The folks at s3ddatabase.com asked us to share some “behind the scenes” experiences from our latest 3D HD project.
– posted by Michael Watchulonis
After a few scouts to nail down locations, consult with biologists, and generate a shooting script that wasn’t guaranteed to damage our health, our two-man crew ventured into the great Okefenokee Swamp with a custom-built beam splitter. For a natural history show like this, we think a beam splitter was the only way to go. Our mission with the story and the photography was to put the audience there in the boat (or high in the trees!) with us in the middle of a pristine wilderness as gators cruise by or a gorgeous corn snake slithers up a tree, looking for a nest to plunder. There’s just no other way to get an insect close up with an IO of 1/4” or a grand vista at 3”.
As a writer/director, I look at the beam splitter as a storytelling tool. It allows us to visually explore the story of a massive prairie full of water lilies and the dramas playing out on a big and miniature scale. We can get the three-mile wide big shot with great foreground action, then get the ECU of the brilliant lilly flowers floating on the water. Filling the screen with a miniature carnivorous plant or exquisite insect is thrilling. Just watching the dailies in 3D is a blast when you’re close enough to see the dragonfly breathing as its mandibles crunch away at the head of a still-kicking fly.
Of course, a beam splitter also demanded fastidious work to keep the mirror clean and additional time setting up shots as we calculated the IO distance to anticipate a swimming gator’s trajectory. That’s when having a really talented 3D Director of Photography is key. I enlisted Daniel Watchulonis (yep, my brother) to design and supervise construction of our rig. Over the past year and a half, our shoots and refinements have given us that priceless connection between DP and director that allows us to make very fast creative decisions and technical adjustments in the field. His documentary and feature film experience was crucial in creating custom settings for our Sony EX3s, making solid decisions about lighting, and how far we could push the limits of the cameras—yet still get great detail in post. The footage is spectacular, and he deserves all of the credit.
We also have a live 3D monitor in the field at all times so that we can see exactly what we’re shooting in real time. Given that the water in the swamp is only about 6” deep in some places, we had to travel as lightly as possible with just the two of us or we’d never have gotten to some of the really remote places. That meant both of us doing multiple jobs. It was quite a challenge to steer a boat exactly where it needed to go and act as director/stereographer while popping my head in and out from under a swath of duvateen. For one shot, I had to get out of the boat and push it up into a field of water lilies to “sneak up” on a flock of Ibis. They are as beautiful as they are skittish. If you get within 100 yards, you’re lucky. Waist deep in black water, you never know if your next mucky step will get you a better shot… or bring the bite of a gator or water moccasin. How Daniel held the camera so steady in a buffeting wind at the end of the lens on a swaying boat, I don’t know. But it’s a fantastic shot of the Ibis wading and feeding then taking to flight. We spent about four weeks in the swamp and are thrilled with the footage.
We chose the Sony EX3 for our beamsplitter because of its impressive image quality. The 1/2″ chip does well in low light. Since you lose about a stop shooting through/off of the mirror, every extra bit of exposure helps. After color correction, the images are beautiful on a 3D TV, which is the planned venue for our current projects. We’ve also provided 3D footage for a major broadcaster’s 3D events that were projected on a 30’ screen and were quite pleased that the image held up very well. For projects that are destined for 3D cinema, we’ll most likely move to the Convergent Design boxes for recording. They will allow us to get the maximum (4:2:2) amount of information the camera can output via HD-SDI. We’ll continue to evaluate each camera that is released in the rapidly evolving landscape of acquisition.
Our approach to editing is about as straight forward as it gets. We cut in FCP and finish the 3D with Stereo3D Toolbox. There isn’t anything we’ve shot that wasn’t pretty easily fine tuned with it. For color correction, our first call is always Ron Anderson at Colorama. Ron has been working his magic on features and docs for more than 30 years, and we absolutely trust him. Because Alligator Kingdom 3D was shot in a swamp, there are a few things we’ll count on Ron to do. First, there’s lots, and lots, and lots of green everywhere. It’s a swamp. We want to create a canvas that showcases the huge range of greens in that ecosystem and let the gators, insects, snakes, and birds play on it. And because we shot a lot of the footage in the blazing sun, we’ll look to Ron to pull as much detail out of the shadows as possible without adding noise. Of course, then he’ll match the Right eye and Left eye images without losing the magic. Given his work on the teaser, we’re very excited to get started.
This guy was crafty and brave... cruised one foot from the boat.
Scheduled to be finished on 8/15/10, “Alligator Kingdom” is the first of eight in our “Ancient Wonders 3D” series. At this writing, we’re still evaluating distribution options. Putting the teaser online a few weeks ago generated substantive inquiries from broadcasters and PPV operators. We’re very pleased with the response of those who’ve seen the full 1080p teaser. The 3DigitalVision team is quite proud of “Alligator Kingdom 3D”, and we look forward to taking the 3D audience on a trip to one of the last great black water swamps on earth.
