Cameron, Katzenberg, Lucas at CinemaCon (SCR, VAR, THR, LAT, TW)

By Nancy Tartaglione

George Lucas, James Cameron and Jeffrey Katzenberg visited CinemaCon on Wednesday to reassure attendees that the best is yet to come in digital filmmaking.

Per Screen, Lucas drew cheers when he said that for his money nothing could beat the communal theatrical experience.

Cameron said he wanted to make "Avatar 2" and 3 at higher frame rates than the standard in order to intensify the clarity of 3D images while Katzenberg said he had teams working on a process that would allow animators to see their work in real time.

According to Variety, Katzenberg said a sea change was coming for animation via a process that will "fundamentally change the quality of what we do." Currently, animators make a couple of seconds of rough, low-resolution footage that's sent to a rendering farm and returned as much as 12 hours later, Variety explains. But scalable multicore processing will take the tedium out of the animation process. "I cannot tell you how transformative that will be in our storytelling," Katzenberg enthused.

Lucas implored theater owners to invest in digital projection and upgrade their facilities. "Once you go digital, once you spend the big bucks to get in the game, everything after that is infinitely cheaper," Lucas said, according to Variety. "We will try to make better movies, but the better the venue, the more prosperous you're gonna be. The technology we're using is accessible on televisions and iPhones and everything else. What makes the difference is what you guys provide."

"Movie theaters, will never, ever go away," he said.

Per The Los Angeles Times, Katzenberg added, "Bring together seeing a movie and getting a meal. I think it's the next blockbuster."

Regarding 2D to 3D conversion, Lucas said that putting time and resources into a conversion can transcend rush-jobs that have dogged the 3D revolution.

"It's taken me seven years with ILM and a lot of research and development -- we're actually spending more money than we did on the original 'Star Wars' -- and that's the thing that will win the day," Variety quotes the filmmaker as saying.

Cameron concurred that true conversion should take between six to eight months, not six to eight weeks. "I'm concerned about things that erode the market. Bad 3D is one of them," he said, according to The Wrap.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron, speaking of higher frame rates said, "The 3D shows you a window into reality; the higher frame rate takes the glass out of the window. In fact, it is just reality. It is really stunning."

He is scheduled to offer a demonstration of the results today in Vegas.

On a separate, lighter note, Sony worldwide distribution president Rory Bruer was part of an incident that THR says "is sure to go down in CinemaCon history as an unforgettable moment."

In support of the studio's "Zookeeper," the exec carried a baby bear onto the stage at Caesars Palace. The cub then proceeded to pee all over him.

A cool headed Bruer, already dressed for an awards dinner for Dick Cook, quipped: "I hope Dick Cook understands."