American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 67) template in the same way 3-D adds to the standard production. You wouldn’t be doing 3-D if you didn’t think it was worthwhile.” The settings for interaxial distance and convergence are a topic of considerable debate among those working in stereo. Brevig says he developed two rules to avoid eyestrain and give himself as many editorial options as possible. First, he set the interaxial distance so the movie would play in “a comfortable volume.” He explains, “If you’re sitting 50 feet from the screen, a comfortable volume is about 5 feet from your eyes to about 100 feet away. I’m always going to adjust the distance between the lenses until the volume is comfortable to look at. It was a subjective call on my part while we were shooting.” Second, he set convergence so the main subject of the shot was generally at the plane of the movie screen, rather than out in the audience or behind the screen, except at certain moments when the team wanted extreme stereo impact. Schwartz says the team consistently set focus at the same point as convergence, which is not the case in all stereo productions. He notes that in stereo, out-of-focus objects in the foreground can feel very disturbing to the audience. “When we shot a cave-in, debris fell very close to the lens, between the lens and actors, and it was very difficult to watch — it caused a lot of eyestrain. Even something like an over-the-shoulder shot can cause eyestrain; you really don’t want to have your foreground element, like a shoulder, as out-offocus as you would in 2-D.” Fred Meyers, the HD/3-D supervisor on the movie, says one of his biggest challenges was monitoring the stereo. “We couldn’t work with small 3-D displays or non-cinema-grade projection systems,” he says. “Eric wanted to make creative judgments on the day about how stereo was lined up, so we really pushed hard to get projection.” On Come visit our showroom or call for our latest Magliner product catalog We are the largest retailer specializing in Magliner customized products and accessories for the Film and Television Industry in the world See us at CINEC 2008, September 20 - 22 at the M.O.C. in Munich, Germany Backstage Equipment, Inc. • 8052 Lankershim Boulevard • North Hollywood, CA 91605-1609 • USA (800) 692-2787 • (818) 504-6026 • Fax (818) 504-6180 • E-mail backstaged@aol.com • www.backstageweb.com 67 http://www.bensemanoff.com http://www.bensemanoff.com http://www.backstageweb.com http://www.backstageweb.com http://www.backstageweb.com http://www.bron-kobold-usa.com http://www.bron-kobold-usa.com
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