Lhary, our vice president of technology, was the first employee of StereoGraphics; there were only five or six of us then. Lhary (his spelling) was a good electronics designer who was self-taught without having gone to college.  He had been the youngest engineer to work at the ABC radio network responsible for the cross country feed. Lhary had a calm disposition and sonorous voice and he wore thick tortoiseshell glasses; although I do not think Lhary and I looked alike people would often mistake us for brothers.  The glasses and the beards were enough; just a couple of hippie anarchists spreading the gospel of 3-D.

We were alone in the hall; that is to say there were no other stereoscopic displays. Lhary and I waited for people to stop by and tell us what they thought of our wares.  Not all of them were polite; a number of people would say things like 3-D! ha! ha! pretty good for pornography or maybe you should have a giant gorilla sticking its hand out of the screen.

No matter what kind of crap was on display in the hall I cannot believe that it was greeted with outright disdain, disbelief, incredulity, and hostility; those reactions went on for years.  But after Silicon Graphics and Evans and Sutherland adopted our products we eventually had a large booth and because of the years of standing behind little tabletops we had seniority so our booth was adjacent to the likes of Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems. The mockery ceased. At one time I counted 40 booths in the hall at Siggraph featuring our products.

We looked like one of the big player, and in fact we had enabled a significant industry whose revenue could be reckoned at a few hundred million but we were only a $5 million company.  That was because many people were selling hardware and software-based on our products but we were considered to be a computer peripheral and we could not figure out how to properly monetize the value of our technology.

Lhary died a few years later but he did live long enough to see us gain acceptance.  I did scores of tradeshows after Lhary was gone but persistent into the beyond he stood next to me and calmly answered questions. Now the technology we developed is in use not only for cinemas but also in the home.  A couple of years ago I thought acceptance had come.  The stereoscopic medium was saving the film industry!  There were going to be 3-D TVs in every home! But now I am having bummer flashbacks behind the velvet (probably velour) tabletop once again flinching because of the barrage of articles in the press decrying the stereoscopic medium. It’s a seemingly unending stream of complaints about 3-D movies and television. The movies are dark, conversion is no good, the movies aren’t making money, 3-D TV is DOA because of the need for glasses and no content.

Today when I read what the skeptics have to say, so outspoken in their loathing of the technology, I have visions of the brothers Lhary and Lenny, standing in front of the velvet curtain, taking it on the chin for 3-D.

I remember laughing so hard with George that I had to fight for breath.  I remember one occasion when George laughed so hard that he fell out of his chair.  Bob Christgau (now a music critic) and I ran a screening room, The Eventorium, on W. 100th St. near Broadway. We had open screenings (bring a movie and we’ll show it) on Friday nights that caught on and well-known underground filmmakers, if that is not contradiction, would attend. We had a couple hundred people packed in this little room watching movies.  Once Gregory Marcopolis showed up and I kept his $2 admission check as a souvenir. We were part of the underground or independent film scene and at that time an independent filmmaker was not somebody who made a feature hoping it would be a stepping stone to a Hollywood career. The term referred to a countercultural artist who either ignored or despised the film industry and wished to pursue an alternative path.  These were experimental filmmakers who were trying to find a way to express themselves beyond the theatrical cinema narrative structure – that was the doctrine. Cinema is capable of many things and only one of them is telling stories.  George and his brother Mike resembled today’s independent filmmakers because they told narratives and were developing their own sensibility, not any wilder than that of John Waters or Tim Burton.  George was a loony guy but he knew exactly what he was putting on the screen.  He was a fine comedian. I suppose Hold Me While I’m Naked is considered his Masterpiece.

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and a year later George came out.  There was a flourishing underground film scene in the Bay Area just as there was a flourishing underground film scene in New York.  The New York scene centered around The Filmmakers Cooperative which is located on the lower East side and the scene in the Bay Area centered around Canyon Cinema Co-op which at that time was located in Earl Bodine’s apartment in San Francisco near the Bay Bridge.  In New York there were filmmakers like the painterly Stan Vanderbeek and Ed Emshwiller, and sybaritic Jack Smith, who were championed by the indefatigable Jonas Mekas in his Village Voice column.  Jonas was the glue that kept the scene together. His diatribes awakened me to the independent filmmaking movement.  An odd movement it was since the filmmakers were so different stylistically.

In the Bay Area there were filmmakers Robert Nelson, part of the Funk Movement, the lyrical filmmakers James Broughton and Bruce Baillie, and collagist Bruce Connor. Canyon Cinema started as a screening society and became a co-op distributor. Under its auspices screenings took place starting in the little Bay Area community of Canyon and then migrated to San Francisco at Glide Memorial Church. The screenings were organized by Emery Menefee, a chemist with the United States Department of Agriculture. Emery was the editor of Canyon Cinema News and once a month or so some of us pitched at his house in Richmond and assembled the News to ship to the membership. The screenings at Glide were raucous. Once there was a man who would not shut up during a film and Bruce Connor, who sat in the row in front of him, turned around and punched the guy in the face; a response that was in excess of the crime. But haven’t you wanted to do it?

My part in this was writing a weekly film column for the Berkeley Barb underground newspaper and making films of my own. It was a great time of my life and a time of community when George arrived on scene.  He stayed with me for a bit and I showed him around and he liked the scene. He helped me with a film I was working on, Below the Fruited Plain.  He added a voice-over track transforming a mundane how-to-do it film, on sandal making (shades of Popular Photography), into the story of a broken marriage. He went home to the Bronx and then returned to stay. And one day after George had been in the Bay Area for a while a friend of his from New York and he dropped by my apartment and the decisive event in our relationship occurred. I do not know how we got onto the topics area but his friend launched into a diatribe against black people. It was a fulsome vituperation and I yelled at the guy telling him he was racist and a jerk. That ended the visit and, as George was leaving, he said to me: “You bit Bob’s head off.”

