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MillimeterStereo Hype
Feb 18, 2009 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer
Stereoscopic 3D is enjoying a renaissance in theaters, but what are its prospects for the rest of the video production market?
Along with the Iconix HD-RF1s side by side, Love and his crew used a Sony SRW-1 deck with a dual-link HD-SDI connection, and a prototype Stereo Image Processor from 3ality Digital.
In Jamaica, Love also used a prototype Stereo Image Processor from 3ality Digital, which alerts the stereographer to any color, iris, or zoom mismatches between the two cameras. “The name of the game is to get two cameras to behave like one,” Love says. He says it takes 15 minutes to align the images properly, which poses a challenge for an unscripted production such as a music documentary.
Still, Love maintains that shooting in stereo is not the black art it might resemble from a distance. He says that over the course of the production, he was able to show the ropes of his niche to the camera assistant/audio engineer, Clifford Cruz. “He took to it pretty well,” Love says. “It's not rocket science. If you have a background in video and film production, it's not counterintuitive.”
Love is undertaking this project in partnership with Stereoscope, a Burbank, Calif.-based postproduction company that's affiliated with the S3D Studio. The outlet for this Jamaica production is not exactly clear — the cineplexes that typically run independent documentaries don't have 3D-enabled theaters outfitted with RealD projector systems. (RealD currently holds 97 percent of the domestic digital 3D market, according to the company, with more than 800 screens in the United States.) The home market is nowhere near ready to adopt stereoscopic 3D (S3D) technology. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, one of the big live-action 3D success stories of the past year, used '50s-style red-and-blue anaglyph technology in its DVD release. The 3D Super Bowl commercial for DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens, and the accompanying 125 million giveaway glasses (using Intel InTru 3D and ColorCode 3-D technologies, not anaglyph), should make progress toward making the mainstream viewing public comfortable with the idea of watching 3D in the home. The 2009 CES show proved that 3D-ready HD sets are there for the offing, but that's but one piece of the puzzle. The technology is here, but outside of a few notable examples, there exists neither a supply of content nor the demand for it.
As a proof of concept for HDNet co-founder Philip Garvin, S3D Studio shot mixed martial artists in stereo using three Iconix side-by-side rigs.
So for Love, the fact that he's working on an independent stereoscopic documentary puts him way past the cutting edge — almost into a three-dimensional free-fall. Luckily, he enjoys it. “I love the pioneering aspect of it,” he says. “I felt like an Army Ranger dropped into the middle of a war zone.”
And it's not the first time he's been there, Iconix rig in tow. In May 2007 in Hawaii, he executed a similar production that produced about 7 hours of airborne footage. Love and his pilot attached a rig to the front of an ultralight plane to shoot Hawaiian beaches and other terrain. They also attached it to the wing to shoot the tiny cockpit, throwing the ultralight into heavy 3D relief against the ever-changing vista. (3ality has used this high-flying, immersive footage in its demo reel, which has played at events such as the Bowl Championship Series [BCS] football game's broadcast to theaters in January.)
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.