International 3D Society awards Storm Surfers

The International 3D Society has named big-wave rider doc Storm Surfers the best 3D documentary at its fourth Annual Creative Arts Ceremony in LA.

Storm Surfers is a multi-platform film and TV series created by the Firelight Productions team of Marcus Gillezeau and Ellenor Cox. The project follows renowned surfers Ross Clarke-Jones and Tom Carroll as they seek out and ride monster waves.

Six different camera systems were used in capturing 1,500 hours of raw stereo 3D footage, including portable GoPro 3D HERO’s to an Element Technical Dark Country beam-splitter rig fitted with SI-2K cameras.

SGO’s Mistika became the element that brought all the disparate formats together. Mistika’s open SAN connectivity allowed it to be networked to Storm Surfers’ production storage allowing easy access the Cineform media. The complexities of correcting stereographic images were also handled using Mistika.

Deluxe worked closely with SGO technicians to improve images and the software features as development continued.

Post production supervisor Matt North commented: “If we had our time again we would have had Mistika from the start and we would have used it for conforming and stereo alignment so we could have corrected and graded on the one box – we would have probably used two of them to speed the process. SGO was very receptive to us telling them what we needed.”

“Mistika was more capable in terms of its ability to correct colour and geometric distortions between left and right eye than any other product we had seen,” said Deluxe’s Efilm colourist Luke Buckley. “Especially in terms of speed – we have various high end post-production suites but they would take six hours just to do one shot while Mistika would take two minutes.”

“Storm Surfers 3D was a challenging but rewarding project to work on as our first full stereoscopic experience,” added Deluxe general manager Andrew Robinson. “Editorial production worked in-house with us here in Sydney to produce unique and exciting 3D content and I am very proud of our team and their results which will be seen around the world.“