Re: [photo-3d] 3D Film Festival in Palo Alto, CA

[Chris Bruns <cmbruns@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

  I watched "Dial M for Murder", "House of Wax", "Creature from the Black
Lagoon", and "It came from Outer Space" recently at the Stanford Theater.
They are the first 3D feature-length films that I have ever seen.  I thought
that the screen and the alignment were excellent, thought the alignment did
drift a little.  By the way, this theater is beautiful, with velvet curtains
over the screen and a pipe organ show before the evening features.

  I noticed that in most of the movies, objects moving rapidly to the left
appeared too close to the viewer, while objects moving to the right appeared
too far away.  The system involves two projectors, and at first I assumed
that they must be very slightly out of sync.  Then it occurred to me that it
might be the Pulfrich effect.  Especially "The Creature from the Black
Lagoon" showed horribly different image intensities between left and right
in many parts of the film.  Plus I think the right projector is genuinely a
bit dimmer than is the left.  It's a shame because it really ruins scenes in
which there is rapid horizontal motion.  I noticed no such effects in the 3D
IMAX films "The Nutcracker", "Into the Deep", and "T-Rex", shown in Irvine,
California and Las Vegas, Nevada, respectively, the only other 3D films that
I have viewed.  The single-film IMAX 3D format (isn't that right?) may
prevent both sync and brightness variation problems.  In the IMAX 3D films,
horizontal motion really punches up the 3D effect, in contrast to the
terrible situation with the Stanford films.

  It looked like there were excellent guide films for aligning the two
projectors horizontally and vertically.  If only there were such an
adjustment for brightness I think it would greatly improve the
presentation.  I can imagine a film with objects moving both right and left
- one would adjust the brightness until they appear in the same plane.  One
final thing: the silvery 3D screen must be at least 20 feet wide.  How much
does a silver screen that size cost?  There was one at Cornell University
when I was there that was about 8x10 that was described as "extremely
expensive".

-Chris Bruns

"Franklin J. Flocks" wrote:

> Starting next Friday, May 12th, Kiss Me Kate and Miss Sadie Thompson
> will be showing for one week at the Stanford Theater. Currently,
> It Came From Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon are
> showing. - The 3D Festival will last at least until the end of the
> month but the rest of the schedule has not yet been announced.
> Dial M for Murder and House of Wax showed last week. I caught part
> of both films. - The theater holds about 1200 people including
> the balcony and has the largest 3D screen that I have ever seen.
> They did a nice job with the 3D.  There was a slight height error
> in the projection - but nobody complained - I don't think it was
> bad enough to bother any but the most picky.


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