American Cinematographer - April 2011 - 14

Soos (in photo at right, wearing sunglasses) notes that deep-focus images allow viewers to better perceive the 3-D effect.

version of the stereo image to make sure the cameras were properly aligned, while stereographer Thomas Villepoux supervised the proper execution of the 3-D effect. “The 3-D effect is more pronounced on a big screen, so you have to be aware of that and do things more subtly when they’re in-camera,” Soos remarks. “In the same way your DIT monitors the digital 2-D image for technical issues, a member of the 3-D team can halt the progress of a shot if there are technical problems with the 3-D.” “The big question is, ‘When will you be ready?’” Boulet says with a laugh. “The answer was usually, ‘Almost.’ It does take a little more time than usual not only for the technical part, but also for the artistic part. After the cinematographer and the director decide the shot, then the 3-D guy can do his job, checking the alignment and depth, and that doesn’t take long. After a couple of shots, everyone gets used to the rhythm.” Smith appreciates the extra attention to detail, particularly with the final 3-D image immediately available on set. “It was helpful to see what worked and what didn’t, that things coming from screen left or right can be more jarring than things
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rising or dropping into frame,” he says. So the filmmakers not only had to get acclimated to a new set of tools, they also needed to adjust to a different cinematic language, which Soos wryly summarizes as follows: “If you move the camera around a lot in 3-D, you’re going to make people barf.” Cropping actors on the lefthand and right-hand sides of the frame became an issue. “When you’re doing overthe-shoulder shots, you have to think about going wider and more static. You compose differently. You also have to take lighting into consideration. Do you meet the lightlevel requirements to render sharp layers and sell the illusion of depth?” Soos notes that the depth-of-field requirements in 3-D are the opposite of 2-D, “where you want an optical depth-offield that creates the illusion of real depth, a painterly 3-D effect.” In stereoscopic 3-D, a deep-focus image allows the audience to better perceive the additional layers of dimension. When it came to lighting, the most important lesson Soos learned about 3-D had to do with contrast. “If things in the background are too contrasty, the way the
American Cinematographer

Set photo by Bonnie Goldfarb, courtesy of Harvest Films.

parallax of your lenses displaces the imagery can cause two contrasty superimposed images to create the illusion of misalignment,” he observes. “Hard lighting is also something you have to be really careful about. In lighting for 3-D, I’ve found that it’s smart to consider using soft, directional sources.” Soos’ ISO was fixed at 200, but he needed an effective T-stop of 5.6 to achieve his desired depth-of-field. His gaffer obliged by pumping a huge amount of light into the rock-cave set, a partial build that was surrounded by a 360-degree greenscreen. “It felt more like classic studio lighting, with at least 36 space lights overhead, 10Ks and 20Ks replacing 1Ks and 2Ks, and 12K and 18K HMIs bouncing in 5,500°K fill,” the cinematographer recalls. “It was a lot of light, a lot of work and a considerable investment for everyone.” “It’s always difficult for the 3-D crew to become part of a 2-D crew that’s used to working together,” Boulet muses. “We understand that they don’t always know how to react to us, and we don’t always know how to react to them. I’ve found that some 2-D crews are afraid of working with people who are going to advise them on how to do their jobs.” But Soos, Smith and Boulet ultimately found that they were speaking the same language. “It was a question of philosophy, habit and how we see cinema: Do we see cinema in the same way?” says Boulet. Soos relished the opportunity to expand his visual vocabulary. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, in 3-D the effect is exponential,” he says. ●

American Cinematographer - April 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2011