Review of Instructional books and DVDs for 3D film productions

It's sort of surprising that with all the attention (and theatrical business) 3D cinema has been receiving for the last several years, there aren't more instructional materials available for the professional cinematographer or editor to get up to speed quickly. There are a lot of websites, particularly of the DIY with two cameras strapped to a rail variety, but precious little hard info that couples theory to practice and is applicable to professional 3D rigs.

The classic book is Lenny Lipton's Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema. (out of print, but available for free download here) It's very heavy on theory, but you won't find much on the current state of equipment, as it was published in 1982.

Last year saw the publication of 3D Movie Making: Stereoscopic Digital Cinema from Script to Screen, by Bernard Mendiburu. This is a very up to date volume. Not only is it accessible and easy to read by anyone already familiar with the basics of cinematography, it contains many exercises and experiments you can try, including some that don't require access to a dedicated 3D camera rig.

It includes links to websites and a DVD with many useful examples. I recommend this book to anyone starting out in stereoscopic 3D film production (or even fairly far along the way). For producers and directors new to 3D, the first 3 chapters are particularly helpful. I think this book will become a standard and I wouldn't be surprised if it's picked up as a textbook.

Now there is also a very cool course available as a multi DVD set: Stereo 3D Filmmaking: The Complete Interactive Course. I've been viewing the five discs, and I'm very impressed.
First, this obviously wasn't just thrown together quickly to take advantage of the 3D boom. The creators have put real effort into it. They didn't just shoot a lecturer in 3D either. Scenes are selected to specifically show off the technique or effect, and includes interiors with near backgrounds, and exteriors with far backgrounds.

The media files on the disc are all in side by side Quicktimes, and are played using the included Frame Forge StereoPlayer. I was viewing on a MacBook, and it was very easy to view, and some of the least amount of ghosting in color anaglyph I've seen on a computer. (partly because they reduced the color saturation a lot). If you have a 3D monitor that can interpret the side by side files directly then you can view the DVD with the glasses that fit your monitor type, polarized or shutter glasses.
It includes not just good examples, but bad examples too, so you can see exactly how screen plane violations and too much divergence get you into trouble. More to the point, there is so much about 3D that is difficult to explain well in a book, without clear visuals from multiple viewpoints, such as "dynamic floating windows". Each chapter illuminates each instructional point with not just samples shots, but also diagrams from the side or above and graphic schematics of the scene. I particularly liked the section on the importance of higher resolution for good stereo photography--it made it very clear how compression can lose the small detail that is so important for creating depth that goes beyond making layers, to depth that appears rounded and life like.

I've almost forgotten one of the best features of the package, the Stereo 3D Lab, which uses the Frame Forge Pre Visualization program. This lab comes complete with it's own set of audio guided lessons, only here, you can manipulate the controls on a virtual camera rig, either a side by side rig or a beamsplitter mirror rig. The view from the camera is simulated and updated instantly, so you can experiment with differing interaxials and convergences, angles of view, distances, etc. Very cool.

At this point, I'm supposed to say, but wait there's more-- 3 DVDs that are just interviews with leading people in stereoscopic production. At first I thought these would be filler, but I got a lot out of them.

At US$350, this is not cheap, nor an impulse buy for most people. But I think it's worth it. Not only is it less expensive than an actual hands on course, it is 950 minutes, or almost 17 hours of material! Plus you don't have to travel to where a course is being given. For someone who has been asked to plunge into 3D filmmaking for the first time, or for someone who is already on their way with a 3D project, and still knows they have a lot catch up on, this will be a great help. The best combination would be if one could view this DVD course simultaneous with having accessing to a 3D camera or rig or monitor, so you could try out the examples on your own right away. This combined with a hands on course, or combined with access to a 3D rig for a couple of days, would be ideal. Of course you could try out many of the examples here by using side by side video cameras, if you also have a way to capture and view the images you create in 3d. It's not ideal, but it would be great at really experiencing all the steps in the process.

Save Money! Shoot 35mm Film!

One of the great myths of low budget filmmaking is that the cheapest way to make a movie is by using a cheap camera and a smaller film guage, or to shoot on tape.

But it's not always true, if your aim is to create a film to watch in a theater-- This requires getting to a 35 mm print somehow.
Shooting in 35mm may well be the cheapest way to get to a 35mm finish. It has been in my experience with some type of projects.

