American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 28)

2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions workable beta version before moving on to other projects. It is an exciting step forward with a lot of features, including 3-D diagnostics and twoway serial communication with Kuper motion-control. Our only seriously missed target was capture speed, which I hope to revisit with new data-transfer technology. While we were in prep, RealD founder Lenny Lipton told Henry about his new 3-D system. Henry saw its creative storytelling potential and believed it would help immerse the audience in our handcrafted worlds. One short visit to RealD fired my enthusiasm; Lenny’s process had overcome every technical snag that made 3-D infamous, taking ingenious advantage of D-Cinema to make it smooth and dependable. His vision of 3-D as a new tool for the cinematographer was infectious. We sought the advice of several other 3-D advisers who provided basic theory, knowledge from firsthand experience and strongly held opinions that were not always in agreement. Lenny wisely noted that we had to choose which advice to follow and find our own way. To follow this story, one must understand two 3-D parameters: interocular distance and convergence. Interocular distance (IO) is the distance between left and right eyes; it affords us the separate views we interpret as 3-D roundness. By adjusting IO, we can expand or contract the 3-D volume of a shot. Convergence is the amount our eyes toe-in to align both images of an object; it gives us a sense of our distance from an object. On Coraline, we worked backwards, adjusting alignment of image pairs to control audience eye convergence. That way, we could pull objects out of the screen or push them back. Because puppets hold still for multiple exposures, we could shift a single camera left and right to capture both 3-D views. That was the beginning of our “3-D sliders.” My first instinct had a two-axis rig sliding Above: In a realworld scene, Coraline’s father plugs away in his study. Right: This shot of the scene’s lighting setup shows the floorsupported modular grid system that gaffer/cameraman Bryan Garver designed for individual stop-motion setups. He and cinematographer John Ashlee lit the scene. MegaPlus EC11000, a machinevision camera based on a 4K Kodak CCD sensor. It sported these features: • Able to double as its own tap, outputting sharp 1K or 2K mono at fast frame rates • Thermoelectric sensor cooling for low noise in long exposures • Physically large 36x24mm sensor • Among the cameras tested, its response curves were most similar to film • Rugged, machinable aluminum body 28 February 2009 • Nikkor F mount • Sensor housed in a dust-free, inert-gas-filled chamber • Software-development documentation for custom user applications Unlike dSLRs, each camera had to be tethered to a smokin’ fast PC (running our custom application) that grabbed production frames and served as a higher-res animator guide and color display to check lighting. The company R&D team worked hard on the ambitiously spec’d software, delivering a

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2009

American Cinematographer - February 2009 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: Circus Production Slate: The International Reverte 2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions Dead Reckoning Embracing Anamorphic Citizen of the World Post Focus: Restoring Manhatta New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Peter Suschitzky

American Cinematographer - February 2009

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