Pixar 3-D Holiday Party and problems

[P3D Harold R. Baize, Ph.D. <baize@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pixar 3-D photo drama...

On Saturday Dec. 14th Pixar held a major gala event. It was
a holiday party held at San Francisco's Sheraton Palace Hotel
in the fabulous Garden Court with its beautiful glass ceiling.
No expense was spared for this high class black tie affair.

All the guests were to receive two Realist format stereo slides as 
a gift. One was a custom computer generated image of Woody and 
Bo-Peep from the movie "Toy Story". The second slide was a
stereo image taken that very night of the guests themselves.
It was a brilliant idea. People were photographed as couples, so
they would go home with a 3-D image of Woody and Bo-Peep and
of themselves. They also received a standard steal the light
plastic viewer.

Now you should realize that we are talking about a minor miracle
here. There were to be about 300 couples at this party. Three
hundred Realist format photos taken, processed, mounted, and 
packaged within four hours!! And we almost succeeded.

The production was organized by a woman named Annie who provides
3-D photo services for small parties. She calls herself the
"3-D Fairy". This was by far her biggest event and it was a risky
experiment. Our team consisted of Oakland Camera Club members with
myself mounting, Barrie Beuler (sp?) taking photos with a Realist 
and Kodak stereo, Jim Johnston cutting the film, and a friend of 
Barrie's assisting with photography. Annie coordinated efforts 
and processed the roles of Polaroid film as they came out of 
the camera.

Annie had devised some ingenious methods to produce a
high volume of 3-D slides in a short period of time. Polaroid
instant slide film was used, and Annie had prepared standard
heat seal mounts by placing strips of double sided tape on them.
This allowed us to quickly position the film chips and fold over
the mount. Annie had done her preparations well, but I was concerned
about the method for delivering the right slide to the party guests.
The system she chose was to give the guests a number as the photo
was taken, and we would mount them in sequence as the roll was cut.
If everything stayed in synch then the guests would be able to pick
up their 3-D photo package by grabbing the bag with their number.

Well, we all know about Murphy's law...
Guests came to get their package and found a nice 3-D slide of someone
else. So they dumped the pieces and... chaos! Long story short. 
      
       STEVE JOBS WAS NOT PLEASED! 

I worked till after one in the morning and we managed to finish about 
200 slides. Since BART (our SF light rail) shuts down at midnight 
Annie had to drive us all home. I didn't get home till 4:15 am. And
none of us were paid because Mr. Jobs was displeased, and the job 
was not finished (there were still about 100 slides to mount). I hope
the confusion does not turn the people at Pixar away from 3-D!

Still it was a good event in many respects. It shows that Pixar is
aware of 3-D and willing to try it, maybe they will make their next
computer animated movie in 3-D -- who knows. Also, many people were
VERY pleased with their photos and became interested in stereo 
photography when they saw the slide. It was also interesting to
mount all those slides. With 20-20 hindsight I've thought of many ways 
that we could have avoided the confusion. I was not involved in 
planning the production.

Harold Baize


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