Prime Focus 3D Exclusive

Apr 01, 2011 No Comments by Jonathan Tustain

3DF: What are disparity maps?

A visual representation of the difference between what each eye views.

3DF: During the Ravensbourne event you showed some clips of wildlife programming converted to 3D – at what point do you think the cost will reach an affordable level where quality conversion of television back catalogue material can be achieved?

Within the past 8 or 9 months we have talked to all the major channels including ITV, BBC, Sky and specific channels SyFy and Discovery about 3D and what to expect, how to plan for it and how we can support a show. At the moment, a lot of TV channels, apart from live action sports and some films, are struggling to put 3D content out there and open up those back catalogues.

Prime Focus does plan on bringing out an affordable proprietary solution within the next 12 months to allow us to offer near cinema quality resolution 3D at a price that is affordable to broadcasters. That’s one of our plans for the next 12 months.

3DF: Are you currently talking to any television back catalogue owners you can share?

There are three films going through the facility in the last few months which are arguably the biggest films on the planet and we are involved heavily in broadcast but we are just not allowed to talk about it.

3DF: I understand that you contributed stereo 3D visual effects to 'Avatar'. Can you expand on that please?

We were a visual effects vendor on Avatar. The main sequence we were involved in was the holographic halo table area in the film. Within that there were a lot of 3D graphics visuals within the monitors and video screens. We were required to put depth into those so effectively we were a visual effects vendor like many others providing CG for the shots. That is where we started developing this tool for conversion which led into Clash.

3DF: What is View-D? I understand it is deployed after the rotoscoping is complete; is this correct?

View D is what we call our proprietary piece of 2D 3D conversion software but it can also be used as a generic term for the whole 3D conversion process. It is so much more than just creating volume in the characters; it is about time management, production management, asset management, artists delivering shots etc. Tasking is where we choose the elements to rotoscope, next it is the rotoscoping itself. Once those rotoscoped elements are delivered to one of our facilities they get ingested which is where the View D process starts.

3DF: What is the most time consuming part of the 2D to 3D conversion process?

Traditionally rotoscoping is the most time consuming so to respond to that we have got a number of facilities throughout India. We have many hundreds of artists rotoscoping thousands upon thousands of frames but we are still able to turn around shots very quickly.

3DF: I keep hearing about Fusion – what is this?

Fusion is what we built View-D into so Fusion, much like Nuke, is a visual effects tool.

3DF: Give me a sense of scale required for conversion – how many artists do you require? What are their roles? How do you split and manage work amongst people?

All the rotoscoping is done in India. We are constantly recruiting and training so it is an evolving workforce which now consists of over 1000 roto artists in India. We do share the global resource so take something like Narnia for example. On that we had 75 artists in London completing over 600 shots. We had about the same number of people in LA completing 450 shots in less time. Clash was completed in 8 weeks which was start (rotoscoping) to finish (delivery). Now we have slightly longer but once conversion is finished we probably still have about 8 weeks to complete the conversion so we still require a huge resource to meet the deadlines.

It is just one big visual effects show but instead of 800 shots we’ve got 2000 shots so we break it down by scene and spread that globally.

Prime Focus has databases and storage networks so we can move data and shots around very quickly. For example, our artists working on shots in India don’t need to send the whole rendered 2K sequence to us; they can just send us the Fusion file which is very small and we can then render the shot here in London.

With us being in the middle and LA and India being on the other end of each time zone we can work 24 hours a day as we did on Narnia. Towards the end of Narnia we were doing regular daily sessions with the client throughout the day. On one particularly complicated sequence on Narnia we started one session, presented a shot from India, the client gave notes on that shot, the notes were fed into the database immediately to one of our co-ordinators, that information went back to India, the artists worked and made the change iteration, re-supplied the shot back to us and by the end of that daily session, which was only about an hour or two we presented the shot again. The client would say, “we’ve already seen this one” and we would say “No you haven’t ,we’ve made the change” and they were blown away by that and to be honest I was blown away by that. That is how quickly and efficiently the machine can work and that is why we maintain our status as the market leader in this.

