But when sound on film came in, the image size of each frame had to be reduced to make room for the soundtrack. The picture quality when the films were new was superb.
Most importantly, silent movie frames used the maximum area of 35mm film. Today I believe the soundtrack is half the movie.īut did you ever consider the projectionist as a performer? How about a disco artist who manipulates sound by hand turning the discs? It's a performance art! In the days of hand-cranked cameras and hand-cranked projectors, there was actually flexibility in filming and projecting. Many even thought that pantomime action, the art of visual storytelling was what made films as a great art form. It took many years to get mobility back into the movies. When "Talkies" came in the late 1920s many critics saw that it caused static scenes, because the cameras had to be enclosed in sound-proof booths. The downside was never mentioned and rarely understood. So it was with every one of the hotly heralded "innovations" on my list above. Where is the storytelling and cinematic advantage if the cameraman and director have to limit their camera framing to compensate for this unnatural gimmick? Now take off the goggles for a minute and notice how the screen is much brighter and clearer, even with an annoying double image. So right away, there is the downside: disorienting moving images that can cause eyestrain and even vertigo. If you look at the edges of the screen, you will see sliced images poking out, unless the cameraman has been deft enough to avoid foreground images near the screen edges. Notice what the director and cameraman hope you will not notice: that it's only in the central area of the screen where there is a credible spatial effect.
That is true 3-D, with no screen edges! Now step back into the theater, put on your stereo goggles and watch a stereoscopic movie from a proper viewing distance.
You are looking at and able to touch solid objects. Everything you see is in three dimensions. In the meantime, the term stereo has been co-opted by sound systems, so the movies have had to fall back on the term "3-D."īut walk up close to the screen of a theater showing one of these goggle movies, and what do you notice? That it's actually a flat movie screen! The only true 3-D is what you are seeing all around you "live," if you are lucky enough to have two good eyes. Photography with the illusion of depth was popularized more than 100 years ago with the Stereoptican viewer, a fixture in almost every cultured living room before there was anything else to look at in there. I'm putting the currently reheated term "3-D" within quotation marks, as it is obviously a phony concoction.
The current "3-D" rage will confuse audiences as many older films are being re-jiggered into faux stereo, simply splitting the film frames into flat planes. Motion Capture ("MoCap") Digital Projection "Live" movie events "3-D" ReduxĮvery one of these highly celebrated innovations had lesser noticed downsides: Kino Automat (audience voting on the course of a movie) IMAX VistaVision: 8-perf horizontal film projection Cinerama Smell-O-Vision "Schultzorama": Lopping the top and bottom of a classic format film and producing fake widescreen Stereo sound (introduced as Disney's "Fantasound")ĬinemaScope (the anamorphic format that launched the widescreen craze) Stereo projection (red-blue goggles): The first 3-D boom lasted only two years Since then I've witnessed the loud fanfare introductions of: "Talkies"Ĭolor (Technicolor and then Eastmancolor)
It's just the latest in the long series of "revolutionary" movie formats, gimmicks and gizmos I've seen come and go just in my lifetime. The song from Chicago sums up the current hysterical hype now gushing forth about so-called "3-D" movies.