Archivists at Warner Bros. were astounded when it came to light in early 2011 that Alfred Hitchcock had initially planned to film the James Stewart/Grace Kelly starrer in 3D. The discovery, made while sifting through files belonging to acclaimed Academy Award® winning director of photography Robert Burks, was all the more surprising since Rear Window was not a Warner Bros. production.
What the archivists discovered is that while Alfred Hitchcock was preparing Dial M for Murder as a 3D production for Warner Bros., he and Robert Burks began to consider their very next project as a vehicle better suited for the stereoscopic medium. That film was to be based upon Cornell Woolrich’s suspense tale Rear Window and made at the director’s future home, Paramount.
“What we realized as we looked through this material was that Hitchcock essentially shot Dial M for Murder in 3D as a dry run for a more ambitious 3D project, Rear Window,” said Clarence Joseph, producer of the 3D conversion of Hitchcock’s film. In a series of notes from the ever-innovative director to his favorite cinematographer, Hitchcock revealed that he believed he could achieve even better effects of depth in Rear Window than Dial M for Murder given the visual nature of the project. The director even sketched out ideas for the placement of the actors, the windows overlooking the courtyard, and the camera which provided a blueprint for how he intended to exploit the use of 3D. Of course, this was all moot since the 1950s 3D fad passed before filming on Rear Window began and so Hitchcock shot it as a 2D or “flat” film.
“Given that Hitchcock had at one time intended Rear Window to be made as a 3D movie, it was almost as if we had his blessing to use today’s technology to realize his vision,” said Joseph. Triple Dee Labs was charged with the task of adding depth to the 2D film to create a whole new look to the film. The CG team at Triple Dee Labs, led by veteran CG artist Steve Maio, went through the painstaking process of mapping every pixel of every frame of the movie and analyzing them to determine where to create depth by separating the planes of each shot into foreground, middle ground, and background layers.
Rear Window in 3D will be released to select theaters in Fall 2012 and to home video as both a 3D Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray release. For additional information on the project and process:
About Triple Dee Labs
Founded in 2011, Triple Dee Labs is a visual effects company with a team of artists specializing in concept development, production, post, directing, editing, motion design, animation, 3D, photography, project management and creative collaboration.
