Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/19885
3 D S T E R EO [ cont. from 23 ] were a lot of variables” in de- termining the post w orkflow for God and Physics. “Post changes fast, and now we have 3D on top of it! This was Origin’s second 3D production, but the first handling everything through post production, and we plan on doing more here. Origin wanted to make the best use of its resources and worked things through to arrive in a good space.” Experienced with both Avid and Final Cut Pro, Lam ultimately cut the documentary in FCP with CineForm Neo3D, a realtime 3D editing workflow software package compatible with most nonlinear editing systems, including Final Cut. “With Cine- Form, we can take in material in any format, 2D or 3D, including stock footage from NASA, and con- vert it to the CIneForm codec,” he explains. “Cine- Form’s active metadata mixes the left eye and right eye footage, so we can look at the monitor and edit in 3D in realtime.To save time we worked in 2D, then watched all the pieces come together in 3D on our 60-inch Panasonic monitor. It was an incred- ible to see the difference watching the footage in the 3D space.” Lam had to get accustomed to the creativ e differ- ences of cutting in stereo 3D.“I couldn’t do MTV cuts on the talking heads any more,” he notes.“I had to find ways to make the footage engaging without the normal tricks of cutting away in two seconds; that’s where we’ll be using graphic elements,” such as back- grounds and lower-thirds. He also discovered that 3D is so immer sive that it held his attention when jump cutting an inter view from a medium to a wide shot. “With 3D you’re sup- posed to give people time to stay in that environ- ment,” he points out. “But in this case, the jump cut worked. It just goes to show there are no rules.” Lam is close to locking God and Physics; he expects to provide the files required for a RealD output to Blu-ray disc. OASIS IMAGERY OPENS FOR 3D Oasis Imagery (www.oasisimagery.com), which launched in August in Hollywood, has good timing. It’s one of the first facilities built from the ground up to suppor t studios and independent f ilmmakers with stereo 3D and file-based production and post services. At Hollywood’s first 3D Film Festival (3DFF) at the end of September, guests got to see a proof of con- cept of the new 3D technology Oasis Imagery has developed, along with Instant Effects, for previsualiza- tion, production and broadcast. Dubbed 3x3D by the company’s chief visionary officer, Scot Barbour, the process allows several layers of 3D to be composited in realtime. For previzualization, filmmakers can “shoot a sub- ject in 3D on our greenscreen stage and composite it into a 3D background in realtime,” Barbour explains. “With 3D, you really need to see what you’re record- ing ahead of time. “Imagine going on location.You know you’ll be ex- tending the set and wonder how well the plates will play in 3D,” he continues.“With 3x3D you can put [ cont. from 30 ] RESTORA TION with cleaning and scratch and dirt removal. But the lion’s share of the restoration was per- WindowSeat Pictures (www.windowseatpictures.com) in El Segundo, CA, was called on by Converse to create a stereographic 3D video campaign for the launch of pro skateboarder Rune Glifberg’s Pro Model shoe. The studio created three :60 viral videos, as well as a :30 TV spot that bring viewers into the 3D world. The project marked WindowSeat’s first 3D stereo job. A two-camera system consisting of Red Ones and a beam splitter was used during production. Footage was shot in 4K and 2K for overcranking effects. A :30 edit was completed in-house using Final Cut Pro V.7. Anaglyphic 3D edits were created using FCP plug- ins so the clients could view every version of the edit in 3D. In addition to FCP, WindowSeat used Maya, a Dashwood Stereo3D Toolbox, Red Alert, Red Rushes and AJA’s Kona 3 card. the background in, put the subject in, set the stereo parameters, then go out and shoot everything else. You know what you need to do before you even get on location.” Broadcasters can also shoot subjects on our greenscreen stage, “add a composited background, put the branding of the network or company on in realtime, dump it to our 5800-SR deck and y our show’s in the can, live,” he adds. It’s the company’s belief that “you can’t do 3D post well unless you do 3D production well,” Barbour em- phasizes. “We can shoot your 3D show, edit it, online it and do the DI in our theater that suppor ts RealD, Dolby 3D and XpanD projection.” Oasis Imagery and Instant Effects are still in devel- opment on 3x3D with the goal of creating a product that works well both on a greenscreen stage and as a turnkey system filmmakers can take on location. “3D without this system is almost like it was shooting film and having to wait for film processing to see the re- sult.To see stereo 3D live is paramount in any situa- tion because you can make big mistakes really quickly in 3D, some that can’t be corrected on a reasonable budget,” Barbour points out. “We showed three simple layers at the film festival. The next presentation will show real interactive ef- fects in a very practical situation. Already a lot of peo- ple in the previz world are extremely interested in what we are doing. Several 3D shows coming up want to shoot live.With 3x3D they shoot live, comp their elements in realtime, output to our theater for viewing and output to SR simultaneously.” formed by Laser Pacific (www.laserpacific.com) col- orist Bryan McMahan, who was fortunate enough to be able to par tner with Exorcist director William Friedkin and DP Owen Roizman,ASC. “I try to make a film as true to the way it was in- tended to be seen as I can, ” says McMahan of his restoration work.“But the only way to really know that is to have the guys who made the movie in the room with you. Input from the director, DP or editor is a must if they are still around.” When the filmmakers are close at hand he learns things he wouldn’t have discovered on his own.When McMahan, Friedkin’s colorist of choice for restoration of his classic films and the release of his new theatrical features, was working on the color f or the home video release of The Hunted, the director said he wanted the movie to look like John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick.The colorist learned that Moby Dick was a Technicolor picture with a black-and-white layer that softened the color and gave a slightly harder contrast. So he developed a process for Friedkin to achieve that look on The Hunted. McMahan applied that same process, performed for the first time at a higher data r ate through his Baselight 8 system, to selected scenes in The Exorcist. It gave images a bit of a pastel look while shar pening the black and white. “It’s very subtle,” he says, “but it gives the scenes a slightly different feel.” Working with filmmakers on their pictures also yields information about what they were unable to achieve technically at the time their films were re- leased. “Sometimes the looks and intentions of the filmmakers didn’t make it to the final theatrical release because of the limits of the f ilm stocks and pr int processes,” notes Price.“Now we can mine informa- tion inherent in the camera original.” McMahan often finds that talent, in relating what they were thinking about when they shot the film, will “get to an area where they say, ‘I’ve never liked that bit.’Now we’re able to do what the technology of the era didn’t permit them to do” and re-tool the portion of the film they’ve never been happy with. Optical sections of films from The Exorcist’s era used Color Reversal Internegative (CRI) that did not reproduce color w ell and created density fluxes, or color breathing, throughout VFX shots. Al- though The Exorcist was in “pretty good shape” re- garding shading issues in CRIs, McMahan did en- counter portions of opticals where color changed from one side to the other. “Correcting the color fluctuations and matching where they cut back to the original camera negative was not easy to do,” Price points out. “This restoration of The Exorcist benefited most by attention to detail,” he adds. “Bryan, working shot to shot with the director and DP over a three-month period, really made a difference.We don’t always have the ability to go to the extent we went to with The Exorcist; a lot of that was due to Billy [Friedkin’s] insis- tence on perfection.” www.postmagazine.com November 2010 • Post 53