BERGEN, Norway —Oct 25, 2006
“Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas” becomes first digital 3D film to screen in Scandinavia
NORDIC project enables European premier of re-mastered Disney classic at Bergen International Film Festival
Scandinavian audiences got their first ever taste of the digital 3D future of movies when BVI's "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" had its European premier at the Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF). The unique screening was enabled by the NORDIC (NORway's Digital Interoperability in Cinemas) project, and was seen by a captivated audience of 265 at the Magnus Barfot Cinema on Saturday 21 October. The film will next screen during the Big Cinema Day (Den Store Kinodagen) November 4th in Bergen. Norway currently has the second highest installation base of Hollywood-grade digital cinema equipment in all of Europe.
“Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas” was first released in 1993 and it became an instant holiday classic. It is the first ever feature film by a Hollywood studio to be re-mastered for digital stereoscopic projection and viewing. Audiences with special light-weight glasses are able to see the action with a depth and colour comparable to watching the original models from which the original stop motion animation was created.
“It is thrilling to be able to offer audiences the opportunity to re-experience 'Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas' in stunning Disney Digital 3D,” commented Buena Vista International Norway’s MD Inger Warendorph. “Disney has a long and proud history of technical innovation and supporting digital cinema, of which this is the latest example.” Walt Disney became the first studio to release a digital 3D film widely when computer animated hit “Chicken Little” was screened on over a hundred screens in the United States, Europe and Asia in the autumn and winter of 2005. Next summer the studio plans to continue its ground breaking work with the release of “Meet The Robinsons” in Disney Digital 3D.
“Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas” premièred in Norway the same weekend that it was released in the US, where it earned $3.3m from a limited number of sites and broke the house record at Disney's own El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. “We are extremely proud that Norway is the first country in Europe to screen this film in digital 3D,” commented Tor Fosse the Festival director, “We believe that the importance of digital cinema will only grow for audiences and directors, which is why we are keen to showcase all aspects of it here at BIFF,” he added.
The digital presentation was enabled by the NORDIC project, whose
integration partner Unique Promotions supplied the active glasses from NuVision. These glasses allow the film to be projected on the existing cinema screen, rather than replacing it with an expensive special silver screen installation. Unique Promotions's Director of Technology Dave Spilde pointed out that “the NORDIC project aims to prove that different types of technology and content can be made to work together to give cinema audiences an experience that cannot be matched by film.” The NORDIC project currently operates 12 digital screens throughout Norway, with three more to come, and has shown films from both Hollywood studios and local distributors. Unique were the first to demonstrate digital 3D cinema content in Norway during the Haugesund Film Festival on August 21st and at an earlier special screening in Bergen.
