Camera positions must be revisited for 3D sport: James Cameron

Speaking at the opening conversation of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit  yesterday with News Corp’s James Murdoch, Avatar director James Cameron stated that although sport would drive 3D to the home, there was a need to rethink camera positions “to really optimise the upside value of 3D in sports”.

“3D adds value to any kind of entertainment media,” stated Cameron.

“Sports, Drama (which people haven’t woken up to), natural history, photography, everything… but the value added is proportional to how much the 3D camera is able to simulate you being physically there.  So if you were at a sporting event, you’d want the seats right at the side of the field because that’s where the cameras would also want to be. However, the cameras are still fairly large and that creates a challenge. To really optimise the upside value of 3D in sports, we’d have to rethink our camera positions a little bit and we have to think clearly. Right now, you have a 2D multi-camera production and a separate 3D multi-camera position and it’s clearly not a good business proposition. That is duplicating energy and that’s not the way to do it,” Cameron stated, adding that he anticipated this while creating Avatar and created only one version “that served both masters – 2D and 3D”.

“With Avatar, there was not a separate 3D version of the film. It was exactly the same composition. However, the problems are much more different in a live environment,” he added.

However, he added that he anticipated that a new wave of camera systems “solve a lot of these problems that are plaguing the pioneers in live broadcast because the cameras will be smarter and smaller and have less requirement for humans in the loop making decisions of what’s good stereo and what’s bad stereo. They’ll be able to put software in the line, coming out of the camera and the stuff that basically says ‘That’s not good stereo. Make an adjustment.’ The algorithms will decide that for you,” he added.