The Hole isn't Joe Dante's first 3D film but it might as well be. In 2002, the director was hired by Florida-based amusement park Busch Gardens to shoot a 25-minute ride film entitled Haunted Lighthouse. 'They called it 4D,' says Dante. 'The film was 3D and then they threw stuff on you, soaked you with buckets of water.'

Between shots on the set of The Hole, a digital 3D production shooting in Vancouver, Dante details how far the format has come in a few years. On the previous film, two large 70mm cameras were strapped to each other, one upside down. 'They were extremely bulky and heavy,' he says, likening the kit to the blimped cameras and magazines from the early days of sound. Now, he says, 'Everything is on chips,' he says. 'It's quite portable.'

This is something of an understatement: 20ft away, tucked under the floor of the set's 'basement', two digital Red One cameras sit on a small tripod looking up out of the titular hole.

Screenwriter Mark Smith never envisioned a third dimension for his spec script. But when co-presidents Gary Michael Walters and David Lancaster of Los Angeles production house Bold Films brought Dante in for a chat, he suggested - 'not quite in jest' - 3D.

'Much to my surprise they agreed,' says the director of films such as Gremlins, Innerspace, The Burbs and Small Soldiers. 'It's an unusual little movie in that it's character driven. It doesn't have large locations and lots of different scenic values. I thought 3D would enhance it and make it more immersive than an ordinary movie. And since it's got a hole and things have got to go down the hole it seemed suited to 3D.'

The film is being produced by Bold Films in association with BenderSpink. Lancaster and Michel Litvak are producing. Walters and JC Spink and Chris Bender are the executive producers. Bold Films International is handling sales.

The Hole was originally conceived as a family-oriented psychological thriller, where the void represented the repository of all the fears of a community. The plot was rendered more literal. When teenaged Dane Thompson (Chris Massoglia) and his little brother Lucas (Nathan Gamble) move with their mom (Teri Polo) into a new home, the two boys find a trap door in the basement. With the help of neighbour Julie (Haley Bennett), they finally get it open and discover a hole that is more of a memory bank of the home itself.

The scene Dante is shooting has the brothers peering down into the camera, wondering how far it is to the bottom and dropping a handful of nails past the lens - the camera crew is impressing upon the young players the importance of the operative word 'past'. Even 3D shots have to be cheated; DoP Theo van de Sande decides they should shoot some takes for CGI purposes. The audience will see computer-generated nails dropping toward them.

Dante says he is a big fan of 1950s 3D movies, recalling several titles he saw in the cinema as a child. He says a recent Los Angeles retrospective of some major titles showed him there is much to be learned from the pioneers. Many titles are only remembered as 2D presentations but were originally intended for 3D.

He points out several name directors tried their hand at the format, including Alfred Hitchcock with Dial M For Murder in 1954 and George Sidney with 1953's Shakespeare musical adaptation Kiss Me Kate - not the most obvious candidates for an additional dimension. Yet, says Dante, 'The use of space in Dial M is so dramatic. It's lost in 2D but when you see it in 3D, it's a revelation.' But both films came toward the end of the original 3D craze and played very few dates in 3D.

'I'd love to say I anticipated the current 3D mania,' says Dante, referring to the success of such titles as My Bloody Valentine and Coraline and the excitement surrounding this month's Monsters Vs Aliens, 'but I never thought it would be as widespread as it is.' He agrees that films of 'modest means' such as The Hole are the beneficiaries of recent technological advancements and the collegial atmosphere engendered when techies and gear-heads are on a roll. Once the province of a few boffins, 3D seminars are now over-subscribed as studio executives try to bone up on the new way of seeing. Even Dante's 1978 breakthrough film Piranha is being remade in 3D by Dimension Films and Alexandre Aja.

Like many, Dante is waiting to see what James Cameron has in store with his end-of-year epic Avatar, comparing the present situation to those seminal crossover moments of sound and colour. Now that the technological bugs are being worked out, 3D could become an artistic choice.

Still, Dante is not quite as bullish as the format's principal cheerleader, DreamWorks SKG's Jeffrey Katzenberg. 'No doubt it performs the function of giving people something they can't see at home,' he says, before noting that it's only a matter of time before 3D home-viewing gains momentum. Watching the playback on the stereographer's video assist or rushes in the mini-screening room set up in the production's edit suite, that time does not seem far away. The specialised glasses work just as well in front of a monitor as they do on a big screen.

Dante also expects to see advances in 3D conversion of flat films. He recently saw a test of the MGM musical Singin' In The Rain. 'It wasn't totally there but it was still remarkable.'

Still, 3D like flat projection remains at the mercy of the cinema where it is presented. As with the cameras, projection technology has come a long way: earlier systems required two separately mounted projectors that had to be painstakingly synchronised after each show. Now, says Dante, the image is 'rock solid'.

But Dante says he has seen a few 3D titles during his time in Vancouver that were poorly projected. 'The equipment wasn't installed very well. That's the problem with any technology. You make a film and you hope they show it in focus. In the case of 3D there are a lot more things that can go wrong.'

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