By William Kallay

Director James Cameron unveiled his new affection for 3D digital filmmaking during his keynote address at the annual Large Format Cinema Association conference held in Los Angeles on May 14.

“I want to shoot everything in 3D,” said Cameron.

His new film, “Ghosts Of The Abyss,” is an ambitious documentary about deep sea dives to the wreckage of the Titanic, the famous ship that sunk on its maiden voyage nearly 100 years ago. He used modified Sony Cine-Alta High-Definition cameras with Panavision lenses to photograph the sunken luxury liner. What makes his film rather unique is that it was output to large format 15-perf 70mm film for release in IMAX theaters.

“The camera system is pretty easy to use,” Cameron said to the hundreds of convention attendees. “Now that we’ve seen that the camera can do almost anything it needs to do, I want to shoot features in the same camera format.”

His keynote address was done before an audience of LFCA members, many of which are filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors from the Large Format industry. Most Large Format films are made for museums and institutional venues. Since the mid-90s, however, some films have appeared at commercial installations.

Cameron - whose career has included writing, producing and/or directing such hits as “Aliens” (1986), “The Abyss” (1989), “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991) and “Titanic” (1997) - is the first Hollywood filmmaker to embrace not only 3D-HD for Large Format release, but is perhaps the most high profile director to have made a film within the Large Format industry. Like George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and Robert Rodriguez (“Spy Kids”), Cameron seems convinced that digital cinema is the wave of the future.

“The Sony 24p Cine-Alta cameras are capturing at a much higher resolution than 35mm negative, even daylight negative at 50 ASA,” said Cameron. “I would say it is about the equivalent of 65mm 5-perf negative. People have told me for the last two years that I’m nuts for saying this, but it’s true.”

The director and his crew logged more than 300 hours of footage for the film. This was edited down to a 60-minute documentary. Cameron said that the DVD release will contain more footage than what was shown theatrically.

Cameron hinted that more Large Format projects might be in the pipeline. His popular film, “Titanic” might be converted to the Large Format screen via IMAX’s Digital Re-mastering process (DMR) in the future.

Cameron’s keynote wasn’t the only news at the LFCA conference. Cinematographer Rodney Taylor received the Kodak Vision Award for his outstanding contributions to large format films. He’s shot a number of films in IMAX, including “Alaska: Spirit Of The Wild” (1997), “Amazing Journeys” (1999), “All Access” (2001), “Ultimate X” (2002) and “Our Country” (2003).

The film “Bugs! 3D” (2003) won Best Feature Film and “Where The Trains Used To Go” won Best Short at the LFCA Annual Gala Dinner and Awards ceremony.

Other topics during the conference included the use of new and improved high definition cameras for use in Large Format industry, and digital re-mastering of commercial films. Olympus has built a prototype HD camera that can shoot footage at 4K resolution. The Super High Definition (SHD) 4K camera revealed surprisingly good images when blown-up to IMAX. The Large Format industry has mostly used 15/70 and 8/70 cameras to shoot footage with impressive results. The SHD 4K camera is yet another tool for filmmakers to use.

In regards to digital re-mastering, IMAX has teamed up with Warner Bros. to release “The Matrix Reloaded” this summer and “The Matrix Revolutions” in the fall in IMAX. At the time of this conference it had not been determined whether the films would be cropped from their original widescreen (2.39:1) ratios or letterboxed to accommodate the narrower aspect ratio (1.44:1) of IMAX screens. Previous IMAX DMR releases have included “Apollo 13” and “Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones.” The DMR process “de-grains” 35mm or HD footage and converts it into 15/perf 70mm IMAX.

The LFCA is a member supported, non-profit organization that is open to the public. Their website address is www.lfca.org.

From left-to-right: Robert Dennis, CFI; Director James Cameron; Charlotte Huggins, NWAVE Pictures; Paul Holliman, Buena Vista Film Dist.

A crew member (left) prepares the unique camera as Mike Cameron (center) looks on.

MIR 2 pilot Genya Chernaiev (left) and Bill Paxton (center) look through a porthole in the submersible to the wreckage on the deck of Titanic.

MIR at Titanic.

Writer Ray Zone and D.P. Rodney Taylor

The California Science Center in Los Angeles