Editing a 3D Documentary: Scouting for Colorists

As we enter the polishing stages on our first 3D documentary, the hunt is on to find a studio that can take on the task of color correcting months of painstaking work.

It’s essential to any post-production process, but especially crucial to 3D because we’re creating an effect that only reads if stereo pairs match perfectly.

When filming, aberrations in stereo images occur because the mirrors/prisms contained within the beam splitter can change the nature of the light from one moment to the next.

Any slight difference in temperature or exposure of image pairs will confuse the brain, create discomfort, and botch the whole operation. Period.

So my team and I need to be choosy when it comes to colorists. The challenge now is finding a studio that has a system capable of stereo viewing and correction – slim pickings due to 3D’s relative newness.

And of course, one that possesses the expertise to produce the high-quality 3D imaging we are looking for at a price we can work with.

More to come …

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Watching a 3D documentary: Tips On Creating the Best 3D Television Experience

As 3D televisions (and eventually our first 3D documentary) make their way into living rooms near you, it’s time to lay down some helpful tips I found online to ensure you are getting the most out of your in-house 3D experience.

Ambience

In order to create the optimal 3D experience, you first have to create the environment for it to happen.

Dim the lights, cover the windows–black them out if possible. Essentially create yourself a tiny black hole.

By reducing ambient light you will eliminate ghosting and double vision that often botch the 3D experience.

When in doubt, darkness is always best.

Viewing Position

Until 3D televisions become 360 degrees of polarized celluloid, we’ll have to make due with flat screens that are better viewed head-on rather than from an angle.

Best then to keep the family or group of friends small so everyone gets a piece of the 3D pie.

Television Settings

Because 3D glasses are tinted, they’ll dim the movie if viewed in default settings made for 2D. So make sure to customize your settings and increase screen brightness.

3D is not normal television viewing—don’t forget it.

HD Screen 

This goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: 3D is a viewing format that belongs on an ample-sized, high-def screen.

The bigger the screen the richer your experience of the imagery—think GIANT pop-up book vs. OK pop-up card.

The only other thing I’ll demand from here on in when it comes to 3D screens is they be dust and fingerprint free.

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Editing a 3D Documentary: Review of Panasonic’s 25” BT-3DL 2550

If you want to create a high-quality 3D program, having the best-of-the-best in production equipment is a must – that and a great crew, of course.

So while we’ve been in post-production for our first 3D documentary, our editor Brian Mann and I have been on the hunt for a picture-perfect 3D monitor to QC our cuts.

The latest contender: Panasonic’s 25” BT-3DL 2550, a passive circular-polarized monitor with dual processors.

The Panasonic comes with all the bells and whistles any 3D editor could ask for: pro-connectors, 10 bit 3D LUT for great color accuracy, 3 stereo viewing options including simultaneous, line-by-line, and side-by-side.

But when we brought it in to try it out we ran into an unexpected problem –  the display’s polarizing filter wouldn’t work properly with our RealD glasses. The colour was off – pink tinges galore.

Funny thing was when we turned our 3D glasses sideways it seemed to work. Hmmmm.

We’re not sure whether it’s a proprietary or technology issue. The Panasonic tech support team wasn’t sure either.

So in the end, we chose to send the Panasonic back.

We weren’t up to buying another set of 3D glasses on top of the ones we already had. Panasonic charges $100 per set which, along with the pricier monitor—Panasonic $10 000 vs. JVC $6 600 —is a bit hard to swallow.

We’ll nail down a dual stream monitor soon enough. It’s just going to take a little more digging.

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Watching a 3D documentary: Blowdown 3D hits the Victoria Film Festival

 3D road trip!

Friday night I packed up and headed over to Vancouver Island for the Victoria Film Festival.

The mission: roll out a 15-minute show and tell about 3D cable TV to the film types.

The gear: 500 pairs of polarized glasses (think big, right?) and our 46-inch JVC HD 3D LCD monitor.

About 70 people showed up to crowd around and check out the latest and greatest in home entertainment.

What I shared with the crowd

How they felt about the experience

The final word: it was great to show some of our 3D documentary material off.

Reactions were mixed, but whether the VFF-goers praised it or panned it, it was clear that my little road trip stirred up a nice dose of stereoscopic buzz.

It’s also clear that our 3D monitor travels exceptionally well strapped to a bike rack … bonus.

On to the next adventure.

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

2D/3D camera equipment for sale: Meuser Optik lenses up for grabs on eBay

parallax photo

Heads up – we’ve listed 2 Meuser Optik lenses for sale on eBay.

Specs:

– 2x Meuser Optik 3.4mm C-mount lenses for 3CCD 1/3″ sensor

– compatible with Iconix camera system and Toshiba IK-TU53H, for shooting 2D or 3D

– fast, small and lightweight

– manufactured in Germany

– used for one shoot only

– f2.2-f16 with manual focus

For more about the lenses in action, check out this 3D blog post.

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Making a 3D documentary: 3D TV penetration stats

Fun with numbers … 3D TV style. As we get ready to shoot our first 3D documentary, I’ve been curious about what the future holds for 3D TV.

It’s tough to find stats on this, but I did come across a report from the International Television Expert Group, released in May 2010.

The report forecasts:

1) Over 20 million TV homes globally will be watching 3D TV within five years.

2) 3D TV is expected to be in 1.6% of all homes by 2015.

