because it was just absolutely fascinating to hear them talk film language. The fact that they know so much about lenses, cameras, pixels and all those jargons just confirms they years of experience.

Somewhere between the conversation, a crazy wacko nutjob fan ran onto the stage and practically bothered Jackson and Cameron, the security came and took him away. It was kind of funny because people thought it was part of the show.

The two directors made interesting announcements. Peter Jackson told his and as for James Cameron…TITANIC in 3D is happening. He’s not going to add any new scenes, he’s just going to go back to the archive and convert it into 3D.. he said it’s already underway and the process will take about 18 months. Cameron said he’s seen a couple of minutes of the newly revised version and he liked it. He said it’s very important that the original filmmaker be involved in such process.

But those of you who might want to to see Frodo and Sam go 3D might have to keep dreaming because Peter Jackson is not planning on convering his classic 3 middle-earth movies into 3D anytime soon. It’s not that he hated the technology, he said it was because Warner Bros. is in charge of LOTR now since the fall of New Line and unfortunately WB is NOT very enthusiastic about converting them due to the lack of 3D screens out there, speaking of which, Cameron was openly campaigning for this, asking for more 3D screens to be available in theaters everywhere.
But when asked if they know what lies beyond 3D in the future of films, Cameron said he couldn’t see it yet.