Imagine an underwater video clip of a humpbacked whale, warm sunlight filtering through the iridescent blue ocean, drawing wavy nets of sun across its expansive back. Now imagine it up-close at arm’s length – its white-mottled tail fin almost threatening to hit you as it cleaves powerful strokes through the cerulean waters.
This is total immersion at its best – a distinctive mainstay in 3D digital movies. “3D has the power to educate in the most entertaining way,” says Francois Mantello, producer of Dolphins and Whales: Tribes of the Ocean 3D, of the new dimension of reality that 3D digital filmmaking affords the cinema.
“When we screened our 3D digital underwater documentary (Dolphins and Whales), the children were trying to catch the fishes,” he recalls, “some liked it so much, they even became advocates of marine conservation.” Such is the massive influential power that 3D digital films possess.
3D digital film works by rapidly projecting two slightly different images on to the movie screen, and through special tinted 3D glasses, members of the audience will see a slightly different image through each eye. The brain then works to merge the two images into one for a more complete, tangible picture.
Change In The Playing Field
Traditionally, films have always been shown in 2D, restricted to capturing only the elements of width and height, but not depth, compelling film makers to deftly use the effects of light and camera angles to bring specific characters and happenings in a scene to the fore of the collective audience’s attention.
With the advent of 3D filmmaking, conventional cinematographic techniques have undergone a paradigm shift. Proponents of the silver screen are now able to add the concept of depth into their pictures, giving the viewer a sense of distance – some characters seem almost close enough to touch, while others appear to be further away. By harnessing this aspect of depth and distance, cinematographers are able to manipulate the audience’s attention to certain characters by making them seem closer or further away in the audience’s field of vision.
A digital 3D-rendered form of James Cameron’s 1997 classic, Titanic, illustrates this concept. In a scene where an elegantly dressed Jack Dawson meets Rose DeWitt at an ornate stairwell before a dinner party, the camera shifts to a closer view of the two – an excellent stage for the digital 3D to showcase its magic.
The 3D rendering establishes a sense of distance, making the couple appear closer and at a more intimate proximity underscoring the romantic and emotional intensity of the moment while other partygoers walking past the couple seem more distant and secondary.
Future prospects and the viability of the 3D digital film cinema were unveiled at the inaugural 3DX International 3D Film Festival held on Nov 18-23 in Singapore.
