Landau : Convert Back Catalogue Films with Original Director

Apr 17, 2012 No Comments by admin

Titanic producer Jon Landau has argued that converting back catalogue films into 3D is best done in conjunction with the original filmmaker writes Adrian Pennington from NAB in Las Vegas

This NAB 3D news article is brought to you in association with 3D specialists Presteigne Charter

“For me the idea of converting a movie is about finding the right library titles and one where the director can be present to oversee it,” said Landau. “It’s not about converting Dr Zhivago, as great a film as that is. It’s about bringing the original creative team back as part of the process.”

Director James Cameron was able to work through each of the 279,360 frames in Titanic to determine the 3D based on his memory of what had happened on the actual set of the production 14 years ago.

“The hardest challenge was the dinner party scene, which is a simple live action dialogue scene but it contains such complex detail among the objects on the table,” said Landau. “Jim was able to recall that the table was a particular size and that the cups were placed this far away in relation to the other objects and so on, in order to make the 3D as comfortable experience as possible. Conversion is a creative decision in which you ask how much depth do you need per shot.”

Steven Spielberg has announced that he is to convert Jurassic Park into 3D. “I’ve spoken to Steven and he is aware of the process and that people who do conversion as a six week process can’t do it justice,” said Landau.

“Converting a movie from 2D to 3D is not a technology process –it’s a creative process that uses technology. It allowed Jim [Cameron] to be very precise about how he wanted to use the stereo".

William Sherek of Titanic 3D conversion company StereoD explained “The artist should be able to work on a frame in 3D to get it exactly the way they want it, as opposed to an approach in which you press a button and what you get is what you end up with.”

Titanic 3D has achieved widespread acclaim and it helped that the film’s negative went through a digital mastering process into 4K and that production company Lightstorm Entertainment spent $18m on the conversion.