“Arabia 3D” represents the first major film production filmed entirely in Saudia Arabia, the first to feature aerial photography of some of the country’s mosques and world’s largest gathering of humans — 3 million Muslims in the annual hajj pilgrimage — and one of the few films to showcase the culture’s 2,000-year history that included a reign as the hub of the Islamic Golden Age featuring the development of algebra, optics, hospitals and the scientific method.
All this in 45-minutes, in giant IMAX, and in 3D, at the California Science Center beginning this weekend and running for several months.
And once again IMAX showcases 3D as it should be presented, creating a completely immersive experience to the point that you even feel as if the sand is blowing inches from your face.
<Story continues following the 3-minute video interview below with “Arabia 3D” filmmaker Greg MacGillivray, who explains why IMAX 3D is the only format getting 3D right.>
Say Saudia Arabia to most people these days and they will think primarily of turban-wearing people riding camels and living in desserts counting their billions of dollars from the oil beneath the sand.
Others may think of Muslims and associate them with terrorists.
It was these one-dimensional stereotypes and misconceptions that people and businesses of Saudia Arabia, including oil companies, sought to change through a film that could paint a more layered and comprehensive portrait of the Arabian culture. Longtime IMAX filmmaker Greg MacGillivray, who directed photography for “The Towering Inferno” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” before spending the next 35 years producing and directing spectacular and award-winning IMAX films such as “Everest” and “Grand Canyon,” accepted the challenge to spend four years on “Arabia 3D.”
The challenges included shooting in a country that has no cinema infrastructure and has not allowed cameras near most anything. And these were not ordinary cameras — they were extraordinarily large IMAX cameras with 3D that shoot only 3-minutes of film before requiring reloading.
The result is a movie filled with fascinating and enlightening historical and contemporary context and anecdotes as conveyed through narrators such as Helen Mirren and three contemporary citizens, including the most engaging one, a film student at Chicago’s DePaul University who is tracked as he returns to his homeland to make his own movie about the country.
While it can be a little slow and dry at times, no joke intended, the enormous amount of in-depth research that went into “Arabia” is clear and presented well, and the photography and 3D is stunning. That photography includes From multiple shots of camels doing that tri-fold thing with their legs every time they want to simply lay down; underwater 3D exploration of shipwrecks of the Red Sea; and ultimately the staggering shots in the holy city of Mecca and the masses of humanity winding through a circle of ceremony.
Everyone will learn a lot about the Arabian culture, and hopefully Hollywood mainstream filmmakers will learn how 3D should be produced.
– By Scot Hettrick
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offers decent 3D considering it is the TrioScopics upgrade of the old-style of anaglyph 3D with the colored lenses. That makes it more accessible to everyone with any kind of TV. Some of the best gross-out and masochistic goofball stunts in 3D are the opening slow-motion mayhem including faces getting bashed, as well as scenes like the one in which the troupe of numbskulls tries putting all manner of objects and body fluids in the stream of a jet engine to see what happens.
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