Cirque du Soleil interprets the life life cycle in the Imax 3-D film JOURNEY OF MAN, directed by Keith Melton and photographed by Reed Smoot, ASC and John Hora, ASC.
Audiences expect a 3-D movie to have things playing into their faces," says director Keith Melton. "But with Journey of Man we were going for something a little more sophisticated."
Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man, a Sony Pictures Classics’ large-format 3-D film currently in release, presents some of the most stunning 3-D images seen to date on the Imax screen. With Reed Smoot, ASC and John Hora, ASC serving as directors of photography, it was filmed over four months using the Imax Solido twin 15/65 camera. An Iwerks twin-camera 8-perf/65mm 3-D rig designed by Steve Hines of Hineslab in Glendale, California, was also used for certain scenes to create a specific effect.
"What was interesting for me," says Smoot, "was the increased opportunity to capture the live nature of the Cirque du Soleil experience. The real locations and the 3-D in a large format give the film a stylistic twist that does much to capture that live aspect." Recently inducted into the ASC (see From the Clubhouse, page 174), Smoot has served as director of photography on more than 40 films in the past 25 years. He is especially known for his work with the large-format film, but Journey of Man is his first 3-D effort. "I was fortunate to have a chance to jump right into 3-D with some very experienced people around me," he says.
Journey of Man presents depth, color, form and motion as natural parts of a stylistic whole, celebrating the human spirit by tracing the stages of human development from birth to maturity. Each stage of life is introduced by a Cirque du Soleil act. The odyssey begins with the appearance of an embryonic child amid a tribal cave of Taiko drummers. Birth is represented by synchronized swimmers in a dazzling underwater sequence, and that is followed by childhood, a sequence in which the Flounes (two clowns representing the instincts), introduce the child to his emotions in the world of nature. The gradually aging child encounters yellow, bird-like creatures diving Bungee-style from the treetops in a forest and then proceeds to adolescence, where he is drawn to manhood by the Cube Man.
After discovering the power of love in a water garden with a graceful Statue Act, the young man is tempted with greed by the demon-like Stiltman. Then, as he gets older, he discovers the Banquine, who put on a rousing display of phenomenal acrobatic feats. The final stop on the journey is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, which signifies hope for the future of mankind.
For 3-D and visual-effects supervisor Peter Anderson, ASC, Journey of Man was a labor of love. "We had an opportunity to make use of the new Imax Solido’s converging lenses," he says. "We dealt with lighting, color and composition to maximize the 3-D experience." By toeing-in, or converging the lenses of the two cameras in the single-body Imax camera, the 3-D imagery on screen can be made to play in the deep space behind the screen.
Anderson, a veteran of 48 large-format productions, 40 feature films and hundreds of hours of prime-time television, is especially passionate about his work with large-format 3-D. "Imax is the most immersive screen in the world, and you do not see the edge of the screen," he notes. "I love to play with the depth axis." With the Imax 3-D film projected onto a screen more than 70’ high and 90’ wide, that is considerable screen space.
"3-D delivery systems can present a problem with ’ghosting’ [high-contrast areas in the film that tend to leak from one eye to the other when viewed in 3-D on a large screen]," notes Anderson. "On Journey of Man we were able to use the new converging lenses to both minimize ghosting and play very deep scenes. Keith Melton understands that the whole show doesn’t have to play ’in your face.’"
By consulting with production designer John Zachary and the costume designers early in preproduction, Anderson and Melton were able to avoid the use of solid white, which would have been problematic in projecting the 3-D film. The costume color for the Bungee jumpers in the forest sequence, for example, was changed from white to yellow. With considerable onscreen parallax in this sequence, the yellow costumes are much more "friendly" to 3-D projection. Similarly, the living statues in the water-garden sequence were changed from white to more of a marble color.
Journey of Man is Anderson and Melton’s fifth large-format 3-D collaboration. They first worked together on Iwerks Entertainment’s Haunts of the Olde Country, and more recently on Busch Entertain-ment’s Pirates, which was shot with dual 65mm cameras; Anderson was the director of photography on both films. "Over the past 20 3-D films and with Pirates, we’ve been able to make improvements in how the audience responds to 3-D," Anderson says. "We’ve been able to keep improving the systems."
Hora served as director of photography on the Banquine sequence, which was filmed first because of the performers’ availability. Smoot was not available at the time this sequence was shot, and Hora, a 3-D enthusiast, was happy to step in. Hora’s first experience filming 3-D was in 1981, when he shot tests for a remake of The Creature From the Black Lagoon that Joe Dante was to direct. Dante and Hora met with Jack Arnold, director of the 1953 original, and Hora shot tests with the over/under single-strip Stereovision process. Although the cinematographer hoped to shoot additional tests with Robert Bernier’s SpaceVision single-strip system, he recalls that the boom in 3-D production at that time made it too difficult to acquire the equipment.
The location selected for the Banquine portion of Journey of Man was Severance Hall, home to the Cleveland Orchestra, an opulent building with an unobstructed 40’-high ceiling that would allow the Banquine to perform their four-high acrobatic formations. Lighting such a large space proved quite a challenge for the camera crew, and it was not easy to keep the lights out of the field of view with the wide lens of the Imax 3-D camera. An additional technique used in this sequence to minimize ghosting was to apply brass polish to highly reflective surfaces, letting it dry dull and leaving it on during shooting.
"I’ve had a lot of experience with large sets," says Hora. "But for the Banquine sequence we used more lights than I knew existed." Journey of Man was shot on Kodak Vision 500T 5279 rated at 500 ASA. Because of the unique, internal mirror system of the Imax Solido 3-D camera, about 1 1/3 stops of light are lost. "We re-rated the film to 200 ASA," says gaffer Dwight Campbell, "and we tried to light Severance Hall with an average of 500 footcandles of ambient light."
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