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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Bolt Released Digital Only
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 09-30-2008 07:50 PM
Ah 3D ![[puke]](graemlins/puke.gif)
As for 3D lenses...there have been several out there throughout the years. The 1980s vintages are the ones I'm most familiar with.
The Paramount lens that most people think about (blue beam splitter/polarizer) was brought out for Friday The 13th Part 3-D and, to the best of my knowledge, was only used for that film though there were a gaggle of them out there. It also had a nifty shipping case.
Stereovision has had split lenses for a long time...however the kickoff film for the 80s 3D craze was Coming At Ya!. This film didn't use Stereovision but a lens by the Marks Corporation. It looked similar to the Paramount lens in that you had this large contraption on the front to split the image and then combine. They issued various wedges for the front in order to allow sufficient range of adjustment...remember, back then you had everything from large movie palaces with throws over 100-feet and dinky theaters. The Marks lens did okay but was a bit fussy to set up and hold its settings. It also really stuck out from the projector. It was also unfriendly to some projectors of the day (Norelco AA2) and probably wouldn't play nice with the turrets of today.
The Paramount lens was very similar to the Marks lens but the box was notably lighter. It also had the real benefit of having a removable polarizer card that fit on the front of the box. This allowed one to set up the lens without fear of buring a polarizer (quite easy to do...even easier than burning a prime lens).
The Paramount lens also had a real nifty feature of allowing one to tweak one image to better match the other to compensate for keystone. I believe it skewed one mirror. Normally with this sort of 3D lens...all you can do is rotate the lens to center the two images left/right and adjust the mirrors to get a bullseye for up/down and let the corners fall where they fall...the Paramount box got you closer to a perfect match.
Stereovision started out sending (renting) customized lenses on a theatre-by-theatre basis for each film. Each film had a particular frame spacing that Stereovision would calibrate their lenses for. You gave them your theatre particulars and they would send you a customized lens that pretty much just went in and worked (they actually really did seem to hit the mark most of the time).
For side-by-side 3D, the theatre would use their own Anamorphic attachment to the supplied Stereovision prime lens...again, it worked pretty darn well...all things considered.
Later in life, Stereovision came out with a universal lens for over/under that had a much smaller image splitter than the Paramount or Marks lens...in fact, I remember ads showing it on a AA2. It had a knob on the top to allow proper vertical alignment between the two images.
When Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone came out...another player in the lens craze hit the streets...Sirrus (not the radio guys) brought out a real niftly lens. It had a fixed focal length and allowed one to adjust the vertical spacing on a film-by-film basis. However, unlike the others, you could also adjust each "eye's" focus independently. Its polarizer was also quickly detachable for safe set ups. All one had to do is click in back on the front.
Stereovision also came out with an attachable side-by-side lens that allowed one to use their normal scope lens and clamp the attachment onto the barrel of the anamorphic attachement.
To answer the question of screen paint for 3D....Oh it is absolutely available. Technikote sold tons of it, for sure. Also, to this day, IMAX paints their 3D screens on site. They don't come from the factory in Silver.
As for Drive-Ins....in the day, Studios struck "Drive-In" prints for both 2D and 3D. In a 2D feature, a drive-in print meant it was timed so they didn't look so dark. If the the feature was 3D, then it meant that the drive-in print was 2D but in CinemaScope since the 3D over/under process had a wide ratio (scope).
Why won't 3D work in a drive in with a Silver screen? Look at the projection angle...most all I've seen have the projector pointing up. Thus that silver screen will be reflecting most of the light up, up, and away.
As for light-loss...regardless of Digital or Film...it is about a 10-times reduction. In film, you have the light being cut in half by the lens so each eye only gets half of the light...then it gets polarized (which looks like an ND filter)...and then after it bounces off the screen, you go through another polarizing filter in the glasses.
Digital has an advantage (in a single projector system) in that each eye gets all of the light coming out of the lens as they are only shifted in time (with triple flash). For now, the 1.2" imagers can't use all of the imager so you will loose some light due to the extra enlargement (this will be corrected soon though it will require an upgrade to existing system; the .98" DLPs don't have this problem)
Dual projection 3D has distinct light advantages for both film and digital...though it does present some alignment issues as both images can't be at the same point in space. Lens shifting can correct for keystone though it will add some linearity issues...albeit minor. You also need to get the studios to time their 3D movies for more than 5fL (the current target is 3.5-5fL or the colors will over/under saturate).
Steve
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Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Master Film Handler
Posts: 405
From: Canton, MI, USA
Registered: Oct 2007
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posted 09-30-2008 09:52 PM
quote: Mark J. Marshall
I would say "cheaper" and "easier", but not necessarily better. Especially when you're talking about one projector putting both eyes on the screen, which results in the eyes being slightly out of sync. Admittedly, most people don't recognize that as a problem, but some people do.
A properly run and perfectly tuned single projector digital 3D setup can not compare to a perfectly tuned and properly run dual strip 35mm setup. The digital setup is certainly easier to run though, and for a lot of people, the end result on the screen is also "close enough".