From that day, until the day George died only a few days ago, we never spoke again. I would see George at screenings and try to say hello but he would avoid me. I wonder if shouting at the dope was the right thing to do?  He was a guest.  Should I have let it pass? Was the response worse than the offense, like Conner’s punch? Sure, I thought I was on the side of the angels but was it worth it?

George I will miss you but I have been missing you for the past 45 years.

Questioning conversion quality is legitimate and there are both good and bad examples of the art. Similarly live-action 3-D cinematography quality is variable. The highest 3-D image quality is associated with CG animation.

It is generally accepted, by the press and by people in the industry, that stereoscopic projection is dim. I have several suggestions for how to go about improving projection brightness. Some of these suggestions will be perceived to be impractical. None of them would break the bank for exhibitors with existing installations. If only some of the suggestions are implemented alone or in combination we could more than double  the brightness of projected 3-D images.

It is a hellish tradeoff to ask people to accept a dim image that’s in 3-D over a bright image in 2-D. Few in their right mind would pick the 3-D image given this choice but that’s what theater-goers are being asked to accept.

The SMPTE standard for 2-D projection is 14 fL. (A special photometer aimed at the center of the screen when projecting clear leader for 35mm or a white field for digital should read 14 fL. to meet spec. ) The reason that we are accepting less brightness for 3-D projection is because it’s not easy to accomplish. But it’s not impossible. If 3-D movies were projected at 14 fL they would look great. I should point out that most of the time 2-D movies are probably not projected at the 14 fL standard but I surmise that it is pretty rare for the image to be in the realm of 3-D stygian gloom. The informal 4.5 fL goal for 3-D projection is a sad comment on the state of the art. If exhibitors want to give people a special experience that justifies the up-charge they need to have bright 3-D projection. Here are my suggestions for accomplishing that:

Screen size
Screen size has greatly increased over the years. I can’t prove it but I think it has doubled in the past half century. This is not the place to discuss the historical factors for this but is not uncommon for the front wall of theaters in a multiplex to be mostly screen even in a relatively small house. But a screen that is only slightly smaller can result in a great increase in brightness. Changing from a 40 foot wide screen to a 30 foot wide screen or from a 55 foot wide screen to a 40 foot wide screen will double brightness — all things being equal. Brightness is a function of area and a relatively small reduction in width can result in a large increase in brightness. The simplest and least expensive way for exhibitors to increase the brightness of stereoscopic movies is to reduce the size of the screen. This will seem like heresy to some of those who operate theaters but it’s a smart way to solve the problem. The audience will notice that the image is brighter but I think they won’t care that the image is a bit smaller.

Lamps
Stop the detestable practice of running the lamp past its rated life. It still gives off light but its output falls of drastically with time of operation.

High gain screens
Exhibitors who’ve purchased Dolby or XPand systems, which don’t depend on polarization conserving screen which are also high gain screens, should not elect to stay with matt screens. They also need a high gain screen. They don’t need a silver screen but there are nonmetallic high gain screens that can increase the brightness by a significant factor compared to matt, something like 1.8 times. Even small theaters will greatly profit from such screens.

Projector choice
I’m now going to make myself an enemy of cost-conscious exhibitors all over the world. If you’re equipping a new theater for projecting stereoscopic movies get the brightest projector even for a small screen. I don’t mean the brightest projector for your screen size; I mean the brightest projector – which is also the costliest. I’ve been to too many theaters and screening rooms with small screens that are projecting dark 3-D images. You can’t spec the projector for 2-D and expect it to work for 3-D.

Scope projection
For 35mm scope is projected using an anamorphic lens. But scope in most digital cinemas is accomplished by means of cropping to get the wider aspect ratio. Cropping results in less utilization of the image engine and less brightness. My suggestion is that when projecting 3-D in scope exhibitors should use and an anamorphic lens to get the brightest image. This will be true for both top masking and side masking theaters.

To recap
I’ve given a number of suggestions for how the industry can improve the brightness of stereoscopic projection.
For a theater running Dolby or XPand products reducing the screen size and using a high gain screen could increase screen brightness by a factor of four. Polarization image selection systems like those offered by the MasterImage or the potentially very bright RealD XL system could also increase their brightness by the means described here. The RealD XL system can be very bright but practically it won’t be if it’s used in conjunction with a projector that is underpowered for that room, or with a screen that is too big, or with lamps that are run past their rated life.

Except for my suggestion for new theaters that they buy the brightest most costly projectors, every other suggestion could be accomplished for a relatively minimum outlay. The single most effective thing that an exhibitor can do is to project on a smaller screen and that would involve getting masking for the existing screen and possibly a new longer-throw lens. This could immediately double the brightness of projection. The other suggestions, such as getting a high gain screen won’t break the bank either. If only some of these suggestions are adopted by theater operators then in a matter of days we progress  from having a bleak stereoscopic cinema to one that is bright enough to justify calling 3-D movies a special event.

The current Conan film is true to that vision, and a better picture than the Schwarzenegger movies, with a better actor, Jason Momoa, who plays Conan. He is better looking and commands the screen in a way that Schwarzenegger did not. Schwarzenegger is a slope-shouldered freak who deserves to be dumped into the dustbin of cinema history. He was as bad an actor as he was a governor. But his failure was fascinating to watch in both roles.

