3D
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Teaching Immersion and Stereoscopy
The profusion of virtual reality projects showcased at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival is a testament to the fact that the tools and techniques for cinematic storytelling are expanding. Film schools are adapting, often quickly creating new courses that attempt to help students navigate this new frontier. My colleague Eric Hanson, for example, now teaches a course in University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts called “Experiments in Immersive Design.” The course was originally designed to help students understand the history, theory and practice of three-dimensional filmmaking. But under Hanson it has shifted more to incorporate his background and […]
by Holly Willis on Apr 28, 2015 -
Solo Smart Drone Creates Virtual Second Operator
While news of another GoPro drone being released may not seem too exciting, 3D Robotics’ new Solo drone has some incredibly smart features that set it apart from everything currently on the market. Anyone who’s operated or dealt with a drone on a shoot soon realizes that to get very complex camera moves you need two operators — one to pilot the drone and one to control the camera. Solo is able to automate some of the tasks of piloting and camera control so a single shooter can get some incredible shots. Check out the video below for an idea of […]
by Joey Daoud on Apr 14, 2015 -
Goodbye to 3-D Rules
To a degree, the content of Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language will be familiar to viewers who have kept up with the director’s latter-day work: aphorisms and quotations by the score, obdurately unidentified characters whose relationship to each other is unclear, snatches of disparate music cued and cut off with disorienting abruptness. It’s not for everyone, but Godard’s first three-dimensional film is so visually astonishing that a lack of comprehension isn’t a barrier. Outdoors, sea and land stretch out into a receding horizon deeper than anything you’ve seen. Inside, there are more knockout distortions transforming even the most banal objects: […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 20, 2014 -
Invisivision: New 3D-And-More Glasses to Allow Multiple Simultaneous POVs
“Have you wondered what your favorite movie looked like from the sidekick’s perspective?” asks the pitch video for Invisivision, a proposed new kind of 3D-and-more glasses being developed by PipeDream Interactive. The basic idea: since 3D already projects two images simultaneously, why not put those two information streams to a use other than creating stereophonic depth? The pitch video below outlines a potential multitude of uses. Would you like to choose which angle you watch a scene from — e.g., to toggle from the hero’s POV to the villain’s? Now you can, and that should be no extra work for […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 7, 2014 -
“I Wanted to Live in That World From Morning to Evening”: Fyodor Bondarchuk on Stalingrad
Fyodor Bondarchuk’s father Sergei made the 1967 War And Peace, a famously profligate Soviet production with thousands of army soldiers as extras and the biggest budget in the USSR’s history. His son came up through music videos and advertisements, making a splash with 2005’s Afghan War drama The 9th Company. The lavish Stalingrad was shot in two parts, as much as possible in 3D; if nothing else, it’ll go down in a sub-section of film history as Russia’s first IMAX film. It’s a tremendously odd film, the kind of overtly nationalistic take on the WWII battle you’d expect from an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 27, 2014 -
Cut Copy’s “We Are Explorers” Video Released With DIY 3-D BitTorrent Bundle
For the video to their single “We Are Explorers,” Cut Copy paired with the Tokyo-New York creative lab Party to relate the tale of a couple of 3-D printed night owls. Cinematographer Sesse Lind shot roughly 200 figurines, printed from a yellow, UV-reactive filament, under black light flashlights, only at night, to achieve the desired effects. The result is downsized nocturnal epic whose scale belies its ambitions. To accompany the release, the creative team packaged a BitTorrent Bundle that includes the musical track, the video and the 3-D printing files, so that fans can craft and upload their own versions. With the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 25, 2014 -
In the Ruins: Paul W.S. Anderson on Pompeii
Pompeii, so-called vulgar auteurist Paul W. S. Anderson’s latest extravaganza, is a love story and a disaster movie, a prison film and a paean to a certain kind of tried-and-true action pic many directors attempt but few make as involving and effortlessly enjoyable as “the other” Paul Anderson. Since his 1994 debut, Shopping, he has, with moxie and aplomb, uncorked one high-concept genre thrill ride after another. In his first film since 2008 without his wife, the actress and model Milla Jovovich, the British veteran deftly takes on the sword-and-sandals adventure epic. After opening with an odd epigraph about the […]
by Brandon Harris on Feb 22, 2014 -
UT3D
While Hollywood continues to generate three-dimensional spectacles, directors, industry pundits and audiences all continue to question the technology’s validity. In a recent story in The Hollywood Reporter highlighting the DVD release of The Wolverine, which includes a 3D Blu-ray, director James Mangold said, “The question is whether 3D will survive or not,” adding, “Is it more than a gimmick and can we make it more than a gimmick?” And after ESPN announced last June that it would shut down its three-year-old 3D sports channel by the end of 2013, Variety’s David S. Cohen explored both the predictions of total demise […]
by Holly Willis on Jan 17, 2014 -
San Sebastian Critics Notebook: Embracing 3D
The debate about the use and popularity of 3D in cinemas may be raging on but the San Sebastián International Film Festival has certainly embraced the format this year – and proved that content is the key to success. The Spanish festival opened with Juan José Campanella’s 3D animated family delight Foosball (Metegol), a comedy adventure which sees a soccer table champ take on a egotistical star with the help of his table-top team. The line-up also featured Alfonso Cuaron’s breathtakingly immersive space thriller Gravity midweek and closed with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s endlessly inventive The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. Jeunet’s film is an adaptation of the book by Reif […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Sep 29, 2013 -
Jean-Pierre Jeunet on his 3D Movie, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
When he was eight, Jean-Pierre Jeunet would marvel at 3D pictures on his View-Master. It was a popular toy where someone could see a sequence of stereoscopic images printed on a cardboard disc inserted into a handheld viewer. “It my first step into cinema,” the director of Amelie fondly recalled, “because I would adjust the frame in the viewer to change the order, and I’d imagine a new kind of film.” Little did Jeunet know that his beloved View-Master would lead to him to direct an entire film in 3D 52 years later. Jeunet was speaking about the pleasures — […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 25, 2013
