Session 2: Programming: Lessons Learned
Moderator(s):
Al Barton, Consultant, Freelance Digital
Panelist(s):
Jason Goodman, CEO, 21st Century 3D
Pierre de Lespinois, Co-Founder, Evergreen Films
Thomas Edwards, VP, Digital Television Testing & Evaluation, FOXPanel
Pierre de Lespinois
Evergreen is working to integrate the storytelling with the engineering. Technology advances fuel revenue growth. After conversion to HD had been done, integrating 3D into that workflow process for live events was fairly easy. They have an “interoccular” crew member, someone “pulling convergence” during the shoot. The camera operator controls the zoom and focus. The stereographer in the truck communicates with the “interoccular”, who makes sure that the cameras are balanced. He has found that most of the time is spent getting the lenses centered so they zoom properly. They spend a full day tracking and calibrating the lenses before the shoot. Once the lenses are tracked, they keep the lenses with the camera for the duration. (He showed a beautify Dave Matthews Band concert clip and a clip from a feature called Totem.) The cost difference for shooting 3D, due to 2 cameras, rig, stereographer, and other, amounts to an additional cost of 10-15% on production and 10-15% on post.
Thomas Edwards
(He started with an extended Fox Sports clip, highlighting football.) The trucks use micropol displays because it is hard to synchronize a bank of shutter displays. Wide/high shots tell the story but produce a toy soldier effect. Tight/low shots “get into the action,” especially if you zoom in. Tasteful, occasional use of extreme negative parallax can be good, but you must avoid objects that are too close to the viewer such as a foul net or a foul pole. Score box placement is an open question. You want the scores/stats to be in front of the closest image. Placing the score graphic at the bottom of the screen puts it in front of the grass (sharp foreground), but putting it at the top puts it in the sky (near screen plane). One bonus benefit of putting the score graphic in the sky/screen plane is that it lets people without glasses read the score.
Challenges
- Equipment is tough to obtain
- Equipment is fragile
- Equipment is large and heavy
- Stereography training – “convergence pullers”, and others
- Discovering what works for 3D sports direction
- Challenges of dual 2D/3D production – more seat kills (e.g. seats lost to cameras in the stadium)
- Challenges of backhaul
- Budget? Is this ever going to make money? HD did not make us any money. 3D must make money for us.
- Small number of distribution channels.
Jason Goodman
(Jason is the first person to be recognized by the DGA as a Stereographer.)
21st Century 3D developed a ground-breaking 3D camera; compact, light-weight, progressive scan 24fps, with the look and feel of a normal camera, binocular viewfinder, and purely digital workflow. He discussed the evolution of their cameras. They are announcing their next gen camera, available for purchase, this week at NAB. (He showed a clip from the Black Eyed Peas movie that they are working on, plus other footage.)
Q&A
Why do you need two cameras? Panasonic is showing a single body camera for the prosumer market. The Panasonic has 2 lenses, one chip. (Pierre – going back to an earlier discussion) Dimensionalizing 2D is fooling the public. Don’t call it 3D. Certain shots in 2D don’t work in 3D. Films need to be shot for 3D. $4.5M to dimensionalize is less than $30M to shoot 3D, but it isn’t real 3D. Call it dimensionalizing.
Thoughts on edge violations? (Pierre) We make sure that things on the edges of the frames are non-intrusive.
(Al) The hardest thing right now is learning what terms to use when discussing 3D production with someone else. The actual language used to describe 3D issues and processes is in flux.