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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The day I walked out on a 3D film set... to defend 3D

Thank you for replying Pedro.
I agree, the specifics should be discussed over a beer, hope to catch up with you sometime soon.
and that's why I did not mention anything that might tarnish anyone's name.

On posting my 'rate', I've learned something from you. I'd not thought much of it before, as I'm not an active on-set stereographer. My work has always been behind the scenes in advising a few mainstream stereographers and on projects for media institutions looking at S3D. So thank you for pointing this part on etiquette out, I'll look more into it.

The main lessons learnt from the incident that happened, is hopefully summarized in the points below, and that is what I equally wanted to share (besides the incident) with Stereographers taking on a job.. at least maybe in less developed markets beyond hollywood, such as these regions.

I'll paraphrase a professor, as he put it on another forum: "Boys owning expensive toys, (although the Epic is no toy) want you to play by their rules..."

I'm doing no favors to the stereoscopic professional community by bending backwards on what will be detrimental to the future of 3D projects should shoddy work become the norm that audiences can't care less.
I also take great pains to point out that I'm not interested in starting an "Avengers" team to protect 3D!

As an accomplished and muti-talented specialist, you will no-doubt have a fall back (DP/Steadicam/2D) market.
But what about Stereographers, 3D hardware and software professionals who are truly investing time to learn and practice the art?... what will they do if boys with expensive toys (and fragile egos) call the shots *without* actually engaging in creative discourse first?

To recap, what I hope this incident provides to others, engaging in a project outside of Big Studios, is to checklist at least these:
  • Define the Stereographers role prior to signing on with the production.
  • Settle for no less than direct communication with the Director and Cinematographer – Stereography after all, can be thought of as Volume Sculpting as much as Photography is light sculpting.
  • Establish a stringent workflow per shot – so that the Director and/or DP is not tempted to skim over the all important point of “motivation” for a particular 3D camera move… or worse, skim over the entire 3D depth setting itself.
  • Persuade via suggestion – and via having an IPAD or tablet full of good 3D vignettes from blockbuster 3D films that were good and cover a particular move – I recommend Hugo, Tron Legacy, Pina, Pirates of the Carribean (the mermaid sequence) as must have.
P.s: If 3D stays because of good production values... Red sells double the cameras too..not to mention two EVFs, more cards, etc etc.. It's in everyone's interest to Flag 3D for quality, not just Stereo purists
 
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Hey Clyde,

sorry to hear you had such a rough time of it!

I have a horrible feeling I know exactly the shoot you're talking about...... and if so I think I feel your pain.
 
Thanks Andrew,
From your signature I see your in Dubai too? Well at least something good's come out of posting this thread - Meeting a fellow 3D enthusiast.
I'm not sure if we've met? Sorry if we have. I'm terrible with faces :(
 
If you take a job, you do the job. There is no honor in quitting. No one held a gun to your head. The honor is in doing the best job you can under bad circumstances.
 
Nick Gardner said:
If you take a job, you do the job. There is no honor in quitting. No one held a gun to your head. The honor is in doing the best job you can under bad circumstances.
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My crime, if any is in assuming that a Director hires a specialist to do a job, not to have a man friday to play to his whims but who also knows 3D to boot.

In this case, both of us didn't do our homework it seems, (he and me) prior to signing on, otherwise it would have saved us both.

let me put this into perspective differently: Suppose you hire someone to pick cotton, Then you don't let them start picking because you have a cotton-picking fetish yourself,.... now how do you make the "if you take a job, you do a job" axiom apply?

Sad example, but you get the drift.

>>The honor is in doing the best job you can under bad circumstances.
This won't work for a 3D shoot - You can fix bad 3D only to a certain extent. It's worse when your name gets attached to it (even if not in the credits).

I have more at stake (credibility and financially) than the honor of working with the type of person, I had the mis-fortune of signing up with.
 
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We just replaced our 3d screen for a brighter, lighter 2d version....

Sorry, but at-home 3D was a pointless expense.
 
I sincerely hope that 3D does not go all moribund "again". I am one of those lucky/unlucky sods who is a bit crosswired in the eyes department, a lefty who is wrong-eye dominant for being a leftie. I can take to 3D like a duck to water without headaches or eyestrain or whatever. Wishes and real happenings of course do not always coincide. Time will tell. "Avatar", "Hugo" and "Life of Pi" were well worth the cost of parking my overweight stamp on a cinema seat and I hope such visual treats continue to prosper.
 
Brandon, I'm with you. I use my 47 inch 3DTv as an extra for video village.
at home it's a BenQ 3D projector - cheaper than a 3DTV, has a 2 meter screen size and does not need a silver screen. The only way to watch 3D Blu-ray and for gaming.

