  How
might Quicktime VR's (QTVR's) be useful to the filmmaker or the commercial
photographer? In several ways:
As a director's viewfinder,
As a time study tool,
As a valuable site library – an idea generator or a real-world
resource for the CG arm of a development group.
The format
of the viewing window for these 360°
animations can be adapted to each rendered file as per your instructions,
to emulate
- the Panovision/"letterbox" (2.4:1)
aspect ratio,
- a vertical full page magazine advertisement,
- a standard television screen format,
- a billboard rectangle or any other
square or rectangular window you would
prefer to work within.
Continued
on Page 2...
 
Much
time and effort is put into the look of a film well before camera and
crew arrive for the start of production.
In preparation,
the production designer may make a series of sketches from research
photos, travel experiences or imagination alone. And as these ideas
evolve, in concert with the director, so do the sketches.
Continued
on Page 4... |
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Remember
the first time you saw a color picture on teevee? (That's right, Lyle.
Way back when, somewhere between the Age of Dinosaurs and The Summer
of Love – before GameBoy and that plasma screen we set up in your
bedroom – there was black and white television.) Why the color
in those moving pictures, on them new-fangled sets, was so... lifelike!
Location
scouts have gone from shooting lots of single-framers in order to cover
an environment for our clients' consideration to pasting together a
series of 35mm prints to create a wider view as an illustration, a panorama.
Then digital
cameras evolved into something more than a toy. (Ever own a first generation
Sony Mavica?) Today the price of a really good device no longer requires
a second mortgage on the home, though professional digital film backs
still cost between (US)$10,000 ~ $25,000 or more.
A location
scout can now spend the day burning frame after frame and drop the files
from flash memory onto their computer hard disc with a simple cable.
And, if a scout has learned the mojo to create temporary Web sites they
can make for their clients' individual projects, enabling the group
to share the results without the fuss of picking through faceless emailed
files, then life is good.
But life
just got better. |
|
Back in
1995 Apple grabbed a rib from their in-house developers and begat Quicktime
VR, a technology that allows for creating animated photographic scenes
– environments that viewers are able to navigate through by using
the mouse and keyboard. "Immersive photography" was born.
Using a
combination of specialized tripod equipment for the camera and choosing
from a variety of software packages to create the finished Quicktime
movies, one is able to finally place the viewer inside an environment.
These animations allow for the viewer to look all the way around oneself,
a seamless 360° world.
The result,
when done well, is absolutely stunning.
Quicktime
VR's will become an indispensable tool for the film director, the production
designer and the still photographer shooting for print advertising.
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