P3D RE: Run for Cover

[DavidH8083@xxxxxxx]

Steve Carter writes:
<<I saw Richard Haines' 1995 3D movie Run for Cover at the
Thalia Theater at Broadway and 95th in New York City
tonight. It looked pretty good through the polarized glasses
they handed out. The shots that the director selected were
often interesting to look at as stereo pictures. The projection
wasn't perfect. For some reason part of the image was being
projected in a ghost like manner onto the seats in front of me
ten feet or so below the screen. >>

Thanks to Steve Carter for alerting me to this screening of Haines film.  I
had missed its original screening in 1995 and was glad to learn about this
vastly underpublicized screening.  Apparently it was being four-walled at the
THALIA in NYC, so unless you happened to be walking past the theater, you
would never know about it.

The script is a boring mess and seems to be two-steps back from Arch Oboler's
The Bubble in terms of 3-D filmmaking.  It is over/under widescreen, and the
onscreen masking chopped off a good bit of the sides.  Projection was by
mirror box probably one of the Marks' units, though I could only catch a
glimpse of it through the projection port.  Yeah, the extraneous reflections
are always a problem with these systems, rarely is their sufficient room
between the projector and the port to make effective use of masking at the
port, but if the theater has lots of flat black above and below the screen it
usually is not too distracting -- unfortunately this is *not* the case at the
THALIA.

It was, however, worth sitting through the entire film to see five minutes of
spectacular widescreen sports photography intercutting snowboarding,
skateboarding and surfing which had been incorrectly spliced into the end of
the reel.  Instead of splicing between frames, some editor tacked on the
footage by cutting between the left and right images; so it was ALL pseudo and
completely unwatchable unless you turned your glasses upside down (I did, the
ONE other person in the audience did not -- yes, the filmed played at 4 p.m.
on Sat. afternoon to an entire audience of TWO!!); while flipping your glasses
solved the pseudo problem, we, or rather "I", was forced to watch the reel one
frame out of sync.  It is to the credit whoever shot this sports reel (someone
from Chris Condon's Stereovision?) that imagery was so fantastic -- ideally
composed for  widescreen and perfectly placed to make really exciting use of
the stereo window -- that I really didn't mind it being out of sync --
afterall, the multi-million dollar Sony Imax just down Broadway projects their
3-D movies out of sync everyday.

So, while you couldn't drag me by my tongue to sit through Run for Cover
again; the sports reel exhibits some of the finest 3-D cinematography I have
ever had the pleasure of viewing.

David Hutchison
davidh8083@xxxxxxx


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