American Cinematographer - July 1983 - 94

Jaws 3-D

Continued

from

page 61

early weeks of shooting there's more
discussion about the best approach.
Designing shots and viewing dailies
take longer.
"I'm assuming additional post-pro¬
duction costs,'' he adds.

take

"One mis¬

in

in 2-D. For

example, with the vid¬
eotape built into our underwater

JAWS II-and, of course, a shark.

housing for the 3-D camera, we were

Jaws movie,

able to film underwater-about
third of

one-

shooting schedule-in
less time. The videotape enabled us
to go from an average of five to seven
our

takes to two.''

Director Joe Alves says

cutting negative on the
septum instead of the frame line and
you'd have a bunch of cock-eyed pa¬

contrasts with

trons. There's an added expense

and-white" underwater

movie

a

that in this
"bright park look'' topside
"harsh, almost black-

projectionists' questions.

footage. Un¬
previous Jaws movies, this one is
set at a marine park. About the only
carry-over from predecessor scripts

But, it's hard to say precisely how

is familiar names-the film features

much less this movie would have cost

some

to

the distributor, who has to furnish a 3D lens adapter and maintain an 800
number for

like

grown-up

characters from

Alves, who has worked

on

every

though never before as
director, suggested doing JAWS III ir
3-D. "The truth is I figured I'd get tc
direct if I came up with something
special-3-D was it,'' says Alves.
"Everyone will want to see that shark
come

out at the audience. 3-D alsc

made it

more logical that a designer,
myself, should be the director. 3-D
requires a focus on somewhat tricky
composition. One has to concentrate
on middle ground distances since
heavy foreground and extreme closeups don't work. The composition has
to be very exacting to make a visually
interesting film.
"Color is important, too,'' adds

like

Alves. "Most 3-D movies

dull

are

anc

washed out,

primarily because cam¬
era systems haven't been perfected
But to enhance color, we totally
dressed the set with colorful flags anc
large yellow tents. I also gave Jim the
time needed to light. In contrast, un¬
derwater footage is very dramatic
with a lot of negative and positive
space in which you barely see the
shark. It has the

same

feel

as

Jim's

photography in CRUISING."
Alves emphasizes that the

use ol
enhancement 3-D in JAWS III results
in some "wonderful intimate scenes.

Whether it's

a

dialog, action

or

love

it's like being there."

scene,

To

explain the challenges faced on
Hitzig, Alves and Contner
give a refresher course on state-ofthe-art 3-D, starting with the three
one-camera systems tried on this film.
"Before I got involved, months o1
testing had narrowed down the
choices to two systems-Optimax
JAWS III,

and ArriVision-which seemed to of¬

fer the

optical quality, ease-of-use,

and lens selection needed," recalls
Contner.
"But neither

deadline,

system made our
filming with

so we started

StereoVision, an over-and-under sys¬
compatible with ArriVision. The
film shot with it intercuts very well
with our ArriVision footage, though
there had to be some change in verti¬
cal alignment in printing. Though we
tem

used StereoVision for two weeks, we

subsequently reshot about

one week
of that, so it accounts for only about
five percent of our finished footage."

(Editor's note: Just for the record the
amount of StereoVision footage actu¬
ally used in the final cut of JAWS III is
the subject of some controversy with
estimates ranging from 5% to 15%.
The StereoVision system was appar92

AMERICAN

CINEMATOGRAPHER, JULY, 1983
American Cinematographer - July 1983

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