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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Last Airbender
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-03-2010 01:03 AM
It is a very tedious process to "convert to 3D" an entire film.
It can be done with satisfactory results given large amounts of time and a group of dedicated and talented individuals to "draw the depth" frame by frame.
But we all know how that goes.
The convertion job goes to the cheapest bid that employees lots of underpaid (and not necessarily talented) workers in low-wage countries and they are pushed to shoot out as many frames per day as possible, with the obvious results.
A half-decent job CAN be done. But unless it's something with years in planning and well budgeted, say for a "classic" where a lot of talent and man-hours are put into it, like i.e. a convertion of "Star Wars" or something worth it of the effort, then a half-decent job WON'T likely be done.
And that's for a half-decent job only. Anywhere near "real 3D" can only be done if the film is photographed/generated with two cameras/views, of course.
It's also a much easier job with much better results when a 2D film goes into post-production already planning for a 3D product out (i.e. Alice, G-force) and the film is thus finished in 3D during this stage integrating the FX's already in 3D, rather than a "last minute convertion" of a fully finished 2D film (i.e. Titans, Airbender), which is a pain to do it half-right by redrawing semi-manually all the shapes of each object in each single frame. This won't get done, of course, thus just a few layers will be separated, with even inferior results.
One of the reasons 3D fails is that stereoscopic 3D is NOT very "flattering" for MANY types of REALISTIC (i.e. not CGI like Avatar) shots, and thus, a lot of filmakers don't like the TONS of technical limits it imposses to their filming style.
These limitations can be ARTIFICIALLY lifted (mostly) by using a convertion process later on, BUT the results will likely be a half-cooked look anyway, so I don't know what's worse.
During the 50's etc, real-life 3D films had fewer limitations due to "technical stuff" like the screen ratios being (sometimes) not as wide as today's (i.e. 1.3 or 1.6 or 1.8 better than 2.35) and the actual restricted style of filming during that era due in part to limitations on camera sizes, focal length choices, camera movement, etc (i.e. no zooming around with cameras from any-angle on a steadycam).
But nowadays, directors/DP's want every conceivable camera movement from any angle on any focal length with any lighting conditions. It's tough to make a good looking 3D film that way with real cameras/lenses/lighting/scenery (i.e. no headaches or vomit inducing to the audience).
Cameron could get away with it on Avatar 'cos more often than not the camera was virtual (there was no camera at all) or the action was shot with almost 200 cameras in a semicircle so the best views could be extracted and the result heavily computer manipulated for every shot anyway. It was technically much more like a converted film or a CGI film than a real-life film. And Alice and Titans weren't very realistic-looking either. Once again, the proportions of some characters in Alice were unrealistic, like the 10' blue elfs in Avatar or the giant girl in Monsters vs Alien, or the 25" toys in Coraline or in Toy story/most children CGI films.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-03-2010 08:13 PM
quote: David Stambaugh
Can you back up that statement with a source? Citation requested.
David,
If you ask ANY theater chain if they buy (near) the cheapest possible equipment (i.e. speakers/lamps/seats), they will ALL tell you that they only buy the top equipment from the top manufacturers, installed, operated and maintained by the top technicians. None of them will admit buying chinese crap and employing 16 year olds (no disrespect intended) at the lowest possible salary to operate it.
If you ask a Hollywood studio which house they chose to do a 3D conversion job they'll tell you that they employed the top house at a premium. And if you ask the top house, they'll tell you that their top supervisors and operators are of the highest (local) talent with only a "small portion of the daily basic tasks" going overseas.
Oh well. You choose to believe what you want. But if this is the best of the best 3D conversion jobs the top (and well paid) local talents can do ....
Take Titans. Google at your leisure:
Titans director underwhelmed by 3D conversion | Reuters
And then, from an interview with the designer of the Prime Focus 3D projection pipeline, the house that did that conversion:
http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/How-Prime-Focus-Built-its-3D-Conversion-Pipeline_12199.html
quote:
Was the work spread out across multiple facilities?
We spread a lot of the roto and selection stages of our pipeline across Vancouver and Winnipeg [in Canada] as well as Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Goa [in India]. A lot of the offices have very similar overall server and switch architecture. India functions slightly differently, but the principles are the same in terms of network structure, directory concepts and naming conventions. It’s easy for us to share work. Winnipeg and Vancouver are behind the same VPN, so we can do things easily like transfer data directly to machines through a VPN tunnel. Artwork and editorial work was happening entirely in L.A.
And now you choose to believe which workers got the lion share of the tedious work ...
But they'll all tell you that the depth design, scene approval etc is done by "top supervisors" but the truth is that a lot of the actual tech/artistic decissions have to be made on a minute-by-minute basis by the sofware operators, which I doubt put much interest in the results when they are rushed through 125.000 frames of film at a salary that doesn't really pay for weekends or overtime ... in India ...
Now, I'm sure workers in India can do just as good a job as workers anywhere else in the world ... if they had the right time to do it, appropiate rest, good incentives, sufficient training and tools, etc, etc. But somehow, knowing the work conditions of animators (a similar job) in the west are not that great, I doubt the conditions of this type of work in Hyderabad are all they should be for getting the job done properly ...
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