The future of 3D cinema

The end of annoying 3D glasses?!

With the Encounters Short Film Festival fast approaching I decided to take a look at the future of our cinemas. What will be on our screens? Or, more importantly, how will we be watching it?

3D video has been taken to a new level by teams of researchers at some of the world’s top universities. At Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute scientists have developed a programme which displays images in 3D, by projecting light to illuminate drops of water as they fall through the air. The water drops fall in three layers and a computer is carefully programmed to control which drop is lit up. So far they have created every child’s dream, 3D tetris, and successfully displayed images, text and videos. 

BBC news reported on a recent attempt by an international team of scientists to create 3D images on bubbles. Much like normal bubbles, the main ingredient is soap. Ultrasonic sound waves are played onto the film, altering its qualities and buckling the surface to create different effects, from the smooth shiny surface of a butterfly wing to the rough opaque texture of fabric. The mixture has been designed so that objects can pass through it without popping the bubble.

A team at Nokia has even come up with a touch screen made of ice.

These things may seem bit useless at the moment – who is going to install a waterfall in their home or replace their TV screen with a series of bubble membranes? However, the projects display the huge potential when science, specifically computer programming, and the creative industries join forces. Who knows, the moving pictures hung of the walls of Harry Potter’s castle may be closer than we think.

My predictions for the future:

- The poster adverts which line our streets and bus stops will become videos, moving images which change and react to you as you pass by.  Perhaps they will even take basic information about you, e.g. your gender and age, to make the advert’s content specific the person walking by.

- Film and theatre-makers will join forces to create interactive ‘experiences’, where 3D projections mean you can view the action in the film from every angle.

- The touch screen made of ice might receive a ‘chilly’ reception, but its successor will mean touch screens can be created on every possible surface.