John Knoll Talks Star Wars 3-D
JK: It's mostly being the arbiter of good taste. There's a lot of different ways to play stereo. How deep do you go with it? Where do you play convergence? Do you rack convergence? Do you do floating windows? How stylistic do you go on wide shots? Do you leave them realistic? Or do we need to see stereo even on a wide shot with nothing close to camera where you wouldn't really see much. A lot of those kinds of questions need to be answered and I'm trying to provide the answers that result in good-looking stereo that looks to the largest extent possible that it looks like it was shot in stereo; and not with the weird miniaturization or the cardy look or the warped spaces or the edge artifacts that we've seen in other stereo conversions.
JK: George and I talked a little bit about the character of stereo and there's a little bit of a different stylization of what you saw on Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, for example. One of the things that Jim did throughout Avatar is a relatively fixed rule: for the most part, camera converges on subject. So that makes whoever you're focused on, whoever's speaking, whatever the subject of the shot is converged at the screen plane. And so if that person walks forward in the shot, we actually rack convergence with them so that they stay at the screen. And that worked pretty well for Jim; it's a convention that served him well. That's not the convention that, for example, DreamWorks and Pixar are doing on their stereo projects. What they tend to do is define a good use of volume for a given shot -- a lot of the DreamWorks seems to be about one-third forward, two-thirds back -- and that's fixed for the shot. So even for the character that's walking forward, we don't rack convergence with them. And we're going a little bit more toward that style than Jim's style.
BD: So, what's your plan?
JK: What we're doing that one-third forward, two-thirds back use of depth. We'll be using floating windows to maximize good, usable, depth dynamic range. And then, stylistically, I go fairly realistic with the stereo. I don't like hyper stereo and there are a lot of shots in the Star Wars pictures that are meant to be big vista spectacle. It's a big wide view of a city or a space battle, and there's nothing particularly close to camera. Shooting in stereo, you wouldn't get a lot of depth. So I'm not going to go hyper stereo on that because it has a really ugly artifact, in my view, of that miniaturization. You don't want to see that these ships are really closer than the star field and undermine all the effort that we tried to put in to make those scenes have vast scale. So I'm going to play all the wide shots more realistically and rely on the overall context of the sequence where you're right there with the characters, experiencing this with them. And there are loads and loads of action where we're in tighter and closer, and that's where the stereo shines.
BD: The prequels will certainly offer a different experience with all the CG.
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Ah yes, nicely put, eveyrone.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS PREMIERE
Can't wait!!!!!!!!! Just to be able to see the Duel of the Fates, Naboo, Jar Jar, Jango, the battle of Geonosis, Anakin & Padme, the space battle over Coruscant, speeder chase through Coruscant, battle of the hero's, the trench run, sand people, Cloud City, speeder biker chase etc. on the big screen again is enough for me!!!! I haven't seen anything in this new 3D yet, The Phantom Menace will be first. I'm glad they're starting in the proper order, I-VI is the ONLY way to watch Star Wars!!! They are NO trilogies, only the Star Wars Saga! Six films, one story! Thank you George, and John!
Money talks, box-office reciepts and DVD revenue are what makes decisions, not the retardation of fanboys who cant grow up.
Okay I'm still trying to figure out where Knoll insulted Cameron because I didn't read it or picked up on it. There is genuinely a difference between what Cameron used 3D in Avatar and what Dreamworks did in 3D. Cameron wanted to create a virtual environment and others just want to wow audiences. I'm glad Knoll realizes that the long shots in movies aren't supposed to look up close in real life and applying that to 3D.
I agree Lucas has destroyed star wars like he has indiana jones. The 3-D thing is just further ruining it.
He can spend 20 million to put jar jar freakin binks in 3-D but won't restore the legendary original star wars trilogy from 1977-1983. Its madness!
What i would ove is restored prints of the theatrical versions of the original star wars trilogy. Not the 1997 special edition, or 2004 video cut.
And if any star wars deserve to be in 3-D it should be the real original trilogy not the bad cgi version.
I remember when they recreated some scenes for imax from the theatrical versions for a ben burrt documentary. That was better than this cgi crap prequel retreads will be in 3-D
I don't think that was Jimmy Mac that made the post you're referring to; the guy (or gal) simply ended with Jimmy's famous quote to Roger Ebert, and they attributed his name to it, as often seen with stand-alone quotes.
All you Prequel haters - just stop wasting your breath. Stop criticizing and hating the prequel for what it is not. No, it's not the Original Trilogy. Nothing ever will be. So many of you haters wanted 3 movies of nothing but Jedi battles and Vader. You wanted a whole trilogy of dark and adult like Matrix or the glut of brooding superhero movies. Well, that wasn't the story George had to tell. But he is filling in some of the blanks with Clone Wars and future SW projects. Enjoy it all for what it is - more SW stories. And if you don't like it, why waste your time spouting off? Move on and find something that you do like.
And understand that the OT was a once in a lifetime phenomena for those of us that were of the right age and grew up with it. Nothing would be able to compare with that magic. Nor would we quite be able to experience any new SW films quite like we did when we were younger and so readily and easily able to lose ourselves in the fantasy of cinema. The OT was delicious cake. The Prequel and now the Clone Wars and everything that comes after such as a 3D release is just icing on that cake.
And to Jimmy Mac - love your Forcecast - thanks for such a great venue for us fans. You guys rock! I do agree with your comments here. But no need to specifically bash someone's personal political stance.
To all the Avatar fanboys, Knoll is basically saying that for their purposes, the other approach works better for them. Don't forget Avatar was developed for 3D, Star Wars was not.
Personally, I found How to Train a Dragon too pop-up bookish. Anyway, Knoll has a great track record, he knows what he is doing, so I am quite sure he will deliver.
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