As 3-D gradually becomes the new “next” technology we embrace…stunning logos are now possible, along with incredible film experiences.
See new 3-D logo (below)
Learn more about how The Wizard of Oz was transformed into 3-D, coming to an IMAX near you!
According to a Wall Street Journal article several months ago:
Run every millimeter of a 1939 film like "The Wizard of Oz" through today's advanced visual effects processes, and you're bound to expose its flaws, reveal its hidden beauty and maybe even bury a conspiracy theory once and for all.
"The Wizard of Oz" has been converted to 3-D for a one-week national IMAX theater run beginning Sept. 20 and a (slightly early) 75th anniversary Blu-ray set due in October. First, the urban-myth debunking: The visual-effects professionals who have enhanced the film are prepared to state unequivocally that there was no distraught Munchkin hanging himself from a tree at the end of the first Tin Man scene.
"It really wasn't a Munchkin committing suicide. What you were seeing was a live pelican in the background flapping its wings," says Chris Del Conte, a vice president at Prime Focus World and co-leader of the company's conversion of "Wizard" into three dimensions.
Mr. Del Conte and his colleagues ought to know. Probably no one has examined the "Wizard of Oz" in such fine detail, even the most rabid fans, whose critical gaze the modern filmmakers anticipate.
"We knew we'd be touching something that would be judged in a way that I don't think any other 3-D movie has," Mr. Del Conte says. "We say, 'Bring it on.' You're talking to the same company that did the 3-D conversions of 'Star Wars' episodes 1, 2 and 3. We get the idea of a fan base."
Pixel-count numbers indicate how widely a viewer's left- and right-eye images will vary, thus how far forward (negative) or back objects appear in 3-D.Prime Focus World
A visualization shows near objects as lighter. Prime Focus World
The conversion of "Wizard" to 3-D and giant-size IMAX started with a high-resolution digital version of the film that Warner Bros., which owns many classic MGM films, created from original Technicolor negatives for the film's Blu-ray release in 2009.
Ned Price, vice president of mastering for Warner Technical Operations, has been working with "The Wizard of Oz" for 24 years. Until now, he's never been happy with prior in-house 3-D tests. "This is kind of strange, but it didn't look natural," he says. "First of all 'Wizard' doesn't look natural at all. But things looked a bit cut out. You didn't have as much control over shaping. And it was very slow and very, very expensive."
Lately, new technology and overseas labor have lessened the costs of converting to 3-D. In a conversion job, filmmakers and 3-D professionals, often called stereographers, decide how much depth to give everything on the screen. It isn't just about landscapes receding into the distance or objects flying out. Different computer settings can make a room feel spacious or cramped. Characters and their anatomies are given mass. How far from her leg does the hem of Dorothy's dress extend? Is the Tin Man's body round or oval?
"Everything is sculpted as if you were sculpting with clay," says Justin Jones, senior stereographic supervisor at Prime Focus.
Munchkins were made to look slightly smaller using an optical effect that can make objects given exaggerated 3-D volume seem miniaturized. For the Wicked Witch, Mr. Jones says, "we wanted the audience to feel a little uneasy. So we tried different looks, pulling her nose out, her chin, the length of her fingers. We wanted to keep it subtle, just making her a little more uncomfortable to look at. Hopefully the audience doesn't know why, they just feel it." The stereographers of "World War Z" did something similar with their 3-D zombies.
One early decision was whether to keep the black-and-white portion of the film in 2D, then jump to 3-D after the twister carries Dorothy to Oz and the film blooms into vivid color, bringing a new dimension to the contrast between her two worlds.
"Originally, that was the expectation," Mr. Price says. Even going back to L. Frank Baum's book, he says, "Kansas is characterized as this flat, dusty looking land." But, he says, it didn't look right keeping it that way (he also says there was "early pressure from upper executives to be more and more 3-D") so they went with a dialed-down 3-D effect in sepia-toned Kansas and greater use of depth in Oz, similar to how the makers of last year's unofficial prequel "Oz the Great and Powerful" handled it.
Director Victor Fleming's style for showing off the lush land of Oz presented other challenges. Modern films have hundreds of quick cuts, and a typical shot might last 72 frames—a few seconds. Here the camera frequently lingers. The shot where Dorothy first steps into Oz lasts 1,800 frames, more than a minute, as a crane-mounted camera pans slowly across exotic flowers and trees and a stream, with objects in the foreground and background. "You're able to give the audience time to look around," Mr. Jones says. "That's great from a creative standpoint. But on another level it means we have to be more accurate, because the audience does have time to look around."
Long before CGI, "The Wizard of Oz" employed advanced visual effects of its day. The tornado raging behind Dorothy when she is on her porch is from a miniature landscape filmed separately and projected on a screen behind her. Other scenes, including the heroes' march toward Emerald City, employ irregular-shaped matte paintings superimposed over live-action film. But the backdrops on many "Wizard" sets, of skies and hills and the yellow-brick road, often look like school-play paint jobs and make it obvious the scenes were filmed on a stage.
"The characters would basically skip right up to them. At the point where the backdrops hit the floor, that was very difficult," says Mr. Price. The stereographers decided not to extend the yellow-brick road far into the distance—stretching backward would have the effect of minimizing characters in the foreground. Rather, they pulled forward certain landscape elements on the backdrops.
Fortunately, the way the original production designers layered their soundstages from front to back lent itself to 3-D. In flying monkey scenes, "you have the trees in the foreground and then you have these nice clearings for the monkeys to land, and then you have backgrounds," says Mr. Jones. "Really what I loved about those scenes is that there's a lot of leaves and debris flying around that you don't really pick up in 2D, but in stereo you're able to see that it's an environment that's alive."
Taking the 3-D version to IMAX format was a separate step, and a way to pay homage to the original. One of the 300-plus IMAX theaters where the film will screen in 3-D is the grand opening of the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood, formerly Grauman's, where "The Wizard of Oz" premiered in 1939. IMAX has its own process for converting video, but the sheer size can expose unwelcome detail.
"I remember the first time seeing an image of the Scarecrow on the screen. His face is a burlap bag," says Lorne Orleans, IMAX's senior vice president of film production, who led the IMAX remastering. The homemade look of the costumes in "The Wizard of Oz" may be part of its charm. But the company rejects far more proposed film conversions than it undertakes.
An IMAX test of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," filmed in 1986, didn't handle the magnification so well, recalls Greg Foster, CEO of IMAX Entertainment.
"We saw the staples in Leonard Nimoy's ears," he says. "We saw the whales in the harbor were cardboard whales. As much as we wanted to do it, we passed."
If you liked this post--please "follow" me below and share with your friends. I
f you'd like to get more great advertising and marketing ideas--CLICK HERE and sign up for our FREE monthly Marketing & Business Update e-newsletter!
Comments
Post a Comment