A long term prediction (long post)

[Marcus Irvin]

As an amateur futurist and long time observer of tech trends, I have a prediction for you smart Red reservation holders to consider regarding feature films.

3D

There is nothing original or even recent about this prediction, but read on to see if you agree with my reasoning about it's soon to be enormous significance compared to the niche market it has always been till now.

Fact 1: Thanks to new tech, 3D has never been easier to shoot and the 4K output from Red will make the price of entry much lower than it has ever been for every production level with film.

Fact 2: Projection issues have always been the largest impediment to long-term adoption of 3D. Low quality glasses combined with choppy (half-speed per side) projection have made the experience less than pleasant. New LCD shutter glasses combined with high framerate digital projection make it much more consistent with regular film viewing comfort. Higher digital projection framerates also allow much brighter lamps(lasers?) than film can project without causing high-brightness flicker perception.

Fact 3: This is the most important fact of all. Many lucky consumers are now putting gorgeous huge 1080P screens (love my Mit!) in their homes along with 5:1 or 7:1 sound systems. Since installing our big screen, my wife and I have almost totally stopped going to the theater. With a few epic exceptions, our film addiction is completely fulfilled in our completely comfortable, clean and quiet media room. Using the exact same reasoning Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, explained to local media why his new billion dollar stadium includes six large video screens, two of which are 50 feet tall by 180 feet long. Love him or hate him, Dallas locals can tell you Jerry Jones doesn't spend millions for anything without good reasons. The movie theater business must offer something beyond what we can get at home or they will lose most of their every day business(like they did with us).

Fact 4: As far as I can tell, the obvious quality of Red cameras combined with their small vertically oriented form-factor and mounting possibilities should make them leading candidates for easy 3D capturing. It's equally easy to imagine an inexpensive edit proxy process that cuts both image views to 4K perfection even on small workstations. Soon your small Red-originated productions can offer something that most large studios haven't realized yet and that's a future-proof original suitable for 2D or 3D projection and/or film-out. Think 2D for broadcast and 3D for theater.

Fact 5: Most CGI is already very 3D compatible or could be with minor improvements. With the exceptions of local correction and rotoscoping/retouching, most finishing can be applied equally to both views.

There are many more considerations, but this 3D scenario seems close to certainty from my perspective. Of course, other open-minders and leading filmakers will soon see RED 3D possibilities as well. They see reservation holders like James Cameron leading the way with his 3D IMAX productions and his 3D 2009 "Avatar" movie. Let's hope his RED reservations arrive in time to contribute to his announced projects.

All the RED team has to do is what they have already planned. The modular nature of RED combined with it's many mounting points, should make head setup easy. If the lenses can be physically synchronized for control, it should be a piece of cake electronically.

Regardless, I think the future is so bright we will all be wearing 3D shades!

Marcus Irvin
Stills/Design/Video

[chuck colburn]

Hello Marcus.

3-D, ohhhh yeah!
Here's some shots of the gear we had to use to mount up the CP-65 (Showscan) cameras for 3-D shooting. I think the production rig for a couple or RED cameras will be a wee bit more mangeable

http://www.hineslab.com/StereoCam.html

[Adrian Correia]

I wish Mr. Lowry was here...sniff

[MikeCurtis]

Coupla challenges:

1.) Interocular distance is key to good 3D - Red is skinny, but I don't think will be skinny enough for side by side - so a 90 degree setup (one shoots straight, the other goes through a prism set at 90 degrees to first) may be necessary

2.) While it is easy to render the 2nd eye view in 3D, suddenly the tolerances get very very tight to be visually believable - your fore/aft settings have to be just so or it will look to be "hovering"

All that said, I think Red will be an excellent possibility for 3D. We'll just have to see how live 3D goes over with audiences - Cameron's working on something that would satisfy this question if I recall.

-mike

[Matt Uhry]

I saw Vince Pace at NAB '06, he's a 3-d and Underwater camera guru and basicaly is Jim Cameron's "Q-Branch" Vince has reserved 5 Red's. I'm sure he's Itching to cut up a couple of Red one's and see if they can be made to sit around 2 1/2 inches apart, interocular distance for 3-d work.

Vince's site: http://www.pacetech.com/

Interesting times indeed.

Matt Uhry
www.fuzby.com

[Dominic Jones]

Marcus, well said - I've been saying that for years, particularly the part about Home Theater systems killing the cinema market and their needing to keep the gap. Before digital projection I was saying they should go to polarized dual projection!

3D as you say is the obvious (and really totally unexploited) answer.

The minimum interocular distance is essentially the entire width of one camera, so I don't think we'll see quite as small a value as 2 1/2" inches, but I don't think it will be too far off, and shouldn't be too much of a problem except for objects that are particularly close to the lens. Shutter glasses and polarized dual projection "glue" together much better than anaglyphed images too, so there is a little more leniency there...

I suppose you could also probably remove the innards of 2 Reds and remount them in a custom 3D chassis (or Jim could just make a 3D camera!). It's not inconceivable that we might see 3rd parties offer these kinds of solutions, as well.

EDIT: Sorry, just re-read your post - I agree entirely!! :)
Damned skim-reading!

[Mark L. Pederson]

Coupla challenges:

1.) Interocular distance is key to good 3D - Red is skinny, but I don't think will be skinny enough for side by side - so a 90 degree setup (one shoots straight, the other goes through a prism set at 90 degrees to first) may be necessary

-mike

RED could build a special RED THREE D - one body - two sensors - hell, they could charge $100,000 and it would be a bargin

[Alex Boothby]

Isn't the problem getting the left and right PL mounts human-eye distance apart (3 inches or so)?

[Lucas Wilson]

Isn't the problem getting the left and right PL mounts human-eye distance apart (3 inches or so)?

jumping to post-production for a minute here... There are big issues in stereoscopic post finishing.

Right now, we (ASSIMILATE) have two big customers in LA that are doing realtime high-resolution stereo dailies and finishing with SCRATCH. With an appropriately configured system, you can output simultaneous left eye/right eye for live stereo playback, review, color correction, etc.

But configuring a system for finishing is non-trivial. The storage requirements are very rigid, and require fairly constant maintenance and upkeep in order to remain consistently realtime for long sequences. That's not to say it doesn't work - it does! ...if taken care of like a kid with a prized and expensive toy.

...just a reality check here...

Lucas Wilson
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Assimilate, Inc.
Los Angeles