If not in its infancy, 3D remains a toddler – one closely guarded by a handful of companies that have developed proprietary hardware and software to achieve three-dimensional imaging. So, for now, when you hire the company you hire the company’s crew to operate it.

When L.A.-based Bold Films, producer of such independent titles as Emilio Estevez’s Bobby and Jay Alaimo’s Slingshot, began exploring production locations for its first 3D project, Joe Dante’s The Hole, the world was essentially open. Most of the film takes place in a suburban basement – where said hole sits, waiting to scare the wits of the young cast – so a studio shoot was a given. Everything else was negotiable.

Donald Munro, a Vancouver-based contract employee for Bold, started exploring how to make his town the Bold choice. It was not an obvious one: Vancouver does not have any 3D digital camera crews. But Munro had a brainwave: What if Bold brought up a 3D crew from L.A. and trained some locals? Canada would get its first live-action digital 3D picture and Vancouver would have another arrow in its infrastructure quiver.

But would Rob McEwan go for it?

Elected president of IATSE Local 669 a year ago, McEwan represents camera crews from B.C. to Manitoba, the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Times have been tough, and McEwan was looking for ways to bring his members up to speed with new developments in technology. What better way than to give permits to foreign camera techs? Presented with an opportunity to do something counterintuitive, McEwan decided to explore his options.

‘We generally permit DOPs and that’s pretty much it,’ he says. ‘Permitting a first assistant camera and second AC is very rare.’ Bold’s 3D camera kit comes from Paradise FX, an L.A.-based 3D house. ‘[Bold] wanted a permitted first AC and two second ACs.’

As it stands, digital 3D requires significantly more human resources to operate. For starters, there are – until technology intervenes – two cameras. And while the digital Red One cameras in Paradise’s package don’t have film magazines, the unit represents about 250 pounds of seriously expensive hardware. When I was on set late in January, four big guys were engaged in the relocation of the tripod.

But those two camera ‘eyes’ bring other more technical and physiological parameters into play, such as convergence: the point in the focal volume (you can’t call it a plane) where the lines of sight meet. Paradise co-founder Max Penner was on the set as the stereographer, one of the new positions created by the additional axis; he controls the distance between the two lenses and thus the point in the picture where all three dimensions are most natural for our vision. (Hold up a finger about a foot from your nose, focus on it and then feel the background recede.)

As Munro explains it – read carefully – the second first-assistant camera is a stereographic technician, whose job it is to ensure the integrity of the three-dimensional image; the second second-assistant camera is a 3D technician whose job it is to monitor the extra equipment.

McEwan went for it.

Says Munro, not quite believing it himself: ‘The production and the union split the cost of the training. It allowed us to integrate the American crew in the eyes of Human Resources Development Canada, so it allowed us to bring in the foreign crew we needed and to keep Canadian members working and to get some training.’

‘It was a coproduction in our own small way,’ says McEwan, who came out to The Hole set to visit. He says talks with Munro and Penner are underway to set up a 3D seminar for his membership. Meanwhile, Penner is hoping to offer his proprietary kit through a local camera house.

At a budget of around US$11 million, it’s no Avatar, but, as Penner points out, B-movies like The Hole are the backbone of the industry (Paradise also did the 3D for the current horror hit My Bloody Valentine 3D). If such films can make 3D make financial sense, then more will get made and, if The Hole’s training pays off, more of them will get made in Vancouver.

With Walt Disney’s 3D remake of Tron set to shoot in the city this spring, McEwan hopes the production will come calling. ‘We’ll have the people,’ he says. He’s heard rumors of between four and five other 3D shows sniffing out the city.

Not a moment too soon. Cineplex Entertainment recently announced it is adding 22 3D-capable digital projection systems to its circuit.