Robert, I'm sure it won't go away. Consumer 3D is going to stay thanks to Augmented Reality visors (think upcoming iterations of Google Glass and other AR visors). These will demand that AR content be inserted at correct or at least near correct Z-depth in the real world. We see in 3d in the real world... technological singularity dictates that we replicate that phemomenon, electronically.

I'm waiting for Gatsby to hit the screens. Word has it, that it will join Hugo / Pi etc in the charts of modern artistically crafted 3D.
Btw, the camera work in Hugo even if mixed with green screen and clever Alfred hitchock "rope" like cutting, has been the best I've seen in Keyframed, motivated camera moves in S3D.
 
Clyde DeSouza said:
Yesterday, I put my money where my mouth is…I walked out of a film set (the first time ever). Admittedly I was consulting at only $1000 per day, so that helped me make up my mind. I’ve previously come down heavy on Stereographers for bending backward and compromising their craft.
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There was a very big-budget 3D feature shot with an A-list director a couple of years ago, and the director and the DP chose to ignore the stereographer's advice for the first week of the shoot. After that, they viewed a rough cut on the weekend and were stunned by how bad it looked. After that experience, they scrapped 5 days of material, apologized to the stereographer consultant, and reshot it with his active involvement. The movie won several major awards (but did not quite make a profit), and was acclaimed by a lot of critics. I won't say the name of the movie, but it's a telling story (and 100% true).

I also know of a case where a big 3D horror movie shot for weeks and weeks but did not do routine checks of the 3D alignment throughout the process. Only when they had wrapped and got to post did they realize that there were shutter and timecode phase issues, which required many thousands of dollars' worth of meticulous fixes. Everyone was driven mad throughout that process -- but the fixes were done, the film looked OK, and did extremely well.

So... crap happens. I agree, there's a point where you gotta know where to hold 'em and know where to fold 'em, but about the only way I'd walk off a set would be if somebody tried to take a swing at me. I'm being paid to do the best job I can under the circumstances, and all I'd do is just cover all my actions with detailed memos and conversations so that they understood and acknowledged they were choosing to ignore my advice. All you can do then is say, "OK, I gave you what I felt was the right technical solution. You're going in a different direction, so let's move on. It's your film."

BTW, note that while 3D has been in a decline in America over the last year or so, it's still doing extremely well overseas -- so it's still a factor for films in a certain budget range. I think Iron Man 3 would still make huge money if it were shot on Super 8 and projected on a bedsheet, so I don't think the 3D either added or subtracted from its success. Some films like that are totally content- and fan-driven.
 
paulherrin said:
petri, while there's a bunch of muck to rake through, there's actually some really decent and creative post-conversion out there.
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Paul, my point is that no amount of expensive post-conversion can make a proper 3D movie out of a movie designed, composed and edited for 2D. However, a 2D shoot done with post-conversion in mind, with a stereographer present on set etc.... that's something else altogether.
 
Nick Gardner said:
If you take a job, you do the job. There is no honor in quitting. No one held a gun to your head. The honor is in doing the best job you can under bad circumstances.
Click to expand...

My thoughts too. And if you have a nightmare client, you certainly don't tell the world they are clowns with no idea or boys with expensive toys - especially in such a small production worlds as I assume there is in your current part of the world. If you feel you are unable to do your job under certain working restraints or conditions then by all means make it clear to your client you cannot do the job your were hired to do and cancel your contract, but professionalism does not begin and end with camera tech.
 
Ben Scott said:
My thoughts too. And if you have a nightmare client, you certainly don't tell the world they are clowns with no idea or boys with expensive toys - especially in such a small production worlds as I assume there is in your current part of the world. If you feel you are unable to do your job under certain working restraints or conditions then by all means make it clear to your client you cannot do the job your were hired to do and cancel your contract, but professionalism does not begin and end with camera tech.
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So the take-away from the above is, share good experiences with others, so they may gain knowledge from your good experiences.. but don't share bad ones, as there's nothing to learn from such incidents?
 
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Petri Teittinen said:
Paul, my point is that no amount of expensive post-conversion can make a proper 3D movie out of a movie designed, composed and edited for 2D. However, a 2D shoot done with post-conversion in mind, with a stereographer present on set etc.... that's something else altogether.
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My take on conversion has gone through an evolution in thinking..

