Re: 3D Movies

[P3D Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Since everyone (mostly) is now off at Rochester and not looking,
was can continue talking about movies for awhile :-)

|the "computer controlled" camera. I think that The Last Starfighter was actually
|the first film to use computer generated imagry in place of "real" models, which
|is typical of modern films like Jurassic Park.

I had forgotten about "The Last Starfighter" (1984) - I have it on tape around
here somewhere - actually not a bad movie, as such things go - 
was that Robert Preston's last film?

"Tron" came out (disaster for Disney - 1982) a bit earlier, but I was never able
to figure out what was computer generated and what was animated/rotoscoped.
Possibly the "Lightcycle" race and maybe the simple geometric forms of
the "Recognizer" - It's an interesting film - however, 
I remember being impressed with the advance in realistic modeling in 
"Starfighter" as opposed to the cartoonish look of "Tron". 1982 seemed
to be the year for film noir SF - what with TRON and Bladerunner...

I hope that ILM (they did "Toy Story", right?) is hanging onto thier
rendering files. It would seem relatively easy to generate a second pass on it
to make a 3D movie if one had the inclination/finances/time.

Speaking of 3D visual clues not related to stereo vision, I just caught
"The Indian in the Cupboard" on HBO. I thought it was very effective
in their use of depth of field to encourage the illusion of very
small people. They would purposely blur out either the foreground
or background depending on whether they wanted to emphasize the
"large" normal world of the "small" minature world. It's interesting 
from a 3D standpoint since emphasizing DOF differences makes it look
a lot like you have grossly differing sizes involved in a scene (ie,
beyond the ability of the "camera" to focus). This of course is the
exact opposite effect we normally want in stereo photos where ALL
of the image is sharp most of the time in order to get the best
stereo image. I'd be curious to know how much of this effect was
actually calculated, and how much of it was just used to make it
easier to do compositing and so forth since things were blurred out
(kind of like matt painting) (Which reminds me - on "Fraggle Rock"
there was a character - Travelling Matt - the first time I heard that
I was ROTFL). Incidntally, someone mentioned CineFx magazine - this
is a super publication for anyone interested in "behind the scenes"
info on movies. Also nice people - I requested permission from them
to post a picture from one of their issues a number of years ago
when the Internet was young and they were most cooperative.

THANKS

   ====== wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ======
  11:15 PM Tuesday, July 30, 1996
   keeper of the Photo-3d, Motorola
 MC68HC11, Overland-Trails, LDS State
Research Outline Guides and other stuff
     (currently in Ouray, Colorado)



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