A New 3D Language
"At the time we talked, 3ality’s production team had recently shot the FIFA world cup for beach soccer and some test material for the NFL, and it was riding a wave of interest in U2 3D, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
“We shot some of the Vertigo tour in Amsterdam, but the bulk of it was shot at the Buenos Aires leg of U2’s tour, with eight camera systems over multiple days. To make the film we had to develop a lot of new techniques,” said Schklair.
“With the advent of digital there was room for visuals to change. The way it was done was with total control of depth in post. This lets us do things like multiple layers. It becomes the start of a new language for storytellers,” he added.
This language has some basic home truths, like with depth you increase the intraocular, and don’t use stereoscopic 3D as a gimmick. The rig seen was fourth generation. It was beam splitter and camera over camera, the suggestion being that cameras side-by-side introduce limitations of size.
3Reality’s system has a metadata box for all the camera information — focus, iris, zoom, intraocular, convergence — and the plan is to make the rig(s) part of a releasable, buyable and serviceable package.
The engineering imperative is data caption for 4k. Storage at 3eality is a Pedabyte, with 5TB of bandwidth. This is enough for handling 4k data, but not for consolidating it into a single workstation. Stereo 4k will come later this year, uncompressed.
“We have designed the system to use a variety of lenses, and specifically rental gear,” said Schklair. “There is quite a bit of artificial intelligence in the rigs; put the lenses on the optical bed, and they align.”
One of the issues with the U2 3D project was the fact that 3ality changed the workflow completely. “We added rapid conform tools: push a button, and within a couple of seconds you get a 3D conform,” said Schklair. “If you have a 2D composite in the workflow, you tend to do one eye and copy it. Compositing is the wrong thing to do.”
3ality ‘scripts’ and its toolset corrects the opposite eye. Sometimes it does the dominant right eye first, and sometimes the left. The less telecentricity built in the happier it is.
“Quantel and ourselves have completely different views of the right way to post 3D. We do colour completely differently, also image alignment,” said Schklair. “We don’t send our systems out without a trained operator. We do use side-by-side systems as well. It is not really better either way, just different. The business benefit is to take out the unknowns in production and post.”
3ality’s IP lies in the rig, the software, the post systems, the metadata feeds, and the control pipeline. It wants small hand held camera systems with no cables hanging off them. And solid state so rigs can bounce around and suffer no glitches. “A lot of this stuff should be automated,” said Schklair. “We are going to sell these, but I’m not going to throw a number out on the table. Our rig is the magic source, but it still needs to be integrated. When in the market, it will fit the motion picture model.”
At that moment in time, U2 3D was the most sophisticated live action 3D experience available in the market. It was all keys and layering, and makes the huge point that crowd shots are not viable in 2D. The eight rigs used recorded to dual SR machines at 4:4:4.
The issue of calibration standards in the 800 theatres set to screen U2 3D also challenged 3ality. It sent out guidance, and flew technicians around the US to check out the venues."
By George Jarrett, TVBeurope
