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Stereo Hype

Feb 18, 2009 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer

Stereoscopic 3D is enjoying a renaissance in theaters, but what are its prospects for the rest of the video production market?

           

In December 2008, stereographer Vic Love traveled across Jamaica with a skeleton crew to shoot a documentary about reggae music using a rig comprising dual Iconix Video HD-RF1 cameras in a side-by-side configuration.

This past December, Vic Love was headed to Jamaica to shoot footage for a documentary about the history of reggae music. With him traveled a tech-averse producer and an assistant who was to function as both the camera assistant and the primary audio engineer. In Jamaica, the team would hire a driver and another all-purpose assistant.

For most run-and-gun documentary projects, this would be a customary (if not always sufficient) crew. Perhaps a typical project of this nature would also have another camera operator and a second camera. No second operator for Love's production, but he did bring a second camera — it was rigged to the first. Upon completion, this documentary will be viewed in 3D.

In Jamaica, Love taught his audio assistant, Clifford Cruz, how to shoot in stereo.

Indie stereoscopic

Love, a stereographer based in Los Angeles, was to function as the director of photography, the digital imaging technician (DIT), and the director of 3D photography. In Jamaica, he'd be composing shots, maneuvering the two-camera rig, and manipulating the interocular distance between the two cameras — all more or less on the fly. The latter task requires the stereographer to adjust the distance between the two cameras using the electronics of the rig, thereby emulating the separation of our eyes. Typically about 2.5in., that space between our eyes is what gives depth to our visual perception; a similar distance between stereo cameras creates the illusion of depth when we don 3D glasses.

According to Love, manipulating interocular distance is akin to pulling focus — instead, you're pulling stereo. “You know how to ride it,” he says. Even most smaller HD cameras — the Sony PMW-EX3, for instance — are too bulky to achieve that 2.5in. interocular distance between the centers of the lenses.

Love uses a rig with two Iconix Video HD-RF1 cameras side by side. These 1920×1080 3CCD box cameras capture images to a Sony SRW-1 HDCAM SR tape deck — which, with its dual-link HD-SDI connection, can record the stereo 4:2:2 streams. Measuring at 1.32"×1.50"×1.92" and weighng 2.5oz. each, the cameras are tiny enough to sit side by side in a rig and achieve the correct interocular distance, which obviates the need for a beam-splitter rig. (In that configuration, one camera points down at a mirror that reflects roughly the same image that is captured by the forward-pointing camera.) Of course, Love's setup includes more than just two cameras. There's also the Iconix camera-control units, which he straps to his side for handheld shots, and the portable SRW-1 deck, which is on his back.

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