Ocean 3D‘s unique underwater scenes were filmed on location from the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aquaba, Egyptian National Parks and include amazing images of swarming tuna around Malta. A prime example of how effective 3D story telling can significantly enhance a storyline, in Ocean 3D, the audience becomes a virtual crew on the expedition; experiencing the excitement of sailing in storms, watching dolphins playing at the bow or setting up equipment for amazing dives.
“Our workflow for Ocean 3D relied on a variety of cameras and formats including Canon HF100 and Canon 5D MKII,” explained company founder Thomas Pinkau. “We originally planned on using our established Premiere and After Effects pipeline for selecting and fixing shots, but SpeedGrade NX quickly became part of the early postproduction stages as well. With SpeedGrade NX’s wide range of tools for analyzing and fixing Stereo 3D material, we quickly got addicted to bringing the material directly into the SpeedGrade suite. We even used it for creating the rough cut in S3D as it was significantly faster and more convenient than any other editorial solution we used before.”
Released at NAB, SpeedGrade NX offers refined stereo tools, support for virtually all RAW cameras, increased render speed and improved color management. SpeedGrade NX includes a major update to the DualStream stereo toolset, native ARRI ALEXA RAW workflows and beta support for the EPIC camera from RED Digital Cinema.
“One thing we enjoyed in particular was the file loading mechanism of SpeedGrade NX,” said Pinkau. “After creating a file structure for the project, it simply loads left and right eye automatically. While we didn’t rely on the auto correction for the geometry (the tools for manually correcting geometry allow for very fast and precise correction, we prefer to keep full control), the auto matching for left/right colorimetry saved us a huge amount of time. It made color grading a breeze as we could focus on creating stunning underwater pictures.”
