3D on the North Sea
Most cameramen find their first job in any new format such as stereo 3D challenging enough, but camera operator/editor and GTC member, Elliot Hornell, upped the ante on a recent shoot for Aberdeen-based production company Viscom. Not only was he to shoot on location in December last year – the coldest month since national records began, during which Scotland bore the brunt of the very worst weather – but the shoot was to be offshore on an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea. Add in the fact that a last minute schedule change saw the planning stage of the project shrink from six months to six weeks, and as an introduction to stereo shooting, it’s probably as tough as it gets. Having at first planned to shoot in a ‘conventional’ two camera 3D configuration (either side-by-side or in beam-splitter mode), in the end the style of the shoot leant itself to shooting on the integrated Panasonic AG-3DA1.
The project in question, which has now wrapped its initial shoot, is a 10-minute 3D film depicting life on the Tern Alpha platform commissioned by oil operator TAQA Bratani for the Aberdeen Maritime Museum. Shot fly-on-the wall style, an important part of the brief was to give the impression of a highly manoeuvrable camera to the eventual viewer at the museum.
“My initial recommendation was to shoot stereoscopic 3D on either a parallel, side-by-side rig or on a beam splitter mirrored rig with the cameras at 90° to each other,” says Elliot. “At However, as well as bringing on board a specialist stereographer for the shoot, Viscom decided to hire in a Panasonic AG-3DA1 from HD camera rental specialists, VMI, initially intending this for use as the B-camera. Elliot says the integrated unit had a lot going for it on paper – reduced hire rates (one camera, not two), reduced kit weight and bulk with all the knock-on effects for transportation costs and manoeuvrability, and so on. As it happened, it turned out to be better on location than the EX3 rig and ended up being used as the main camera. “What happened offshore was that, precisely because of the manoeuvrability, not to mention the minimising of potential rig errors, we ended up using the Panasonic camera for 80% of the shoot,” Elliot explains.
“You can be sure that the lenses are parallel, you know the left-eye and right-eye images are always going to be in sync, and all this means that you can just trust it. When you’re working in a busy environment and need to get things on the first take, this is invaluable.”
Pros and cons
As a unit it does have its limitations. While the fixed inter-ocular distance (IOD) simplifies things, this same simplification can also be a limitation. Not being able to vary the IOD to provide an increased perception of depth can deliver a comparatively flat image in some situations. “The minimum convergence point of around 3m combined with minimum object distance (MOD) of 2.2m is not ideal and will present a few challenges whilst shooting, as you can’t get close to the subject,” says Elliot. “This relatively long MOD and minimum convergence point, combined with the need to check and manually adjust convergence, does restrict the use of the camera to controlled environments and pre-planned shots.” The recording medium of the camera is to solid-state SDHC cards using the 24Mbps AVCHD codec (4:2:0). “This was a perfectly useable format which we were happy to use as backup, however we wanted to record images at the very highest level possible, so VMI also supplied a Convergent Design high definition portable 3D recorder the nano3D. This unit pair connected to the dual HD-SDI outputs of the camera and was powered from a single Anton Bauer battery. After some initial testing we set the nano3D to record MXF files of both the left and right channels simultaneously at 100Mbps using the Sony XDCAM 4:2:2 codec. The improvement in quality using the nano3D over the native AVCHD codec is noticeable and I am glad that we decided to use it.”
While the North Sea is not exactly known for being controlled, the planning that Elliot and the team put into the shoot managed to mitigate any shortcomings of the camera.
Adapting to 3D
It’s interesting to note that Elliot sees the differences in working in stereo 3D as being comparatively minor. “There’s a new language to learn for a start, and as an operator you now have to concentrate on the convergence point as well as focus and exposure, but that will soon become second nature. You need more light and fewer areas of shadow and it’s also important to remember to change your shooting technique as fast cuts don’t work well. You need to let the viewer linger far more over scenes than you would in 2D work – something that will come out even more in the edit I suspect.”
Talking of which, Elliot is currently reviewing rushes and investigating Avid-based post workflows. “Again, as with the cameras, there doesn’t seem to be a one size fits all solution at the moment,” he says, “but we hope to have an initial cut completed by the Spring, plus we’ll be out to the platform again to shoot some material we missed due to time constraints and bad weather last time around.” And while springtime in the North Sea 100km north east of the Shetland Islands and 200km west of the Norwegian coast is hardly the Caribbean, compared to the weather from last December it could be positively balmy!
Thanks to Zerb for the reproduction of this article. Zerb, the journal of the Guild of Television Cameramen www.gtc.org.uk
