After watching UP again at a Sydney VES preview event, here are my 10 tips for better stereo 3D imaging, or what I like to call Lessons I learned from Pixar after watching the best 3D I have seen yet:

1. It needs to work in mono first. If watching the mono the cuts seem odd- (because it is cut that way just for stereo 3D), then you are approaching your film the wrong way. See Journey to the Centre of the Earth
2. Dont push it on divergency – my eyes look in, not out
3. Be careful with defocus and 3D stereo. In the real world if I look around the shot… I bring that part of the shot into focus.

4. Avoid lens flares – they are really hard to get right – and would often affect one eye differently than the other in the real world. See U2:3D
5. Try and stay inside the screen, dont make we work to hard for the 3D effect – it takes me out of the film experience. See Meet the Robinsons
6. Give the audience a clear thing to look at, a clear visual layout or direction, I want to be directed – I want to not have to look around for the point of the shot.
7. Watch reflections – I change my focus when I look at reflections on say glass – as they are ‘further away’. The problem with reflections in Stereo 3D – I can look at them but the focus or otherwise of the reflections dont change as they would in real life.
8. Dont animate convergence in the shot – it is too clever and it annoys me to the point of a headache See Best of Both Worlds Concert : Miley Cyrus – on second thoughts – dont see it (unless you are a ten year old girl and if you are; why are you reading this?.. go,.. play).
9. Make the Stereo work completely be an extension of the camera and lens choices, understand the cinematography before picking the convergence.
10. Focus on the story first : See UP

Note: check out the fxguidetv interview (Episode 65) with the UP team.