Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

be made in the set before rather than after construction takes place. Again, when the public learns how to look at quick-cutting sequences in 3-D, it will often be possible to build these up out of material shot with an ordinary "flat" camera, giving each shot a single plane space by means of optical printing, and ring this plane if necessary by means optical zooms. The construction of :h a sequence is greatly simplified if it can be plotted in space, with the optical corrections read off from the graphs. The same technique may be applied during the editing stage of an ordinary 3-D film to readjust a shot which does not fit into the space continuity finally decided on. And lastly, optical printing may be used to match infinity points (or any other points) in converting films to use on very large or very small screens. Since optical printing is necessary with our camera to provide leftto-right image reversal, the transfer from original negative to master positive is made use of also for the stereo correction and for the introduction of the necessary optical effects. Duping and printing then become normal contact processes. There are of course limits to the width of the stereo correction which can be printed on a single film without trespassing too close to the final projector aperture. If the correction is too large, it must be split between the two bands of film. However, the larger the screen for which the film is shot, the smaller the absolute magnitude of the corrections. Furthermore, an additional width is provided for the corrections on each film by the printed-on stereo window. The Stereo Window This is the last printing stage to which the film must be submitted. The Black Swan has a fixed stereo window at approximately N2 (with M = 218), containing patented fusible components along its top and bottom edges, so that these contribute to the stereoscopic effect nearly as much as do the vertical sides. The window also could be incorporated at the master positive stage, but extremely high contrast is necessary in a traveling matte to avoid fogging the image, and it is therefore best printed on at the release print stage. The stereo window is an essential component of most 3-D films, and its existence and position in space must be contemplated from the beginning. More than half of the shots in The Black Swan were designed to occupy the full stereoscopic space between NQ and N% (i.e. A#z) ; but as the scene was a ballet stage with dancers on it, effective space would have been seriously telescoped had not a forward window permitted a free movement of the image out to a distance halfway between the screen and the spectator. Appearance of the Scene in the Theater It is now time to stand back from the technicalities of production and ask how the two shots we have so often referred to appear to the ordinary audience in the movie theater. In the first place, whether they are conscious of it or not, spectators will see the entire scene framed behind the forward window, with the exception of one or two self-supporting objects such as the banners in Slate 35 and Beryl Grey's arms and back-bent body in several shots. Since the screen, if free from blemishes, becomes invisible in a 3-D film, the window is easily mistaken for it. Thus an audience might be led to comment on The Black Swan, "Practically nothing comes out in front of the screen," although, in point of fact, almost half the film does so. But the actual — even if unrecognized — use of theater space has one extremely important advantage which we have often heard commented on during commercial presentations of the films. Because of the increase of stereoscopic depth magnification (md) with distance from the screen, the spectator in the most distant balcony seat has a view of the film which is just as dramatically effective as that ob Spottiswoode, Spottiswoode and Smith: 3-D Photography 273