Anticipation mounts for Baz Luhrmann’s 3D The Great Gatsby

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EXCLUSIVE – Baz Luhrmann discusses the use of 3D to achieve a greater connection with the drama's characters writes Adrian Pennington

After the critical and commercial success of Martin Scorsese's Hugo and Ang Lee's Life of Pi, anticipation is growing ahead of another major literary 3D feature adaptation, The Great Gatsby.

Filmed four times previously, notably in 1949 and 1974, F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic is retold by Baz Luhrmann as a parable for our times. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan it charts the lives and loves of an elite and the impact on them of sudden wealth.

From correspondence and conversations with Luhrmann, and key crew including director of photography Simon Duggan and stereographer Alonso Homs during the closing stages of filming in Australia late 2011, it was clear that the entire project had been crafted with 3D at its heart.

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The film's trailer features wide shots in the manner of movie classics from the 1930s and ‘40s filled with Luhrmann's typically flamboyant visual style and choreographed flows of movement. His ambition is to create a sense of being present in the Jazz Age where everything was new, technologically advanced and sophisticated.

“I grew mindful that Fitzgerald was obsessed with all things new and modern, especially as he was writing Gatsby: the new cinema, the new radio, the new skyscraper, this new thing called jazz, the automobile,” the director explained. “I felt that I couldn’t address his Gatsby as a much-loved museum piece. My mindset was to address it something like Fitzgerald might have, as a piece in an age full of new possibilities enabled by new ideas and new technologies. Seen this way, shooting in 3D made perfect sense."

Having adapted breakthrough film Strictly Ballroom in 1992 from his own play while studying at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art, Luhrmann said he appreciated the similarities that 3D has to a theatrical stage performance where he could create depth by blocking actors and designing set pieces.

He also drew inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller Dial M for Murder, itself an adaptation of a successful stage play which takes place in the confines of a single setting, the living room of a London flat.

“That film proved for me, how fundamentally different 3D is in terms of dramatic staging,” he said. “It has a force that is born quite simply from its ability to capture great actors playing against each other in a tight space and toward the camera, something like the theatre.”

Before shooting, Luhrmann conducted a series of tests to help him grasp the visual grammar that would work for the story. These included a spell in LA at the Sony 3D Technology Centre and time at production company Bazmark’s New York offices with cast including Di Caprio and Tobey Maguire in the autumn of 2010.

In these lab-style tests, using a low-tech 3D set up, Luhrmann was able to demonstrate to himself how a performance might be captured using stereo cameras. He later used a 3D camcorder to help scout locations while production designer and co-producer Catherine Martin used a handheld 3D camera to envision how her costume designs would look.

“The main dramatic tension in the story is between Gatsby, Buchanan and Daisy,” said producer Barrie M Osborne. “In 3D you feel the force of these characters and the power of the actor’s personality comes across on screen so much more.”

This was the single biggest take away for Luhrmann’s team; that 3D could be used to enhance performance and draw out the humanity in a character. It became the overriding goal for the stereo approach to The Great Gatsby.

It's to be hoped that the six months additional time in post production following reset of the film's release from Christmas 2012 to this May, has preserved this vision intact.

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