Haunted Castle begins with a sweeping aerial flyover of the European seaside and ends as we spot Johnny’s car making its way toward a mysterious castle. We learn that Johnny (played by Arid lead singer Jasper Steverlinck) is a young musician who has recently inherited the imposing castle once occupied by his estranged mother. After making his way up the hill, Johnny arrives at the castle’s front door. It is at this point in the film that the point-of-view shifts from third-person to first-person. The ominous door beckons Johnny to enter, and the audience, now seeing the film through Johnny’s eyes, succumbs to his curiosity.
The decision to exploit the subjective point-of-view presented many challenges for director Ben Stassen and his team, but it was a decision easily justified by the end result. Stassen explains, “Creating a film like this is indeed challenging—there are almost no edits; there are virtually no jumps in time—but it also offers an opportunity to create a sense of place, which is critical since the main character of the film is the castle itself—it’s the space. Large format 3-D cinema is about the exploration of space and with it we have an exciting opportunity to transport the audience within the filmic environment.”
In 3-D, the film’s castle becomes a tangible environment—one in which unexpected happenings can be found around every turn! Cautiously moving through the castle, Johnny follows the voice of his mother until he finds himself in a large, mysteriously inviting room. Here, Johnny’s mother (played by Lunascape’s lead vocalist Kyoko Baertsoen) appears in the form of a holographic projection, as if to give her son a message….
For scenes in which a live actor appears in the virtual set, a custom-built 3-D camera rig was employed. The actors were filmed in front of a green screen, interacting with imaginary set pieces and props. The actors were later digitally composited (minus the green screen) into the virtual set. In order for the illusion to work, the filmmakers had to pre-determine every detail. Where should the actor be looking? How far should the camera be from the actor? At what height and at what angle should the camera be positioned? What type of lens should be used to ensure that the actor will “fit” precisely in the 3-D space of the virtual set?
Johnny’s brief reunion with his mother is abruptly cut short by the entrance of Mr. D (voiced by multi-talented Harry Shearer, The Simpsons, This Is Spinal Tap), the castle’s custodian of evil. The conniving Mr. D offers Johnny the promise of fame and fortune in exchange for Johnny’s soul. To further persuade him to accept his offer, Mr. D sends Johnny on a tour of some of the more unpleasant areas of the castle.
The chance to create the surreal underworld of the castle gave the Brussels-based team of computer animators an excuse to let their minds run wild. Animator Jérémie Degruson explains, “Not everyone has the opportunity to create movies shown on screens that are over eight stories high. As animators, we are responsible for every aspect of the image on the screen, so the pressure of having to fill the giant screen helps to push us and focus us on making the most spectacular images that we can conceive.”
While touring the dungeon, Johnny learns of Mr. D’s weakness—opera music. Upon returning to Mr. D’s lair, Johnny confronts Mr. D face to face and openly defies him by rejecting his offer of fame and fortune. Then, without warning, Johnny summons the power of opera to destroy Mr. D and the castle once and for all.
For the climactic confrontation between Johnny and Mr. D, musician Jasper Steverlinck (who plays Johnny in the film), had to fine-tune his vocal cords to deliver the operatic rendition of “Donna Mobile.” He explains, “It was challenging because I had never sung opera before, plus the song is in Italian. I sing in English, so I had to practice Italian to sing it properly.” After weeks of training with a vocal coach, Jasper delivered a powerhouse performance of the song that, once placed in the film, was effective enough to destroy the evil Mr. D and obliterate the castle.
With temptation behind him, Johnny’s adventure ends six months later as he and his band play to a sold out audience at Madison Square Garden in New York. Even without the aid of Mr. D’s dark powers, Johnny has achieved success in his own right….
Once the computer animation was completed in Brussels, the digital files were then transferred to film via a film recorder in Los Angeles. A film recorder is essentially a machine comprised of a computer and a high-resolution monitor with a large format (65mm) camera placed on top of it. Computer files are scanned onto the monitor that reads the primary colors of red, green, and blue. In turn, the monitor exposes the film three times, one for each color.
For a large format, high-resolution film like Haunted Castle, the film recorder takes nearly two minutes to record each frame of film. Considering the entire film has a total running time of forty minutes and requires two sets of images (a left eye and a right eye) at 24 frames per second, Haunted Castle has approximately 115,000 frames. Working twenty-four hours a day non-stop, with a record rate of 800 frames a day, it took nearly five months to transfer Haunted Castle from computer to the giant screen. The final result was definitely worth the wait!
A Brief History of 3-D and How It Works
While Haunted Castle’s spectacular imagery and digital animation set the mood of the film, it is the amazing 3-D process that transports audiences into the film. Haunted Castle was designed from the beginning as a 3-D experience, so it’s no wonder that 3-D is such an intricate part of the the way in which the story is told. The following is a brief history of 3-D technology that shows how this stunning technology has evolved over the years...
In 1838, Charles Wheatstone invented the world’s first stereoscopic viewer based on Renaissance theories of perspective. Constructed of an assortment of angled mirrors, his invention contained two separate drawings—one for the left eye and one for the right. When both images were observed at the same time, Wheatstone’s viewing device produced a stereo image.
Wheatstone’s device encouraged the beginning of a new era in motion and still photography. The fact that our left eye and right eye see objects from different angles is the basis for 3-D photography. If you try looking at an object through one eye and then the other, you will notice that it slightly changes position. However, with both eyes open, the two images that each eye observes separately are fused together as one by our brain. It is the fusion of these two images that creates normal binocular sight and allows our brain to understand depth and distance. To replicate this process on film, two camera lenses are used in place of our two eyes.
Filmmakers place the two lenses of a 3-D camera at about the same distance apart as the distance between our eyes. This space is referred to as the interocular distance, or interaxial distance, and is typically set at about 2-1/2 inches.
To project a 3-D film, two individual images representing the perspective of the left and right eye are simultaneously projected on screen. Without special glasses during the presentation, it will seem like you are seeing double, because in fact you are seeing double. Fortunately, the 3-D glasses correct this problem. Each lens of the 3-D glasses has a special filter which blocks out the opposing image, allowing each eye to see only one image. Your brain perceives the fusion of the two separate images as one three-dimensional image.
There are several ways to project the dual images necessary to exhibit a 3-D film; however, not all processes require two separate projectors. The anaglyphic film format simultaneously projects two different, offset images from one single strip of film. One image is coated with a green (or blue) color, the other image is coated red. Spectators are given glasses that sport one green (or blue) lens and one red lens. The green lens of the glasses cancels out the red image on screen, while the red lens of the glasses cancels out the green (or blue) image on the screen. Your brain processes each separated image as one 3-D “black and white” image!
To see 3-D in color, the images for the left and right eye must be kept separate. Before the advent of today’s large format theaters, which use two separate synchronized projectors, previous methods placed two 35mm frames in various configurations, either over and under each other or side by side.
Contemporary 3-D films have begun to use computer generated imagery (CGI) to maximize the 3-D illusion. Use of computer created images allows filmmakers total control over convergence and focus, the two most problematic aspects of live action 3-D production. By creating the environment in the computer, the point of convergence can be precisely set by the filmmaker. Furthermore, the entire frame can be kept in focus, something nearly impossible to do when shooting by conventional means. What this means is that when the film is projected onto the screen, you will absorb the visual information much like you would in the real world, thus maximizing the illusion.