Silicon Imaging continues to ride the wave of success its camera had as part of Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar-winning ride. The company, at NAB this year touting its integrated 3D cinema camera/visualization system, had the good timing last year to provide technology from its original, now two-year-old, SI-2K camera system to director Danny Boyle and his award-winning cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, for crucial chase sequences across the city of Mumbai, India, that were part of the movie’s critically acclaimed visual style.

I chatted this morning with company CEO Ari Presler, who freely admitted that, in a slow economy, being part of a major success has its advantages. Inquiries about SI’s digital camera systems, both 2D and 3D, have been brisk since Slumdog Millionaire rolled at the Oscars, and he’s very optimistic—which is nice to hear these days—about what is coming next.

And what is next is SI-3D, a system that shoots uncompressed raw imagery from two synchronized cameras and encodes that imagery, plus metadata, directly to a single stereo CineForm RAW QuickTime file. The stereo file can be instantly played back and edited in full 3D on a Final Cut Pro timeline and viewed on any quality, calibrated monitor. Presler says the SI-3D system is already in the field, being used to produce imagery for feature films like Dark Country 3D, My Bloody Valentine 3D, and The Hole 3D, and it is being used to entirely make the upcoming documentary Human Flight 3D—a cool, in-your-face look at free flyers (guys who like jumping out of airplanes and cruising for a while before using their parachutes).

It’s all part of the 3D revolution so obviously on display here at NAB. But it’s also a part of the business revolution on a challenging landscape in our industry. Presler feels strongly that Silicon Imaging has discovered a suite of digital camera systems perfectly suited to complimenting various workflows, mixing and matching media, or even competing with the Red camera, and others, as a mature, compact, and affordable digital image acquisition technology for filmmakers and studios having to make hard technology decisions as they move forward.

–MG