Well, the 35mm 3D setups I've seen did not compare favorably with the Real D setup at my old theater (and my opinion on that issue is well documented). I am normally not an advocate of 2k DLP, but I think this is one arena where even a reasonably well run booth would benefit from it.
It certainly may be possible to produce better results with 35mm 3D, but I have never seen it done, in contrast to most 35mm 2D presentations I have seen having surpassed the 2k DLP 2D shows I've seen.
As for the light loss that Steve mentions, that is my biggest complaint. It certainly doesn't help if you are using an already lossy projector. I have not seen a Dolby show to compare to Real D, so I guess I'll have to do that at some point.
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 09-30-2008 10:55 PM
I remember Marks Polarized made big waves in the 3D market back in the mid-80s. So much so, that the guy was receiving death threats.
Just found this obit, from nearly 4 months ago...
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Alvin M. Marks, a prolific inventor who held 122 patents on polarized film for sunglasses, a 3-D moviemaking process, a generator the size of a grapefruit that could produce enough electricity for a house, a windmill with no moving parts and a trillion-dollar "space train," died May 25 in Gardner, Mass. He was 97 and lived in Athol, Mass.
The cause was liver and pancreatic cancer, said Molly Bennett Aitken, his former wife.
An expert in optics, he developed several variants of polarized film that were used in sunglasses and to reduce glare on television screens; a headlight system to aid night driving; and window panels that change gradually from transparent to opaque and back.
In 1951, he was granted a patent for a "three-dimensional intercommunicating system" that could be used to make TV shows and movies. He was president for many years of the Marks Polarized Corp., based in the Whitestone section of Queens, where, along with his brother, Mortimer, who died in 2006, he invented many improvements on his original device, even though three-dimensional moviemaking never became the widespread technique he hoped it would.
Alvin Melville Marks was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 28, 1910. His father, Alexander, was a lawyer. He studied at a variety of colleges and universities, including Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Harvard, MIT and New York University, receiving a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Cooper Union.
After his first two marriages ended in divorce, he married Molly Bennett in 1967; they divorced a decade later, and she subsequently married Gerard Aitken III, who became Mr. Marks' business partner, helping to raise money to support his research. Aitken died in 1987, and Mr. Marks adopted the two young children his partner and friend had had with his former wife.
All told, he had five children, two stepchildren and two adopted children, all of whom survive him.
In 1989, Mr. Marks received a patent, with Peter G. Diamandis, for perhaps his most audacious invention, a plan to circumvent conventional space travel with a 6.6-million-pound, 180-foot train that would be propelled into outer space in an electromagnetic tunnel. It would cost trillions of dollars and take a decade to build, he said, but once complete, it would cut the cost of space exploration drastically.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-01-2008 01:58 AM
quote: Tim Reed
In 1989, Mr. Marks received a patent, with Peter G. Diamandis, for perhaps his most audacious invention, a plan to circumvent conventional space travel with a 6.6-million-pound, 180-foot train that would be propelled into outer space in an electromagnetic tunnel. It would cost trillions of dollars and take a decade to build, he said, but once complete, it would cut the cost of space exploration drastically.
Umm...wow. Just wow.
Tim--you should come visit. We can watch "Starchaser 3D" in under/over. It is "The Greatest 3D Movie Ever Made" (it says so right on the poster, so it must be true).
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-01-2008 04:34 AM
quote: Galen Murphy-Fahlgren
Well, the 35mm 3D setups I've seen did not compare favorably with the Real D setup at my old theater (and my opinion on that issue is well documented).
Simple -- then you haven't seen 35mm 3D setups worth diddly-squat. "Well documented" by whom? Not by the thousands of people (most of whomwere in some manner connected with the industry and more than a little critical) who saw the 30 plus original dual strip titles via double 35mm projection at the 3D World Expo I and II. Those two weeks of back-to-back 3D presentation of dual projection 3D proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that 35mm polaroid 3D could be simply remarkable when done correctly.
Almost all of the negative myths I hear people spouting about the pioneering, original 50s 3D craze, come from people who weren't even born yet and talk about it as if they have first- hand knowledge; you know, the ones who still think all those 50s titles were shown red & blue anaglyphic. That glaring mistake comes up so often that I finally have given up and don't even make an effort to correct it.
In this case, Galen, youth isn't on your side. If you had seen the original 3D films of the 50s (HOUSE OF WAY, KISS ME KATE, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, etc), and back then, you could see them in almost every theatre in the country because the process was so hot that even the small local neighborhood theatres had to run them in 3D, you would know that when you hear these negatives, they are predicated on hearsay and usually based on the worst presentation someone vaguely remembers from the 80s (which is like judging all automotive design based on a a few rides in a Ford Pinto), and not on the flagship theatres that were doing "3D DONE RIGHT" in the 50s.
The next time Jeff Joseph puts together a 3D film festival in the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, get there by hook or by crook and see what 35mm real 3D can look like. Or just wait until Disney starts putting everything they release in 3D onto the new, just over-the-horizon 3D Blu-ray for your Home Theatre 3D system. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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It's great you have a print of that show. I DO remember being impressed by it - seeing what went into making it. I was expecting they'd just shift the background to get the L/R pairs, but no...
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