Rock concert as trial balloon
There's nothing new about filming a concert in 3D. Back in 2008, Walt Disney Pictures made a 3D film of the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, featuring the American teen idol Miley Cyrus. The film grossed an impressive US$65 million (roughly NT$2.08 billion) in North America.
Before that, when the Irish rock group U2 played seven venues in the South-American leg of its Vertigo Tour in 2006, the concerts were filmed as a 3D movie called U2 3D, which gave people who couldn't make it to the concert a chance to get a life-like feel for what it would have been like to be there.
As the cameras glide from one focal point to the next, they afford an array of changing views. Now it's an up-close shot of a U2 player singing his heart out, now a soulful look into the eyes of lead singer Bono, now the viewer becomes a member of the audience, caught up in a maelstrom of raving passions and waving glow sticks. If the movie could just replicate the smell of sweat and beer, it would feel almost exactly like being there in person.
Hannah Montana and U2 3D both scored critical and box-office success, to be sure, but the market for 3D movies wasn't yet primed at that time to take off, so there was no follow-up until 2009 when the worldwide buzzed sparked by Avatar led to a revival of interest in 3D concert films. In addition to Mayday 3DNA, Japanese diva Ayumi Hamasaki and South Korean boy group Super Junior are both gearing up to ride the wave of excitement. Hamasaki has been the quickest off the mark, as her ~Arena Tour 2009 A~Next Level~ will be hitting theaters at the end of August, the first Asian 3D concert film to do so.
Wolf Chen is head of production at Double Edge Entertainment, the firm that will be releasing Mayday 3DNA. In his view, concerts are a perfect trial balloon for the early-stage development of 3D movies because popular singers or bands come with a solid base of diehard fans, which means that the moviemakers need not worry that they won't recoup the big bucks it takes to make such a film.
Another important reason why rock concerts are a good launch pad for 3D movies is that the special effects-fireworks, exploding ribbons, and assorted pyrotechnics-provide a vertiginous mix of motion and sound that is perfect for 3D presentation. Moviemakers in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia have other reasons for filming rock concerts in their initial foray into 3D movies-such films pose no scriptwriting burden, and good ticket sales are assured.
According to Chen: "3DNA was shot in Taiwan, Singapore, and Beijing at a cost of NT$100 million, which is hugely expensive by Taiwan standards. But the project has generated considerable buzz, and Mayday is extremely popular throughout the Chinese-speaking world, so we're very confident that we can recoup our investment."
Chen reveals that his company is also preparing to film a movie version of Black and White, and that director Tsai Yueh Hsun had originally wanted to do it in 3D but decided against it because he wasn't 100% certain he had the necessary filming and post-production skills.
In order to promote 3D stereoscopic imaging, personnel from the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) recently visited the headquarters of Pili International Multimedia, a puppet theater hotbed in southern Taiwan, to collaborate on experimental 3D filming of a puppet theater performance. They spent 12 hours filming a four-minute short. During the filming, camera angles and 3D effects were continually tinkered with, offering some hint of how technically tricky 3D cinematography is.