It may sound like a parody of a 1960s children’s TV series,
but that’s the greeting people get when they visit our new stereoscopic 3D blog
– Stereoville. The blog, which was launched last week, will be updated
regularly (we’ll make sure of that, if only to see more grown men wandering around
the office in 3D glasses) and contains the latest stereoscopic news and videos (of
puppets) – we’ll explain that later.
What we really wanted to do was give people an understanding
of how the technology works, and the kind of quality that can be achieved. We
needed a way to let people know about these exciting new tools. Everyone seems
to be doing a lot of talking about 3D, and we just thought it was time to step
in and show the benefits instead.
Of course, visitors to the blog will be met with a red and
blue haze coating everything from our video creations to the banners and
titles. Stepping back to the days of ‘Jaws 3-D’ (keep an eye out for our own rendition,
‘Shark!’), the Stereoville blog is a full-blown stereoscopic wonder. That means
you’re going to need to get your hands on a pair of our anaglyph glasses to
appreciate the effect but, we’re generous people, so just send us a request
using the form on the site and they’ll be winging their way to you in no time.
With Hollywood
now choosing to release stereoscopic 3D films as often as they can – this year
alone, there are 21 coming to a screen near you – it seemed time to throw our
hat into the ring. Naturally, we thought the best way to rise to that challenge
was to create a video of melon-headed puppets and a giant (ish) man-eating
shark. At least, that’s what you get when you combine the efforts of one senior
consultant/Geppetto wannabe, four designers and two copywriters with peculiarly
durable arms. Not that the blog is exclusively about fun videos – honest.
When you’ve watched our videos, you can take a look at the slightly
more serious demonstration of negative parallax – the effect of reaching out of
the screen towards your audience. There’s also the technical diagram of our
stereoscopic workflow and, by following the nicely-inquisitive link ‘Can’t see
the 3D?’, you can watch an explanation of why 5% of people can’t see 3D images.
The question is: why did we choose to use anaglyph 3D on the
blog? Well, even though you’re unlikely to see a pair of the good old
red-and-blues waiting by the cinema door nowadays, anaglyph 3D is far from
dead. It just happens that technology has found a way to improve on that – our workflow
can produce both. You create footage using the same set of equipment and only
then decide on your output when it comes to editing. As much as we’d love to
show off how good polarised 3D looks, we guessed that visitors to the blog probably
wouldn’t want to invest in special monitors or projector setups just to take a
look at the preview.
It’s an exciting time for filmmakers, whether they’re media
students in a classroom or broadcast professionals in a studio. 3D looks set to
be a big thing in the coming years, and Stereoville is just one way to show
that the tools to create dynamic stereoscopic footage are becoming available
for anyone to use.
Of course, if watching videos and reading about the science
behind the process isn’t your thing, you can download examples of our own work
and have a play around at editing them using the free Cineform Neo3D Final Cut
Pro plug-in. It’s great for getting a hands-on feel for the technology!
To pay a visit to Stereoville, click here.