Page 14 - CinemaRecord #11R.pdf

30 Epitaph Or Prologue? by John Norling (Loucks & Norling Inc. New York)

Three Dimensional film appeared at a time when the motion picture industry needed a stimulus of some sort.
That 3-D was a stimulus that brought increased business is a well-e~tablished fact. Because it was such a
success at the outset, it should have been no assurance that it would continue that way. Certainly, the industry
seemed to have done almost everything possible to make its success sliortlived.

Producers madly went ahead with inadequate equipment operated by persons to whom the fundamental prin-
ciples involved were as unfamiliar as Sanskrit is to the average person. Exhibition could not have been more
·badly handled than it was. It was a long time before projectionists, incredulous that a major industry in dire
straits could indulge itself in further economic strangulation, became aware of what their pay-giving bosses
thought they were doing.

The 3-0 Projection Shambles: Even after the projectionists had learned the how they were not provided with
the proper means. Interlock mechanisms were often of the shoddiest design and assembly; port-hole filters
were often of the wrong type or of infer_ior polarizing materials. And they were almost impossible to keep clean.
The exhibitor was provided, in many cases, with polarizing viewers that were nothing but junk. Unsatisfactory
screens were more common than good ones; in many cases the theatre owner was told that all he needed to do
was to have his old screen sprayed with .aluminium paint. No other American industry has ever done the
deplorably stupid things that the great(?) motion picture industry was guilty of when it latched onto 3-D. No .
wonder. 3-D films came upon evil days. · ·

A Long-Look into 3-D's Future: What does the future hold for 3-D? Nothing but interment unless the industry
realises its great potential and supports the research and development that will assure the perfection and
convenience required. Certainly the attempt to apply 3-D to the various widescreen processes will be a com-
plete failure unless a lot of new development work is undertaken in advance.
Dual projection must go! It was an expedient-and that's all! ts inconvenience and unreliability were recognised
by ·projectionists from the very outset. If 3-D has any chance for revival, acceptance and growth, some single-
film system must be used. At present, the Vectograph process invented by Dr. E. H. Land of Polaroid Corp.,
and Joseph Mahler, and being developed by Polaroid and Technicolor, offers the best solution. For one thing,
it affords a better utilization of light than is possible with any other single-film method. The full possibilities of
3-D have not been explored.

Binaural Sound: Binaural sound will give each ear its own sound signals just as stereoscopic photography
gives each eye its own picture signals. Binaural sound is quite different from stereophonic sound. It provides,
the writer thinks, the ultimate in sound reproduction, as far as giving a sense of location of the sound source is
concerned. It doesn't merely "tell" whether the sound source is at the left or right or in any other direction: it
pinpoints the sound in space, and in its exact direction, tells not broadly that it's from left or right, but tells
exactly where it is to the left or right and how far away it is.

Binaural sound is true 3-D sound. It doesn't seem to emanate directly from the lips of an actor, from the oboe
playing the obligato, from the -place where water drips from an overflowing gutter, from a mischievous boy
barely seen behind the shrubbery. It is as different from stereophonic sound as a big picture is different from a
small picture.

Binaural Sound, Prus 3-0: Stereophonic sound is exciting, is effective, particularly for wide-screen presenta-
tions of conventional films. It is doubtful whether binaural sound would contribute much to a 2-D wide-screen
movie, but it certainly would add the ne plus ultra to the 3-D wide-screen presentation. And 3-D wide screen
movies can be produced and presented. There are no technical problems unique to 3-D that do not exist for 2
dimensional wide-screen ..

We may look forward to wide-screen 3-D as an early embellishment of the art, and to the eventual wedding of
binaural sound with wide 3-D- a wedding the consummation of which would undoubtedly result in a robust box-
office. The "stereoscopic window" is often touted as a prime necessity for standard 3-D presentations.

The stereoscopic window is something that has been contrived to achieve coincidental image reconstitution
and to avoid marginal disturbances. We don't have to have this window if certain 3-D photographic and projec-
tion procedures are employed. It is perfectly possible to have 3-D pictures exiting in space the margins of which
are vignetted, gradually shaded off from outer darkness to the full illumination of the picture itself. Some optical
problems exist in the methods of doing this, but they are not very difficult to solve.
Reprinted From INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST-July 1954