15:47
interview
Adam May on the Advanced Imaging Society’s The Close-Up
Adam May, Jim Chabin
Jim Chabin asks Adam about In the Heart of the Sea, and about Pan, Gravity and Edge of Tomorrow before it.
Warner Bros · 2013
Gravity
Stereo supervision from 2010 to delivery: the depth designed with Alfonso Cuarón before the shoot, the stereo VFX at Framestore and the conversion at Prime Focus directed through post.
What it was
Gravity was conceived as a 3D film from its earliest draft. Alfonso Cuarón wanted depth to be a central tool for taking the audience out of the world, and he wanted realistic 3D, the way the eye sees it, rather than objects thrown at the screen.
Chris Parks joined the production in 2010, three years before release, and worked with Cuarón and VFX supervisor Tim Webber on how the depth would serve the story inside the CG environments Framestore was building. The debris sequences were given a rhythm in depth that rose and fell with the threat. Before the jump, a moment of theatre space with Marvin the Martian relaxed the audience so the cut would land harder. At the point where the two astronauts' hands touch and separate, the depth was increased five times over three frames and then let slip back.
The film changed what audiences expected 3D to do in a drama. It won Best 3D Film and Best Stereography at the International 3D Society Awards, and Cuarón's direction won the Academy Award.
Technical approach
Most of the film exists inside computer-generated space, so the stereo could be designed with a virtual native rig rather than a physical one, and multi-rig methods until then used only on animated features gave shots that no optical camera could take. Live-action elements were converted, and the two were cut together so that the join never showed.
To direct the conversion of faces, native headshots were shot at different focal lengths, the "sum head" tests, so the vendors knew exactly how a face should sit in depth. Chris supervised the stereo VFX at Framestore and the conversion at Prime Focus through to the depth grade.
On camera
15:47
interview
36:34
talk
Chris Parks on the 3D in Gravity
Chris Parks
At the 3D Creative Summit, Chris takes the Gravity work apart shot by shot.
3:14
featurette
Gravity: Experience the Third Dimension
The Warner Bros featurette on the 3D.
In their words
Stills
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