3-D Movies
Aug 13, 2010 19:18:54 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2010 19:18:54 GMT
I would have sworn there was a thread on this, but I can't find it. If someone else can locate it, I'd be happy to move this post there.
There is an article about 3-D in today's NYTimes online. It says in part:
Does 3-D represent the future of the movies?
After a few months of ambiguous box-office results for stereoscopic movies, that’s a question Hollywood executives would love answered in the affirmative, because of the higher ticket prices they can charge. We won’t really know the answer for a year or so, when audiences respond — or fail to respond — to the big-budget 3-D films now entering the production pipeline, all chasing the phenomenal figures generated by “Avatar.” But 3-D is definitely part of the cinema’s past — never as gloriously and gaudily as in the approximately 45 stereographic features released by the American film industry between 1952 and 1955.
...
Generically known as “double system” — because it requires the use of two 35-millimeter projectors, running side by side in perfect synchronization — ’50s 3-D at its best produced an illusion of depth of such brightness and clarity that it puts many modern single-projector systems to shame.
And forget about those red-and-green glasses. Though it’s a myth that refuses to die, the 19th-century anaglyph process (to give the red-and-green technology its textbook name) played only a tiny role in the 3-D boom of the ’50s.
Back then, just as in the systems most widely used today, polarized lenses were used to separate the two images projected on the screen into left-eye and right-eye views. But because 35-millimeter film has a higher resolution than the digital video used for today’s 3-D, and the use of two projectors allows more light to strike the screen than the single projector of digital 3-D, the illusion produced by the double-system technique has a sharpness and presence all its own.
Some people here live in areas where they might be able to see revivals of these older, sharp 3-D movies. It will be interesting to hear how they stack up next to contemporary 3-D.
In the meantime, here's the anyport thread on Avatar.
There is an article about 3-D in today's NYTimes online. It says in part:
Does 3-D represent the future of the movies?
After a few months of ambiguous box-office results for stereoscopic movies, that’s a question Hollywood executives would love answered in the affirmative, because of the higher ticket prices they can charge. We won’t really know the answer for a year or so, when audiences respond — or fail to respond — to the big-budget 3-D films now entering the production pipeline, all chasing the phenomenal figures generated by “Avatar.” But 3-D is definitely part of the cinema’s past — never as gloriously and gaudily as in the approximately 45 stereographic features released by the American film industry between 1952 and 1955.
...
Generically known as “double system” — because it requires the use of two 35-millimeter projectors, running side by side in perfect synchronization — ’50s 3-D at its best produced an illusion of depth of such brightness and clarity that it puts many modern single-projector systems to shame.
And forget about those red-and-green glasses. Though it’s a myth that refuses to die, the 19th-century anaglyph process (to give the red-and-green technology its textbook name) played only a tiny role in the 3-D boom of the ’50s.
Back then, just as in the systems most widely used today, polarized lenses were used to separate the two images projected on the screen into left-eye and right-eye views. But because 35-millimeter film has a higher resolution than the digital video used for today’s 3-D, and the use of two projectors allows more light to strike the screen than the single projector of digital 3-D, the illusion produced by the double-system technique has a sharpness and presence all its own.
Some people here live in areas where they might be able to see revivals of these older, sharp 3-D movies. It will be interesting to hear how they stack up next to contemporary 3-D.
In the meantime, here's the anyport thread on Avatar.
