Sky is continuing its push into 3D following the recent live broadcast of a music gig with the stereoscopic recording of a ballet.

The shoot, which used three dual-camera rigs, took place at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London on Thursday (9 April) and featured a performance by the English National Ballet.

Using technicians and a full-zoom rig from US company Pace, the images were captured on Sony F950 cameras with each ‘eye' recorded onto HDCam SR decks. The results are expected to feature at NAB where Gerry O'Sullivan, director of strategic product development is giving a keynote speech.

While the high-end technical knowledge was shipped in from the US, much of the talent on show - including camera operators - was from the UK with a specific emphasis on increasing the UK's knowledge base.

Sky chief engineer, broadcast strategies, Chris Johns said: “We're trying to encourage more people to gain [3D] experience. We're utilising people from the UK and training them to do inter-oculars and balance cameras so we're not reliant on someone from the US.”

Johns, who is also encouraging directors to “linger longer” and shoot wider to allow viewers to receive the full benefit of the 3D images, is now keen to make 3D production work more quickly.

“We have to speed up the workflow, which can be labour-intensive as everything has to go through high-end suites,” he said. “But we don't want to leap in and buy equipment while we're in this process of evaluation.”

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