[photo-3d] Journey of Man

[Ray Zone <r3dzone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Springsteen wrote:

<I've never balked at any price for a Ray Zone product  - well, maybe
on eBay - and I am otherwise pretty frugal, so this speaks for itself.>

Ray Zone responds:

Thank you Bruce.  I appreciate your support.

Bruce: Incidentally, there is no photo credit on the two demo pairs of the
movie schlubs - I am assuming they were shot by Ray with a Realist
format camera?

Ray: No, those demo pairs were shot with a Nimslo Stereo camera by John
Hora, ASC, who was the director of photography on the "Banquine" sequence of
Journey of Man.  For the stereo pairs in the magazine I pulled the first and
fourth frames from the 4 captured by the Nimslo camera.

Bruce: I do look forward to seeing the film for sure!  I'm a big Cirque du
Soleil fan, though never having been to a live show.  They overcome
my misgivings about traditional circuses (circi?) that deal in
miserable animals and gaudy outfits.  A costumer friend of my wife's
answered an ad they put in the trade classifieds for a wardrobe worker
with good swimming skills to help in their underwater Vegas show (if I
remember right for a change).  How can you not love an enterprise
that creates jobs like that?

Ray: The underwater performers are in one of the amazing opening acts of
Journey of Man.  The technical details of the complex lighting and 3-D
filming of this underwater act are covered in the American Cinematographer
article.

Bruce: I do have a technical question.  The Iwerks theater our club just
visited gave us a little backstage tour (thanks, Dave Williams) and
the guy described the system as 15/70 format.  In the article, Ray
refers to the 15/65 camera.  Is that really the same format - I'm
guessing the former refers to the total film width of 70, the latter
to an image height of 65?

Ray: IMAX 3-D and all 70mm release prints are originated on 65mm film and
then optically printed to 70mm film with the additional width provided for
the optical sound track.  15/65 or 15/70 refers to the number of
perforations per frame for the horizontally travelling film which creates a
very large image area 1.913 x 2.740 inches.  5/65 mm or 5/70 is vertically
travelling film with 5 perforations along the side for each frame and an
image area of 1.913 x 0.868 inches (aspect ratio of 2.2:1).

Bruce: It will be interesting to see the results of the new adjustable
convergence/interocular/window camera.  The history-in-your-lap effect at
"Mark Twain's America" was a bit overwhelming after a while.

Ray:  Up to Journey of Man, the IMAX 3-D films were shot with the twin
lenses of the camera in parallel.  As a result the stereo window was at
infinity and all of the imagery came off the screen.  This has been the
unspoken IMAX 3-D philosophy to date and the feeling has been that the large
screens are so wide that the peripheral vision doesn't really notice
violations of the stereo window or "banding" at the edge of the field of
view.  With the new converging lenses on the IMAX 3-D camera the DP and
Director can now use screen space behind the stereo window.

With the exception of the forest sequence shot with the Iwerks 3-D rig all
of Journey of Man was shot with a fixed interocular of 2.85"  The new film
"Ultimate G's" or "The Flying G's" to be released soon uses a variable
interocular as well as adjustable convergence.