MEET THE ROBINSONS IN DISNEY DIGITAL 3D™:
LEAPING FURTHER FORWARD INTO THE ENTERTAINMENT FUTURE

MEET THE ROBINSONS and its outrageously imaginative world will come to dazzling life in groundbreaking Disney Digital 3D™ on an unprecedented number of screens -- more than 600 nationwide -- marking Disney's most creative and ambitious venture into 3D moviemaking yet.

Disney pioneered the high-tech rebirth of 3D with the Disney Digital 3D™ release of the animated hit "Chicken Little".  A special Halloween engagement of "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas” in Disney Digital 3D™ was also a huge success.  But those releases, while doing banner box-office business in select cities, provided just a peek into the potential of Disney Digital 3D™.  So now, Disney takes a major leap, both in terms of more sophisticated 3D storytelling and the opportunity for a far wider audience to enjoy the state-of-the-art 3D experience with MEET THE ROBINSONS - a movie tailor-made for this kind of forward-looking fun. 

            Says Lylle Breier, Senior Vice President of Disney Special Events:  "MEET THE ROBINSONS is all about the future, so it's a natural for this completely new way of experiencing a movie that takes you inside this animated world and really lets you live it.  This is the future as only Disney could imagine it - and today's sophisticated audiences want to experience that future in a cutting-edge way that makes it totally immersive." 

            Breier continues:  "What's exciting for everyone at Disney is that we were there in the beginning with 'Chicken Little' and now, just a short time later, we're seeing astronomical growth in digital 3D theatres.  Audiences all over the country are demanding digital 3D and thankfully theatres are stepping up to the plate." 

            "We are very excited that the filmmakers have taken giant leaps forward in the production of the film.  Disney Digital 3D™is now more comfortable, easier to watch and bigger and bolder than ever.  Throw away your old ideas of paper glasses, eye-strain, and headaches - with Disney Digital 3D™ it's totally comfortable to watch and you don't really notice the 3D process.  What you do notice is you are immersed in this incredible world with wonderful characters," added Breier.  

Movie-goers have always loved the idea of 3D, but the reality of it has never quite been able to match up to the dream, until now. In the brave new world of digital cinema, 3D has finally come of age.  In general, 3D films work by projecting a double image: one for the right eye and another for the left, which creates the rich sensation of real-life depth. Traditionally, this was achieved by using two projectors.  Disney Digital 3D™, however, takes advantage of advances in digital projection technology by needing just one projector, which rapidly shifts between images for the left eye and the right eye, so quickly (144 times per second) that the brain is not even aware of it.  Using polarized light, the images are crisper, clearer and more immersive than any 3D process in history.

With MEET THE ROBINSONS in Disney Digital 3D™, the technical has also started to impact the creative. For the first time, the filmmakers took the 3D rendering process into account early on in the creative development of the movie.  "We actually wrote what we call a 'Depth Script' for the entire film, in which we determined how much depth we would use in each sequence of the story," explains the film's Stereoscopic Supervisor Phil McNally, whose love and skill in the three-dimensional world have lent him the nickname "Captain 3D."  "It was a real jump ahead creatively, because we were able to look at the entire story in advance and actually use the 3D to enhance the storytelling as we have never done before." 

            For example, McNally and his team purposely held back on the dimensional depth of the film until Lewis arrives in the Future City, when things suddenly and viscerally pop with dynamic shapes and colors.  "Throughout MEET THE ROBINSONS, we are using much more depth than you saw on 'Chicken Little,' and by the time Lewis gets to the Future City, it's the deepest you've ever seen," notes McNally. 

            Yet for all the creative shifts in depth, the aim was also a refined subtlety not usually associated with 3D.  "The idea is that audience shouldn't notice the changes in depth, but simply have the feeling of that you're suddenly looking into a more spacious future world," McNally comments. 

            McNally notes several other areas where the film pushes forward into an exciting future for 3D filmmaking.  "We did a lot of work with the sense of scale," he says, "developing different tools to actually measure the characters and to see how round or how big they need to be, which helps to make them very convincing.  We also have improved the shot-to-shot transitions, so that we can keep up with the Robinsons even in the fastest-cutting sequences." 

            He continues: "We also have taken control of the movie frame itself, known as the 'stereoscopic window' in 3D filmmaking. For example, in most scenes we keep the world behind the frame in order to make it feel under control, but then, say in the dinosaur scenes, we break out of that window, playing with angles and allowing the shots to literally become unstable. It's a very subconscious kind of thing but it's really effective in creating a dynamic sequence."

            All of these technological leaps will add up to a bigger, brighter and more seamless experience for the audience -- but both Breier and McNally note that, in keeping with the theme of MEET THE ROBINSONS, there are more exciting changes ahead. 

            "There's no doubt that for big movies like MEET THE ROBINSONS, digital 3D is going to be a major factor in the future," says Breier.  "In fact, MEET THE ROBINSONS will only be seen in 3D in all of Manhattan." 

            Adds McNally: "The future will allow filmmakers to create movies that are incredibly immersive and thanks to 3D. The key thing is that with the technology we are using now at Disney, most of the limitations are gone and anything is possible."