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SCRATCH My Bloody Valentine 3D
1 May 2009At the recent National Association of Broadcasters (NAB 2009) convention in Las Vegas, Patrick Lussier, director of the box office hit My Bloody Valentine 3D (MBV3D), described how some of the existing rules of 3D filmmaking were broken along the way and longstanding perceptions were changed.
Lussier, whose film directing career résumé spanned a dozen features, found himself back in school to learn 3D production techniques.
“We finished shooting on December 10 and the film opened on January 16 in 1,033 3D theaters,” Lussier said, speaking to a capacity audience. It made US$21 million in a three-day weekend in these theaters,” he said.
Lussier said that about 70 per cent of MBV3D was shot with dual RED 4K cameras, and the balance was done with 2K Silicon Imaging stereoscopic units. The last scene, however, involved a slow motion explosion and spreading fireball sequence that had to be shot on film. He praised the efforts of his colour timer for making the different media work together.
“We were going to be almost 95 per cent location, shooting in real-world environments and, in particular, underground in a mine with the 3D cameras. We found Paradise FX Corp, who said they could do what we wanted.”
“In the beginning, it was a constant challenge to remember that everything had to be set for stereo, and it’s not as obvious as setting focus where you can tell that the thing that’s supposed to be in focus either is or isn’t. For stereo, it’s deciding the point you want, and the part of the frame you want, to be out as well as how far out you want it to be.
“I think 3D is remarkably seductive and a very intoxicating storytelling tool. I think it has all the potential to continually capture audiences and envelope them into the cinematic experience. … “
Lussier stressed that producing a film in 3D required a lot of exacting work but that the end results were very rewarding. “When you don’t get it right, it is not a powerful experience, but if you do get it right, it’s a beautiful experience,” he said.
The filmmakers turned to Technicolor Creative Bridge (TCB) for the back end post-production, requiring dailies in both 2D and 3D sent to their offices.
As early adopters of Assimilate’s SCRATCH digital process solution, TCB knew it could easily handle a variety of input formats, including the RED 4K digital files (native REDCODE RAW files), and output to the format of choice.
Brian Gaffney, vice-president/general manager of TCB describes the process: “For My Bloody Valentine 3D, we used SCRATCH as a versatile support tool for four different applications within our 3D workflow.”
Virtual Telecine
“For all dailies, we loaded the RED R3D files from Paradise FX onto our Globalstor server running SCRATCH, and recorded in real time to HDCAM SR with custom LUTS applied.”
Edit Module
“We could check that the content was in sync at the beginning of a take. Due to the design of the 3D camera rig, one camera would continue to roll for a few frames after the stop record triggered and could get out of phase. Within SCRATCH construct, the artist could check the left eye and right eye, change the orientation - edit, flip/flop, trim - to get the two eyes properly aligned and ready for the transfer to HDCAM SR.”
Quality Control
“We did a lot of the QC up front, using LUTs brought into SCRATCH for the color QC to ensure the material was properly matched and the TC and ALE files matched.”
Visual Effects
“In support of VFX, we would commonly be asked to render out 4K DPX background plates to allow the compositors to pan and scan the plate behind the 2K foreground to achieve the best visual impact. The DI artist could ask for the timecode or filename of any original R3D file for rendering out as requested, and since SCRATCH tracks all of this metadata it was very easy to support these requests.”
Gaffney adds, “At first glance, tackling a 3D project appears to be daunting and that’s why we opt for best-of-breed tools like SCRATCH. SCRATCH is a powerful stand-alone workflow in itself, but it also works seamlessly, as in this case, within any digital workflow as defined by the project. Its ability to support any format - HD, SD, 3D, RED 4K, 35mm, 16mm - and its depth of functionality make it a highly used and versatile tool within our workflows.”
My Bloody Valentine 3D credits
Format 3D stereoscopic
Director Patrick Lussier
DP Brian Pearson
Camera RED ONE Digital 4K Camera, provided by Paradise FX
Back-end Post Production Technicolor Hollywood Post
Post Production Tool SCRATCH Digital Process Solution
SCRATCH artists: Matt Purse, Patrick Bellanger and Ernie Camacho
Workstation Globalstor Extreme DI
About ASSIMILATE
ASSIMILATE is transforming post-production with its SCRATCH Digital Process Solution, the essential mix for a real-time, resolution-independent data pipeline. Along with data management, SCRATCH features a rich set of DI and post tools for working in any combination of HD, SD, film (2K, 4K), RED ONE 4K, and stereoscopic 3D.
