◗ Scalawags in Stereo Top: Working on a set constructed on the Universal Studios backlot, the crew prepares to roll camera on an attack by an army of mermaids. Middle: A camera housing is employed to get a closer angle on the mermaids. Bottom: The crew sets up a night shot on location at Oahu’s Halona Cove, where some of the action around the “mermaid pools” was also filmed. slice out of the middle of the 4.5K image in post and designate pixels around it left-to-right as realignment pixels. So shooting parallel made sense.” It was Hendriks’ job to qualitycontrol the recorded images on set by viewing, syncing and backing them up. This included examining stereo quality by building rough 3-D files on location — applying a 1-percent offset to synced imagery using Assimilate Scratch powered by Red Rocket accelerator cards. As the production moved around the globe, the filmmakers sent 3-D imagery and metadata from the set to Company 3’s headquarters in Santa Monica and to Deluxe 142 in London, using a remote data center set up at each location by Company 3. Various colorists graded the dailies and then sent them on to editorial, also sending those same color settings as metadata back to the location, where Drzewiecki would apply them to files on site. (Wolski also did the final color correction at Company 3, working with ASC associate member Stefan Sonnenfeld.) But the process started with data downloads and checks on location. Hendriks used Scratch on a mobile 3-D station in tandem with 1 Beyond’s 32 June 2011 American Cinematographer