September 28, 2006 - By Carly Mayberry, The Hollywood Reporter

Attendees at Tuesday’s Digital Coast Roundtable took a reprieve from more serious technology topics and instead fixed their eyes on a giant Imax screen to view the first 3-D showing of Sony Pictures Animation’s “Open Season.”

The event, which took place at a private screening room at Imax’s Santa Monica office, featured not only the unveiling of the first in-house feature animation project from the studio division but also a recounting of the collaboration between Sony Pictures Animation and Imax on the film.

“Imax 3-D is bringing movies back to the cineplex and having people see them the way they were intended,” said Imax Filmed Entertainment chairman and president Greg Foster, who oversees all aspects of the company’s global filmed entertainment activities. “What Imax does is put you inside a movie. You simply can’t replicate this experience at home.”

Crediting Imax’s proprietary DMR remastering technology as a significant factor, Foster cited the growth of Imax in the past five years to about 250 theaters in 36 countries.

“In 2005, the boxoffice was down by 5% from the year before while we were up 36% from the year before,” he said, also noting the repositioning of Imax’s film slate to include more Hollywood blockbusters.

Foster described the collaboration with Sony on “Open Season” as apropos and in keeping with the relationship the companies established on previous movies. “When a movie is in 3-D, Imageworks is not afraid to change the design of the movies to best be seen in 3-D,” he said.

Sony Pictures Imageworks president Tim Sarnoff, who introduced Foster on Tuesday, called the experience of making “Open Season” a unique opportunity for Imageworks to explore how audiences see a movie in 3-D.

Under his direction, Sarnoff has led the unit to Academy Award wins for “Spider-Man 2” and the CG-animated short “The ChubbChubbs!”

Said Sarnoff: “3-D is an event that changes the way you emotionally see a movie.”

The evening included a presentation by Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Buzz Hays, who serves as senior producer of the division’s recently formalized 3-D stereoscopic pipeline, on the process of technically transforming digital to 3-D format.

The Digital Coast Roundtable is a Southern California nonprofit leadership organization dedicated to emerging technology and new-media companies.

Copyright 2006, The Hollywood Reporter. All rights reserved.