Esther Jacopin

Stereoscopy is an optical technique that fools the audience, giving them the impression that what they are watching really is in 3D. The three-dimensional aspect of the scene even appears as an evidence the very moment the audience put their glasses on: stereoscopy does not hide the device that make it works. On the contrary, special effects (SFX) and visual effects’ (VFX) tools, devices and workflows must remain invisible to make the audience believe that the characters are walking on the Moon or that they are seriously injured after an accident. Like magic tricks, the audience must only see the result: the film’s credibility is at stake.

Nowadays, in the digital film era, most stereoscopic 3D films contain SFX, and VFX shots. How do filmmakers make these illusions working altogether within a film, while saving images’ consistency? This presentation aims to study the impact of stereoscopy on film production and post-production workflows, focusing on the making of SFX, that are made “for real” on set, and VFX, that are achieved digitally during the film post-production. We propose, instead of analysing the aesthetic result of making a film in stereoscopic 3D, to explore how it changes cinematographic techniques and how cinema technicians manage to adapt their savoir-faire to make these illusions cohabit in a film’s images. This case-study will rely on witnesses from the production of French films Astérix and Obélix, and The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. We will complete with elements from High Frame Rate stereo-3D films: Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy and Ang Lee’s last film Gemini Man.

Max Hattler

A number of contemporary moving image artists are exploring unique types of perceptual illusions in stereoscopic filmmaking which stand in opposition to mainstream discourses of 3D cinema. This research examines some of these alternative artistic potentialities of stereoscopic moving images and discusses how artists experiment with various concepts and techniques to expand or subvert normative stereoscopic vision. Their approaches are examined from an aesthetic-perceptual viewpoint which aims to understand the resulting new perceptions and aesthetics. This is supplemented by some technical production-related knowledge which contrasts these alternative approaches and intentions with dominant stereoscopic forms. The artists under review have brought to the audience ‘imagined things’ based on reality, and impossible spaces that can only exist in what we term ‘expanded stereoscopy.’ They problematize debates related to realism and perceptual illusion in numerous ways. Blake Williams for example presents what he calls ‘fantasy’ in Prototype (2017), showing a diferent kind of reality informed by the media archaeology of certain stereoscopic media, which avoids and transcends the conventional practice of cinema to ‘re-present’ reality. Instead of the traditionally assumed passive role of audiences proposed by the psychoanalytical approach in film studies, the studied works turn viewers into more active spectators, engaging them in unconventional ways while expanding their senses and sensations. The study delineates various examples of expanded stereoscopic moving image works which show an emergent aesthetics of new forms of artistic practice and set a foundation for the future of experimental 3D cinematic art.

Ana Victoria Falcon Araujo

Stereoscopy is an optical technique that fools the audience, giving them the impression that what they are watching really is in 3D. The three-dimensional aspect of the scene even appears as an evidence the very moment the audience put their glasses on: stereoscopy does not hide the device that make it works. On the contrary, special effects (SFX) and visual effects’ (VFX) tools, devices and workflows must remain invisible to make the audience believe that the characters are walking on the Moon or that they are seriously injured after an accident. Like magic tricks, the audience must only see the result: the film’s credibility is at stake.

Nowadays, in the digital film era, most stereoscopic 3D films contain SFX, and VFX shots. How do filmmakers make these illusions working altogether within a film, while saving images’ consistency? This presentation aims to study the impact of stereoscopy on film production and post-production workflows, focusing on the making of SFX, that are made “for real” on set, and VFX, that are achieved digitally during the film post-production. We propose, instead of analysing the aesthetic result of making a film in stereoscopic 3D, to explore how it changes cinematographic techniques and how cinema technicians manage to adapt their savoir-faire to make these illusions cohabit in a film’s images. This case-study will rely on witnesses from the production of French films Astérix and Obélix, and The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. We will complete with elements from High Frame Rate stereo-3D films: Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy and Ang Lee’s last film Gemini Man.