[by Jay Ankeney, www.tvtechnology.com]

It was a celebration of all things 3D when the International 3D Society (I3DS) staged the first ever major Hollywood awards show shot completely in 3D to honor the current state of stereographic production in 3D movies, television, advertising and video games.

The “3D Creative Arts Awards” produced by 3ality Digital and hosted by comedian Tom Cavanagh at the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater in the heart of Hollywood, was actually the second annual presentation of the Society’s Lumiere statuettes. This time, however, the ceremony was designed to eventually be broadcast nationally in 3D as a two- hour special on 3net, the joint venture of Sony, Discovery and IMAX, sometime after the network’s launch on Feb. 13.

Jim Chabin, president of the I3DS and former president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, was executive producer of the show along with Steve Schklair, CEO of 3ality Digital and Gina Tanner, CEO of Digital Revolution Studios.

TECHNICAL TRIUMPH

Chabin regards this first 3D awards show as a triumph of both creativity and technology. “This show is evidence that live 3D production has come of age,” he said, “Even though this is a Creative Arts event, our people work hand in hand with their technology partners. We’re at a stage now where 3D production has to be a team effort both in front of and behind the cameras.”

The show’s producer, Ted Kenney, said he had to look at everything from set design to camera placement with 3D in mind.

“In 3D, you want the audience to feel as if they were present at the event,” Kenney said. “For example if we are shooting the host on the red carpet we creatively decided to stay on that shot longer in 3D than in 2D to let the viewers feel they are part of the moment. We can even change the convergence of the left/right eyes by giving it additional negative parallax to create the impression the host is coming out of the screen.”

Everything about this production was groundbreaking, from the lenticular 3D Red Carpet designed by Create Advertising for the celebrities’s flashbulb-popping entrance to the two 3D production trucks provided by Touring Video of Burbank, CA. One truck, the TV-3 43foot Expando, was used by the show’s director, Paul D. Miller, as a control room where the production was recorded by TD Gene Crowe onto two Abekas Mira direct-to-disk systems as 8 stereoscopic channels in 60i. The other truck housed stereographer Nick Brown with all the camera convergence operators and their equipment.

Director Miller had five beam-splitter 3D camera rigs to work with, four supplied by 3ality Digital holding pairs of Sony HDC-1500 cameras and one handheld rig holding Sony HDC-P1 block cameras. For the red carpet entrance, he would have access to a Jimmy Jib crane and a SteadyCam rig, each holding Canon HD XF-305 cameras that came from Digital Revolution Studios.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

To optimize the impact of the 3D, Miller equipped his camera rigs shooting the two stages inside the theater with wide angle lenses and positioned them closer to the presenters than he normally would have on a 2D awards show.

But inside the main production truck, he also had to deal with the requirement of wearing special glasses to evaluate his 3D shots. So he arranged for the right hand side large LCD screen to display in 2D so he could evaluate shot compositions and keep his 3D glasses handy to see the final 3D imagery on the left side screen.

Miller also faced the reality that the 3D clips shown to the audience would only record in 2D when shot with stereoscopic cameras. So all those clips would have to be replaced during post production at Digital Revolution Studios.

“All of these techniques are still evolving,” Miller said. “For example, we could not tie the Steady Cam’s 3D camera rig directly into the production truck so that crew had to carry their own recorder with them on set.”

The Lumiere Award winners in the 3D Creative Awards’ 15 categories had been voted on by the Society’s 400 members. This year they included Disney’s “Tron” for live-action 3D feature of the year, DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon” as best animated 3D feature, and “Black Eyed Peas 3D: Live” as the best live 3D event. The Walt Disney Studios won the People’s Choice Award for “Toy Story 3” based on online voting for favorite 3D animated movie.

Honors for 3D video game went to “Call of Duty: Black Ops” from Activision/Blizzard, and “Guitar Center” copped the trophy for 3D TV music series.

A highpoint of the evening was the presentation of a Lifetime Achievement Award to 3D pioneer, Lenny Lipton, by Jon Landau, the executive producer of both “Titanic” and “Avatar”. Landau also accepted the inaugural Harold Lloyd Award for outstanding achievement in 3D filmmaking that was bestowed upon James Cameron.

Cameron was on location shooting his latest 3D production, but on his behalf Landau told the audience, “Jim looks forward to doing every project in the future in 3D.”

See the original post here: http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/117028

[by John Dvorak, PC Magazine]

The Nintendo 3DS will be successful not only because it produces a great 3D image without glasses, but because it takes 3D pictures. Making 3D personal with 3D pictures and video is the key to the eventual success of home 3D.

The new Nintendo 3DS promises to be a success not only because it actually works well and does indeed provide a 3D image without any glasses or aid whatsoever, but because it takes amusing 3D photos and is just fun to play with.

When all is said and done, the Nintendo 3DS may actually accomplish what Fuji has been promoting and what many 3D hobbyists have tried: popularizing 3D photography for everyday use.

And, yes, we know that it’s a gimmick. But it’s a cool gimmick.

After taking a few 3D pictures of just about anything, you’ll find that they are so compelling that it is hard to express the odd joy you get from them. This is the key to the eventual success of home 3D. It has always failed in the past, because it was somebody else’s 3D. It was never personal.

Photography itself never flourished as a hobby when the cameras were the big bulky clunkers utilized by Matthew Brady and others. Think about this. Photography was nothing new during the Civil War in the 1860’s, but all the photos were done by a limited number of pros. You have to wonder what the Civil War would have been like if everyone had a cell phone camera like we do today.

Then Kodak produced the Brownie and gave photography to everyman. Next thing you knew, photography became the number one hobby in the world. 3D is following that same pattern. It’s just odd that a game company, Nintendo, is the Kodak and the 3DS is the Brownie.

Fuji is the only one that has been promoting 3D photography to any extent, but the seriousness of its efforts are questionable. The company seems intent on being a marginal player and is hardly promoting its 3D cameras. How many people reading this column knew that Fuji is the leader in consumer 3D cameras?

It’s okay, since Nintendo will pick up the slack. If the 3DS is a success, I would hope the company pushes the 3D angle to the next level, which is to create 3D video that can be played on a big screen 3D TV.

I suggest this because, again, here is where Fuji dropped the ball. There is nothing more boring than people’s home videos of little Becky’s birthday party that were filmed with flip-cam. But the exact same event becomes oddly compelling and interesting when shot and viewed in 3D. Instead of watching a flat two-dimensional replay of the event, 3D puts you into the moment, as if you were actually there.

3D movie-making adds a whole new dimension to the 3D hobby. While it is inconvenient to set up the 3D TV and outfit people with glasses, it’s still fun to watch on the small 3D screen without the glasses.

Before I get too carried away, let’s back off and logically look at how this whole 3D thing will unfold.

Be assured that small 3D screens do work well, and combine that with the fact that making 3D pictures and movies is a lot of fun, and it will trigger all sorts of uses for 3D. But who are the most aggressive makers of handheld devices with small LCD screens? The mobile phone handset makers, of course.

So it’s obvious that someone will come out with a 3D mobile phone, and the likelihood of it being Apple is quite high. The iPhone 3D would be a good moniker.

When Apple goes 3D you can be assured that all the 3D naysayers will change their tune from “it’s a fad” to “3D finally done right!” But when the history is written, I think the Nintendo 3DS will be recognized as the father of it all.

See the original post here:  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382761,00.asp