The present version of Conan has not clicked with the public or critics although it is well made film. It is hyper-violent but not quite at the porn-slasher level. It tells a story of revenge set against a bleak Bulgarian landscape. The sizable number of people who worked on the picture, which can be observed when the credits roll, is bloated by the half-dozen or so houses that worked on the 2-D to 3-D conversion.

For the most part the conversion sucks. The stereoscopic effect is utterly inappropriate to the film which is broadly melodramatic and cartoonish. The stereo is flat and chock full of anomalies. I am sure it is a better picture in 2-D but 3-D is my thing so I sacrificed my afternoon and saw the film that way. There are occasional shots, maybe a score, that are gorgeous in 3-D. It is as if an angel descended from above to bless a handful of shots. Diamonds in the shit. But the beauty of these shots, for the most part long-shots and landscapes, amplified the absolute horror of the rest of the conversion.
Go ahead Hollywood – turn off the audience. Kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Chop with a rusty blade the goose’s neck and if that is not enough cover up the mistakes with projection that can be best appreciated with night-vision goggles. Hey! A new invention: 3-D glasses with built in night vision capability.

I watched the show at the 12:05 (afternoon) August 30 screening at the Arclight Sherman Oaks . There were two people behind me — an elderly man and a young man and what they said was what people all across the country are saying about 3-D: the movie was dark. Given the Xpand shuttering glasses system that was being used in a relatively small theater the image ought to have been decent. To lift up the glasses was to see what a movie should be – bright!

The crime at the Arclight is especially galling because it is one of the premier venues for the projection of motion pictures in the United States, and possibly the world. It is as good as a studio screening room. The Arclight prides itself on its excellent projection but its 3-D projection is lousy.

Between the studios and their crappy content and the exhibitors with their self-dooming approach to projecting 3-D, 3-D is being diminished. As far as the content goes I must point out that conversion is not solely to blame – movies shot in 3-D are frequently wanting as well. But that’s another story for another time. Cartoon features (CG animation to you) are the best looking 3-D content.

I walked in that theater feeling fine I left with a headache and I do not get headaches very often. Fourteen dollars for a headache? You do the math. How long can 3-D movies survive at such bargain prices?

The JVC, by allowing you to see mixed images to precisely set ZPS, gets lots of points.  Both have mucked up setting creative controls and everybody, including Ford, should revert to knobs and drop the Chinese puzzle-box menus and touch screens as the sole means of control.  At least offer the knobs for individual functions so that more than one function can be addressed at a time.

Shame on the ads for promoting the Sony as running at 24p.  It does but only for 2D operation.  The JVC is also a 60i 1920 by 1080i camera but more expensive 24p versions (required for universal distribution  here, there and everywhere) of both are on the way. And when they arrive there will be some head scratching amongst the pros.  Are these only disposable machines for drop-them-off the cliff stunts or how much of a feature or TV show could you get away with using these cameras?

The system there is the XPand shuttering eyewear system on a big screen but what was used was not a true product and serves only to highlight the problems of stereoscopic projection.  In order to get decent brightness Paramount used two projectors and such a remedy is out of the question for neighborhood theaters. The eyewear dug into my nose — I was aware of them — but the ANSI image contrast is great and cross-talk is zilch.

I am bemused to recount that I was the leader of the design team that invented and manufactured the first IR linked shuttering eyewear, CrystalEyes.  The XPand eyewear are a direct descendant of CE I, the original model with non-folding temples.  They even use optically compensated pi-cells, which I also invented.  The StereoGraphics product was $1,000 and although heavier and a bigger than the XPand eyewear they were more comfortable.

Paramount should put in a silver screen and use the RealD XL projection system.  (I also helped to develop that but I have no interest in RealD.)  That would be brighter than the XPand double projector contraption and use but one projector.  Not sure the contrast would be as good, nor am I sure the cross-talk reduction would be as good, but on balance it would be a better experience with relatively unobtrusive eyewear.  Paramount, I think, wants to keep on with a matte screen because of color balance issues and also because side-seats will suffer in image quality.

The autostereoscopic technology they will be adding to their tablet was demonstrated many years ago. There’s little development risk. Sadly a couple of guys I know lost their shirts trying to get people interested only a few years ago.  They were a only bit ahead of the curve.

What Apple can do now is probably going to be good and if they do everything it’s possible to do it will be superb for single user stereoscopic viewing.

It’s true that it’s a job of conversion and that process is much maligned.  However I do know of a successful example.  My sister-in-law Sara converted to Judaism.

Chris Condon came by and he began to talk to me as if we were old friends. He told me about his involvement with the 3-D movie The Stewardesses. He liked what I was showing and was encouraging which struck me as generous since there I was squirreled away in a little booth with Super 8 projectors and he had been making theatrical features.  He showed me a card that he had in his wallet that said that he was a vice president of Sierra Pacific airlines. Chris told me that the airline had gone under and that he had lost the $12 million he had earned from the stewardesses.

We talked about stereoscopic technology for a while but what I remember the most was how forthcoming he was to me, a stranger.  I stayed in touch with Chris in the days before and after I founded StereoGraphics Corporation. Chris and I created a venture called Future Visions. I ran across the logo recently. FUTURE DIMENSIONS was in drop shadow type with the shadows trailing off to infinity.

Chris was good at building stereoscopic camera and projector lenses but he needed somebody to represent the system and to act as a stereographer. He literally took me into his home and I stayed with him and Marge, his wife, and worked in his shop with him. We shot demo film behind the Stereovision International brick building on Burbank Boulevard. I pass that building on my trips to the hardware store, Burbank airport, or the studios. Every time I passed the building I think of Chris and bits of memory come to mind.

