It just so happened that I was in Mumbai in 2008, and one afternoon I went to the PVR multiplex in Juhu to see the Hindi film Jodhaa Akhbar.
Not unimportantly, only the day before I had seen a stimulating demonstration of stereo 3d (s3d) for film, organized by Quantel at the Taj hotel at Land’s End.
In this particular Mumbai demonstration we were shown many different examples of shots produced in s3d.
I was fascinated by the various examples and especially intrigued by the almost sculptural effect that s3d has on human bodies in movement. Indeed, I found this to be one of the most stimulating aspects s3d has to offer. I also observed that slow motion particles - snow falling, rain and atmospheric effects, for example, become esthetically very beautiful to watch in s3d.
In any case, apart from the fairly well known, and often heavily abused effects of objects and people flying out of the screen towards Joe public to create cheap thrills, and which sometimes do actually have a validity in the film’s story line, s3d in itself can be used to create a sort of hyper-stereo effect on scenarios or wide shots, to the extent of being able to re-create the emotions one can experience with fear of heights or vertigo if desired, while giving a new and more stimulating aspect to the cinematography of location shots – that of depth.
In a certain sense, if used accordingly, it can also give us the sensation of being where the action is actually happening rather than looking at a flat projected image on a screen in front of us.
Sports, theatre and alternative content in general are all added advantages that digital projection will eventually give to theatre owners, and many of these will be produced in 3d in the future - they all represent new opportunities to attract different segments of public in different times of the day to theatres, and these are all factors that are helping to speed up the complete and final adoption of digital projection in these.
At this point in time some of you might be rightly saying to yourselves “what on earth has s3d got to do with Jodhaa Akhbar”, especially since, those that have seen it, know that it was a 2d film.
Well, the point about Jodhaa Akhbar is that I was watching the film in a theatre the day after that Quantel demonstration, and precisely at more or less the center point of the film, where, as often happens in Hindi films, there was a marvelous song and dance scene with hundreds, if not thousands of extras dancing to a lively soundtrack, all dressed with beautiful costumes and shot with exceptional cinematography - I remember visually the large drums close to camera and the multitudes of brilliantly choreographed dancers - all of a sudden I felt goose pimples and a tremble down my spine, as I realized that I was looking at the scene and imagining how it would appear if I could have seen it in stereo 3d in that specific moment in that theatre.
In my imagination it was almost as if I been there during the actual shooting - and yet I could see it consciously with more depth than there really is when we look at “real” 3d with our eyes; because yes, reality is one thing, but entertainment is another, and as film-makers do, we use set design, colours, photography, editing and cinematography orchestrally to create entertaining stories for the “Theatrical Experience”, not just reality shows on the big screen - and s3d offers a new added palette of opportunities above and together with all of the previously known ones, thereby allowing us to innovate the language of cinema for the ever-evolving, and, indeed, always more demanding public.
It was a very emotional scene and I could see that the public in the cinema were completely involved, enraptured and concentrated on it, as I looked from time to time to judge their reactions too (something I had learned to do years ago in order to understand what the public likes and doesn’t like – a tip from the Italian film director Sergio Leone who used to sit behind and to one side of the screen invisibly to the audience, so as to judge the strong and weak points of his films, and which was related to me by Giuseppe Tornatore), but the emotions ran wilder still in me as I imagined each one of those thousands of extras and dancers and drummers more as a moving sculpture than as a flat image; indeed moving sculpture in which I could almost feel the vibes personally and physically; in essence, something I could almost touch rather than just watch, and something that also made me feel much more drawn into the story.
Similar thoughts and sensations ran through my head when I saw round about the same time some excerpts from Mystic India, another beautifully photographed film that I could imagine to have been even more exceptional had it been shot in stereo 3d, and a film where the cinematography in 65mm must have been conceived to give the sensation of more depth or three dimensionality in the first place – one of the many examples where we can see how cinematographers strive to make films look as three dimensional as they can on a flat screen, and something which is now, with the advent of s3d, ever closer to their grasp, and which will also imply a whole new language to be developed for using it all efficiently for story-telling.
While watching Jodhaa Akhbar I began to understand why the public - seeing the first 3d music concerts like that of U2 - actually stood up and danced in the theatres where they were projected in s3d. I’ve since been involved in the stereo post production of Ligabue’s Campovolo Concert film, so I’ve seen first hand how stimulating it is to feel as if one was actually at the concert, and yet able to see so many more details than from one fixed position if one had been there at the actual event. I saw the première of this and the audience created additional surround sound in the theatre.
I guess it’s true to say that the increased perception of being an integral part of the show rather than a mere spectator of it - especially when we’re looking at music concerts, sports and the like - will help kindle the fire of why s3d will take on in a big way in the coming years. It will increase the emotional involvement and enhance the entertaining experience compared to current “traditional” cinema.
The acting will assume even more importance, as in theatre, because we can see powerful new aesthetics and perceive much more of the real acting performances with the addition of the third dimension.
James Cameron recently spoke at the IBC convention in Amsterdam about the use of s3d for films. In his view, s3d lends itself to all film projects. He mentioned that there is not a single genre that is more or less suited to s3d. His contention is that s3d has more to offer in terms of added value to low budget films than it does to the kind of huge budget visual effects films like Avatar.
Personally I’m inclined to agree with him, and I’ve noted that every single director that has chosen to make films in s3d thus far, has decided to go on making them in the future. This, I believe, is because, like Wim Wenders in “Pina”, or Martin Scorsese with “Hugo Cabret” they have discovered the new opportunities in story telling that stereo adds to the existing palette, and they’d like to carry on developing them.
In some recent tests I made for an Italian director, he told me that he wanted to make the audience feel that they were in the same room as where the action was going on. I figured that we could achieve this by appropriate lensing and angling of the cameras, making the scene seem to be happening on the theatre floor. Consequently, the screen in the theatre appears to be a huge window looking onto a live stage right in front of the audience, and, I’ve noted, this indeed does have the effect of making the viewing public more intrigued by what’s going on, more intimately connected, much as if they were in constantly privileged positions while watching a staged play.
My recent experiences in shooting and posting stereo 3d allow me to state that, when well prepared, it doesn’t take any longer to shoot in s3d than in 2d, and that, with today’s constantly evolving technologies, it can be done for a very small increase in costs over traditional 2d shooting.
