THE SILVER SCREEN: Part 1

Ah the silver screen: searchlights scanning the Hollywood sky, glamorous premiers, gorgeous actresses….  The silver screen is a term that has denoted the glamour and excitement of Hollywood since Chaplin twirled his cane. While to some it is the most visible sign of hope for the cinema for others it is a dreaded surface upon which to project those old standby 2D movies.  But there’s so much more to it than glamour – there’s dreadful science.  It’s a technology that ought to command the industry’s keenest minds, because, after all, that’s where a hundred and fifty million bucks wind up as a vibrating veneer of a hundred billion photons reflected into the eyes of tens of millions of photon consumers. That’s one big point in favor of the film industry – they have not dehumanized the customer to the point where he or she is called a consumer.  The customers are still the audience, people with feelings rather than human maws born to consume piles of chazarai labeled made in Chinese. 

SIDE-BY-SIDE FOREVER

Lately there has been a lot of interest in two formats for stereoscopic multiplexing:  The above-and-below, resurrected by Technicolor for theatrical projection using film, and the side-by-side for multiplexing left and right images for television.  Here’s some background from a personal perspective. 

OVER-AND-UNDER AND OUT

In the early 1980s, when I founded StereoGraphics Corporation, the first bit of revenue income we had came from a venture with Chris Condon of StereoVision International.  Chris was a pioneer in the projection of stereoscopic movies using a single 35mm projector.  He founded the company Century Precision Optics, which is now a part of Schneider; but he moved on from there, sold it, and created StereoVision International because he had a big hit with the ‘70s movie The Stewardesses.  The success of that film set him to work on perfecting a single film approach to stereoscopic projection and photographic techniques.  He settled on the above-and-below (also called over and under or over/under) format based on two two-perforation high subframes with the Scope 2.4:1 aspect ratio occupying the area of the academy aperture. 

LIVE-ACTION STEREOSCOPIC FEATURES

 

As reported in Daily Variety Jeffrey Katzenberg was recently heard decrying the lack of live-action stereoscopic features.  He exhorted the industry to correct this situation.  He was also quoted as musing about his motivation for going beyond the mandate of his own particular self interest, animation, by taking on the live-action cause.  But if there were more live action stereoscopic features in the theaters it will also be good for people who make feature-length animated films, like Katezenberg. 

THE DIGITAL RELIGION

The announcement by Technicolor of a film-based 3D system, which would cost exhibitors comparatively little money to install, was provocative to say the least.

Email to a Producer

 This is opinionated but backed by reason. This is not at all like the debate on health care reform. It’s better to shoot parallel because you will not incur asymmetrical trapezoid distortion which shows up most often in wide angle in close shots. The zero parallax plane can then be set in post by horizontally shifting the left and right images. The downside of that approach is that you will have to crop image area to maintain the aspect ratio.

When shooting your IMAX films parallel was just fine without having to laterally shift because IMAX uses a different compositional theory — different from that used for the usual theatrical cinema. IMAX strives for a so-called immersive effect and the background points are set to be at a fixed 2.5 inches — at least for many IMAX films. Shooting with toe-in will create the geometrical distortion I alluded to but it can be fixed in post with a Pablo — for example. Most stereo rigs do not allow for shooting parallel to control the desired zero parallax setting. They depend on toe-in. Parallel going lens axes can only have a zero parallax control if the sensors or lenses are horizontally shifted at the time of photogrpahy.

The overriding aesthetic concern has to do with what I call stereo timing — the analogue of color timing. There is no way to set the zero parallax plane with complete confidence during cienamtogrpahy because it is impossible to understand how the shots will finally go together at the time of photography. Therefore, no matter what method used, tweaking in post is necessary to get the right stereo timing — or proper image flow and look.

Link to MacVideo Part 2

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=117128

Surrendering to the Flu

Monday and Tuesday I lay in bed,
Wishing I was very dead.
What I preferred to getting worse,
Was that final ride in a big black hearse.

Link to MacVideo Interview

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/interviews/index.cfm?articleId=116729

Yoda Beware

Yoda, a grungy puppet,

Demonstrates the worthlessness of charm and wisdom.

A shrill caricature of a wise man,

A shmata paper-maché piece of crap,

Who spouts cliché Eastern philosophy.

Yoda, I deplore your Lego lightsabre,

Your Jedi bullshit.

You punky poseur,

You mock the ephemeral nature of the path.

Of the dharma and the sanga.

You false squeaky voiced phony bodhisattva,

I stand before you naked.

I condemn you.

 

And you, corrupt puppeteer,

Remove your hand

To reveal the broken lifeless spirit of a doll

Without a spine.