I learned more about Chris as he told me that he had been a bombardier in the Second World War and become fascinated with optics and airplanes. When he returned to Hollywood after the war he saw that there was a need for long focal length lenses for the film industry and he founded Century Precision Optics to fill that need. Later he got involved with the production of the Stewardesses by providing stereoscopic optics and by investing in the picture. It was an unusual film in that while it was in theaters it was still being shot, or more properly reshot. Chris told me that the film had originally been shot on dual 16mm film before he came up with optics that would allow it to be shot on a single 35mm roll of film. He used a side-by-side format with an anamorphic squeeze in the horizontal direction and it is the direct precursor of the format used in today’s stereoscopic television systems.

The Stewardesses, Chris told me, earned $26 million on a small investment. That convinced Chris that a lot of money could be made from the stereoscopic cinema and he began to devote more and more of his efforts researching stereoscopic optics. He sold Century Precision Optics to devote himself to Stereovision International.

He had a broad interest in stereoscopic optics and he built both 35mm and 70mm systems and became interested in the above and below 35mm format that others such as Robert Bernier had been developing. Chris had become convinced that above and below was the best way to go. It provided a Scope aspect ratio and an effective utilization of the 35mm  frame’s area. He pooh-poohed any criticism of the format, but there were some genuine technical shortcomings which he did attempt to overcome. He patented a projection lens for the format using a heat sink to overcome one of its problems. He produced a line of three focal lengths of above and below lenses that mounted on a reflex camera like an Arri so the camera operator could see through the lens. This was an improvement over Bernier’s Spacevison lens which worked only on non-reflex Mitchells.

In 1981 I worked on two films as part of the Future Dimensions venture. The first one was called Oldsmobile Dimensions of Quality that was shot in Detroit where I spent a week or so with a crew making a film that was to be shown only once at a tradeshow. Immediately after that shoot I headed to Shelby North Carolina to work with Earl Owensby on his 3-D film, Rottweilers, Dogs from Hell.

Although Rottweilers is a bad film the stereoscopic cinematography is good. Chris and I used the film as a calling card to try to get onto the Universal picture Jaws 3D. I remember us carrying the metal cans of 35mm film into the Black Tower on the lot. We did a screening for Pete Comendini, who ran Universal Optical, and the director of the show, Joe Alves. After screening about two reels they stopped the projector and told us that they couldn’t show the film to the executives who would make the final decision about who would get the job notwithstanding the excellent quality of the image.  ”The 3-D is great but the picture is crap,” they said. They felt that the executives upstairs couldn’t separate the content from the image quality. So we didn’t get the job but Chris did wind up doing some B role photography for the show.

I continued to stay in contact with them Chris over the years. I bought some lenses from him and I would visit from time to time. I liked going to his shop on Burbank Boulevard. For one thing I had become part of his family and over the years they were proud of what I had accomplished. He was encouraging and helpful in a field that’s notorious for vile rivalries. The lens grinding area and the place where the lenses were assembled was always off-limits at Stereovison but people hung out there and the place was fun. It was an odd setup not the least of which because his son-in-law’s motorcycle repair was shop in the middle of it all.

The last time I had a real conversation with Chris was just a few months ago when we met at Pete’s coffee in Encino to discuss his attempt to sell me 400 lenses that he had made for India. He failed to get an upfront payment and after a bizarre disaster he was unable to ship the lenses. The Indians were producing their own 3-D movies and they were using his projection lens in theaters.  In one theater the audience took exception to the quality of the film and a riot ensued with people getting hurt and the theater being demolished. As a result of this the Indian customer canceled the deal and Chris was left with 400 warehoused lenses.

Chris also pitched another idea which might be considered to be odd coming from the man who produced the soft core movie The Stewardesses.  He was seeking financing for a travelogue about the Holy Land.

Recently I visited Chris several times in the hospital and care facility.  He was unable to recognize me or to speak.  And then I heard that Chris had died.  Goodbye Chris.

LL:  What gave you the idea of shooting a 3-D, I’ll call it a horror movie?

TJ:  Let’s call it a thriller.

LL:  It’s a thriller.  Because “horror movie” is wrong.  Today it means gore.

TJ:  Yeah, this is much more…  a psychological thriller.  And the idea of exploring some psychological issues in the vein of film noir, where the heroes are typically conflicted psychologically and are working out some deep personal issues… For me, shooting the film stereoscopically was an allusion…  The depth in the picture gave me a chance to explore depth in filmmaking.  In other words, I felt like I could heighten the symbolism that’s inherent in the dreamlike narrative of film noir, with a heightened sense of depth and using the visuals in a way that would cast them in relief, bring some of the visuals to the foreground, and allow me to explore psychological issues in a visual way. 

LL:  So you knew 3-D was going to be an element in this story from the get-go?

TJ:  Yes, I did.

LL:  Just the way any director would know that color and sound were going to be part of the story, and almost take it for granted.

TJ:  Yes.

LL:  But in this case I presume you had to be more self-conscious because it’s news, or it’s a novelty.

TJ:  Yeah, it is novel.  So there are less filmic references that I can draw upon in stereo, which allowed me to be freer in making my associations.  Whereas in the 2-D world you know you’re going to be working with color, sound, and a composition that’s going to be in a 4×3 or a 16×9 frame – you know, you have your wide lenses, and your tight lenses, and you have your depth of field, and these are the tools with which we’ll tell a visual story.  With 3-D we add the extra element of the z-axis to our toolbox to tell a visual story – to use visuals to tell a psychological, emotional narrative.

