Celebrating International Children’s Day, China’s first homegrown 3D sci-fi adventure film Animen opened in cinemas Tuesday, realizing a first-time filmmaker’s quest and bringing to life a young boy’s dream.

Animen was made by a wholly “Chinese team”, based on a story the director made up for his son. In order to bring the story to the big screen, Xu spent over five years developing it. The movie contains such typical Chinese elements as “Beijing Opera”, “Chinese Kongfu” and “Confucian Theory”. In particular, the design of a warship was adapted from the “Shenzhou 6″, China’s second manned spaceship, launched on October 12, 2005.

Source: Global Times

After the success of Avatar, the Beijing Film Academy is stepping up its efforts to cultivate 3-D animation talent by establishing the first ever related major.

Beijing Film Academy will start the new major in September, titled New Technology in Movie Production. 3-D photography will be a primary subject, said Mu Deyuan, director of the photography department at the academy.
He said the academy plans to enroll 10 students into the major. The department will invest 10 million yuan in specialist equipment.
“After Avatar’s box office results, the central government and education authorities stressed a need to strengthen China’s moviemaking level,” he said. “We want to support the transformation of China into an advanced movie production country.”
Lei Zaixing, a photography lecturer with the film academy, is shooting a 3-D short film at Hengdian World Studios with Reed Smoot, a veteran cinematographer from the US whose 3-D works include Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets.
Lei believed 3-D film is the way forward for motion pictures, but Chinese movie-makers are a long way behind Hollywood. “We are lagging in many areas, such as proficiency, professional ethics, experience and production flow,” he added.
“After Avatar, those in the business learned how lucrative 3-D films could be and rushed in to have a bite of the cake,” he said. “But at least two productions failed from a lack of technology and expertise.”
However, he hoped China would be able to produce a 3-D movie in just four to five years. “Everything should be authentically Chinese, from the storyline to the crew members,” he said.
Chinese director Zhang Yimou raised a proposal during the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference session in March. He suggested the Beijing Film Academy establish a postgraduate course on high-tech movie making.
“We need to spice up our stories with advanced technology and make them more appealing,” he said.

Source: China Daily