SGO Mistika 3Dday Event

Yesterday, December 3rd, the 709 Media Room team attended the 3Dday event, organized by SGO Mistika. From our Twitter, live, we were telling step by step each of the topics and demonstrations, along with pictures of the event.

The start time was 15:15, at which time we entered the Madrid Film Academy and took our seats in the screening room. After a brief presentation and welcome by Sofía Pensado, Head of Marketing and Communication of SGO, Borja Adsuara, General Director of Red.es opened the event, talking about the great merit of SGO as a Spanish company that has developed and promoted projects internationally.

Borja Adsuara also mentioned the importance of training new technicians in systems such as Mistika, to develop audiovisual content as well as video games and interactive entertainment.

Then came the long awaited trailer of The Hobbit, by Peter Jackson, where we could enjoy a preview in three dimensions of what will arrive to our theaters in the coming days. In case you are one of those who want to go to see it with its 48fps, here is the worldwide list of cinemas that will screen it this way.

Miguel Ángel Doncel, CEO of SGO, welcomed us and praised the high technical level of the Spanish industry, not only thanks to software like Mistika, but also to the technicians who manage them; and the importance of the increasing number of productions being sold outside Spain. Before leaving, he left us with the trailer for Justin and the Sword of Courage, an animated film coming to theaters next summer.

A little later it was the turn of Leo Vezzali, stereoscopy supervisor at Identity FX, in Los Angeles. He showed us the showreel of this company, where we could see films like Spiderman, Prometheus or The Chronicles of Narnia, and the impressive technical level of each of them.

One of the topics he dealt with the most was the conversion from 2D to 3D, and for this he gave us an example with the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). We were also able to enjoy the experience of seeing the Red Hot Chilly Peppers really up close thanks to their performance in From the Basement.

In this photo you can see Luis Ochoa with Sergio Ochoa, the next guest at the event. Sergio Ochoa wanted to demystify those problems that always seem to accompany the s3D and make clear how they are gradually being solved thanks to new technologies and new ways of narrating.

He explained the different problems he had working on the stereoscopy of Asterix and Obelix: On Her Majesty’s Service (of which we were also able to see the trailer). He also talked about his experience in other very different projects, such as Spivet, by Jean Pierre Jeunet; the short film Souviens Moi, by Josephine Derobe; or the documentary Barcelona 3D, by Manuel Huerga. In the latter we had the opportunity to see how the shots were thought from the pre-production with previews made digitally, and how was the final result in the dailies, with a material without postproduction, which was more than interesting.

Finally, Francisco Ramos, a stereographer at Sky, the first 3D television channel, took us through the broadcast side of things and showed us his company’s operating model. Francisco made it clear that he did not think that 3D was a substitute for 2D, but that he believed that, at some point, it will become a genre, another way of telling stories, so there will be people who love it and others who do not. For this reason, he insisted on researching new techniques so that the negative publicity of 3D can gradually disappear, and he spoke to us about the strategies followed by the Sky channel to get new clients and to keep those who are already there. One of the keys is the selection of content: they need more content, but if it does not reach a certain level and is not “good”, they do not admit it.

He also explained some stereoscopy terms, such as comfort zone, negative or positive parallax, guiding us through a 3D adjustment chart that exemplified them.

Finally, we were able to see several examples of the channel’s content, such as promos of the channel itself; some sports such as soccer or golf, which are really impressive; or the beautiful images of the documentary series Galapagos.

The presentations and demonstrations ended at La Academia at 18:30, but at 19h we were expected in the Tempo Room to continue the 3D party and exchange views with the attendees.