DJClinton
08-11-2007, 08:05 PM
Hi there,
As you may or may not be aware, as of 2009 Dreamworks will only be releasing films in 3D. Obviously to bring the experience of film back to the theatre after home theatre looking so good.
Now going through my book by David Samuelsons "Manual for Cinematographers" it outlines with some basic math for making and screening 3D films. Also here in Dunedin/NZ the National History Unit has just used 2x HVX cameras to make a 3D presentation for Mount Cook that will be screening in a theatre purposly built of course.
First up, I thought I'd share my insight and share with you all some interesting research that make the HVX the ideal camera for 3D filming.
Before I begin, I will be talking about the 3D that requires Polarised lenses, not the red/blue variety. And using 2 projectors to screen the film.
First and foremost is the ability to sync 2 cameras to being frame acurate, by way of firewire cable and free running of the timecode. REALLY important.
As for mounting the cameras, the "best" option is to shoot one straight ahead and have the second pointing down, they shoot through a 1 way mirror like the newsreaders read from the teleprompters.
The standard distance between the middle of both lenses is 63mm or 6.3 cm, Also the projectors have to also be calibrated to do something similar. 35mm for a 20 ft screen according to my manual.
BUT, depending on the "depth" that you want your shot to have, you will need to increase the distance, or decrease to pointing the cameras towards each other (toeing-in) in order not to cause the viewers brain from getting tired.
Shooting 3D is easy, BUT, Shooting 3D well, takes planning, math and paitence.
From my current understanding, you'd like to separate the cameras apart so that things that have a negative parralax poke forward and things that have a positive parralax go off into the distance.
So finding the space that is the wall/screen is like "ground zero" and that's what takes the math.
And the formula is a little bit hard for me to figure out right now.... damn it.
But I have a chart for it which is nice, and I'm sure I'll get it sorted over the next week and post it here.
OK, so, using my skills as a computer programmer, I was thinking about writing a program that will take care of the computations for you. THEN, if you have 2 HVX cameras connected to 2 different firewire cards, get them insync and also slave one to the other with regards to settings, zoom, iris etc etc.
Now there already exists some software that does the later part and allows the recording of 2 images onto a single frame, yes it's twice as wide on the x axis.
There also exists a player that will play the movie out of the computer and keep it in sync. Very nice.
Visit this page:-
http://www.3dtv.at/Index_en.aspx
It has free trial versions of the software there.
Now I haven't tried this software as yet, because I'm still using my DVX, but would be keen to learn some more.
If you've filmed in 3D, I'd like to know what you did and what rig you used.
Cheers
Clinton
As you may or may not be aware, as of 2009 Dreamworks will only be releasing films in 3D. Obviously to bring the experience of film back to the theatre after home theatre looking so good.
Now going through my book by David Samuelsons "Manual for Cinematographers" it outlines with some basic math for making and screening 3D films. Also here in Dunedin/NZ the National History Unit has just used 2x HVX cameras to make a 3D presentation for Mount Cook that will be screening in a theatre purposly built of course.
First up, I thought I'd share my insight and share with you all some interesting research that make the HVX the ideal camera for 3D filming.
Before I begin, I will be talking about the 3D that requires Polarised lenses, not the red/blue variety. And using 2 projectors to screen the film.
First and foremost is the ability to sync 2 cameras to being frame acurate, by way of firewire cable and free running of the timecode. REALLY important.
As for mounting the cameras, the "best" option is to shoot one straight ahead and have the second pointing down, they shoot through a 1 way mirror like the newsreaders read from the teleprompters.
The standard distance between the middle of both lenses is 63mm or 6.3 cm, Also the projectors have to also be calibrated to do something similar. 35mm for a 20 ft screen according to my manual.
BUT, depending on the "depth" that you want your shot to have, you will need to increase the distance, or decrease to pointing the cameras towards each other (toeing-in) in order not to cause the viewers brain from getting tired.
Shooting 3D is easy, BUT, Shooting 3D well, takes planning, math and paitence.
From my current understanding, you'd like to separate the cameras apart so that things that have a negative parralax poke forward and things that have a positive parralax go off into the distance.
So finding the space that is the wall/screen is like "ground zero" and that's what takes the math.
And the formula is a little bit hard for me to figure out right now.... damn it.
But I have a chart for it which is nice, and I'm sure I'll get it sorted over the next week and post it here.
OK, so, using my skills as a computer programmer, I was thinking about writing a program that will take care of the computations for you. THEN, if you have 2 HVX cameras connected to 2 different firewire cards, get them insync and also slave one to the other with regards to settings, zoom, iris etc etc.
Now there already exists some software that does the later part and allows the recording of 2 images onto a single frame, yes it's twice as wide on the x axis.
There also exists a player that will play the movie out of the computer and keep it in sync. Very nice.
Visit this page:-
http://www.3dtv.at/Index_en.aspx
It has free trial versions of the software there.
Now I haven't tried this software as yet, because I'm still using my DVX, but would be keen to learn some more.
If you've filmed in 3D, I'd like to know what you did and what rig you used.
Cheers
Clinton