Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/10459
eight stereo rigs per show with Sony 1500 camera heads. (Up to 14 2D cameras cap- tured concert action as well). While Chesney and his band mates may toy with viewers’ perception of the Z-axis occasionally on stage, the real action re- volves around Chesney’s showmanship.“The coolest stuff is moving,” says Masters, who served as unit production manager as well as editor.“Kenny is in almost constant mo- tion and there aren’t many static shots in the show.We used tracks with Chapmans, pneu- matic pedestals, a Super-Techno, Steadicam, and even a few cameras on conventional sticks.” Masters is a partner in production company HDReady, LLC (www.hdready. com) and 3ality Digital served as production partner on Kenny. 3ality Digital’s quest is to provide end- users with a stereo viewing experience sans glasses (www.3ality.com) but Masters and crew monitored their progress through a 3ality SIP (stereo image processor) displayed on a JVC 3D LCD monitor using polarized glasses. Masters is a veteran of multicam live concerts and edited Summer in 3D, his first stereo show, on Avid DS Version 8.4, which was not yet 3D-ready. (It is now.) The show was cut in 2D (one eye) with constant refer- ence to the 3D material on the JVC monitor via a Sony 5800 VTR. “There were really very few shots that had to be changed be- cause of something we couldn’t see in the other eye,” Masters says. Chesney the performer is kinetic and his music is energetic, so the concert film needs to play that way, too, even if 3D is known for its slower pace, Masters says.“In the case of Summer in 3D, we started out at the languid pace that you’ll see in a lot of live-action 3D, and Kenny really felt it was too slow. So we kept ratcheting it up until he was comfort- able and some of this movie is cut quite quickly — which is appropriate to the artist and his music, and his fan base.”The outdoor arena stage incorporates a projecting T- shaped gangway that Chesney uses to great effect.“We spent a lot of time in post mak- ing the pace comfortable from the perspec- tive of the audience with regard to eye strain, etc. And it worked out great, I think. We also had some songs that were very in- teresting to play with in the Pablo with re- gard to visual layering, dissolves, and with depth balance.” Milton Amadou, who began using Pablo in 2007, is currently working on M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming fantasy epic, The Last Airbender, which is a 2D-to-3D conversion. He now uses Pablo’s Neo control surface which emulates the tactile controls colorists favor such as track balls. “Pablo isn’t just a color corrector,” he points out. “It’s a com- positing system, an editor, a conforming sys- tem, a stereoscopic toolbox, a Paintbox.” On the 3D release of Kenny Chesney, Amadou’s role was editorial online con- form and geometry corrections rather than color correction, which was done in DI ses- sions at Colorworks on the Sony lot in Cul- ver City using Baselight, which output the DCP (digital cinema package for screening). Amadou did perform color duties on the 2D Blu-ray release. “It was a stereoscopic online job,” he says.“The Pablo was the hub for the pro- ject where we were assembling every- thing.” Besides geometry corrections Amadou was also “doing depth grading, ad- justing the convergence and rebuilding the opening sequence.”The opening was shot on 35mm and involved seven layers of CG graphics and text for both the left and right eye, but some of the elements were jump- ing forward or backward out of place, and Amadou succeeded in smoothing things out to work in 3D.“This is where the Pablo really works because you are multilayer compositing through two eyes.We had to combine it, view it all in 3D, then adjust it all in 3D as we were watching it through all the independent layers.” Amadou appeared at NAB last month on the Quantel stand showing off Pablo’s latest 3D post production tools in Version 5. Be- sides new color and geometry-correction capabilities, he likes the “very advanced 3D analysis tools that will show you where things are in 3D space, as well as being able to do things [like sharpness] on both eyes or just one eye.” One 3D bellwether Amadou notes is time-to-completion. Post on earlier 3D concert shows was measured in months.“For this we had to complete the post process in four weeks.You’ll find this in post production,” he opines.“Things will get faster and faster, and at some point it’ll plateau and reach a comfortable place where we say,‘Okay, this is going to take X amount of time.’” STEREO INTERNATIONALE Repercussions from the success of Avatar and other 3D films are being felt around the production world. Bartosz Malina and his partner, editor UVphactory created this Drown in the Nowmusic video for Crystal Method. Ninety percent of the video is CG, which helped in creating a true stereo 3D version. Pawel Witecki, own three-year-old Master- Shot Studio in Warsaw, Poland. MasterShot (www.mastershotstudio.pl) is dedicated to Red acquisition and Assimilate Scratch post www.postmagazine.com May 2010 • Post 25 Sysmic Films’ Arnaud Paris with a Red 3D stereo set-up. STEREO 3D