P3D IMAX Fatigue?

[Michael Georgoff <Michael_Georgoff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Let me start off by sharing my disbelief and sadness at Noel's untimely
passing.  I had the chance to exchange an email or two with Noel a year
or so ago.  I probably told him that he had the absolute greatest job in
the entire known 3D world, and I don't think he disagreed with me.  What
a tragic loss.  He leaves behind a legacy of beautiful stereo work.  

Now, I had never seen IMAX 3D before last Friday.  I had the good
fortune to be in Irvine, California, and had a 3D grand day out, with
Into the Deep at 10:00 am and the new Mark Twain's America at 3:00.

Into the Deep was absolutely stunning.  I found that there was a great
deal of though-the-window, but the field of view in an IMAX screen is so
large that I really had to consciously look at the edges to be able to
see window violation.  It was pretty darn immersive, or submersive, per
the subject matter.  No complaints, no problems, just your standard
issue jaw-dropping awe-inspiring 3D.

Mark Twain's America was another matter altogether.  It was mostly
"modern live-action" of Hannibal, Missouri (Twain's birthplace),
marching bands, etc, and plenty of volunteer/revival footage (Civil War
re-enactment, authentic period dress/dancing, guy who restored/runs
steam locomotive engine).  Interspersed were many, many images of Mark
Twain (and that general period in history) from the UCR/Keystone Mast
(?) collection.  (Many of these could have been cleaned up, a very
high-res scan and some Photoshop work before dumping to optical would
have helped immensely. I noted, for example, one image would have a
light or dark defect, like dust on the neg, but the other image would be
clear in that spot).  There was also ghosting on some of the old images,
which sometimes would clear when I moved my head a bit left or right,
but this was inconsistent and I couldn't figure out the cause.  There
were also a few reworks of what looked like Norman Rockwell images made
into "3D" and turning out like cardboard planes.  

Mark Twain's America ran almost an hour, and after about 45 minutes of
it, I got kind of a headache right between the eyes, about an inch back
into my skull.  (This was later confirmed as experienced by many others
in our "viewing party", so it wasn't just my brain.)  The film had a lot
of fast edit cuts, going from and old Keystone views to modern footage,
some edits were dissolves from modern footage to other modern footage,
etc... And I think what was going on was some sort of convergence
fatigue, wherein my powers of accommodation were slammed around much
faster than was good for my brain.  Way too much jumping from image to
image without enough convergence adaptation time?  I've never
experienced this in polarized slide shows, or spending extended amounts
of time with a hand viewer.  (I note again no problem with Into the
Deep, perhaps because the pace was much slower, transitions easier,
etc?)

Can anyone help me understand why my brain was complaining??

Thanks.

Michael Georgoff
San Jose, CA


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