The Best of Both Worlds: The Hannah Montana Concert Tour, Live in 3D

The Best of Both Worlds: The Hannah Montana Concert Tour, Live in 3D

After completing a sold-out nationwide concert tour and launching a hit television show, what’s a pop music phenomenon to do? If you are 15-year-old singing sensation Miley Cyrus (a.k.a., Hannah Montana) there’s only one answer: make a move to the big screen - and not any old screen. Cyrus’s new film, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, releases in theaters this February as a live-action, 3D (stereoscopic) feature.

More than a straight concert movie, the film begins with behind-the-scenes sequences of Cyrus and her band shot in 2D. It then moves back and forth between 3D concert footage and 2D off-stage interviews to give audiences both a live concert-going experience and a realistic look at Cyrus’s life on the road.

Editor Michael Tronick (Hairspray, Mr. and Mrs. Smith) has extensive experience as a music editor and picture editor, though he had never cut a 3D film before. He welcomed the challenge, traveling to Salt Lake City during production. “There is so much that goes into the shooting,” says Tronick about the seven cameras that followed the moves of Cyrus and her band to capture the 3D material. “Director Bruce Hendricks and director of photography Mitch Amundsen did a great job placing cameras for the shows … where the techno cranes should work, the dollies and steadi-cams.”

“I wanted to give the movie audience the feeling that they were there, part of the concert, with access to the stage.”
-Michael Tronick, Editor

During the shoot, Tronick sat in a remote truck alongside Hendricks, executive producer Vince Pace, and producer Art Repola to watch live 3D footage play back on specially equipped monitors. “We could put 3D glasses on and see it all in 3D. It was so overwhelming … at first I didn’t know where to look,” he says.

Cutting with One Eye Closed

Back in Los Angeles for post production, Tronick soon adjusted to the unique aspects of 3D storytelling, while cutting the film in 2D on an Avid Media Composer Adrenaline system. “You start recognizing and looking for these 3D moments … when someone lifts a guitar straight at the camera or when there is a wide shot that has a good foreground, middle ground, and background with some depth,” he explains.

He also learned to work with a 3D technique called “convergence,” which can be used to lessen or heighten a 3D effect by adjusting the foreground, middle ground, and background in relationship to one another. Tronick explains, “We don’t want the audience bouncing back and forth [abruptly] between the foreground and the background, and we can actually smooth that out. Sometimes this necessitates a different transition or we need to go back and use different shots.”

Some 3D moments were so jarring that they were edited out of the film, for example, when an arm shot up from the crowd in the foreground. Tronick explains that 3D shots such as these can be so difficult for audiences to process that they can cause physical pain or headaches, a phenomenon fondly known as “brain sheer.”

Tronick found the tempo and quickness of cuts to be about the same as in a standard live-action film, though he did sometimes stay a bit longer in a shot so a 3D moment could develop fully. He also tried to strike a subjective balance between the 2D and 3D material. “Sometimes I found myself thinking that I was not seeing enough 3D in certain places and that it felt too 2D,”

he explains. “But the fact that we have 2D material gives your eyes a chance to rest. I like the balance. If you have too much 3D, it becomes less effective.”

“My hunch is that this is the beginning of something big. 3D is not going away, nor should it.”
- Michael Tronick, Editor

Streamlined Post

On a tight 13-week post schedule (supervised by associate producer Paul LaMori), the editing team looked for every advantage to streamline the workflow to complete the 75-minute film. All of the digital footage was prepped at Los Angeles-based FotoKem and delivered on hard drives in encoded Avid DNxHD 36 format for the quickest ingest and the utmost storage efficiency throughout editing.

North Hollywood-based Pivotal Post provided the rental equipment, which included three Macintosh-based Media Composer Adrenaline systems. The workstations, used by Tronick, first assistant editor Aaron Brock, assistant editor Dylan Quirt, and 2D editor Greg Perler, were all connected to an Avid Unity shared-media network with 8 terabytes of shared storage for simultaneous editing.

With two nights of concert footage and two pickup shoots - each shot with seven cameras - there were as many as 28 camera angles per song. Tronick used the Avid system’s Group Clipping and Multicamera features to quickly organize and sort through this enormous amount of footage. “Group clips are absolutely crucial to cutting a musical sequence,” says

Tronick, who sorted through each set of cameras, picked the selects, and assembled them onto one video channel to begin the editing process.

The time savings afforded by the digital editing setup were significant. Tronick cut one song per day for a total of 25 different songs. Fourteen of them made it into the final film, which is being finished in 3D at FotoKem under the direction of John Nicolard and John Daro.

3D for All

Approximately 700 digital theaters across the U.S. are set to carry the film for fans eager to experience the excitement of Cyrus’s stadium shows. “I saw all of these kids lined up to see Hannah Montana in person. I was just trying to carry that kind of enthusiasm with me,” says Tronick. “I wanted to give the movie audience the feeling that they were there, part of the concert, with access to the stage. The sense of actually being at the concert was also greatly enhanced by the sound team - Rob Sephton, Joseph Magee, Dave Fluhr, and Brent Brooks.”

In the process, Tronick uncovered a new passion of his own - working in 3D films. “I think the applications of 3D are limitless,” he says.

“It is smart that studios pay attention and gear up for 3D,” he continues. “My hunch is that this is the beginning of something big. 3D is not going away, nor should it. It enhances what you see, both dramatically and emotionally. You could use it for anything - from a Pinter play to an action film. With 3D, people are going to see things in a whole new way.”