Annie Goes Boating - 3D short @ SXSW

[noel paul]

This past september I made an very low budget stereo 3D narrative short called Annie Goes Boating. Next month it will premiere at the SXSW film festival.

The film is a laconic portrait of a girl (Alessandra Torresani, Caprica) on a picnic in the park with her friends (including Alycia Delmore, Humpday, and Davie-Blue, Bass Ackwards). You can see a 2D trailer here. And you can watch it in 3D via yt3d here. (looks best if you can freeview, though not many people can..)

Michael Ragen was the DP. We shot on Red using a parallel beam splitter rig generously loaned to us by Lightspeed Design. All the equipment that enabled stereo production, such as Denecke boxes and a matched set of cine mod nikon lenses from Duclos, was provided for by a grant won thru my school (DXARTS program @ the University of Washington, AGB is my thesis film..).

I did the stereography on set and handled all the post in After Effects using a workflow designed by Bob Mueller at Lightspeed. Bob is an extremely talented stereographer and it was a huge honor to be trained by him. I didn't have access to a 3D monitor so I freeviewed in order to work in 3D.

This was my first 3D film and my first narrative film, so the learning curve was pretty steep. If people have questions about how we did stuff I'd be happy to answer them.

 

[Riku Naskali]

Great work, although where I'm comin from this wouldn't really qualify for low-budget But it's a different ballgame in the States

Did you use fixed focus, or did you have for example the Cmotion synced remote focus?

 

[Andrew M.]

(looks best if you can freeview, though not many people can..)

For free-view you need to adjust zoom factor on the browser (located in the right lower corner of the browser frame) so the horizontal spacing between two frames pictures is the same as your eyes spacing.

For my screen it is 75% zoom factor. Pictures are bit too big on my screen. Than look at the two top pictures from 12 inches or less making sure you are looking at these pictures like these pictures would be far away. So don’t cross your eyes, keep them parallel as you do when looking at the horizon or through binocular. If you have trouble to do it put small 2”X3” piece of black carton paper between your eyes to help you start with it, than you will not need it again once you figure out how to keep your eyes parallel.

Noel, can you post this short from youtube in the 32:9 instead 16:9 format with two frames for left and right eye side by side?

Andrew

 

[Mike Yonts]

(looks best if you can freeview, though not many people can..)

I tried this and it looked like the girl was in the background with the trees pushing forward around her!

 

[Rumpy the Cat]

They're posted as Cross-eyed views. Keep them normal size in the browser and cross your eyes.

 

[noel paul]

Did you use fixed focus, or did you have for example the Cmotion synced remote focus?

Fixed focus. Definitely put some limitations on our 'cinematic language,' but it also allowed us to set up shots & swap lenses much more quickly.

@Andrew sorry I didn't clarify, these are convergent freeview images. Would you like me to post divergent? What is the 32:9 thing you refer to?

 

[Michael Ragen]

Riku,
We did another stereo shoot this past week where we used the C-Motion system. We had two motors for focus and two for iris. It worked out really well.
On Annie Goes Boating we also used the Optitek Nikon Prolocks which I would highly recommend.

 

[Andrew M.]

They're posted as Cross-eyed views. Keep them normal size in the browser and cross your eyes.

Cross your eyes! Mean left eye looking on the right picture and vice versa?!!

Molto Impossible!

 

[Andrew M.]

I tried this and it looked like the girl was in the background with the trees pushing forward around her!

Looks normal to me.

What about the frame with sign.
Do you have sign behind or in front of the trees?

 

[noel paul]

Cross your eyes! Mean left eye looking on the right picture and vice versa?!!

Molto Impossible!

not impossible, just uncomfortable, at first.

 

[Andrew M.]

not impossible, just uncomfortable, at first.

I can go parallel so left eye is looking on left picture and right on the right but left on right and right on left, hell no. Are you pulling my leg?
Unless you have your eyeballs wired independently to your brain like chameleon?

 

[Miltos Pilalitos]

Hey, i just watched the 1080p version in Youtube. I used a pair of Green/Purple glasses and it didn't work at first. Then i flipped the glasses (purple on the left, green on the right) and the stereoscopy came through!

Weird huh?

 

[noel paul]

Weird huh?

haha how did it look using green/magenta glasses given that the film has so much greenery?

 

[Pedro Guimaraes]

Worked fine for me(yt). Nice work.

I also love shooting RED with my Nikons. There great lenses, just a pain to pull focus on.

Just alittle tip. I found that vimeo and youtube(2d) tend to wash out the blacks when you upload them. So I usually go a bit overboard on my versions that I upload. Once crunched by them(yt) usually get it to look like my final color output.

It's tricky and time consuming but usually worth the extra effort of trying a few versions and seeing what youtube does to them...

 

[Riku Naskali]

Yeah we've used the Cmotion before, it works pretty well. Although it would be nice to have more than two calibration points, since most of the lenses do have some difference (we had a matched set of Zeiss glass, but there was still some difference). I've heard that there is a beta firmware version with multiple calibration points, but it's not commonly available.

 

[Miltos Pilalitos]

haha how did it look using green/magenta glasses given that the film has so much greenery?

Surprisingly well. Color reproduction was not great but the stereoscopy was. I can't figure out why it only worked when i flipped the glasses... Is there something wrong with my eyes? :blush:

 

[noel paul]

Is there something wrong with my eyes? :blush:

Maybe your brain is wired backwards?

@Pedro I was going for a soft lifted blacks look.. It's not totally dialed in yet though.

 

[Pedro Guimaraes]

Well then don't take this the wrong way but the images just look washed out. Adding more color and a bringing the blacks down will help your stereo alot.

Color, contrast and shadows play a huge part in depth for obvious reasons! Shadows help give objects volume. The lack of a good range of shadows and color will tend to cardboard your 3D to some degree.

If you lift too much things will tend to blend together a bit as well.

Keep working on it to achive your look but it should aid the depth and not detract from it.

Just my .02 cents, I applaud you for start and finishing a stereo project. I've shot so many things that never see the light of day!

Congrats!

 

[C.H.Haskell]

Nice work, that is Caprica's Star?

 

[noel paul]

Well then don't take this the wrong way but the images just look washed out. Adding more color and a bringing the blacks down will help your stereo alot.

Color, contrast and shadows play a huge part in depth for obvious reasons! Shadows help give objects volume. The lack of a good range of shadows and color will tend to cardboard your 3D to some degree.

If you lift too much things will tend to blend together a bit as well.

Keep working on it to achive your look but it should aid the depth and not detract from it.

Just my .02 cents, I applaud you for start and finishing a stereo project. I've shot so many things that never see the light of day!

Congrats!

Pedro i think you have a really good point and I appreciate the feedback, I hadn't thought as much about how the lifted blacks style would effect the perception of depth. The current grade looks pretty good on hdtvs (which increase the contrast) in 2D, but i already know it's not so hot when projected in 3d via a pc using the depthq playback software, and then obviously there is the h264 bs.. I'm working this week on dialing it in for projection at sxsw, and will definitely be adjusting the gamma a bit and bringing the black level down.

@C.H. Yep!