“The Director’s Guild of America has a Digital Days event, and the primary focus this time was on 3-D,” said Matt Efsic, equipment technician for Brooks Institute of California, a school of photography, film and graphic design.

3-D technology revolves around projecting a slightly different image in each eye to allow the brain to make a full 3-D experience, Efsic said.

“A lot of it involves programs protection systems, and high-definition televisions are also moving more toward 3D,” Efsic said. “Generally the way it is using glasses for HDTVS, but one flat-screen has no glasses necessary.”

Two separate transmitters near the movie screen are polarized in the lenses to set off separate images in each frame of the 3-D glasses, which is how the glasses work, Efsic said.

Currently, filmmakers are re-releasing films that weren’t previously available on a digital format, but that process comes at a heavy expense.

“Moviemakers can take the stuff that previously wasn’t 3-D and shoot that,” Efsic said. “It’s very expensive, but the added value of the re-release is that people will go see it.”

Although digital 3-D technology could be the movie industry’s future direction, so far it’s been used as more of a gimmick to draw people away from their home theater systems and to the local cinema, said Dan Marsh, assistant professor of telecommunication, information studies and media.

“Movie story lines could significantly be benefited to create an interesting sense of wonder by using this technology,” Marsh said. “The experience kind of blows away what you can see at home.”

Celebration Cinemas, at its Lansing location at 200 E. Edgewood Blvd., in Lansing, offers digital auditoriums at some of its locations that seem to be a hit among theater-goers, said Dan Boyer, general manager of Celebration Cinemas.

“It drives sales a lot and does a great job of increasing traffic,” Boyer said.

This Friday, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is set to be re-released on the digital screen, and Boyer hopes the movie can repeat the success of “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which Boyer said drew steady sales throughout the summer.

“It’s a different experience — vastly improved over what it used to be,” Boyer said.