LL:  So when you’re on the set shooting a shot, are you able to visualize what the 3-D effect is going to be like to the audience?

TJ:  In creating the narrative, I try to incorporate aspects of stereoscopy in order to…  In other words, I try to plan, using storyboards and the script, where the 3-D is going to have an impact on the narrative beforehand – before I get to the stage and the set.  And for that reason I storyboarded the entire film – shot by shot, frame by frame – so I knew where each shot was going to land in the film, and where that shot was going to exist on the z-axis of the 3-D narrative.  In other words, I created the narrative in a storyboard form, and I went back through that storyboard and decided where the subject in each frame was going to exist in the z-axis of the picture.  Looking at the film scene by scene, act by act, I could then map out how I wanted the stereo to play in the film – in other words, how I wanted the audience to experience the 3-D narrative.  For instance, I believe that if you’re watching a 3-D film and everything is put into stark 3-D relief, eventually your eyes will get used to the 3-D effect and you will lose the impact that you have.  The first 30 seconds of a 3-D film are always the best, because your eye is visually stimulated in a new way that you’re not used to, even in real life; because stereoscopic film is still an illusion.  It’s two flat images married together to create the illusion of depth.  So when you’re watching it on a screen, although closer to real life it’s still an illusion.

LL:  That’s a very important point, because people often say that the addition of the stereoscopic element to the cinema makes it more realistic.  But you’re getting at something that I think is deeper.  It’s not necessarily that it’s more realistic; it’s something else that you can use to involve the audience, and manipulate.

TJ:  That’s correct.  Like color, like stereo sound, it is a reflection of how we perceive reality in our day-to-day lives, but it is still a manufactured, man-made illusion.  And you’ve experienced that.  In no way do you feel like these images are real at any time.  You’re still using depth, you’re still using depth of field, you’re still using focus to tell the story.  I still can pull focus from subject to subject.  I’m still confined by the frame in telling the story, and 3-D is just another tool to manipulate the image.

LL:  In The Dark Country your main character is trapped, and I believe that he’s even more trapped in 3-D than he would be in a 2-D movie.  It’s a paradox.  It would seem that you’d have more space, and yet it’s as if the 3-D element in this film puts the guy, the poor bastard, in a cage that he can never get out of.

TJ:  That’s correct.  That’s absolutely correct.  And that’s why I felt like stereo would be a perfect medium to explore the psychological issues that the film deals with, and those issues of being trapped.  That’s why the setting is both containing and…  You know, it’s contained inside of a car for a lot of the film, but it’s set in the desert, which is an extremely vast wide open space.

LL:  Right.  I knew you had something after I saw…  I guess I saw an untimed rough cut.  Movies go beyond intellect.  For days I thought about…  Not that I thought about it, but it kept coming back to me and bothered me.  So your work haunted me.  No matter what I thought about it intellectually, analyzed it or whatever, it was very disturbing and it stayed with me.  And then I knew that it was real.  That [?] this was a worthwhile film, and entertaining at the same time.  Of course nobody wants to sit through anything if it isn’t fun to look at.  But it’s actually very disturbing.

TJ:  That’s the idea.  And you’re right: The stereo can enhance the sense of confinement by further defining the borders.

LL:  It’s very monochromatic, and very dark.  And it’s honestly easier to see in stereo than it would be in 2-D.

TJ:  Yes.  Again, that’s the monochromatic choices that we made, you know.  The film noir, chiaroscuro style was chosen to enhance the 3-D effect of the film.  I think that, paradoxically, the less visual information that you can fill in a frame, the more what’s there will stand out in relief.  If I can shoot a character in shadows against black, the more that character will stand out and what he’s doing will take on an inherent larger-than-life meaning than if I were to shoot the character in a much more realistic manner.

LL:  In a sense movies have always been three-dimensional, because directors and cinematographers have always been attempting to direct the audience’s attention to a specific part of the frame through depth of field, or by adding smoke and fog and choice of focal lengths.  So the stereoscopic element is another way to tell a story in depth.  But it’s taken a long time for us to get here.

TJ:  Yeah, all the tricks we use to create an image are mimicking binocular sight.  So we’re trying to create depth in a 2-D image, a 2-D space, and we’ve become very good at it.  And our visual depth cues are so inherent and instinctual that when we see a 2-D image that has foreground, midground and background, we automatically can extrapolate that into what that would feel like in real life – and thus we can have a visceral experience watching a 2-D image.  Nothing changes with the stereo image.  You are still confined by the same limitations, and you still have the same tools to bring about the same effect.  In other words, if you want someone to focus on something in the foreground you’re still going to have to use, like you said, depth of field, focus, and composition to achieve that.  But you’re adding the stereo binocular effect when you shoot with two cameras.

LL:  But curiously, your tormented character who, in a 2-D movie, would be confined to the x and y plane, is now confined to the x, y, and z plane or space.  He’s even more confined.  It’s a paradox.  What you did was very clever.  And I think it’s very important that directors start thinking about the stereoscopic medium not as a gimmick, but as an intrinsic part of telling the story.  The thing is, it isn’t that it’s any more realistic.  It’s that it lets you tell the story better, if you use it right.

TJ:  If you use it right, it’s another dimension – like having a sound come from the back of the theater and then roll forward to the front of the theater.  It’s the same immersive technology that you can use…  It’s another tool in your kit.

LL:  What was it like to be on the set with this new gear, this new equipment?  This is the first picture you directed, correct?

