Stereoscopic 3-D advice for free

Recently, I have started the 3-D Stereoscopic Professionals Worldwide LinkedIn Group: a group for professionals working in the field of stereo 3D, who also happen to be on LinkedIn. The group is growing very rapidly and already includes members from the big 3-D producers such as 3-Disney, 3-Dreamworks, 3-Digital Domain (sorry, can’t help it) and Sony Pictures Imageworks.


Beowulf 3-D: Top-notch Stereoscopic Film Production

In the first round-e-mail I sent out, I asked the members why there is not more communication and cooperation between 3-D stereoscopic professionals and, more over, why there is no openness of information and a sharing of industry practises. It seems to me like a logical question and the desire to make the industry benefit as a whole by sharing information appears, on the surface, to be the only way to truly build a global 3-D industry. The immediate answers to this question were very positive and most group members responding agreed with my standpoint of cooperation rather than secrecy and greed towards 3-D information.


Shhh, don't tell anyone: it's a 3-D camera system!

It was not all calls to arms, though, and a little reminder about the reality of the 3-D industry was given by Disney’s top 3-D man: “Unfortunately, I know a lot of 3-D gurus who have been severely punished for their generosity”.

I get contacted almost daily by people who ask for 3-D advice and I am the last person to send them away with no information, as I strongly believe in helping out those who cannot find any information out there and are unable to pay for professional help. How else can a real independent 3-D film library come into existence? But sadly it is not only people unable to pay for professional help who try to get as much 3-D information out of me as possible before they disappear into the thin air... On the upside one can sometimes get rewarded with kind words about supplying free 3-D information and of course a fantastic end product to enjoy. Last year I was contacted by a small independent animation production outset with the words: "I just found your website & I must say I really appreciate all the information you have provided on stereoscopy. I'm doing some research for a 3D film project and this just about answered all of my questions. I do have one more question though.”, and: "There seems to be little information on the world of 3D cinematography on the Internet, with the exception of your website, which has been an incredible resource. Thanks for all your help.”


www.the3drevolution.com - the 3-D Revolution website

The metioned question pertained to how small an interaxial should be on a model shoot where the models would be integrated with bluescreened actors and what cameras should be used etc. The company was called Encyclopedia Pictura and half a year after the kind words and my free advice the news of Björk’s latest music video being released in 3-D reached me. Wonderful work by EP and nice & calm 3-D that never goes negative on the parallax but keeps the video in the small theatre of positive parallax, just the way Bjork loves it.


Wanderlust 3-D - dark in places, even for Björk's taste


3-D composition in Bjork's 3D stereoscopic video 'Wanderlust'

Staying with indie 3-D animation, I have done very brief consulting on an independent stereoscopic animation production in the Netherlands by the name of ‘The 3-D Machine’ and the production company Ka-ching Cartoons thanked me and sent me a complimentary DVD of the final product. If you’re going to take free 3-D advice, at least thank the Stereographer. I am of the opinion that the 3-D industry can only grow when information is shared, but not even mentioning the person who helped you accomplish great 3-D is not the way to work either. That only makes for 3-D professionals shutting their mouths again and keeping the stereoscopic information to themselves in the most paranoid way possible. Regardless I am still keeping my website open for business and the information keeps on flowing freely. Maybe stupidly, but that’s 3-D belief for you.


'The 3-D Machine' by Ka-Ching Cartoons

By the way, you CAN also hire me for your stereo 3D music video or professional stereoscopic 3-D film or video production. Contact me.

Alexander Lentjes
3-D Revolution Productions

Hit & Missy 3D in Stereoscopic HipHop Video

3D HipHop Music Video for Pure Slime's Watch How We Blow

A small, independent, low-budget music video production in 3-D: words that seem to be at odds with each other. East London-based Hip Hop act Pure Slime approached London directors Ashley Dagg-Heston and Bruno Sardinha of Ruffhouse Productions in January 2008 with a mission to produce an explosive music video for their latest release ‘Watch how we Blow’. Ruffhouse found DOP Robert McGowan, who quickly suggested doing the video in 3-D – the first one in music video history as far as they could see – as Ruffhouse had a clear vision of the artists propelling themselves into the living room from a ticking bomb. 3-D Stereoscopic Consultant Alexander Lentjes of 3-D Revolution Productions was approached to pull off spectacular 3-D on HDV, on a budget, with little more than inventiveness and professionalism on his side.


3D Still of The FrenchLine, another 1950's 3D musical

Being a 3-D film buff, Alexander was quick to note that this was not going to be the first 3-D music video in history. Although the very first British Hip Hop music video in 3-D, ‘Watch how we Blow’ has been preceded by 1953’s famous 3-D musicals ‘Kiss me Kate’ and 'The French Line', 1998’s infamous ‘Psycho Circus’ by Kiss, 2005’s 3-D Duran Duran video of ‘I don’t want your love’, and most recently in February 2008 Missy Elliott’s ‘Ching-A-Ling’.

Beaten in terms of release date, it was thus a case of beating these previous releases for 3-D quality and effectiveness. The over-hyped ‘Ching-A-Ling’ is certainly not 3-D Bling-A-Ling and can easily be called Hit-and-Missy 3-D. For the cinematographic use of 3-D and even the 3-D effect itself, the Hackney boys have got the LA Hip Hop superstar well beat. Where Missy spent 200,000 Pounds with ease, Ruffhouse had to work with something closer to 2,000 Pounds. But with 3-D, budget isn’t everything – understanding its potential is.


