The premiere of Avatar culminates the survival strategy initiated by cinemas around half a century ago. It was exactly during the 50s that the great film studios, worried about the growing popularity of television, launched themselves to produce 3D movies. During this period, House of Wax and Bwana Devil were born. But elevated costs and technical difficulties soon relegated the 3D genre to the background. After support from film makers such as Robert Zemekis, George Lucas, Spielberg and even Cameron, it appears that 3D had finally arrived to stay. Once it had demonstrated it was more than just a passing trend, a vital question emerged: will this new technology be sufficient to guarantee the survival of cinemas?
Television was the official threat to cinema during the 50s; today, conventional movie theatres are subjected to enormous passing whims in the form of new, evolutive screens. Both Sony and Philips have started manufacturing 3D capacity televisions and it is just a matter of time before other devices such as cell phones, computers, video games and projectors start demonstrating similar abilities, with the added aggravation that these small gadgets will be much more accommodating as it will be easier and cheaper to acquire new cell phones or video games compared to equipping all cinemas with new technologies.
In fact, although it may seem that movie theatres are the natural option for 3D due to their spectacularity, this is only symptomatic of not having developed its' own expressive language. The usual manner in conventional film is to construct and bring the characters closer to the spectator through the story; viewing the protagonist's head floating over the audience like the wizard of Oz and gigantic in size does not help us to identify with their internal conflicts. 3D requires other settings - screens - in which to mature its narrative possibilities and generate proper codes. For this to occur, two elements are necessary which are absent from traditional screens: human scale and interaction.
* Translation by: Vera Ciria