TJ:  The first picture I directed.  We used the Silicon Imaging cameras.  No one had ever shot a feature with those cameras before.  They’re very small.  The digital live-action 3-D – if we weren’t the first, we were the second film to use this digital technology to shoot a live-action stereo film.  The workflow was not established and kept changing on a daily basis as the technology evolved.  The RED cameras hadn’t been used very much, and that technology was evolving as we shot the film.  So there were a lot of technical glitches that we came across.

LL:  You took a lot of risk for your first outing as a director.  You’re either crazy, or you like to take risks.

TJ:  I think what’s exciting for me about digital filmmaking in stereo is the newness of the technology.  Because I was able to put it on a Steadicam rig and shoot live action, I was using the camera in ways that hadn’t been done in stereo before, in live action.

LL:  So there were several different cameras that you used?

TJ:  There were two.  We used the Silicon Imaging camera, which is a very small camera, a 2k camera; and then we used the RED camera.  Both were excellent, excellent cameras.

LL:  And these were in rigs that were put together by Max Penner of Paradise FX.

TJ:  Yeah.  They basically hand-built these rigs to make them work to suit our purposes, cramming them into an AKV [should this be M-KV?] Steadicam rig, which is a special Steadicam rig that can swing from high to low all in one…  It was something that hadn’t been done before.  I’m not saying that they hadn’t shot stereo with a Steadicam before, but the flexibility and the mobility of the camera was something that we were breaking new ground on in the film.  And just the digital workflow – working with stereo and making a stereo film from inception to completion was the exciting part about making the film.  It was that I got to use the stereo to tell the story in a way that was intrinsic to the story that we were telling.  In other words, it wasn’t a gimmick.  In my film there are very few shots where we see objects coming off the screen and coming out at us.  And when you do see it, it’s for reasons that are narrative.  In other words, when that happens it forwards the narrative.

LL:  Up until now you’ve been an actor in action pictures, mostly?

TJ:  Action, drama…  I’ve done dramas and action films and comedies.  I’m a jack-of-all-trades in the acting world.

LL:  So if you would use stereo in any particular genre, where do you think it would work the best?  Because what I’m thinking now is that what we’re going to see in terms of live-action 3-D is going to be [?] movies that use a lot of CG backgrounds or characters.  Your movie is different.

TJ:  That’s right.  The movies you’re going to see, of course, are going to be the horror films where you have knives and axes being thrown out at the audience, and it’s going to be used in much the same way that House of Wax used 3-D in the beginning – which is for the novelty, and to explore the cheap-thrills aspect of 3-D.  If 3-D’s going to evolve and become the tool that it is, and if we’re going to use it as the tool that it is, then we need to find ways to evolve stereoscopic filmmaking and incorporate it into the narrative of a film.  I think the best use of 3-D is going to be in the drama, in the sheer sort of physical, visual, filmmaking largesse – the John Ford, the 70mm, Stanley Kubrick 2001…  And it needs to be used with restraint, and it needs to be used in ways that make the experience of the film deeper.  In other words, it’s not just for saying, “Wow! Pretty pictures!”  It’s for deepening the psychological experience of the film that you take home with you.  Apocalypse Now is a film that stays with people because of the psychological experience that they take away from the film.  It makes them think, it keeps them up at night, it asks serious questions about the nature of existence and humanity and why we do the things we do to each other.  And we can use stereo to enhance that experience.  We can use stereo to further drive home the ideas that we wish to communicate through film.

LL:  Your vision is an avant-garde vision, because I think it’s safe to say that the great majority of studio people, and the producers, don’t see it that way.  They don’t understand that movies have always been three-dimensional and that this is an evolution.  They would use it as a gimmick.  I think we will have arrived at a really good place for the stereoscopic medium when the kinds of dramas that you’re talking about are shot stereoscopically.  But for some reason I think we’re going to have to endure a period of gimmicks.  Paradoxically, and oddly, the cartoon cinema – the CG animation cinema – doesn’t do it.  They’re very well modulated.  The stereo supervisors at DreamWorks, and at Imageworks, and at Disney – and at Blue Sky, I’m familiar with their work…  It’s not gimmicky.  It’s very well controlled.

TJ:  The animation guys, and the guys who are doing animation like Pixar, I think are the most technologically and dramatically evolved filmmakers of our generation, and of any other generation to come before us.  They’re making – and I think this will be proved out – they’re making the best films ever made.

LL:  And they get no respect.  The Academy absolutely doesn’t respect…

TJ:  But they will.  And part of the reason why is because they have to – proof-of-concept, you know – they have to previz their film every frame, frame by frame.  So their narrative is constantly revised so that the visual experience and the narrative become seamless.  They are one.  The music in these films is the best music out there.  It’s brilliant.  The music to Toy Story is absolutely fucking brilliant.

LL:  I’ve actually been listening to it on XM radio.  They have a channel devoted to cinema music, so my kids and I, when we drive around we listen to a lot of the stuff.

TJ:  But you’ll see it.  So when they use stereo, they’re using it as a narrative function.…

TJ:  I was thinking about the animated movies.  I think that because the narrative is so important in an animated film, they just inherently understand that 3-D is used to enhance the narrative.  And one of the things I think is important to understand about 3-D is that when you create a 3-D film, it’s not just a one-size-fits-all stereoscopic effect that you put on the film.  You can vary the intensity of the 3-D effect.  In other words, you can make it stronger or more subtle, and you can go right down to flat 2-D in a 3-D film for sequences.  I think that’s important, because I believe that the eye gets used to the 3-D effect, and halfway through Hondo with John Wayne I stopped seeing the stereo.  I take it for granted, which is a good thing because I’m no longer consciously aware that I’m watching a 3-D film.

