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MillimeterThe State of 3D
Jul 29, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Sean Kilbride, Nvidia's technical marketing manager, workstation products
What's your sense of how many videographers are now producing or trying to produce in 3D?
Difficult to determine a number on this one, I guess suffice to say almost everyone we have talked to lately has plans to at least start exploring stereo 3D production. It's hard to estimate how much of that is real world use and how much is just curiosity.
What's their motivation?
More and more every day and the pro, prosumer, and hobbyist levels. Stereo 3D (S3D) is a tool for creative expression, another 'level' to be used to tell your story.
At a high level an artist uses S3D along with pacing, color or lighting to generate the correct emotional response in their audience. For example if you want the audience to feel warm and intimate with the scene you'd light in a warm golden colors, put neutral colors on set and create a very shallow stereo depth, in essence to draw you in. Now if you want to set the emotion of dark scary tunnel, darken the scene, create flickering point lights on rough grimy textures and set a very deep stereo depth.
Coraline 3D is one of the best movies I've seen take advantage of this. While it might not be out in 3D BluRay yet, there is a great article in Cinefex talking about this.
What's the demographic? Are you seeing anything in the business market, or is it all indy film?
All the major studios are embracing S3D as a motivator to get the public back in to the cinemas as well as counter the piracy issues. With S3D Digital Cinema Packages being fairly secure and encrypted, the pirates can`t just steal a movie by pointing a camera at a screen any more. The Independent film makers have jumped at S3D because it gives their project a real value proposition and longevity to distribution which is essential to getting a film released and any hope of recouping costs. With the S3D filming techniques exploiting digital camera technology the cost of entry into production is lower than that for shooting 35mm film.
What camera/rig are most videographers using to shoot the video?
It varies on what they are trying to do and the budgets they have. There is no one "correct" stereo rig different shots, shooting styles and budgets call for different stereo rigs.
Technic, Arri and others are currently manufacturing rigs for filming but no single rig fits every shooting situation due to their size and lengthy calibration. Setup on an S3D rig can take up to 30 minutes or more so if the rig is going to be moved better make sure its factored in to the schedule.
What are the most common target outputs? YouTube 3D? 3D DVD? Film?
True film is the one piece that probably doesn't belong here. One of the key pieces that's making stereo movies comfortable to audieneces is removing film and going all digital. A properly shot piece can be re-purposed easily, but artistic choices do need to be made on the stereo cinematography depending on the size of the screen. A stereo shot that looks good on the big screen may not look right on a 50in. LCD or 24in. LCD so some amount of stereo touch up should be expected as you change output media.
Where does 3D Vision fit into the 3D workflow from a price/performance standpoint?
3D Vision fits on the production side as well as the home consumption side.
Production: 3D Vision is the only stereo solution that delivers a true 1080p stereo experience to desktop LCDs though the 3D Vision glasses and 3D Vision Ready LCDs. Other desktop alternatives rely on interlacing which removes texture detail. 3D Vision can be used on set as we showed at NAB with Silicon Imaging and during editing with Premiere Pro and CineForm. Many effects tools, like the Foundry's Nuke also support 3D Vision.
Home Consumption: The same features that make 3D Vision beneficial for the production side of things are also allowing it to grow the home 3D PC market as well. Every Nvidia 3D Vision PC out there enables their customers to not only enjoy games in a new way, but also view all the 3D content just as the creator had intended whether it comes from BluRay 3D or streaming over YouTube 3D or through fixed deployments like the NASCAR RaceBuddy 3D.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.