The shooting methodology called for a single camera to get both the leftand right-eye views for each frame. The cameras were always mounted to 3D sliders, which remain similar to those used during the production of Coraline; for Kubo, some sliders required extra travel distance in order to accommodate a larger interocular (I/O) - the distance between the left and right "eyes" of the taking cameras - and all of the sliders have been made slightly more compact. Passingham notes that the sliders have a very fine pitch to enable the cameras to travel a fraction of a millimeter with extreme accuracy. "Sometimes [the "Passingham understands the ballet of light, camera and human performance that breathes life into a puppet." camera] would be required to move between the left-eye and right-eye position for as many as six separate exposures for a single frame," he explains. "You can imagine the tens of thousands of left- and right-eye movements that were required from these stereo sliders throughout the duration of the production!" To take full advantage of the 3D effect, the team would sometimes even "animate" the I/O and alignment. "Alignment and convergence are [essentially] the same thing in our world," Passingham clarifies, "although we shoot parallel and do not 'converge' our lenses as was done in films like Avatar. Our [alignment] is constructed after shooting our stereo and is something Top: Camera assistant Jake Carlson takes a measurement of Kubo in the Great Woods. Middle: Production designer Nelson Lowry touches up the trees. Bottom: Members of the art department prepare the woods and cemetery set. www.theasc.com September 2016 55http://www.theasc.com