P3D Re: 3D Fallacies & the Lumiere brothers

[Greg Kintz <gkintz@xxxxxxxx>]

Regarding the thread on the "first 3-D motion picture", I
recently talked with a fellow film buff who collects silent
films and recently viewed the new IMAX 3-D retrospect
"Encounters in the 3rd Dimension".  His comments are
reprinted below:

Greg

This is an interesting discussion. I never had heard about the
train shot being 3d. That is until we went to the 3D film at
Indianapolis. As I said in my critique on the film, they showed
examples of early 3D. Most of that was the side by side. But
in one sequence they mentioned that the Lumiere film of a train
entering a station was in 3D. Then they went ahead and showed
it. What they showed was a miniature train entering a miniature
station. This was an introduction for a scene of a locomotive
coming straight off the screen and running over us. (This train
was probably computer animation. We discussed this on the
way home. Dale, Conrad (from Ball State, who teaches film
courses there) and myself all agreed that the Lumiere film was
really mono.
As was mentioned in the discussion you forwarded to me, the
audience that first saw the train sequence was nervous at the
train coming toward them. Having never witnessed a moving
image before even the flat train that enlarged as it moved toward
the screen gave them a feeling of reality.
Another argument for Mono is the technical aspects. I don't
think they had two cameras at first. The cameras were hand
cranked -so if they had two, how would you synchronize the
cranking? Also the capturing of movement at this time was
exciting. They were busy developing this technique from scratch.
Would they burden themselves with the problems of a stereo
shot at this stage?

Jerry


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