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Watch TV on PC - 12,000 TV Channels and Movies SINGAPORE : Get ready for a slew of 3D movies from Hollywood next year.

More than 20 such films will be released, up from just one about five years ago. And that's because 3D is poised to improve cinema attendance and ticket sales.

3D action movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" which hits cinemas across Singapore this Christmas season, has grossed more than US$212 million worldwide since its release in July, while yet-to-be-released science-fiction blockbuster "Avatar" is already generating intense interest.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" is the first live-action movie to be shot entirely in 3D digital format. Brendan Fraser, star and co-executive producer of the film, decided to go 3D because it is "nothing that people have seen before".

"I've come of age in a period of film making when I've learnt my trade with CGI and visual effects treatments, and a whole generation has also come of age at the same time having seen that type of imagery and it seems almost par for the course, the norm. So I ask myself where do you go from here... what would really grab an audience and immerse them in the experience of film, and the answer is simply 3D," said Fraser, who is in Singapore for the world's first international 3D Film Festival, 3DX.

Today's 3D is different from the 3D of the past. For starters, audiences wear polarised glasses which are "comfortable and kind of geeky-cool", instead of the traditional red and blue eyed paper glasses.

"You will feel like you are a member of the cast, if not a character, or a part of the action itself," Fraser said.

"It has the experience of taking the audience right out of their seat and immersing them into it (the film)."

No longer do you watch a movie, you "experience" it, said Jon Landau, producer of upcoming 3D blockbuster "Avatar".

"Digital technology allows us to present up on the screen an experience that people have never gotten before. What happens is the screen plane disappears and they are looking through a window into a world."

Contrary to popular belief, 3D is not just for sci-fi films but all movie genres, and Landau strongly believes 3D is here to stay.

He likens it to the transition of films from black and white to colour, "Once you've gone to colour, you go back to a specific creative reasoning to do black and white, other than that, everything is made in colour."

"And I think you’ll find it coming into your home... into your personal devices. We’ve seen 3D, nature created us that way, and I think we will continue to see it that way in entertainment," he added.

- CNA/km/il

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