LL:  It’s the same thing for color, or sound.

TJ:  Exactly.  Eventually you become desensitized to it slightly.  So I think that one of the things we can do is to vary the intensity of the 3-D.  In other words, if I have a sequence coming up where I really want to use the stereo to enhance the experience of the film, then before that sequence I might back off on the stereo effect, make it much more subtle, so that I lull you into a sense of… You feel like you’ve become completely unaware of the 3-D.  And then turn up the volume on the 3-D when I want you to see it, and it becomes more impactful.  The 3-D will suddenly come roaring out at you at the screen for that sequence.  Then I can back off on it again.  Just like building tension and release in a film, I can also build tension and release using stereo.

LL:  One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately has been how to control that in post.

TJ:  Right.  You have a certain amount of control over it, but you want to kind of think about this stuff while you’re previzing your film.

LL:  That’s the thing:  The animation people have total control over it in post.  They can control the strength of the effect of an individual shot and see how it plays with adjacent shots, or they can control the strength of a sequence to make a point in their depth script.  Actually, what you were describing to me earlier is the “depth script” concept that is used in making animated movies.  In CG animation they make a chart that looks like a musical chart, and they chart the strength of the sequences.

TJ:  I’ve done the same thing with my film.  Ray Zone and I created what we call a depth chart.  It’s a color-coded chart – I’ll include a copy of it in your book – that delineates the z-axis in the space.  So you show the screen, you show the audience, and you show the z-space.  You show the depth behind the screen and the depth in front of the screen, color coded:  Yellow is neutral.  That’s stuff you want to appear at the surface of the screen.  As you go farther back the colors change according to the rainbow.  I think orange is a little bit of depth, red is a lot of depth, and then forward you get…

LL:  What is this?  This is actually the storyboard that’s colored in that way?

TJ:  Exactly.  It’s a depth chart.  Once I have that color code I know that things that are blue are coming out of the screen.  They exist in the audience space – sort of in a, maybe a midpoint.  Things that are purple might exist deep into the audience space – something you’d use very rarely, I think.  Then I can go look at my storyboards, and with colored markers I can color different pieces, portions, of the frame according to where I want those things in the frame to appear in the depth space of the film.  And then I can show that color-coded storyboard to my cinematographer and my stereographer, and they’ll know exactly where I want elements to appear in the frame, and they can make the adjustments.

LL:  So you think 3-D movies require a stereographer and a cinematographer?

TJ:  Right now they do.  I think that stereography is something that is fairly complex.  I think it’s fairly easy to understand, but it has certain complexities, certain guidelines that your average cinematographer – although he can educate himself – he won’t have as much experience as a stereographer.

LL:  So the question is, is the stereographer a real creative force on the set, or is he more like a focus puller?

TJ:  Well, you know, I think that a focus puller can be a creative force on the set.  But the job of the stereographer is a technical job.  His job is to achieve… first of all, to keep it all comfortable so we’re not diverging and making your eyes hurt, and second of all to achieve the effect that you wish to achieve shot by shot.

LL:  So those are the two elements:  You really want the image to be comfortable, and you want the image to be appropriate – and look the way it should to tell the story.

TJ:  Yeah.  I think comfort is your guideline, your number one rule that you only want to break when it’s intentional.  And I think you can intentionally create shots that are uncomfortable.  What’s the word for opposing ocular… ?

LL:  Accommodation and convergence?

TJ:  Yeah, but what’s the word for… ?

LL:  Divergence.

TJ:  Yeah, but the discrepancy between eye-to-eye, you know?

LL:  You’re talking about either retinal or binocular disparity.

TJ:  Retinal rivalry.  Exactly.  I think that retinal rivalry, when both eyes are seeing two different things, can be a tool.  It’s a rule that a stereographer won’t break:  There is no retinal rivalry.  You can’t have it.  It’s taboo.  I think it’s a fantastic tool.  It’s very disorienting.

LL:  It was used in Robot Monster.  I wrote a blog article about it.  Retinal rivalry was used in Robot Monster purposely: one image in one eye, and the other in the other.  And I used that years ago in work I did when I was making super-8 movies in 3-D.  I put two different reels of film on the projector.  It can be an effective technique – and very disturbing.

TJ:  I used it in my film, towards the end.  The character becomes very disoriented, and I use retinal rivalry to give us a sense of the distortion that he’s perceiving.

LL:  You are very thoughtful, and way out there.  This is going in extremely strange directions.  I never thought, because I don’t know you very well… but I’m very impressed.

TJ:  What’s great is, it’s a whole brand new toolbox that people haven’t seen or used a lot.  I mean, there are tools I was hoping to do on this film that I haven’t been able to do.  One of them is that, we create the stereo window.  We determine that the stereo window is going to be in a 4×3 format, a 16×9 format, a 1.33 format, and then we stick to that window.  If we have an object that goes out of frame, then the stereo window is broken.  One of the tools we use, and one of the things we can create, is something that…  You can create a stereo window.

LL:  I saw that in your film.

TJ:  But I don’t think Sony’s going to let me do it, which is really unfortunate.

LL:  You projected in Scope in 2.4:1 and the movie was shot in 1.85 – then you can have material enter the frame.  And with digital projection, you can do it.

TJ:  Digital projection affords…  For the first time, I can create a window.  In other words, I can shoot a 1.85 image, and then I can letterbox it.  And I’ve done this in the cut:  I create a letterbox on the top and bottom of the frame.  If you do it subtly enough, you can weave in a fake stereo window with a letterbox that I can then have an object break the frame.  What is that called?  Breaking the frame.

