While the 3D Film industry may be fragile the 3D television industry is doing nothing but growing exponentially. As existing 3D content is mostly mediocre films companies like Discovery, Sony and IMAX and working to create new programing that could run 24/7 on 3D TVs. One such project worth looking forward to is a four-part documentary about the Cival War from Towers Productions in Chicago.
“We pitch ideas on a daily basis to Discovery, The History Channel, National Geographic — all the major documentary networks,” said Seneca Lester, Towers’ managing director. “We’ve been working with Discovery quite a bit lately, and when Tim Pastore, who is the executive producer over at 3net, told us about the network, we gave him a list of ideas. This was one of them, and it caught his attention largely because it’s the 150th anniversary (of the war).”
The series will be completely in 3D, from the dramatic recreations of notable events to the CGI maps that will show off the topography of the battlefields. The big and pleasant surprise is the specialty content Towers has up its sleeve. Namely, Towers has access to still photographs from the era that were taken with a stereo camera (the 3-D technology of the time), which is affixed with two lenses that can take two photographs at the same time, simulating human binocular vision. Meaning, even the authentic stills and portraits that documentaries often show will be in original, non-convertted 3D.
According to Lester, “We stumbled across these stereoscopic 3-D images from the Civil War, of soldiers in the field, of battles. There are like 20,000 images, and I had never of heard of them until recently. They’re all housed at the Library of Congress, and we thought these photos would be outstanding to tell a story.”
Towers began shooting this month and plans to wrap by Wednesday. All filming is being done inIllinois (with local crews), including battle scenes at Dollinger Farms inChannahon, about 90 minutes southwest of Chicago. “It’s a good open area,” said Lester, “and they have a lot of Civil War re-enactments there,” the next of which is set for mid-October. Though Towers is using some 300 re-enactors as extras, the principal cast is made up of actors from Chicago and Los Angeles. They are playing lesser-known figures in the war — a concerted effort by Towers to explore some of the corners left untouched by “The Civil War,” Ken Burns’ massive PBS documentary from 1990.
The series, Lester said, will focus primarily on the Battle of Gettysburg; but he isn’t allowed to divulge many details beyond that. Even the air date is being kept secret (although Lester projected it would show up on the network in early 2012.)
“This is the largest project Towers has ever worked on, especially in this short period of time,” said Lester. “We’re known for long-form documentaries and hard-hitting stories. But then you have the 3-D element and that’s entertainment, so we have to put things in your face — those 3-D moments. We don’t want to sensationalize the story, so it’s a fine line to walk.”
But will enough households have 3-D TVs going forward to make any of this worthwhile? “When we started this in October, 3-D televisions were $2,500-$3,000,” said Lester. “Now you can actually find a really good television for $1,600, so the price is coming down big time. I’m talking about a 46-inch screen, and these are LG or Samsung, so not some obscure brand.” (A quick check at Best Buy found an LG 47-inch TV for even less, at $1,329.99.)
In terms of the viewing experience, “It’s a different kind of 3-D. In a movie theater it’s grander, there’s more depth. In television there’s depth, but you don’t have those moments where you feel like the person (on screen) is in the room with you. It’s a bit different, but it’s really cool to watch. We’ve done a lot of research and I’ve seen some of those surgical procedures and concerts in 3-D, and those are amazing. It’s really fascinating what people are doing.”
Towers has a number of 3-D TVs in their offices, which they use to watch dailies. “It’s been amazing to see some of those images. You’re blown away. It’s just gorgeous.”
Source: Chicago Tribune
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