Sixty40 -Battlestar Pioneers Low-Fi 3D

Two Eyes
Sixty40 therefore shot their video stereoscopically on two identical cameras separated in space to mimic two eyes. The clip uses a flicking technique, swapping from one camera to the other, as in the two-frame animations of stereoscopic pairs. In this way, a sense of depth is given to the footage by changing between the left and right eye views between each frame. In moving footage, this creates a sense of depth and adds intensity to each scene, resulting in an original vision for the artist’s style of music.
To dramatise the hip-hop track, the crew recorded the performance of a b-boy dancer on two Panasonic P2 HD camcorders, which was also able to record their slow-motion footage at 50fps. They also used their own Sony HDV HC1E and hired another to pair it with. They shot on location at various venues, including a rooftop, near their studio in central Sydney.
They constructed a custom-built spreader on a tripod to hold the cameras an optimum distance apart, which took a fair amount of trial and error. HD quality shot in PAL widescreen was important for the ‘two-eyes’ footage because these sections of the video needed to be overlapped and integrated to achieve the correct alignment.

Post-Production
The post-production workflow began with exporting footage of their star’s dance sequences from each camera to an HD QuickTime file, for each ‘eye’ view. These were edited in Final Cut Pro, adjusting according to dance quality and to progress the story line, and then exported again to two QuickTime files. In AfterEffects, they aligned the subject from both files in the frame, as they integrated the views from each ‘eye’.
Some 3D animation was later mapped onto the live action in the form of violent black spikes emerging from the dancer  and a nearby skyscraper to show that an alien had invaded. Mark Simpson at Sixty40, the Director of this production, said, “’Battlestar’ is the most significant film clip we’ve made, for the level of freedom given to us by the artist and recording company Warp Records, and also for us to push our ideas into a full length clip. Harmonic 313 liked the result so much he went back and re-mixed his own track to fit the finished vision.
Sixty40 have recently set up a new website at www.sixty40.com where you can watch ‘Battlestar’ and other projects.