On Location for Dark Country: Silicon Imaging SI-2Ks Go 3D

http://www.uemedia.net/CPC/digitalcinemamag/articles/article_17028.shtml

 

By Jon Silberg

 

May 20, 2008, 09:23

 

3D has long been touted as the savior of a troubled film industry, but the films made with the process have almost always been perceived by audiences to be gimmicks and novelties. Some major studios are soon to release a new crop of mega-budget 3D films in the hope that these will help to change that view and provide an experience that cannot be matched outside the Cineplex. But as the studios roll out their enormously high-budget features, Dark Country will--if it sees the hoped-for release--show off what can be done in the 3D realm on a decidedly “indie” budget.

 

Actor/director Thomas Jane and Cinematographer Geoff Boyle made the 2D science-fiction feature Mutant Chronicles using a pre-beta version of the SI-2K--the small 2K camera from Silicon Imaging--and were very pleased with the way it handled and the pictures it produced, so when they embarked on their follow-up project, the 3D film noir Dark Country, they were excited to incorporate SI-2K technology.

 

Of the camera, Boyle says, “There is a smoothness to the images, a really nice, sympathetic, un-hard look. It’s possible to get obsessed by resolution and not look at how smooth an image is or how much latitude and color range [an imager] can give us. And that is so much more important than resolution.”

 

Of RED ONE, the other new camera system in the SI-2K market space, Boyle is also enthusiastic (he used both the RED ONE and SI-2K in Dark Country), though he proclaims that Silicon Imaging did a better job of getting its hardware and software into user-friendly shape than did RED Digital Cinema. “RED has done an amazing job,” he allows, “but SI did everything right. Rather than hyping everything too early, they got the camera ready to go, they worked with P+S Technik on an adapter, and they made a fantastic camera. RED, meanwhile, has had 15 software updates since it came out because it wasn’t really ready when people started getting the cameras.”

 

Of course, it takes two cameras working in perfect alignment to photograph 3D, and this is where 3D specialists Max Penner and Tim Thomas of ParadiseFX came in. They provided the rig necessary to use the cameras for 3D. The MK-V-AR Steadicam makes use of a stereo beam splitter and variable interocular control to allow for the free-floating Steadicam-style shooting with the advantage of 3D. They also had a separate rig with fixed interocular for handheld shooting.

 

The Steadicam rig and the light, compact SI-2K cameras imbue Dark Country with an aesthetic generally not associated with 3D shows, which are traditionally shot by gigantic cameras that move infrequently, if ever.

 

“The very first and second day,” says Boyle of Dark Country’s shoot, “we did a move where Thomas comes out of a diner with cups of coffee, and we follow him back around a filling station, and we follow him around some more and reveal the back of a car with a ‘just married’ sign, and we then see a woman in the car window, and it goes on, all in one take--with the camera smoothly moving head height to ground above the car. It gives the audience a feeling of perspective as we move around these people and establish what’s happening. It totally flows, with none of that 3D rubbish that’s just there to show off ‘This is 3D!’”

 

Though Jane and Boyle designed the film to work in 2D--the extra dimension is gravy--they obviously want audiences to have the opportunity to see the best presentation possible, which will occur only in theaters using polarized 3D glasses. Any DVD or broadcast presentation, Boyle says, would have to use the more distracting red/green glasses to get the 3D effect.

 

Boyle sees a lot of exciting possibilities in 3D filmmaking for both lower- and higher-end productions. “3D has never taken off,” he sums up, “because people have made 3D events, rather than making movies that are 3D.”