3D Shoot

The other day I worked on my first 3D camera project. The camera operator from "Mother's Little Helpers" was shooting test footage for a documentary that will be pitched to Gatorade and he invited me to come with. It was a pretty guerrilla style shoot, no permits. The Sony 3D rig was set up inside a van which served as our portable video village as well. We spent the night following bikers around the city streets of L.A shooting first out the back of the van and then out the sliding side door. The rig was so big and complex it took us about 45 minutes to move it from one shooting position to the other. The rig itself was made up of two identical cameras, one that shot straight out like normal and another that shot straight down into a mirror that was attached to the bottom of the matte box. This allows both camera to shoot basically the same image at the same time. In video village, the DIT could adjust the "ocular distance" of the two cameras remotely. This adjustment changes how close or far away the two image beams intersect and become one. Any object that is in front of the image intersection will pop forward on the screen and anything behind it will fade into the background. The DIT can control exactly what elements in the frame will pop out.

I learned a lot about 3D but there is sill a ton that I don't understand. Hopefully if Gatorade likes the test footage, the project will get a green light and I will get a chance to work with the 3D rig again.