Don't be fooled by the cost of tape stock vs the cost of film stock. The costs of making a digital intermediate and then a print out to 35mm can be far more than these costs. Just as the cost of making a blow up added greatly to the cost of 16mm origination.

Is this a documentary project or a scripted short? What do you anticipate your shooting ratio to be? If it's not a documentary, and you're going to have a reasonable ratio, say 7 to one or less, then you may be better off shooting 35mm

A lot depends on the local situation there for renting cameras and buying film. Here in the US, rental facilities always have older cameras, such as an Arri BL2 or BLIII sitting on a shelf, or if you don't need sync dialog sound, Arri IICs. In Italy I'll bet you can find great deals on Cameflexes. People starting out often turn up their noses at "Old" cameras, forgetting all the great films that were shot in the 70s and 80s with these "old" cameras.

Also, here we can get "Short Ends" and "Re-Cans" which are film cans left over from productions, and there are places that specialize in selling that here. It's not difficult to get 400' rolls that are much cheaper than new. The film is snip tested before they sell it to you.

The 35mm film/processing/workprint/neg cut process is very simple and well understood. You could even avoid expensive tape transfers for Non Linear editing, and cut on a flat bed. People are giving away flat bed editors. They take up a lot of space and there aren't many buyers, they'd rather see someone using it then send it to the recycling center.

Several years ago I was DP (and AC, and Loader for much of the shoot!) on a small low budget film, "FLOSS". I convinced the producer, that since he was in this to make a movie that could be shown in a theater, the best and easiest, and even cheapest route to go was 35mm origination.

Then we used the same techniques low budget film producers have used for decades-- getting bargains, getting people to work for little or no money, and as much for free as possible. Because it's the labor and all the other expenses that constitute most of the budget of the film, not the film stock.

Still when you are operating on this level, there are hard costs you usually can't avoid, namely film stock and processing, and camera rental (unless your DP is coming with his own lesson.)

We scheduled our shoot to start right after christmas, when most TV Series and movies are on breaks. This enabled us to get a great deal on a 35mm camera package from a hollywood camera rental facility. A 35mm Arri BLII with 5 lenses, batteries, 4 mags, Video tap, matte box, everything, for $4900 for 3 weeks!

Sure, the BLII is an old camera. But a heck of a lot of great films were shot in the late seventies early eighties with BLII's, right?

Next up, Film. We bought short ends from Dr Raw Stock in Los Angeles. Here was another example of how shooting in 35mm has advantages over 16mm. By choosing a stock that was popular with multi camera sitcoms, we were able to easily get all the 400' "short ends" we needed. The reason for this is that the multicamera film shows change loads when they get below 500' of film in their 1000 and 2000' loads. Whereas it is not nearly as easy to find a short end of 400' of 16mm, since 400' is the largest load almost everyone ever shoots with.

In all, our stock and processing costs were under $35k. We kept to a low shooting ratio as we knew our actors really werent' going to get that much better after 3 takes. We did more rehearsals, instead of the popular fad for rehearsing on film.

Lighting was a lot easier on Floss, because we weren't shooting on Digital Video. (Low cost HD cameras were still a few years away, the Sony CineAlta HDCAM would have blown Floss's shooting budget in 3 days. We basically lit from a couple of kits, with a 1k chimera as our key light, usually no fill light at all, and some accent lighting. To our eye, the scenes looked to contrasty to someone used to shooting on video, but the bounce from the walls provided nearly all the shadow fill we needed in most scenes.

This enabled us to move very fast and quick, yet looked great for a drama like Floss. In some scenes, such as a torture scene in a warehouse, we used a single hard key. But mostly it was just the chimera, and some rim light, and background lights. Locations were picked for their ability to look good with minimal lighting. We were able to paint the Dental Office so that it wouldn't have blinding white walls, as is typical. Then we used a large house for all the home scenes that gave us several different looks, and also had a lot of wood paneling, which looks good with minimal lighting effort.

Just putting an idea in your head. If you have to shoot a lot of footage, then this won't work. But people assume that digital is always cheaper, and yet make that conclusion without running the numbers on a spreadsheet, using real world quotes of what you can find great equipment for.