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MillimeterIn Your Face
Sep 25, 2001 12:00 PM, By Cynthia Wisehart
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"Step by Step: Corkscrew Hill"
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"The Projection Challenge"
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Corkscrew Hill, a new 3D attraction at Busch Gardens, demonstrates how digital projection can offer an alternative to film.
When Spiderman debuted in 1999 at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure theme park, it was clearly one of the most ambitious ridefilms ever created. It was exactly the type of show that could only be film, with its large screens, closeups, and dramatic, in-your-face 3D effects.
Just a few months after Spiderman opened, development began on a similar project for another theme park — this time without the film. The screens were large (44"×30"), the 3D effects complex. But Busch Gardens' Corkscrew Hill would be entirely digital — created in computers, encoded to servers, and projected digitally with DLP projectors.
 Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company created Duncan the barman for Corkscrew Hill, the first digitally projected 3D ride film. (Photos courtesy Kleiser-Walczak © 2001 Busch Entertainment Corporation. Reproduced by permission of Busch Gardens Williamsburg. All rights reserved.) |
Systems designer Electrosonic and animators Kleiser-Walczak, who worked together on Spiderman, did not initially expect the project to be digitally projected. They envisioned the 70mm film and domed screen that had proven so effective on Spiderman. And Larry Giles, vice president of design and engineering at Busch Gardens, certainly did not think his show was going to be a small part of projection history.
Yet it was soon obvious to everyone that film would not be practical in light of architectural factors in the building. By the time a 1900×1280 digital picture filled the screen on opening day, it was clear that digital projection was a viable option for large-format 3D.
Not Your Father's 3D
The short-lived popularity of 3D cinema peaked in the '50s, as Robert Stack hurled spears at the audience in Bwana Devil. 3D incarnations of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Shakespeare's famous Shrew popped off the screen to the horror of critics and the delight of bespectacled viewers.
But from its earliest days, 3D cinema has had its biggest artistic and technical successes on the World's Fair circuit, beginning with a Chrysler novelty film developed with Poloroid founder Edwin Land for the 1939 fair in New York. Imax vividly illustrated the experimental possibilities of the form at the Futjisu pavilion at Osaka in 1990 with the miraculous Solido, creating a 70mm image that seemed to entirely erase the boundaries of the screen.
The theme park industry has found a middle ground between the surrealistic beauty of the early Imax 3D films and the kitschy thrills of Bwana Devil. Today, ride designers and animators achieve high-energy, theme park-appropriate 3D effects, and often enhance the impact of motion-base ride vehicles.
So 3D seemed the perfect option when Busch Gardens wanted to refurbish an unused venue that was already equipped with motion-base seats. But if the concept seemed a natural fit, a film projection system was not — there was no room in the building's existing envelope for the projection room, loop cabinets, and other film infrastructure. Electrosonic began to work on the idea of a digital projection configuration. Physically the digital system fit within the space (with just 3 inches of clearance). But there was another issue: how to get enough resolution onto the screen to do justice to Kleiser-Walczak's animation.
Like most 3D film systems before it, the solution for Corkscrew was an ingenious one (see “The Projection Challenge,” this page), achieved through extensive collaboration among Electrosonic, Kleiser, the projector vendor Barco, and Busch VP Giles.
Digital Workflow
The final projection system incorporated Barco DLP digital projectors served by Electrosonic HD servers, which played back encoded digital files. So what did this mean to animators at Kleiser-Walczak?
 Animator Diana Walczak modeled Corkscrew Hill’s digital characters using a tactile, virtual sculpting tool from Sensable Technologies. For more on this process, see videosystems.com. |
For one thing, it meant an end to the hassles of a film output, says Jeff Kleiser. Unlike Spiderman, which was a series of short scenes, Corkscrew Hill was a continuous, 4½-minute scene and so required an excruciating film output. Every small mistake in writing the digital files out to film would require starting over. Alternatively, with the digital system, the team could simply recalculate any faulty frames and insert them.
“We also didn't have to worry about hermetically sealed film loops and backup films,” Kleiser says. “Our backup was just another disc drive.”
Another advantage of digital output was that during production the team could encode the files-in-progress to an onsite server and play them back through an onsite digital projector. No waiting for the lab. Electrosonic provided the animators with a digital projection system, server, and encoder so they could simply encode files themselves and view them digitally in a mockup situation that closely resembled the Busch Gardens theater. This approach gave Kleiser more accurate information about how the stereoscopy was taking shape, and encouraged the team to do more experimentation.
“We were able to add a lot more detail, things we wouldn't normally have had time to try,” says Kleiser, citing embellishments such as a subtle reflection of the audience in a mirror, and a tricky scene involving sightlines and a horse's ass.
 An onsite digital-dailies system allowed animators to encode complex 3D scenes, project them at near full size, and evaluate the effectiveness of the stereoscopic 3D effects immediately. |
Kleiser says that understanding how Corkscrew Hill would be projected was factored into its design. “It's critical to know what the projection systems will do, how close we can get to the audience, for example,” he says. “It's the last step before the retina, so it must be understood and designed for.” And of course, no media is headache-free. The Corkscrew team tested five projector configurations before they got a solution that worked within all the parameters.
Kleiser also points out that there will still be situations where film is the better choice. “We've bumped into the limitations of digital projection,” Kleiser says of his current project, a Christmas attraction for Radio City Music Hall that needs to reach 6,000 viewers from a 70ft. screen — more than half again the size of the Corkscrew screen. But even if jumbo screens are still reserved for film, Kleiser, Giles, and Electrosonic have helped us understand how digital imaging can provide a more practical, scaleable, and lower maintenance solution in many applications.
Cynthia Wisehart is editorial director of Video Systems and Millimeter magazines.
The Projection Challenge
How did projection-system designers achieve a 1900×1280 digital image for Corkscrew Hill? DLP projectors currently produce a 1280 horizontal by 1024 vertical picture (SXGA), not enough to fill the venue's wide, custom screen. So Electrosonic designers proposed using two projectors turned on their sides at a 90-degree angle.
Why on their side? Because the screen was much wider than it was tall. In turning the Barco projectors on their side, the vertical resolution became 1280, the horizontal resolution became nearly double 1024.
The point at which the two projected images overlap was masked with Electrosonic's edge-blending technology and was, according to Kleiser (and my eyes), imperceptible.
To achieve the 3D effect, the final configuration included two pairs of projectors.
The projectors are served with synchronous digital images by Electrosonic's HD servers for a seamless 3D image.
Frank Serafine's 7.1 surround soundtrack, mixed with Mackie tools
onsite, completed the illusion.
— CW
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.