After I have changed my virtual camera’s into 3d camera’s (a camera with 2 lenses, 1 for the right, one for the left eye), I put on my stupid cardboard red and blue glasses. It gives at least an impression of how the 3rd dimension will be perceived. When I am satisfied with the result, I render (calculate) the images, one movie for each eye. The next step is the be find downstairs. I can watch the rendered files in ‘real’ 3D, with real colors on our 3D flatscreen TV. I think the set is very nice but we don’t often watch 3d films on it. It gives Liesbeth headaches. So I would be obliged to watch during daytime because the TV is occupied after dawn. But watching during daylight is too tiresome. It’s true that 3d is still in it’s infancy, the headaches are not uncommon, but as with children (I presume, I don’t have them), that does’t keep people from loving it.

When I am happy with what I saw on 3D-TV, the next step is into my car, to drive for an hour and test the film in the real cinema. If I don’t like what I see, the process repeats itself. Just until 13 minutes of flat film has gained in depth.

If by chance you have a set of anaglyph glasses, this is what you see in 3D as I see it when I am editing the camera:

Beside posters we made postcards, badges and magnets (!). I haven’t seen them myself yet. I am curious.

When we were mixing the sound for Chase with Jeroen Nadorp at Kommer’s Studios in The Hague, Jeroen told me he stumbled upon OpenDCP. An open source piece of software that brings home baking DCP’s to the less fortunate, independent filmmaker.The first test didn’t bring what they should, image was great, sound became an awful shrieking whistle. It came out that DCP servers (apparatus that playbacks your DCP) don’t accept 16-bit sound files, only 24-bits. That was good knowledge, but after the first test, done in a cinema in Paris with a bunch of absolutely uninterested and rude technicians, we didn’t have a cinema to test again. To run a DCP you still need expansive software or a cinema. Since I don’t have both we had to find an alternative.

We contacted the Clermont-Ferrand film festival and by chance they knew a place. The village of Gannat had the honor to be the first completely digitally equipped cinema in the Auvergne. Quite an achievement for a town with only 6000 inhabitants. Richard Morier runs the place and was more than happy to help. Since a week I have access to a cinema with all the equipment you can wish, I can use it every tuesday and thursday to test DCP’s. So this week I could finally see Chase as it was meant to be. With the help of Jos Herni (Linux, Tweet and OpenSource addict ;-) I managed to put the whole film on a USB-stick, stuck it in the server and, voila. 13 minutes of triangles with sound and image as they were meant to be. All on a device smaller than my, already tiny, index finger.

So I passed my deadline, and decided to gave the film priority over the blog. Many more new deadlines were skipped. I delevoped a terrible reputation. But as a result from all this unreliable behavior the film, apart from it’s transfer to 35 mm film,  is now finally finished. And I realize that I am more pleased with the result then I thought possible some months ago.

On top of that last friday we got the news that Chase had been selected for the prestigious Labo competition in the Clermont-Ferand short-film festival. The biggest short-film event on the planet.

So, I started re-editing the film, and that feels like switching on the turbo. In two hours I moved with the incredible speed of 1 minute/hour. Or to make it clearer, by re-editing I threw away 2 minutes of not yet produced material. Making the film faster and lighter. For the moment no more tunnel vision of upcoming headlights. At least for a day…

I found a little test, 3 years old. I didn’t know how to build my characters at the time. This is the enemy with a heartbeat (you won’t hear it, it’s muted). I think it lacks movement, it hasn’t got an organic feel. It’s more like a robot. I still think it is pretty, but useless for the film.

*Nicolas is owner of Autour de Minuit, succesfull animation production house in Paris. He produced Logorama, an Oscar winning animation totally constructed with logo’s.

The shot I am talking about starts at 3:23.

If you compare it with what I have done there is obviously still room for improvement.

Beside Chase the ‘flat’ film we will also develop a 3D, or stereoscopic version. We have a 3D television in our living. There is hardly any content available, but it’s great for testing 3d animation I have made myself in my studio. Unfortunately this still only works with glasses. One day we will hope to get rid of those, the production of 3D content will benefit strongly from the absence of glasses. I found as astonishingly simple example on how to develop 3D for small screens. Without any modification for iPad or iPhone the user get’s the impression that icons are popping out of the screen. The technique cleverly uses the build in camera to track the position of the eyes and uses that information to determine under what angle one is looking at the screen. Beside the film we trying to develop a game for iPad. This would be a great way to immerse the gamer further into the game. Read more about it here.