P3D stereo/pufrich/multicam

[Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Recently I've been seeing a couple of tv commercials with the
"freeze motion" technique which recently was perfected. One is for
some kind of hair coloring (which is notable in that it combines
the freeze motion AND regular motion in the same frame with absolutely
(on my tv) no hints of masking or other "normal" special effects techniques).

The more striking example is for the GAP (a USA mid level clothing store) which
has dancers doing WWII era "jitterbug" dancing (those of you who know what
that is, we are old guys :-) It's QUITE striking as the depth clues are
in abundance. I've not tried it yet with prufrich glasses, but since the
effect *relies* on a camera dolly effect strong prufirch 
should be present (although the picture of the
camera set up tended to show the cameras arranged circularly, rather
than linearly - thus being relevant to the recent SD-3D discussion
on toe-in considerations in ray-traced images). Of course it's not 
really a camera dolly - but the effect is similar.

The thing that was
striking in this commercial is that the action moves, pauses, and moves
again as if it was a single freeze frame, rather than 20 (or 60 or
whatever). I can't figure how that would be done with film - although
with an array of digital cameras it would be fairly easy. If I read
the description of the film version correctly, the inventor has
an array of cameras which a length of motion picture film threaded
thru them linearly. All the shutters are tripped simultaneously.
When projected at normal speed, what you see is that moment in
time, but from a rotating viewpoint. The drawback is that the
number of frames/cameras determines the length of the sequence, and to
make the next exposure, the whole length of film has to be advanced
into the cannister and replaced with a new length of film. This is
done (at least in the original implementation) via mechanical means.

I find this kind of exciting (at least at the moment before it's
run into the ground, like the "jerky camera" cinema verite and 
grungy "clogged typewriter" font that is turning up everywhere). 
It's kind of neat to see something in the field that is pretty much
totally new. Can anyone on the list verify if I'm understanding
the procedure correctly?

It would be pretty interesting to extract some of these frames and
stick 'em together in Holmes format - unfortunately I don't have
the equipment here to do it.

THANKS

              Bob Wier
     mailto:wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   1:32 AM Friday, May 15, 1998
   Rocky Mountain College, Billings MT.
 keeper of the Photo-3d and Overland-Trails
mailing lists and the USA GPS Waypoint server



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