[1] Avatar is now the highest grossing film of all-time with over $2.7 billion dollars in ticket sales [3], a substantial portion stemming from 3D screenings. Jon Landau also produced the second highest grossing film of all-time, Titanic. April 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sink in the icy Atlantic and has been rumored to be re-released [4] in 3D early 2012.
Landau spoke at Idea Festival 2010 [5] about some of the most complex visual arts entertainment technologies in Hollywood today. The filming of Avatar took more than one petabyte (aka one million gigabytes) of media storage and a render farm with 10,000 quad-processor machines, per Landau. When asked about the future of 3D, he noted that, "Distortion is useless change, but innovation is the art of beneficial change." Landau also noted that in the future, 3D glasses should not be a deterrent but that we do need 3D screens that don't require glasses. He continues to discuss how society should and will likely be immersed in 3D technology with their mobile devices and TVs. Whether the technology is integrated into contacts, glasses, or sunglasses - it will become a very key factor in every consumer's visual experience. With the prevalence of 3D movies and TV's [6] alike, it will be quite interesting to see how the future of 3D technology will integrate into our daily lives
Aside from his motion picture producing brilliance, I had an opportunity to speak with Jon and he is one of the most down to Earth people I've had the opportunity to speak with. Landau even let me hold the Oscar that was won for the film Titanic.
Today's Tech Deal: The iTunes App Store offers downloads of James Cameron's Avatar for iPhone / iPod [7] touch for 99 cents ($6 below anything I've seen).
Photo: Lewis Bertolucci