halle1 (05/10/83)
I must disagree with mhuxt!hstrop. There have been 3-D movies since House of Wax that have been decent. All of them have been Cinerama. You remember them, the huge wrap-around screen and the three cameras. Windjammer wasn't bad (it was the first) and I enjoyed The Brothers Grimm (of course I was rather young at the time). I suspect that it didn't last because it was horrendously expensive, what with extra screens and three times the camera work and film. The Cinerama movies were much better technically than all the other attempts, and didn't give you headaches.
gh (05/11/83)
The later Cinerama films used only one camera and projector, not three.
(Presumably a suitable anamorphic lens was developed).
Yes, Cinerama was not 3-D the same way that the double-image-and-glasses films
are; but the latter, with their effect of flat pieces of cardboard stacked
one behind the other, are not "full 3-D" either. (If we could just combine
the two processes...)
Doesn't anyone out there remember seeing "2001: A Space Odyssey" in Cinerama?
The effects were absolutely marvelous! The film was released simultaneously
in Cinerama (in cities that had it) and 70mm elsewhere. When it is shown these
days, it is invariably a 35mm cinemascope print, and it's just not the same!
Graeme Hirst, Brown University Computer Science
{decvax, ihnp4, allegra}!brunix!gh gh.brown@udel-relayjim (05/11/83)
Am I completely confused? I'll admit it's been years since I used to work in the movie business, but I thought that Cinerama was just a wider than normal aspect ratio, something on the order of 2.5 (I think "normal" is 1.67, which is still wider than the 35mm frame at 1.33). I didn't think it involved 3 cameras, just a very wide cylindrical lens.
davew (05/12/83)
During the early 1950's the motion picture business tried all sorts of new film formats to try and lure the public away from the boob tube. One of the approaches was the wide screen. Among the contending processes was Cinerama, a system that used 3 35mm projectors running simutaneously to put a large picture on the screen. The normal pull down (i.e. picture height) for 35mm film is 4 sprocket holes, Cinerama used 6 meaning that each film ran at 1.5 times normal speed or 135 feet per minute instead of the usual 90 fpm. The Cinerama format also used the 3 mm optical sound track area for picture. The sound was carried on a separate 35mm magnetic film with 7 audio channels and a control track. This meant that the Cinerama format ate up 6 times the film of the standard format. Because 3 images were projected on the screen at once (left,center,right) there was some over lapping vertical lines on the screen where the images overlapped as well as some jitter problems. As the technique was improved these problems were minimized. Since theaters had to be specially outfitted for this process and the screen size was so huge only large theaters in some of the larger metro areas were equipped for it. Another process used an anamorphic lens to squeeze the horizontal field onto a standard 35mm format film. On projection a similar lens was used to expand the image to the wide screen format. Aspect ratios of 1.67:1 to as large as 2.75:1 were used. Some of the trade names were Cinemascope (20 th Century Fox), VistaVision (Paramount) and Superscope (Those same wonderful people who now bring you Marantz hi-fi). For road show engagements 4 magnetic sound tracks were added to the print, 3 audio and one control track so that the sound could be switched between various speakers throughout the theater. Some 70mm formats were also tried, among them Todd AO. 3-D movies used two images slightly offset from one another to gain the 3-D effect. A special camera mount was used which consisted of two 35mm cameras pointed at each other with two mirrors in between. The mirrors were adjustable for shooting objects near or far from the camera. The mirrors reflected the images into the two cameras. The two films were run back at the same time through 2 projectors using Polaroid polarizers. The audience wore Polaroid glasses to filter the right and left images to the proper eye. Dave Williams Tektronix ECS