Brain Gardner Is Doing It Right

I recently read an article by Brian Gardener for Creative Cow Magazine. It's an amazing article that does a lot to explain some of the things I've been unable to adequately explain in previous posts on this blog. But more than just establishing himself as a very competent authority on 3D film-making, the article also brought up a very interesting concept about dynamic floating windows. I'm not entirely sure what he means, so I intend to watch more of his work and pay attention for this concept.

What's particularly interesting to me is his filmography includes two movies thought to be masterpieces of stereoscopic cinema: Coraline and Life of Pi. The article references a live action film in the planning stages that utilizes a technique he pioneered, and given the recent release of Life of Pi and how long the article has been up, I think that may be referencing Life of Pi, which so successful that even 3D critic Roger Ebert praised the use of 3D in it. Having not personally seen Life of Pi yet (and I may have to wait until the Bluray is released to see it, because it's no longer playing in 3D in my area), I am indeed very curious of how important that technique is.

What he describes is something he calls a "Dynamic Floating Window," which because I haven't seen it is something of a mystery to me. He talks about a short film called The Black Swan that tried to keep the audience separate from the onscreen action by creating a floating black screen, effectively creating a new theater screen in front of the actual screen. In that way, it would fix something called a "window violation," where only a portion of an object protrudes from the screen. The problem was audiences noticed this new screen and found it ridiculously distracting, causing more problems than it solved.

Brian Gardener says he tried using this idea with a moving screen instead of a flat one, and suddenly nobody noticed the floating screen anymore. It was still solving problems, but it wasn't causing them anymore. To be honest, it sounds too good to be true, so I'm very curious if I'm just misunderstanding what he's describing, or if what he's describing really accomplishes all he says it does without being distracting. Based on the reviews given to the 3D in his work, it's promising.