In The Heart of the Sea

What it was

Ron Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle gave the film a stylised look drawn from the impressionist painters of the period. That put the stereo inside a stylistic constraint while the story demanded that the audience feel the terror and majesty of the open ocean. Chris Parks led the 3D creative, treating the shape of the ocean almost as another character, the swell underneath every move the cast made.

Midway through the film the survivors are stranded and starving. Stereo was used to make that physical: the textures of skin, hair and muscle, seen in depth. At the other end of the scale, the scale and behaviour of the great waves were explored in depth so that the detail of life at sea was shown as it had not been before.

Technical approach

Some of the hardest material there is for stereo: water effects, the intricate rigging of the ships and long sequences in low light. Stereo supervision by Chris Parks with additional stereography by Angus Cameron; stereo production based out of Vision3.