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By Nick Dager
January 15, 2007 Issue #119
When the new concert film U2 3D premieres this month at the Sundance Film Festival and following that in theatres around the world it will mark another step in the ongoing evolutionary change of how motion pictures are made and shown.
The movie, which was produced by 3ality Digital Systems of Burbank, California, is the first live-action digital 3D ever made. Steve Schklair, founder and CEO of 3ality Digital Systems, started the company seven years ago to develop content and tools for stereoscopic 3D because he believed that the implementation of digital cinema would lead to an audience demand for 3D movies.
U2 3D consists mainly of footage shot with eight cameras over three nights during concerts the band performed in Buenos Airies. Some shots come from concerts in other cities. Schklair emphasizes that the movie is not a documentary but is, rather, a concert experience.
The idea for U2 3D came from 3ality. “We sold them on the idea,” Schklair says. He says the company wanted to do a concert movie and wanted a band that had a broad international following and, just as important, puts on a visual, theatrical performance. They didn’t want just four guys standing on a stage playing their instruments. They approached the band, got the go ahead to do a test shoot and proceeded from there. Although two people are credited as director of the movie, Schklair says the key director was Catherine Owen, who is U2’s visual director. This was her first film, although Owen has a background in art and is a sculptor.
The company chose National Geographic as it’s distributor because they have a track record of dealing with movies with a long shelf life and, just as important, says Schklair, “They wanted it.”
Schklair won’t disclose the budget for U2 3D because he says he can’t honestly determine the movie’s real cost since so much of the cost includes all the company’s research and development. He says the budgets for future movies will be much lower.
“Exhibition has always been the problem,” he says. Even in well-run theatres film prints develop scratches over time. When the scratches on the left side don’t match those on the right, headaches result.
Schklair says he and his team took the position that one of the biggest problems of earlier 3D films was that many viewers got headaches watching them. With that in mind the 3ality team looked at the 3D process backwards from the headaches and asked themselves what tools were needed. “What’s needed in the field defines what tools we make,” he says.
One of the biggest problems was that when people shot 3D with film the lenses were invariably too far apart of were difficult to properly align. This gave many viewers headaches.
“Lenses that are out of alignment cause headaches,” says Schklair. “They have to be perfectly matched.” On the production side, the equipment was very heavy and limited the number of shots filmmakers could get in a day, often to as few as three or four.
The tools that 3ality has developed include a complex framework that houses two off-the-shelf digital cameras and proprietary software designed to ensure that the two cameras are properly aligned.
The system for U2 3D used two Sony FW950 high definition cameras. Zeiss lenses were used because, says Schklair, “They’re incredible lenses. They’re so clean.” Sixteen motors in the camera system operate the lens to ensure that the images for the left eye and right eye are the same.
Another issue is that there has never been a dedicated production/post-production pipeline, Schklair says, adding, “3ality is the pipeline.”
“We’re building equipment to solve the problems,” Schklair says. “We tell DPs, ‘Now go out and make a good movie’ because that’s what this is all about.”
“We shoot knowing what our pipeline is,” he says. “The camera puts out meta data while we shoot.”
That meta data includes precise information on focus distance, iris settings and other critical data. That makes such post processes as CGI possible. “They know all this when they start post,” he says. That saves time and money.
U2 3D was edited in 2D on an Avid and the EDL from that was used to create the 3D master. CineTal monitors were used for editing.
“The reason we’re doing this is so that visuals can move to a new place,” says Schklair. “3D has been tried in the past and it’s failed for a lot of reasons. Digital technology solves all of the [technical] problems.”
“3D is now an immersive experience,” he says and, as a result, the market is starting to grow.
Beowulf played on some 850 screens in 3D. DreamWorks Animation has announced that all is movies moving forward will be released in 3d. Schklair says that 2009 will be “the banner year” when several 3D movies, including James Cameron’s Avatar, will be released.
Schkalir says 3ality has turned down some projects that he didn’t believe his company could do a good job on. “That’s not a show we can do,” he says to describe his attitude. “The [digital 3D] business is too young to have mistakes made.”
Schklair says filmmakers always have to live with the fact that the exhibition process often does damage to their work. “We’ve always lived with that,” he says, adding that this is especially true of 3D. For that reason 3ality will send technicians to theatres showing U2 3D to spot check how their movie is being screened.
3ality has two other projects upcoming: one the NASCAR race and the other a beach soccer championship match. And 3ality has begun selling camera systems. “The tools are catching up,” Schklair says. The company is developing handheld 3D cameras. One that is small enough to fit in the palm of a man’s hand was mounted inside a car for the upcoming NASCAR movie.
3ality has patented a lot of its technology and has other patent applications pending. The long-term goal for 3ality is to produce the live transmission to theatres of sports and concerts in 3D.
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/thebigpicture_119.html
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