3DF: During the Ravensbourne 3D Storytelling event you showed a complicated clip from your conversion work on Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Can you expand on that and explain some of the challenges. How many shots, artists, locations etc.

Yes, that was from Narnia. In fact, I was referring to that sequence in my last answer! It is a massive 360 degree tracking shot. The camera comes up high, swoops up over the boat, through the boat, through the rigging, turns round 180 degrees, up the mast, follows the mouse up to the top and rests there. This was a 1500 hundred frame shot. You’ve got constant movement, lots of rigging, fine hair detail, characters, visual effects shots in there, lots of depth as well so in some respects a 3D visual effects conversion shot does not get much tougher than that. To make that work the shot had to be broken down and spread over teams so we had multiple artists all working together as a team but working on different points within the shot. You slowly build it and build it.

3DF: What is the hardest type of shot to convert?

Stereo conversion gets more challenging the more depth there is in a shot.

3DF: Barry Sandrew from Legend 3D told me that conversion can be visually better than filming in stereo. Can you add any comments to that?

I completely agree. We are often fighting but 3D is all an illusion anyway. From our point of view, we work on hybrid shows. Right now Judge Dredd is going through the facility. Judge Dredd is predominantly shot in stereo with stereo visual effects but there are elements of 2D 3D conversion in Judge Dredd.

Within the world of 3D there are three levels of control. Your ultimate is something like Avatar; it’s all 3D created within a digital CGI world. The next level of control is 2D to 3D conversion in the hands of a company like Prime Focus whereby we maintain control throughout the process and can genuinely create controlled attractive 3D. Finally you have shooting in stereo which can be the least controlled environment. You are locked into what you are doing on the set and there are so many other parameters that come into play like lighting, contrast, camera set up, movement etc.

3DF: Stereo conversion is all quite new – how easy is it to employ people to work on your conversions or do you need to employ people from other VFX roles and train them?

I’ve recruited everybody that has come through the London door. We’ve recruited guys who have got quite a lot of visual effects experience in a previous facility but we also able to take on people straight from a compositing training course or technical experience in graphic design. The key thing is having that desire to make a career within the conversion industry because we need to train people in the technique we developed in house.

Quite often your first job in a VFX house would be working on a prep scene, working in roto and learning your skills there. Then you start with some low level compositing and work your way up. However, with so much of the roto and prep work being outsourced to other countries it is harder to find those entry level positions in London. Just by the nature of stereo conversion, is does not require those years of compositing skills. We can take on people, train them up and give them that entry level in a visual effects house. Aside from being a conversion house in London, Prime Focus film is also a visual effects house so we can offer genuine career advancement.

3DF: Are you concerned at the new 2D – 3D conversion companies popping up around the world promising to do conversion cheaply?

You can look at it in terms of quality but you can look at it in terms of cost. Not every director and cinematographer is going to be comfortable with a 3D rig on their show. Some directors can be accustomed to shooting in very specific ways with all the complications. It is not just about creating 3D to make money at the box office, it is about making good quality films in 3D so we just become part of the post process. In the same way that you want your film to have the best visual effects, the best colour grade, the best sound etc, you’re going to want it to have the best in 3D. I feel we are going to see the market change over the next couple of years and more boutique facilities will open up. However, no studio is going to put all their 1500 visual effects shots in one house; you have the main vendor and then you have a number of supporting vendors supporting the process so that is probably the way its going to go with 2D – 3D conversion.

Costs will be driven down but I’ve been to a lot of the same type of seminars you have and I am staggered by the amount of bad 3D that gets presented. It is heartening when I look at the work we do and the high quality that we offer. There is a premium to be paid for a) – offering high quality and b) being able to offer the volume on schedule and on time to get it in the cinema and TV.

Article written by Jonathan. Contact