In the beginning I was dead against it, but as time has gone by and more experienced/talented artists have come on board with a thorough understanding of stereoscopy, and with software getting better, I've seen at least some conversion houses grow from strength to strength (StereoD, Prime focus).
Now a days, I come to think of fast action scenes as the best candidates for post conversion, simply because there's not much to "Dwell on" and it can at times be cost effective than multiple rigs capturing a critical action scene from multiple angles etc.
I still prefer non-action parts to be captured natively in stereo. ( yes it's getting harder to define native, when so much is shot green screen, in layers and mixed with CGI...)
But to me native is narrative shots, and CGI rendered with Stereoscopic 3D virtual cameras (Cgi software follows the rules of physics and ray tracing of light etc)

Agree with Petri, a stereographer present on set in a shot for 3D, 2D scene is an absolute must. I believe a few of the conversion houses now have this going for them.
 
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Clyde DeSouza said:
So the take-away from the above is, share good experiences with others, so they may gain knowledge from your good experiences.. but don't share bad ones, as there's nothing to learn from such incidents?
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If I have two candidates for a job with identical resumes and showreels, the one where a simple Google search doesn't show him badmouthing his former clients on a public forum without detailing his efforts to make it work gets the job. It's a fairly simple equation.

If you wanted to be positive then by all means write a piece about how you managed to find a workaround under tough circumstances.

I've been working with client I'm not too keen on this week and on the way home after day 1 I was cursing his name the entire journey. Then I went home and worked out how to make the remaining days work best for the client but without me going crazy and walking out of the production. Each subsequent day of the production has been better than the last. It doesn't matter if I'm not proud of the work. It matters that he gets the service he expects from me.
 
You make good points Ben, it's true in what you say.
Note that I;ve made sure I've refrained from naming said "client" so that the end paragraphs -- the takeaway, in the article is of benefit to stereographers who may in their own upcoming projects, ovelook areas that I did. No where have I badmouthed a client by name.

When I do google someone prior to associating with them or hiring them, I do go in-depth (at least one of the crew on this shoot was pleasantly surprised when I mentioned articles from his blog) However, nothing came up on the background of the Director that rang any alarm bells. Hence the misfortune. Possibly the direct result of everyone who had previous bad experiences, keeping it to themselves. Sure they have reasons being actively involved in the field. (i've since got quite a lot of feedback in private, saying I did the right thing in this particular case. Feedback from professionals who know the "client" personally)


It doesn't matter if I'm not proud of the work. It matters that he gets the service he expects from me.
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As I've mentioned a couple of times before, I never got a chance to "work" I was on active "ignore".
My main area of work is not an on-set stereographer.
I teach (preach?) thinking in 3D. I would be going against my principles and betraying the faith of many who subscribe to the text in the book I've written, had I just kept mum, collected the money and given the client what he wanted, which again I have to re-iterate was not actual work or creative debate on 3D, but more someone to worship him/his assumed knowledge on 3D.

A bit different than the average crew situation this. That's what I can think of. At any rate, I'd like to re-emphasize lessons learnt:

- Never assume the role of Stereographer is understood by every production shooting 3D.
- Make sure you define what the stereographer does and the channel of communication
- Set a stringent flowchart for progressing through each shot.

The above seems obvious at first glance considering we are in 2013 and 3D has been with us in it's newest incarnation since at least 2009... but truly it isn't.

Kind Regards.
 
Interesting thread and subject, Clyde thank you for putting yourself up for review. My only thought was that I'd be careful of your own ego here. I can tell you know your stuff and have a lot to offer and that there is real wisdom to be gained by listening to you.

My observation is that you answered your perception of the ego of fear of the director, something I call False Ego, with your own attempt to stamp your authority over him by walking out and then continuing to establish your authority over the project by creating this thread. I understand the emotion and am guilty of the same error a lot, but it doesn't ever serve you. It will do more to leave a trail of confusion as to who you are than anything else. You made an agreement to work on the project and I would think you were clear about your role. I looks like things changed, in my opinion you have the right to address that not working and if you can't come to an agreement then go your separate ways.

It sounds like you are a talented, knowledgable person whose value is clearly realized and utilized. How about more of that and less of this muck? I hope this helps.
 
Chris Henze said:
It sounds like you are a talented, knowledgable person whose value is clearly realized and utilized. How about more of that and less of this muck? I hope this helps.
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Point taken Chris.
I'm guilty of over explaining and getting drawn in too much. It happens when your (over)passionate about something I guess. But you're right, less muck from now on.
Cheers!
 
Just to say, I'm not being antagonistic for the sake of it Clyde. I just think 99% of the world's population gets treated like crap in the workplace and we tend to be very lucky getting to do the things we do in exchange for a paycheck.

It's relatively straightforward for many of us to do our jobs when everything is going right. We only really earn our money (in my opinion) when we make right what is wrong. Whether that is a camera behaving badly or inter-personal relationships breaking down - it's all part of the job. Unlocking the right door to make it work.

If nobody seemed to want your advice or opinions on set, why were you hired, do you think?

EDIT: I see it's all been covered above :)
 
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