LL:  I literally had a filmmaker call me up this morning asking me how to do it.  And I told him that you’d done it, because I saw it in one of your shots.  You may be the first person to do it – I don’t know.

TJ:  I am the first person to do it.  And it pisses me off that right now I’m having trouble with Sony in allowing me to break the stereo window, because there are certain guidelines that you have to conform to when you deliver a film, and they’re giving me a crap about, if I create a stereo window then I’m going to be in breach of some kind of bullshit…  It’s all bullshit.  What it means is that people are scared, and they don’t want to break the ground.

LL:  I saw The Dark Knight in IMAX.  Some of that movie is in about 1.4:1, and some of it is about 2:1 – and you never notice the difference.

TJ:  Exactly.  In the first cut of my film, I vary the stereo window.  When we’re dealing with tight shots that are confining and inside the car, I switch to a 2.33 frame.  I have a very long, narrow frame inside the car.  And then when I crash outside to a big wide shot of the desert, I can go 1.85.  Nobody notices.

LL:  We’re actually talking about two things.  One is breaking the window by having material outside of the edges of the frame or the surround, and the other is something that Eisenstein called the “dynamic square.”  Eisenstein wrote an essay called “The Dynamic Square” in which he said, “Why not change the aspect ratio or the shape of the shot as you need it to tell the story?”

TJ:  Yes.  So my goal was to create a dynamic frame where I could move the window around, and then break that frame – letting you know that this box we’ve created is not real.  It can be broken.  It also enhances the hell out of a 3-D effect.  Because when you reach out into the audience, or when you have something break the audience space, if you move and hit the edge of the frame – top or bottom, left or right – the effect is broken, because you can’t escape the box.  But if you create the box, then you can break the frame.  You can literally reach out and break the frame.  It’s a great effect.

LL:  Another effect that people have done is to adapt something that was done in the ‘50s – the floating or virtual window.  Have you seen that effect?  It was done in Beowulf, it was done in Meet the Robinsons, in which the screen surround, or the window, actually moves out into the audience and you can control what is contained within it.  It increases your depth range.  It’s another effect you can use.  It’s very effective.  And it’s not noticed by the audience.

TJ:  Right.  I saw it in Meet the Robinsons.  Very cool.  So, you know, these are new tools.  These are fantastic tools.  You can use them subtly, and people don’t notice – they just feel it.

LL:  The digital cinema turns out to be a wonderful opportunity.

TJ:  These are the advantages of the digital cinema.  It’s fantastic.

LL:  It’s the opportunity for stereo, because without it, either with capture or content creation we wouldn’t have it.  In projection we wouldn’t have it.

TJ:  In film, if you were projecting in 4×3 you’d have to get that little window and put it in front of your projector, and that was it.  That would give you your solid lines.

LL:  For a technical reason, in projection you don’t need masking on the screen for digital projection, because you have a hard edge.  So digital projection screens can be larger than the projected frame, and you still get a very hard edge, if that’s what you want.  But you have to mask or crop movie projection in order to get a hard edge.

TJ:  So for the first time we’re able to use Eisenstein’s dynamic frame.

LL:  This is pretty far out.  You don’t want to be too far out, because they’ll kill you.

TJ:  That’s right.  You want to use these tools, and not get caught.

LL:  I was thinking of the business people.

TJ:  Believe me, I tried.  What’s funny is, when I screened my rough cut of the film I used the dynamic frame, and no one noticed.  That’s when I knew it was effective.  No one noticed.  I had to point it out to them, and then they told me I couldn’t do it.

LL:  The movie business is a tension between artists and business people.  If the artists weren’t allowed to be as free as they were, people wouldn’t come to the movies because they’d be so dull.  So subject matter and techniques are always on the edge, but the business people try to pull it in.  It’s interesting.  It’s a very interesting business.  I’d been selling 3-D systems to engineers.  I was a filmmaker, and then I got interested in 3-D and I started making 3-D systems that were sold mostly to engineers and scientists and people like that.  Now for the past four years I’ve been back in the movie business – which is much more fun.  This is a great business.

TJ:  Yeah.  There’s a always a tension that exists between the technical side, the business side, and the artistic side.  And I think that tension is what allows us to create such great [?]

LL:  I must tell you, your thinking is very advanced.  This is not necessarily the kind of thing that would advance a career.  Even if you were a very well established director, you would have trouble promoting these ideas and getting approval from a studio because they are…  Someday I think they’ll be taken for granted.

TJ:  Absolutely.  This stuff will someday be taken for granted.  And probably in the very near future.  There’s no reason why we couldn’t do it now, other than ignorance.  And just the status quo, you know?  This will change.

LL:  Tom, this has really been fun.  This has been a great conversation.  I don’t want to put you down, but I didn’t know you had it in you.  It’s really interesting.  You’re very thoughtful.

TJ:  Thanks.  This film has been, in many ways, a proof-of-concept.

LL:  I hope it gets released.  It’s a good film.  Because it moves the universe of 3-D in the direction of drama and away from cartoons and exploitation.

TJ:  That’s the proof-of-concept that I started out with.

LL:  I am surprised.  Some of this is not going to make its way into this, but Max is kind of the underdog of the three companies that make camera systems.  His work is superb.  Max is very, very good, and I think underrated.  We have a very interesting problem.

TJ:  Max thinks outside the box.

LL:  Max is a wonderful man.

TJ:  A wonderful guy.  He’s incredibly bright, and he thinks outside the box.  He’s an innovator.