Re: ABC 3D - I liked it!!!

[P3D John W Roberts <roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 06:58:24 -0500
>From: "P3D  Dr. George A. Themelis"  <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: ABC 3D - I liked it!!!

>I don't know what you guys are talking about... What exactly
>were you expecting?  I was not expecting anything and was
>very pleased with what I saw last night... My TV reception
>is bad and my glasses were dirty with fingerprints (I gave
>the good ones to my children).

Apparently quite a few people on the list had harbored the notion that
broadcast anaglyph would look just as good as Realist slides in their Dr. T
Red Button viewers. :-)

>I could see stereo and that was enough for me.  Not much
>different that other 3d movies I have seen. 

I could see stereo too. Some of the scenes were much more effective than
others, and in many scenes I saw quite a bit of ghosting. The ghosting may
have been partly a function of my monitor phosphors - I used an old Amiga
(1084?) monitor - I'll have to try again on a television screen. Another
feature that was distracting to me was that the blue lens appeared to let
through a lot more visible light than the red lens, so it was a sort of
combination anaglyph and Pulfrich effect. The difference in apparent
transmission may have been necessary due to phosphor characteristics,
the color encoding of NTSC, and the sensitivity ranges of the color receptors
in the retina - or perhaps not.

In general, I'm glad they included the 3D. And it's good that this time they
consulted with someone who is knowledgeable in the field. I think it's
interesting that while the presentation of television usually manages to
look so polished (though there are occasional glitches), when they ventured
into this less well known field, even with the help of an expert there were
still significant errors (for example the colors of the costumes and props
in relation to the colors chosen for the anaglyph separation).

It was mentioned that some promotional clips were broadcast before last week.
I wonder if they had any staff sitting at home and watching their own sets,
to report on how well the effects worked when actually broadcast.

But overall, I'd say that the 3D clips were much more entertaining than the
moaning and groaning about them on P3D was. :-)

>Things thrown
>at the screen for no good reason?  So, what???  It worked and
>I liked it.  My children had fun too!  That's what counts.

In that context, as long as they were going to use the 3D for clowning
around, I thought perhaps "Home Improvement" made the most effective use
of it. The "Tool Time" show-within-a-show is *always* highly exaggerated,
with props such as gasoline-powered kitchen appliances, turbocharged
lawn mowers, and so on, so the exaggerated use of 3D was just a continuation
of the regular theme. The show also gave a brief explanation of how the
cameras were set up, and showed a picture of the cameras.

>Only thing I would have liked to see different is to have 
>longer 3d segments.  There was not enough time for the eyes 
>to get used and enjoy.  Don't have the entire episode in 3d 
>so that one can appreciate the difference.  Let's say half 3d, 
>half 2d.

Analogous to "The Wizard of Oz", which made use of both black and white
and color segments to differentiate between Kansas and Oz.

Actually, the material may already exist - in the infamous computer-
generated episode of "The Simpsons", as explained by Springfield's local
scientist, Homer slips out of their normal 2D universe into a "hypothetical
*third* dimension". The show was broadcast in 2.5D, but if by any chance
the data files were archived, it should be possible to extract a second
viewpoint and get real stereo.

Side note: "The Wizard of Oz" is the one movie for which there appears to be
pretty much universal agreement that colorization would serve no purpose.
Other all black and white movies are more controversial - some people think
that colorization can help to introduce the old movies to a new audience,
while others think that changing the format creates an objectionable change
to the message the creators were trying to convey. If the "2D to 3D"
video conversion technology ever advances to the point where it actually
produces credible results, won't the same arguments come up again?
("I don't care how much more realistic it looks - if 'Gilligan's Island'
in 2D was good enough for Bob Denver, it's good enough for me!" :-)

John R


------------------------------