American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 63) could be to the subject without creating eyestrain for the viewer. For this reason, it was used mainly for wide establishing shots, aerial shots, underwater shots, and shots captured at least 8' from the subject. There were also two new rigs, the Studio Beamsplitter and the Mini Beamsplitter, and these came to be the rigs of choice for most of the project. Both rigs had one of the two cameras mounted at a 90degree angle to the other, shooting straight down into a half-silvered mirror, which meant the lines of sight for the two cameras in the rig could be much closer together. The Studio Beamsplitter was mostly a dolly camera and also spent a lot of time on the crane; the Mini Beamsplitter was used for Steadicam and handheld work. Both rigs could be used very close to the subject. “It was essential in certain sequences to convey a claustrophobic sense, and the Mini Beamsplitter made it possible to narrow the IO for this close work without creating eyestrain for the audience,” says Schuman. The lenses were all Fujinon zooms, used as variable primes. At the time, says Schuman, it was too time-consuming to change lenses on the stereo rigs because each change meant realigning the system. “We therefore decided to dedicate a matched pair of zoom lenses for each rig and use it to achieve whatever focal length we wanted,” he says. HA10x5B (5-50mm) zooms were used on the cameras in the Fusion Side-by-Side; HAc18x7.6 (7.6-137mm) zooms were used with the Studio Beamsplitter, and HAc5x7 (735mm) zooms were used with the Mini Beamsplitter. As a visual-effects cinematographer, Schuman had operated 35mm and 65mm stereo rigs on a few jobs, but he still considered himself relatively new to the process. “I understood the theory, To light action on a climbing wall, Schuman had his crew position 4'x4' mirrors over the set and shoot Xenon Pars into them from 80' away. “That gave the light a dramatic look of ‘god rays,’” he notes. but it’s all cerebral until you do it, and once I started working with the system in prep, the learning curve was very fast. One major realization for me was that many of the ‘bag of tricks’ techniques used in 2-D camerawork don’t work as well, or at all, in 3-D. For example, forced-perspective, hanging miniatures and painted or projected 2-D backings will immediately look false when viewed in stereo, even if the camera is locked off. “The issue of depth-of-field is a subject of debate and is ultimately a stylistic choice,” he notes. “Many stereoscopic filmmakers feel more is better. On this movie, we chose to use focus cues along with convergence to guide the viewer’s attention to the intended subject, generally the same as in 2-D imagery.” Journey was shot in Montreal from June through October 2006, and a few extra days were shot in Iceland by a splinter unit. Most of the story takes place in underground caves, as the three characters try to find their way back to the Earth’s surface. Brevig notes that early in the project’s development, the plan was to shoot the actors against bluescreen and create all backgrounds digitally. “That was the biggest change I made when I came onto the project,” says Brevig. “I was American Cinematographer 63
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.