Early 3D Films
The Power of Love, the first 3D feature film released in 1922, was displayed at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles. The film was shown using red/green glasses, and it was also the first 3D film to use anaglyph glasses and dual strip projection. The film was made with a custom-made camera that can record two movies in one body. William Van Doren Kelley designed his camera rig in the same year based on the Prizma color system he invented in 1913. To capture two different color channels, the Prizma 3D color system employed filters over lenses.
Late 1922 saw the unveiling of Teleview technology. The initial alternate-frame 3D projection system kept the left and right eyes in sync, enabling one to view two distinct images. No one understood the practical operation of the teleview theory and how it would allow for film viewing in a cinema until Laurens Hammond.
Laurens Hammond designed a two-projector system where the left film was shown in the left projector and vice versa. This method was only utilized for the production of The Man From M.A.R.S. The technology didn’t catch on, not because of the image, but because of the viewing apparatus required. One of the most significant advancements in 3D technology was made by Edwin H. Land in 1929. His invention involved the use of images and polarized lenses to create stereo vision. His invention was first utilized by Clarence Kennedy, an art history instructor at Smith College, to display sculpture images to students.
In 1936, Beggars Wedding in Italy released the first polarized 3D film. The first stereoscopic feature that included sound was filmed using polarized technology. The use of polarized filters in In Tune With Tomorrow was pioneered by an American film released in 1939. 3D films were produced between 1939 and 1952. However, the onset of the Second World War and the Great Depression made it expensive to produce movies. Hence, restricting the industry and leading to a reduced output of 3D films.
3D became sporadic and active again between 1960 and 2000. The invention of a single strip 3D format in the late 1960s marked the beginning of this. The projectors no longer caused eye strain and headaches by going out of sync due to this advancement, leading to a revival.
The first version of this 3D format was Space Vision 3D, which worked both over and under. The frame was horizontally split into two during playback and then separated using polarized glasses and a prism. Significant drawbacks were present in the Space Vision 3D format. The Bernier lens was the only compatible camera design for filming in this format. The focal length of the Bernier optic was fixed and could not be varied, but it could be altered. Therefore, this limited creative filmmaking options and was superseded by another format called Stereovision.
Splitting the frame into two parts was a similarity between this format and the first one. The break would occur vertically instead of horizontally, and the images were arranged side by side. The edges were then stretched back to their original size using an anamorphic lens. Land’s polarizing method is also employed by the format.
This method was used for the first time in The Stewardesses of 1969. The movie made $26M at the cinema, and it only cost $100,000 to produce. This substantial profit margin attracted many studios, making 3D an exciting prospect again. However, the films were still being edited using old techniques, which made manipulating the movies quite tricky. The lack of control by filmmakers over the entire filmmaking process made 3D less appealing.
New Competing Technologies
Currently, a significant number of conventional cinemas are capable of displaying digital 3D films. The majority of them have transitioned to digital, and I.M.A.X. is not the only cinema that can display movies in 3D. Real-D and Dolby-3D are among the top distributors. They all ditched the traditional anaglyph glasses for polarized lenses. This is because the advent of digital filming made post-production work easier.
Both the Dolby-3D cinema and I.M.A.X offer a big-screen experience, although I.M.A.X tends to have more seats and bigger screens than the Dolby cinema. However, Dolby is known for having a more precise and sharper image, along with plenty of rumble and reclined seats. Real-D seems to have taken over the world of 3D movies as the default. Almost all films in 3D use Real-D technology, which offers an excellent experience through the film as the technology accommodates head-turning. I.M.A.X. uses this technology, but it is designed for bigger screens.
Stereoscopic Photography
Stereoscopy is the oldest known form of displaying 3-dimensional images. Two offset images are presented separately to the left and right eye of the viewer, which is how it works. The brain’s combination of these results in the perception of 3-dimensional depth. Wherever there is a new development in 3D technology, there is always a change in how the 3D effect is captured. The same principle still applies to today’s digital 3D cinematography, but the technology has been lagging behind waiting to catch up to the present day. Due to the earliest form of moving image technology. The kinematograph was strictly 2D at the time, so a device was needed to show these stereoscopic images in sequence so that they kept their depth. The Kinematoscope, an early hand-cranked motion picture device, was the solution to this. The kinematograph’s lack of recording capability made it physically impossible to create a stereoscopic effect for the audience. The ‘3D Beam Splitter’ was the first real stereoscopic motion picture device, which was created in 1915 after much discussion. Unfortunately, the device was never put into practical use due to funding issues at the film studio. Many inventors continued to think about the idea in the future years. In the meantime, the stereoscopists of the time made the decision. The only way to truly generate public interest in the technology was to display stereoscopic images on a 2D surface.
