3D Technology: Parallax Film’s Beamer EX – a stereoscopic rig like none other.

After many blog posts chronicling its inception, the time has finally come to detail la mini beam splitter rig de resistance.

Meet Beamer EX Stereoscopic Rig, a Parallax Film Productions exclusive, designed and assembled by our stereographer Sean White.

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With two successful 3D shoots in the can, our Beamer has proven a force to be reckoned with in the field – portable, rugged, and a damn good shooter.

And pretty easy on the eyes, don’t you think?

Here’s the Beamer breakdown:

– Custom built aluminum beam splitter chassis integrated with 15mm rods and components

– Designed for two Sony EX3 cameras for perfect genlock and time code sync

– HDSDI signals from both cameras recorded to Convergent Designs nanoFlash 3D at up to 280 mbps

– Precise monitoring and alignment with 6″ Transvideo CineMonitorHD 3D View

– Easy to setup and transport

– Switches from tripod to handheld shooting and back in seconds

– Adjustable interaxial distance from 0-100mm

– Calibrated camera heights from base mounts

– Floating 4-point micro adjustment screws for perfect mirror alignment

– Single Anton Bauer Dionic battery on Goldmount powers the monitor and both nanoFlashes

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Shooting a 3D Documentary: Sony EX3s on Custom Designed Rig Get The Job Done

Production of Battle Castle is fast underway. It’s a documentary series that brings the world’s greatest medieval strongholds to life and we’ve kicked it off shooting 3D in Kent England, on the grounds of the magnificent Dover Castle.

Packing wisdom gathered from taking Blowdown 3D from production through post, we’ve optimized our beam-splitter rig for this new terrain to avoid the issues (and limitations) we had to work with during our first journey into the third dimension.

The result: one self-contained system that can capture almost everything we need.

Here’s the breakdown:

We’ve chosen to mount 2 Sony EX3s over the Canon 7Ds to avoid genlock issues we were experiencing with the Canons.

The EX3s are great, gold standard cameras and can output a clean signal straight to our Nano3D drives.

We’ve also reconfigured the sliders for more interaxial play and attached customized attachments so we can vertically hang cameras without ripping out the hot shoe mount.

We used red-rock micro components along with some custom parts to fine-tune the hand-held splitter.

Altogether it weighs 45 lbs meaning a strong DoP can hold it for 4-5 minutes before taking a break.

Well worth the effort when it means you have freedom.

Limitation worth noting – the EX3s can’t capture vista shots where the subject is faraway. We fill this gap by using a pair of Canon 5Ds on a side-by-side rig to capture these types of shots.

So what it comes down to is we now have a system with perfect sync, beautiful capture, flexibility, and portability.

What more could you ask for?

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Shooting a 3D Documentary: Arming our B-cam system for Blowdown

In the previous post I described the evolution of our mini beam splitter rig, engineered by the Parallax crew for portability and 3D close-ups.

Before the filming of our first documentary, Blowdown, we went back-and-forth on what cameras to mount on this custom-designed rig to complete our B cam system. It was an epic battle that ended with Canon 7Ds as victor … for this round at least.

Here’s why:

When we shot the demolition of the Fonte Nova Stadium, our Iconix A cam system rigged side-by-side, also with our very own hand-held design, took some beautiful shots.

For our B cam system, it down to Sony EX3s or Canon 7D’s. The big problem is the Sony EX3s proved too heavy and cumbersome for our purposes. This is an event-based documentary in a demolition zone – last thing we need is to haul excess weight around.

So the 7Ds were the cameras that we went with – but we knew this decision came with a couple drawbacks:

1. The 7Ds have genlock issues making it difficult to synchronize the captures between the two cameras. Meaning we’re going to have a long gop compression issue.

Translation: fast motion close to the camera will produce retinal rivalry.

2. We can’t use video feeds coming out of the cameras with our Transvideo 3D monitor.

Which means we won’t be able to overlap images and check alignment during the shoot.

3. There’s no uncompressed signal coming out that we can tap into and record to the nano3D drives – a problem in 2D as well.

Despite these limitations, we still captured great stereo images with properly set interaxials.

In the end, our confidence in our Canon 7D mini beam splitter system paid off and we have a visually-unprecedented documentary to show for it.

But as we move further into the third dimension, we’re upping our game …

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring

Shooting a 3D Documentary: How to customize your 3D gear to get the best shot

Industriousness, adaptability, and innovation are vital when it comes to the world of filmmaking – especially when you’re shooting one of the first event-based 3D documentaries ever produced for an international audience.

Before we filmed Blowdown 3D, our stereographer, Sean White, faced a huge challenge: engineer a 3D rig that could capture the variety of shots we needed and stand up to run-and-gun filmmaking on an industrial demolition site.

We decided on a beam-spitter rig because a side-by-side rig wouldn’t have allowed us to shoot the close-ups we wanted.

But there was a problem: the Film Factory Indie beam splitter rig we had purchased would have been a beast to lug around a condemned sports stadium in Salvador, Brazil.

Necessity is the mother of invention after all … if we were going to make this journey into the third dimension work, it was clear that we’d have to come up with our own rigging system.

First step: tear open our Indie Film Factory beam splitter, get to know its insides, and build it stronger.

It was a process of experimentation, ordering parts, making adjustments and modifications.

Customize, customize, customize.

Finally, we created a design that worked and hired a machinist to solder the pieces together.

The result: an aluminum box with a window for a horizontal camera and an underslung design shooting up at a mirror.

We call it the mini beam splitter rig.

Besides being close-up capable, this custom design also makes for less problems with reflection and helps protect the mirror and camera lenses from the rain, dust, etc. sometimes encountered in the field.

Above all else is its portability, which is paramount when you’re filming an event-based documentary.

All this at a fraction of what manufacturers are asking for this kind of optimized technology.

–Ian Herring, President

@ianherring