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"Nightmare Before Xmas" in 3D


Guest Ian Marks

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Guest Ian Marks

I've been seeing TV commercials for Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas" in 3D recently. My understanding is that this movie was produced using stop motion and a single 35mm animation camera - a Mitchell or something.

 

I can understand how an all-CG movie could be re-released in 3D... it would basically be a massive re-rendering job involving two "cameras" at a fixed, virtual 2 inches from each other, side by side, but how can they go back to something shot on 35mm with a single camera and generate a 3D version?

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I just can't figure it out.

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There's a featurette you can watch - it doesn't go into details, but you can get a pretty good visual idea of how they made this film 3D. It seems like a fairly painstaking process.

 

http://media.movies.ign.com/media/846/846389/vids_1.html

 

Great site. The original 2d film was composited in a computer from different elements. The background might be one and Jack another e.g. Apparently they saved the original 2d elements. It looks like they then generated two separate films one for the right eye and one for the left eye. In the right eye film jack would be a little to the left of frame. And in the left eye version Jack would be slightly to the right. It is kind of phony 3d in that the elements are still flat. Jack is in front of the back ground but has no depth himself. Because Tim Burton?s team are probably dedicated to making great 3d I bet they went back into the original 3d programs of the key characters and generated some real 3d effects specifically for the film. Something coming out of the screen really needs to have true 3d characteristics.

 

The technique they used is sort of old school. The View Master 3d views often took animated cells from films and created 3d in planes in the same way. It has a vastly different feel then 3d shot with two offset lenses.

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