‘Star Wars I’ 3D to Show Familiar Characters in ‘Entirely New Way,’ Says Converter

Controlling depth and limiting “gimmicks” were the goals of Prime Focus, the company chosen by Lucasfilm and its Industrial Light & Magic to convert Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace to 3D, Prime Focus CEO Namit Malhotra told Consumer Electronics Daily. The film, about 90 percent complete, is due to hit theaters Feb. 10, 2012. The most challenging aspect of the conversion was maintaining the creative vision of filmmaker George Lucas, who urged Prime Focus to “downplay the in-your-face aspects” of 3D, Malhotra said. He said audiences will be most impressed by seeing characters they know well “in an entirely new way, like they're right in front of them."

Converting the film to 3D took seven months, starting with “ingesting” the two hours of film footage “to separate every object and then give the objects proper sculpture,” Malhotra told us. After positioning objects in “proper photographic depth,” editors clean artifacts introduced during conversion before meeting with the filmmaker to ensure that the artistic vision has been maintained, he said.

Malhotra disparaged the auto-conversion algorithms that convert content in some 3D TVs. With auto-conversion, he said, “you're never going to know where everything is supposed to be in the 3D space.” Artifacts will be introduced as a result of “not knowing which object is at what distance from each other,” Malhotra said, and viewers won’t see “the right depth between objects or demarcation of objects” that produce a comfortable 3D experience. With most auto-conversion, “after 20 minutes you'll start to feel a headache because it’s not designed to manipulate and manage the general inconsistencies in film,” he said. Auto-conversion follows a logic that’s “never going to be accurate,” Malhotra said. The process can work adequately for 3D music videos or “one-offs,” but “you don’t want to watch an entire film in auto-convert mode because you're not going to enjoy the experience,” he said.

Although poor conversion can cause problems, shooting a movie badly in 3D hurts the results more, because “there’s less you can do to prevent the damage done since you already have it in camera,” Malhotra said. Companies like Prime Focus have the tools and flexibility “to massage every shot and make it work to make sure everything is consistent,” he said. With plenty of time and an adequate budget, conversion can get “fantastic results,” Malhotra said.