3) North America will lead the way in terms of number of 3D TV homes with 9.2 million.

4) Western Europe will be the second largest region with 6.8 million.

5) Asia Pacific third with 4.6 million.

It predicts growth will be constrained by:

1) Absence of a glasses-free system of watching 3D TV.

2) Lack of content.

3) High production costs.

4) Scarcity of channels.

5) Bandwidth constraints.

6) High cost of 3D sets.

Obviously, the more people who get to watch this next episode of the explosive demolition series Blowdown we’re about to shoot – the implosion of the Fonte Nova Stadium in Salvador, Brazil – in 3D, the better.

Has anyone else come across stats on 3D TV penetration?

It would be great to see more …

 

Making a 3D documentary: stunning visuals, solid story

It’s the final countdown. Our stereographer, Sean White, is hustling to nail down all the gear to shoot  our first 3D documentary.

The crew will be packing up on Sunday, and flying to Salvador, Brazil on Monday to start filming the explosive demolition series Blowdown – plan to get get lots of pics and video of the gear before they leave and post here next week.

I’ll be joining them the week after, and will stay until after the implosion of the condemned Fonte Nova Stadium.

And while Sean and the others are busy thinking about how to capture great visuals in 3D, I’m going to be thinking about story.

Even though all this 3D stuff looks incredible, I still believe that if the story isn’t good, it’s not worth watching – so I need to make sure we’re investing in it first.

This means capturing key bits between Controlled Demolition Inc.’s crew – obstacles they encounter, conversations they have, and emotional moments that resonate.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be afraid to capture 3D footage that will captivate our audience visually …

Shooting a 3D documentary: thinking 3D in the field

As our first 3D documentary shoot approaches, I’m contemplating the intricacies of shooting in the third dimension. Our stereographer, Sean White, is familiarizing the rest of the crew with the new things they’ll have to take into consideration when shooting the prep and implosion of the Fonte Nova Stadium in Salvador, Brazil.

Bottom line: the jump into 3D will change how we frame and shoot the explosive demolition series Blowdown.

In other words, it will change pretty much everything.

And to make it work, the crew’s going to have to learn how to “see” in 3D.

They’ll have to think about where things are going to fall into positive and negative space.

They’ll have to identify visuals that are going to look superb in 3D – and, just as importantly, recognize the shots that won’t make the cut.

They’ll have to understand the strengths and limitations of each rig – our beam splitter, mini beam splitter, and the plethora of side by sides – so they know which one works best for which shot.

They need to recognize when we can’t get too close to a subject.

They must realize that they can’t frame something in the extreme foreground and pan to reveal a subject in the background – a trademark move to help create depth in a 2D image can mean too much volume in 3D.

They also need to make sure there are no objects floating around in the foreground (ie. wires, the edge of a wall, rebar sticking up, edge of a concrete slab) – and understand what details could be distracting.

Not to mention they’ll be working on a dusty demolition site – for example, excavators pulling up dirt, swinging into the shot as the “claw” grabs something.

They’ll not only have to think about how this will play in 3D, they’ll have to think about if one lens is dusted out, say, by the excavator’s load.

If they miss any one of the parameters on any one of the eyes this shot – or any other shot – will be useless.

Here’s to cleaning the cameras – times two.  And all the adventure that comes with it.

Lucky we have a great crew. Ready to roll.

Shooting a 3D documentary: why we use still photography to capture time lapses

A bit more re. how we plan to produce time lapses for our first 3D documentary.

We’ve used still cameras to capture time lapses for previous episodes of Blowdown, the explosive demolition show we’re gearing up to film – for transitions, establishing shots, and work that’s progressing.

Here’s a raw example of one from an episode in Season One – the implosion of four cooling towers at the Sellafield nuclear facility in England:

The reason we use this technique is because it gives us photos that are higher resolution that HD – pristine, jpeg images up to 21.1 MP.

Obviously much better quality than frame grabs off of video.

It also means our primary video cameras/crew can be used to film action – in this case demo work on the Fonte Nova Stadium in Salvador, Brazil – while the still cameras (in this case Canon 7Ds) sit unmanned on a side-by-side rig, automatically collecting shots.

In the 3D realm, the super high resolution will allow us to converge and do digital zooms in post within the time lapse without losing any quality.

The mini beam splitter rig: portability for 3D documentary filmmakers

The mini beam splitter rig concept we came up with to film elements of our first 3D documentary has come to fruition.

We decided to try and build because the thought of moving and setting up our Film Factory 3D Indie BS Rig for one or two close ups is just too painful. Now we can use this smaller unit to shoot these components for the explosive demolition series Blowdown and save schlepping the full-sized rig around the Fonte Nova Stadium in Salvador, Brazil for when we’re shooting extensive B roll in one location.

The goal was to custom-design a rig that would house two Canon 7Ds and that was small enough and light enough to be operated by one person, handheld.

To achieve this, the mini beam splitter rig:

1) Has customized aluminum rails that aren’t as big and fat as the ones on the Film Factory Indie rig.

2) Is bolted and tweaked specifically for the dimensions of the Canon 7Ds.

3) Has a smaller box.

4) Is designed so the second camera is underslung – easier to handle because it’s not as top-heavy.

5) Allows us to get camera lenses closer to the mirror.

It was whipped up in a couple of days, and it’s not pretty – but it is portable and robust. We’ll see if it works.