The talented film crew that recently finished shooting an IMAX 3D documentary about the Panama Canal utilized a versatile 3D rig provided by Radiant Images – featuring a modified CC3D Gen-2 rig and twin Sony F65 digital cameras – to capture some of the most challenging shots.
Even though Radiant Images customized the two 3D rigs with full-sized production cameras, they were light and well-balanced enough for Cinematographer Reed Smoot, ASC, to use them in a variety of ways during the Panama shoot, which wrapped in late February. The custom rigs were mounted on platforms in trees and on zip lines, hung in mid air, and placed on Steadicam, cranes and stabilized remote control heads.
“Panama: A Land Divided, a World United” 3D is scheduled to be released in 2014.
“We were able to think outside the box a little bit and come up with a solution that worked,” said Nick Lantz, the Head of Technical Services and R&D at Radiant Images. “You don’t always have the luxury of using a different rig for every set up. In this case, even with the difficulty in shooting in large format, we succeeded in creating a rig that did pretty much everything and could be quickly moved from one platform to another without compromising high quality.”
Radiant Images worked closely on the project with Steadicam operator Scott Hoffman and Marty Mueller of Converging Concepts 3D, the designer and creator of the brainy CC3D Gen-2 rig.
(Marty Mueller, Radiant Images Co-Founder Michael Mansouri and Nick Lantz will join Panama Director Keith Melton for a panel discussion next week in Galveston, Texas at the GSCA’s Film Expo and Digital Symposium. See details below.)
In addition to the two 3D rigs with F65s, Radiant Images, an L.A.-based rental house and digital cinema innovator, also provided the lenses, gear and accessories to outfit a production that will be the first documentary about the Panama Canal in IMAX 3D.
The Sony F65‘s captured crisp images in Sony RAW 4K to maximize the potential of the digital camera system and work more seamlessly with IMAX. The production was a huge undertaking as two movies – one in large format 3D and the other in 2D – were filmed simultaneously. Multiple cameras and camera systems were operated by three to four units each day. Smoot, well-known for his work in large format documentary filmmaking, shot with IMAX 15/70MM film.
Keith Melton, a large format and 3D pioneer, is directing the 3D film and Abner Benaim is directing the 2D film. Craig Hosking, one of Hollywood’s top camera pilots with 150 feature film credits (Flight, Dark Knight Rises, Inception), coordinated the aerials.
The 48-mile Panama Canal, opened in 1914 connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is one of the great feats of engineering in the history of the world. In the early days, about
