Interview – CEO 3ality Steve Schklair
Jan 09, 2011 2 Comments
Steve Schklair is the CEO of 3ality Digital, a world famous 3D production company that are highly involved with the production of live 3D sports events for Sky 3D in the UK.
Steve Schklair has worked in the 3D industry for many years and previously worked at Digital Domain, the company responsible for the world’s most expensive ‘per minute motion picture production’ – Terminator 2: 3D. This is part one of a three part exclusive interview with Steve Schklair who talks about who is paying for 3D content, whether he thinks 2D – 3D conversion is a threat and why 3D sports is being being pushed as 3D’s big genre.
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3DF: How And Why Did 3ality Come About?
Steve Schklair: I wrote the first business plan for 3ality back in 1998 which was early for the 3D transition. I wrote it in response to what had happened in this country (USA) which was a FTC mandate for television to go from analogue to digital. I looked at digital television and for me, the only thing it was good for, other than improved picture and sound, would be 3D.
If you look at audio, you can see a distinct corollary to that so as digital technologies came in, audio went from that little mono speaker at the front of your television set to a set with stereo speakers, then finally to surround sound. The corollary to surround picture is 3D so even in 1997/1998 it was clear to me that television would eventually go 3D because that’s where audio went – it was the only place television could go. However, if television went 3D and you were to aggregate all the 3D content that had been made to launch a 3D channel, you could fill one maybe two days without replaying everything. How are you going to fill the other 360 some odd days? The idea for that was that you have to be able to build 3 hours of content in 3 hours – in other words, you have to be able to do live 3D broadcasting.
So the idea that live broadcast would drive the 3D revolution became the compelling reason for 3ality to start developing this technology.
I hired a small team in the year 2000 and there were certain requirements that I set out. One – it had to work within the existing digital infrastructure that broadcasters had just gone through (SD – HD). If we suddenly approached the broadcasters and said “throw everything you just bought have got because we have got something newer better and cooler”, that was a non starter and we would have lost.
Two – Anything we built had to be able to create real time 3D images, so we had to work out what it was about 3D content that required so much expensive post production just to barely make it work. If the left image and right image aren’t perfectly matched to one and other, you start to get headaches so we had developed a digital acquisition system that was capable of real time broadcast that worked within existing infrastructures. It was small, lightweight, felt like television/movie equipment and produced the images that were perfect straight from the camera which was quite a challenge in those days.”
3DF: What has been 3ality’s relationship with Sky 3D? How did you successfully get to power Sky 3D’s broadcast network?
Steve Schklair: About 3 years ago we did a presentation at NAB in Las Vegas and broadcast the world’s first live 3D broadcast. The Sky 3D guys were in the audience and I guess they were at a point where they were looking for a new product. They thought “That’s it – that’s our new product”.
They met with us immediately after. We put together a test where we shot the Hatten prize fight up in Manchester in 3D. They then tested everybody in the world and every piece of 3D gear out there but eventually came back to us after realising we had the best technology for this job. We put together a deal to build the infrastructure and support for their efforts in launching Sky 3D which they are doing amazingly well.
Our relationship with Sky 3D now is a leading primarily equipment technology vendor. Even though it is not a formal partnership, we call it amongst ourselves a partnership/ relationship. Sky 3D views us as a partner in this whole endeavour and we view them as a partner in a flagship launch of 3D television.
3DF: Why do you feel live 3D sports is being pushed as 3D’s ‘killer app’ ? I must confess, I am not a sports fan but what are the sports fans saying about watching football, darts, golf etc in 3D?
Well you might become a sports fan if you started watching sports in 3D! We are finding is that people who are not sports fans who actually see sports in 3D suddenly become sports fans because it makes it so much more interesting.
If you look at sport from an analytical point of view, most sports are about playing a game in a confined, constrained or defined space. Nothing shows that space as well as 3D where you actually get a spatial feeling for what you are looking at – It really shows the game in a much better light. It makes things that are happening fast even faster and it makes the action more compelling.
I’m going to give you the example that Sky 3D did recently that’s incredibly simple and one wouldn’t have thought would have been good to do in 3D but turns out to be amazing and that’s golf.
First, I didn’t think golf would be great in 3D because it is a very small golf ball – there is no 3D when you have got a white golf ball and a blue sky because there is nothing there to give away any depth. But golf is also a game about hitting a little ball in a defined field space. And that confined space has all kind of contours and obstacles.
Let me tell you about one shot when we did our first golf test. The camera operator followed the ball up to the sky and of course there is no 3D in that but as the ball started to drop, he started zooming out; all of a sudden the banks of the fairway were revealed as the trees came into the shot and you suddenly saw how far away the ball was being hit from. The ball landed on the green and rolled towards the camera. But it didn’t roll straight because the green has contours. I was watching a 2D shot right next to it and the ball just rolled all over the place but in 3D you could actually see the bends of the ground, the contours and why the ball is rolling where it is.
The ball rolled onto the apron which in the 2D looks like a darker patch of grass but in the 3D shot, you realise is downhill from the green – suddenly you realise the golfer is going to have to chip upwards to get out of the green. Golf in 3D is so much more compelling.
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