Missy Elliott watches her video Ching-a-Ling in 3-D

A 3-D HD shoot means twice the cameras, twice the compositing and a bit of work in getting the 3-D material aligned. There is always some deviation between two cameras, unless a very precisely aligned - and usually very expensive – camera rig is used. So that sort of 3-D post correction is unavoidable. Where big budget shoots opt for beamsplitting mirror rigs to control the interaxial value to human eye-distance and below, the rent of such 3-D rigs can quickly become prohibitive in terms of budget spend. With 2,000 Pounds it’s either a whole 2 day shoot and 3 day post or 1 day with a 3-D mirror rig and no studio.


Greenscreen 3D HD Shoot

Both the ‘Ching-A-Ling’ and ‘Watch how we Blow’ videos are intended to be seen mainly online and occasionally on TV. This means the main delivery format is relatively small in size and will have quite a bit of compression to it. But the high budget LA production of Missy Elliott uses 3-D interaxial camera values that are suitable for a movie theatre, which results in a very shallow and hardly 3-D volumetric end result in the actual release format. On top of this ‘think big’ mistake, the very fact that performers in the video are wearing red and blue clothes means that the 3-D presentation format of the video was completely overlooked. They may have had polarized projection and big frame sequential LCD screens in the Walt Disney studios where this was shot, but the main release format is anaglyph 3-D, which relies on red and blue colour values to filter the 3-D to the correct eyes. So seeing ‘Ching-A-Ling’ in its actual release format is a big disappointment and even an unpleasant experience. The production of ‘Watch how we Blow’ was determined not to make the same mistakes and deliver impressive 3-D in the way it is supposed to be experienced.


The way most people will see Ching-A-Ling in 3-D: online, small, compressed

Alexander Lentjes: “The brief I got was that the 3-D imagery had to be larger than life, in your face, and mainly exploding off the screen into your living room. That means extreme use of 3-D, with interaxial values that most stereographers would never dare touch being that close to the subject matter with the 3-D cameras. The budgetary constraint of having to shoot without mirror rig thus became a great strength as the side-by-side Panasonic HVX 200’s produced the exact interaxial I knew would create an extremely volumetric 3-D image. And I am very pleased with the actual end result”

As part of the 2-day shooting schedule was a green screen shoot, there was the ability to count on recentration in post, making the 3-D fuseable by eye and brain. After this frame distance change, the stereoscopic depth can be pushed even further with a composited 3-D background. Part of the video features 3-D background material shot with twin-Sony A1’s, shot at 1080i - as with the Panasonic material. Although the video will be presented in SD on TV and mainly through the web in sub-SD sizes, the HD format of the source material means much more manoeuvrability when it comes to 3-D recentration, scaling and cropping. These are production parts intrinsic to 3-D stereoscopic video and it can be very frustrating when there is not enough resolution to work with in post.


Still from Watch how we Blow in Stereoscopic 3-D

The music video starts as CCTV footage of a lab where a ticking bomb is about to produce the explosive act of Pure Slime. Because this footage is in Black&White, the 3-D footage will actually tie in well in the Black&White anaglyph format, where no attempt is made to reproduce colours naturally, but only red and cyan are used as colours. As they are opposite colours on the colour wheel, this means the end result in indeed Black&White. Any possible mistakes of red and blue clothes in an anaglyph video are certainly very much avoided in this way and when one chooses to present a video in anaglyph 3-D, which means ending up with difficult to distinguish colours through the red&blue glasses, why try very hard to have colours anyway? Leave that to the 2-D version!

Speaking of colour, a typical situation arose on the day of the Green Screen shoot, when the artists turned up with green shirts and hankies – the Pure Slime posse colours. Some quick switching over of shirts and sweaters solved that problem, but the boys were obviously not very happy about this. As green screen shooting imposes colour limitations on the subject matter, 3-D shooting for (colour) anaglyph has its added on do’s and don’ts. An unavoidable part of any 3-D technique is that it imposes limitations and every 3-D technique has different quirks. Anaglyph is particular on the colours, but in the same way polarized 3-D projection doesn’t work well with high contrast and very low lighting. When you know these limitations and respect them, you can produce professional quality 3-D, while using the stylistic peculiarities to your cinematographic advantage.

Some of the composited background material features rare declassified US military 3-D stereoscopic stock footage of Nuclear Blasts and destruction from the 1940’s and 50’s. A rarely known fact is that not just 3-D, but Technicolor was perfected for film use by the US military to be able to shoot Nuclear Blasts as detailed as possible. So the 3-D process comes full circle with a Hackney 3-D Hip Hop video shoot backed by original 3-D footage from the birth years of serious 3-D film development. What would those generals have said had they known this would happen? A very loud: “Blast!”


“Watch how we Blow”

By
Pure Slime
www.myspace.com/94057249

Featuring
Rawz Artillery
Dread Marachi

Produced by
Ruffhouse Productions
www.rhousefilm.com

Directed by
Ashley Dagg-Heston
Bruno Sardinha

DOP & Camera OP
Robert McGowan
www.mediaedit.co.uk

Stereoscopic 3-D Consultant
Alexander Lentjes
www.the3drevolution.com

Shot on
2x Panasonic HVX 200 P2 (HDV)
2x Sony A1 (HDV)