Science in 3-D motion picture

3-D, motion-picture process that gives a three-dimensional quality to film images. It is based on the fact that humans perceive depth by viewing with both eyes. In the 3-D process, two cameras or a twin-lensed camera are used for filming, one representing the left eye and the other the right. The two lenses are spaced about 2.5 inches (6.3 cm) apart, the same as the separation between a person’s eyes. The resulting images are simultaneously projected onto the screen by two synchronized projectors. The viewer must wear differently tinted or polarized glasses so that the left- and right-eye images are visible only to the eye for which they are intended. The viewer actually sees the images separately but perceives them in three dimensions because, for all practical purposes, the two slightly different images are fused together instantly by his mind.

Studios and independent producers experimented with 3-D throughout the 1920s and ’30s. Many of the technical problems were later solved by the Natural Vision process, which used striated polarized lenses (with similarly striated viewing glasses for the audience) that made it possible to film in natural colour and correctly applied the convergence principle of the human eye in the filming. The first 3-D film in Natural Vision was Bwana Devil (1952), which was followed by several hastily shot action films. It is generally believed that the popularity of 3-D in the United States subsided after about a year because of the low quality of the films presented. Filmmakers in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and other countries experimented with 3-D at about the same time as did those in the United States, but its popularity in Europe soon faded when the illusion of depth was no longer a novelty. The process experienced a minor revival beginning in the 1970s.

Tereoscopy

science and technology dealing with two-dimensional drawings or photographs that when viewed by both eyes appear to exist in three dimensions in space. A popular term for stereoscopy is 3-D. Stereoscopic pictures are produced in pairs, the members of a pair showing the same scene or object from slightly different angles that correspond to the angles of vision of the two eyes of a person looking at the object itself. Stereoscopy is possible only because of binocular vision, which requires that the left-eye view and the right-eye view of an object be perceived from different angles. In the brain the separate perceptions of the eyes are combined and interpreted in terms of depth, of different distances to points and objects seen. Stereoscopic pictures are viewed by some means that presents the right-eye image to the right eye and the left-eye image to the left. An experienced observer of stereopairs may be able to achieve the proper focus and convergence without special viewing equipment (e.g., a stereoscope); ordinarily, however, some device is used that allows each eye to see only the appropriate picture of the pair. To produce a three-dimensional effect in motion pictures (see 3-D), various systems have been employed, all involving simultaneous projection on the screen of left- and right-eye images distinguished by, for example, different colour or polarization and the use by the audience of binocular viewing filters to perceive the images properly. In holography the two eyes see two reconstructed images (light-interference patterns) as if viewing the imaged object normally, at slightly different angles.

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