John Carter 3D behind the scenes exclusive
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is a lengthy article on the 3D work in John Carter]
3D Focus: Can you elaborate on your new 2D to 3D conversion technique?
Scott Willman: Anytime you want to convert or separate anything you have to identify certain objects in the frame and give them individual depth. How you give them individual depth various from company to company. Ours takes a more visual effects approach and says – if I’m in a 3D environment like your animated character would be or your virtual set would be, there is no reason we can’t use that same 3D environment and render it through a second eye camera instead of selecting a character or selecting someone’s face or nose and saying 'this should be this deep' or 'this should be this big' or 'this person’s running towards the horizon so they need to shrink this much'. We are able to project that plate image onto a piece of geometry that physically does run towards the horizon and vanishes properly and works with the rest of the visual effects elements seamlessly. It becomes a lot less arbitrary and a lot more realistic.
3D Focus: Do you think conversion is now better than native?
Scott Williams: Conversion and native both have their benefits. If given the right amount of time, the right budget and the right people, conversion can give you a level of control that native can’t give you. You can say this is our hero character or this is where the audience should be looking so let’s give a little bit more depth in that area or maybe not so much in the background and you worry about specularity and reflections that maybe don’t match between the eyes which you often get. Some of that is not even there working from a single image. Which one is better is a debate that will go one forever I am sure but I think conversion does have a place and can give creatives a lot of control.
Courtney Vanderslice-Law: I think from a producer’s point Scott’s being incredibly modest. He and Bob Whitehill working together have made John Carter look the way it looks. From a layman’s point of view you would expect that native 3D would look better because it's shot in native 3D but the process we went through shows it can work. Unfortunately not all the results of conversions have been up to the standard of what the John Carter conversion is. ...
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