U2 3D Brings Hyperreal Arena Rock to the Multiplex

More than a week later, the film still resonates as a stunning cinematic experience, and the best rock show I've never attended.

With 3-D glasses trained on the Imax screen at the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas, I felt I was experiencing more of the U2 concert from my theater chair than I would have in person. Chalk it up to the impossible camera angles, the breathtaking close-ups and panoramas, or the convincing nature of the latest 3-D technology, but I was really there: watching guitarist-keyboardist The Edge play a Fender Rhodes from a vantage point 4 feet above his head, seeing lead singer Bono's hand reach out to the crowd, and flying through a massive stadium lit up by thousands of cellphones waving in unison like a school of glowing sea creatures. The capacity crowds filling these South American soccer stadiums go absolutely mad for the music of U2. Their hands wave to the beat just a few feet in front of you. Their enthusiasm is wildly infectious.

"Every development in the history of cinema has always been about making the experience more realistic, whether going from silent to talkies, or black-and-white to color," said John Rodell, the producer I spoke with outside the theater. "We see the world in 3-D, so this is a natural progression, now that the technological limitations have been conquered."

The 3-D format goes a long way toward making the movie great, but the film would not have been nearly as powerful with the cameras pointed at most other bands. U2's musicians are masterful performers, and the epic nature of their songs and stage act lends itself perfectly to larger-than-life treatment.

Still, watching a movie is a passive experience; to keep viewers fully engaged for more than an hour, Sassoon Film Design added a smattering of clever visual effects somewhat reminiscent of the square that Uma Thurman's character draws in the air in Pulp Fiction. Post-production staffers also added animated versions of U2's backdrop videos -- most notably a series of icons suggesting that the world's major religions are one. To capture multiple band members in the same frame, the filmmakers added as many as five 3-D layers to the final cut.

Other than that, U2 3D includes little visual or audio trickery. The band insisted that no audio overdubs be included; every note in the film was played live (although for on-stage close-ups, U2 agreed to be filmed playing one show to an empty stadium). "I could make my cat sound like a good singer with Pro Tools," said Rodell, "but we didn't use any of that. What you see there are those guys, playing that night, in front of 90,000 people."

Director Catherine Owens, whose background includes sculpture and music videos, used long, sumptuous cuts that encourage viewers to focus on the music -- as they should during a concert film -- rather than employing the exhausting, cut-heavy style so prevalent in music videos and even some feature films.

The 3ality hyper-realistic 3-D video-capture technology, which uses two lenses to mimic the human visual system with a degree of precision possible only with digital technology, is another crucial ingredient. Stereoscopic cameras have been around for ages, as my grandmother knew, but previous attempts at 3-D cinema were stymied by the complexity of forcing both cameras to work in perfect concert with each other -- thus the nausea and headaches associated with 3-D movies of the past. The 3ality solution begins with nine mobile camera setups, each consisting of two $115,000 Sony F950 CineAlta digital cameras and a surround-sound recording apparatus.

"Every camera has an onboard computer which is correlating all of the different parameters of the camera," said Rodell. "And each camera has 13 very precise Swiss motors on it, and they're moving those cameras relative to each other. They're also making sure focus, focal length, aperture and stuff like that is exactly matched between the two eyes.... This is also the first time zoom lenses have ever been used for 3-D, which is a very tricky thing with 3-D because you have to match your two lenses so precisely." Because even the best zoom lenses have slight variations, 3ality wrote software that finds those trouble spots and compensates accordingly.

Data from each camera traveled through fiber-optic cables to a control room, where it was recorded in the Sony HD SR format. Each frame uses nearly 20 MB of data, 9 MB to 10 MB for each eye. With a frame rate of 24 frames per second, that added up quickly. The entire film consumes almost a petabyte (1 quadrillion bytes) of data on 3ality's servers. Despite the advanced technology involved in creating all those bytes, Rodell pegged the total budget of the film at around $15 million, though he acknowledged "bills are still coming in."

The end result is amazing. U2 3D makes the band's four members -- Bono, Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. -- look and sound like musical heroes, even to this lapsed fan. The songs sound incredible. Only once does the specter of Ben Stiller arise: when Bono hugs the crowd in slow motion, gently ending in an embrace of himself as the crowd roars. The thing is, that's exactly the sort of gesture that electrifies a stadium crowd. As it turns out, such moves are nearly as effective in 3-D Imax theaters as they are in packed arenas.

For all the fun I was having, I did sense an occasional nostalgic pang for an experience I'd never actually had: being a member of these ecstatic stadium throngs. Watching the audience's energetic displays while strapped into my chair felt like being trapped inside of one of those pods from The Matrix -- feeling like a participant, yet participating in nothing.

Those feelings passed -- especially when I realized I could just saunter out of the theater rather than plodding with the other 90,000 or so attendees trying, cattlelike, to exit a stadium.

Besides, I'd had the best seat in the house.

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The movie U2 3D, distributed by National Geographic Cinema Ventures, opens Jan. 23. To find local venues, go to the U2 3D website and click Find a Theater. According to producer Rodell, the Imax version offers a more immersive experience, while the Digital 3-D version features more vivid colors.

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Eliot Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1998, after seeing the world's first MP3 player sitting on a colleague's desk. He plays bass and rides a bicycle, usually not at the same time.

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