Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 16, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The 3D production centres on the story of a peregrine falcon in the metropolitan environment of London. For her chicks to survive, the female falcon must hunt at least one pigeon per day. To do so, the peregrine falcon dives at its prey at more than 300 km/h. With scenes such as these, the BBC wanted to explore stereoscopic possibilities and evaluate the complete 3D workflow for planned future wildlife documentaries.
KUK Filmproduktion was commissioned to produce the 3D footage and carry out stereoscopic postproduction. The film was supported by the 3D4YOU research project, funded under the EU’s 7th Framework Programme, in which BBC Research and KUK Filmproduktion cooperate. As early as autumn 2009, KUK Film’s 3D production team travelled to England with specialised stereoscopic equipment to shoot the live-action footage with specially trained peregrine falcons, together with the wildlife-film experts of the BBC Natural History Unit Bristol.
The wildlife-documentary genre is particularly well suited to cinematic 3D presentation, since it can offer viewers unfamiliar perspectives and allow them to experience events at close quarters. However, because the telephoto lenses generally used in wildlife films do not produce satisfactory results for 3D recordings, a special shooting concept was developed together with the BBC. The trained falcons were accustomed to flying very close beside the camera vehicle.
The required close-ups during flight could thus be produced on the runway of a disused airport. A 150 m blue-screen cloth was laid out so that the falcon could be combined with backgrounds shot in London during postproduction. For these varied shooting situations, in addition to the mirror rig, the KUK Filmproduktion team used a newly developed compact 3D parallel rig and a special macro 3D rig, both equipped with Fraunhofer IIS Micro HD cameras.
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