A String of 3D Firsts

Great ideas always gather momentum, and so it proved when pop band Keane decided to do a live 3D web cast for their fans to view with anaglyph glasses that had been sent out with the single Better Than This. Sky jumped at the chance of securing some popular content, and hey presto there were several flavours of 3D all happening at once as Sky achieved its first ever live uplink and downlink to its STB, and also piped the uplink to a Vue Cinemas theatre for test purposes.

Keane’s management had sent the anaglyph glasses out from March 16, and planned the gig for April 2 at Abbey Road. The main enabling players were the production company Nineteen Fifteen headed by founder Vicki Betihavas, and the 3D production and technology company Inition, headed by MD Andy Millns.

Introducing herself as “the insane person, who decided to put all this together,” Betihavas explained that Nineteen Fifteen was set up to produce live events in 3D, and that these would primarily involve music. “The music industry has always preferred to work with music specialists rather then with generalists,” she said. “Inition thought it might be cool to explore the web casting, so the band approached me to go and speak with Inition to find out how it would work. It’s been an interesting time between challenging them and where their experience is, and how it fits with my multi-camera experience. What we had today was a live HD multi-camera shoot with a more complex set up because you are talking about a very fundamental change,” she added.

“Mirror rigs are very much heavier than single cameras. You have weight and counter balancing issues, which means big cranes. There are also certain bits of grip equipment that you cannot work with, but at this point in our development the mirror rigs seem to be the best solution for what we are looking for in the way of nice close-up shots,” she continued.

In addition to the weight issues, which caused Betihavas to say this was “a TV shoot with film practices,” she had noticed the loss of an F-stop of light. “There are all of those issues, but it has been an interesting learning curve for everybody on the production team. We used Zeiss Digi Prime lenses and that helped to counter-balance the light loss a bit. There was no zooming going on, it was all focus,” she said.

Another area of interest was the use of mini rigs, but the full spec issue did not bother the producer. “Is it the quality of the image you are looking for technically, or is it the compelling nature of the image?” she challenged. “Music has always been an early embracer of technology; it embraced CDs and DVDs before anyone else, and it certainly embraced HD before sports went live with it. What we have done with 3D is in the same spirit, and the music industry will embrace it.

“All arts will embrace 3D because they lend themselves better than sports; not because sports are not good in 3D but because the fundamental way you cover a sports match is dictated by physical locations and various other aspects. In music you can control the environment, which makes for optimum capture,” she added.

“We have shot it as well as we can, so it’s down to the manufacturers to make the distribution match the acquisition. If you archive well, you can always go back to the material when the quality of displays improve.”

Betihavas is very aware that the UK needs to build a skills base if it is to exploit the potential of stereoscopic 3D. “That’s one of the reasons I did not go for an American rig solution, and that’s why I concentrated on working with local talent,” she said. “I have nothing against the American companies, but when you have a lot of money, you don’t always have to be challenged in quite the same way as in the UK with its modest budgets,” she added.

Last up, Betihavas talked about the set. “We tried to keep it as natural as possible,” she said. “It was actually more of a rehearsal set up. It’s was all to do with the web cast viewer feeling like they’ve seen something they wouldn’t have seen it they went on tour with Keane. It was to give the fans something different.”

A few little tweaks
Andy Millns explained his facilitating role. “It’s not all about the rigs,” he said. “A lot of it is about 3D expertise. We planned to do a full five-camera OB, effectively. On the three (P+S) mirror rigs we used Hitachi HVD 32 cameras, which are split block, and Zeiss Digi Primes,” he added. “We used synchronous, two-camera follow focus units, and on the crane rig we also had a motorised interaxial between the cameras.”

The crew also used a Polecam with two Toshiba mini cams and a Steadicam unit with the same cameras. Inition is the exclusive UK distributor for the P+S rig.

“We have modified it with a few little tweaks. Mirror rigs are always difficult because of their physical size and weight,” said Millns. “I’d like to see an ultra lightweight version for use on Steadicam.

“The motorisation was a new thing for us, and it is vital, especially when you have got a rig on the end of a crane. It is also good enough to pull it during a shoot, so it is very advanced,” he added.

For its film activities Inition often uses 2K Silicon Imaging minis, but they were no good for Abbey Road. “In a space of that size we were talking about interaxial distances of 15-30mm and you are not really going to get a decent head or lens at that diameter,” he said.

Asked what he had found to be the difficult aspects of 3D production, Millns said: “Zooming at the moment, certainly for live transmission, is a very challenging thing to attempt. This is partly to do with the lenses, and partly due to the follow focus systems we use, but it’s mostly to do with working live,” he added. “If it was post produced, it’s fine. We can pull the interaxial, zoom, and make minor adjustments to the lens. Live you have two options — you can either do it with a motor, which is what the 3ality guys do, or you can do it digitally, which is what we are working on.”

When the picture feeds come from the rigs, the first thing to handle is the upside down image produced by the top camera.

“We have developed a product called the StereoBrain processor with a company called NuMedia, and that takes care of flipping the images,” said Millns. “It also does the multiplexing, so we have a live director’s monitor and also a preview feed, so we can check any of the cameras on a 3D TV.

From the flip box, images go into a switcher. Inition uses a standard Telegenic unit, and it was surprising to hear Millns say, “We have found that standard kit, whether it is in a truck or flight pack gear, is capable of doing everything we need in 3D.”

For its post production work, Inition uses a Speed Grade system from Iridas. “This is a 2K online system that allows us to plug into either a beam splitter monitor, which gives us HD in each eye, or a projection system, which allows you to do all the geometrical stuff you need to do live, plus the stereoscopic colour correction,” said Millns. “This is very important because you get slightly different colour tints in each of the cameras (on mirror rigs).

Asked for his view of the set used, Millns said, “3D does not dictate everything. The band wanted to shoot in the round. We were happy with that decision because we had enough cameras to cover it. “It does have an impact, how the physical space is set up. Ideally, it wants to be a more confined space so you are not wasting any space in a gap,” he added.

Millns had accommodated Sky very quickly. They worked afterwards to create a post-produced version of the gig, and Inition gave Sky a feed via the Sensio encoding system it used. What is his take on the picture quality consumers will accept?

“The 3D displays have half HD resolution per eye, so there’s not a lot of point in going beyond HD per eye. In cinemas there are bandwidth limitations and the servers won’t let them go above 2K per eye,” he observed.



Right in the middle
People at the gig could wear anaglyph glasses and watch the gig on laptops, or opt for the polarised option offered by Sky (Sky HD Box to consumer flat screen), which highlighted the need for brighter lighting, and better positioning (spacing) of the musicians and singer.

There so were many 3D firsts happening, it would have been ungracious to carp. Sky executives were there in great numbers, and it was Gerry O’Sullivan, director of strategic product development, who explained the opportunism. “We knew that Keane as a group always wanted to be part of doing things that are futuristic. And their management had already set up the web cast,” he said. “They had seen we are involved in getting 3D going, so we kind of rolled up and suggested we do something together.

“What’s brilliant is that so much happened with that content on one night. We’ve only really just started, but the buzz we are getting suggests that S3D is going to work for everything,” he added.

O’Sullivan would not toe the company line that S3D will be huge in time for the 2012 London Olympics. He said, “If the sceptics were at Abbey Road and saw the Keane experience, they would be the ones saying, ‘Yes. We can do this in a year or two’.

“The production companies have to come on board. The flat panel manufacturers must flood the market with 3D sets. If we can get a good amount of content together, consumers will lap it up,” he added. “After HD and then surround sound, this is just another step. It makes people feel they are there, right in the middle of the action.”

By George Jarrett, TVB Europe