Avatar director James Cameron believes the industry requires a “second wave” of 3D content to successfully promote the evolving medium amongst mainstream consumers.
“We’ve demonstrated that the 3D market is an extremely lucrative market and this is not a fad, this is not something that is going to go away,” Cameron told USA Today.
“It’s going to be interesting because (3D) TVs are going to change things yet again. But the TVs are going to take awhile to catch up with the marketplace because there isn’t enough content.”
According to Cameron, consumer electronic companies have created “almost the reverse problem” that the 3D industry previously experienced with movies.
“With movies, we were generating the content but the screens weren’t there. With the home, we’ve got the screens available and people are going to buy them because they’re future-proofing,” explained Cameron.
“But right now we’ve got a content gap. It can’t be filled by movies, because we can’t make them fast enough. So its going to have be filled by live production or near-live production.”
Nevertheless, Cameron acknowledged that producing live 3D television was a “very expensive” endeavor, with visual effects causing a significant “uptick” in the cost of production.
