MMI Bonus Session: Neil Feldman

---

---

A few months ago, MMI had a bonus session with Neil Feldman, CEO of In-Three. If you’re unaware of In-Three or Neil, Neil is the guy who invented 2D-3D conversion for film. He runs the company, which is currently working on Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” I took notes during his talk- you can read them in an organized fashion after the jump.

Neil spent the first part of his talk introducing himself, his credentials, and educating us on 3D. Though at the time I was well aware of the many debates raging over whether 3D is more than just a gimmick, I hadn’t really researched it. Neil explained 3D quite well- did you know there’s 6 different patents associated with 2D-3D stereoscopic conversion? Apparently Neil has been a proponent of, and been working on, 3D for a long time. He first started research and development on the technology in 2000.

His opinions on the technology were fascinating. Now that I’ve seen Avatar, this quote rings truer than ever: “3D is surround sound for your eyes.” It’s his opinion that 3D draws you into the story more, something I definitely agree with. He trashed the auto-conversion approach for converting 2D movies to 3D- he said it looked awful. One of his opinions I thought was interesting- he said,”The realness of 2-camera 3D is contrived. ” He even went on to say that 2-camera 3D actually limits your options. He also is of the opinion that the 3D debate is not the same as the colorization debate, when it comes to classic films. According to Neil, it actually enhances the classics and draws you in more- it doesn’t ruin the film.

He’s created many demos of the technology for different filmmakers and visual effects studios. Some include James Cameron, Peter Jackson, and Industrial Light and Magic. Neil showed George Lucas the technology for 3D he was working on back when Mr. Lucas was working on Episode III of Star Wars.  Some of his other demos he’s created with the technology is Casablanca, and Transformers. He also mentioned that George Romero’s original “Dawn of the Dead” is coming out in 3D soon.

He also talked about depth design. Now that 3D is on the rise, it’s also giving rise to a new occupation: depth designer. Depth designers were used on the movie “Up” by Pixar. It makes sense given the new options 3D gives filmmakers have- they now need someone that knows depth and how to design it in context of the story & audience. One fact he brought up that I thought was interesting was that Disney’s 3D films do not have as much stereo depth as other films might. The reason for that is children have less ocular depth than an adult.

Neil took the time to tell us about his companies process for converting films to 3D:

• Scene Analysis by expert Stereographers
• Object Definition(summarized as very advanced roto-scoping)
• Create Geometry(making realistic shapes and depth)
• Hidden surface reconstruction(in-painting occluded areas). Neil said this is the hardest step of the process.

His final thoughts on the challenges of this new approach were:

• Educating creatives and the industry(He says there’s a lot of misinformation out there)
• Involvement should be at conception of the project
• On-location consultation cuts costs
• Coordinating resources and people can be difficult(understatement)

All in all it was the best bonus session we’ve had since ILM artist C. Andrew Nelson(the blog entry below this). Though he couldn’t really show us, Neil still made great use of his session with us, and educated us a great deal on 3D, and it’s implications for the future of filmmaking. Hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for reading!