Recently, it covers all the attention. 3-D Avatar, remaster this or that film to be 3-D, 3-D capable televisions at prohibitive prices, and so on. I won’t be less, so I will discuss the different technologies to perforn 3-D effects and give my personal opinion.

Filming in 3-D

It’s one of the greatest challenges is facing the film industry, perhaps comparable to other landmarks such as sound or color. What does it take to record a movie in 3-D? Well, maybe I should first explain what the 3-D is.

We have 2 eyes. (so far, nothing unknown). As our eyes are at a distance from each other, each one receives a slightly different image. You can do a simple test: Place a finger pointing upward, between you and the screen. Shut one eye and then the other. It seems that the finger is in a different position relative to the screen, because really you are looking it from a different angle. The further you put finger, the lower the feeling. The human brain (which is awesome) processes and interprets the 2 images, giving us the feeling of distance. That is 3-D, the third dimension, depth. For example, a typical pirate with an eye patch, probably wasn’t a good swordsman, since he couldn’t know precisely how far was his opponent.

However, there is a little problem: The screen of a cinema or television is flat, our eyes receive the same image, so don’t get a 3-D sense. So, to record a movie in 3-D, 2 movies have to be recorded, with a special camera (called stereoscopic) that has 2 lenses (yes, as our 2 eyes). Needless to say, these cameras are terribly expensive. Then, using different techniques, they must get our left eye see the movie recorded with the left lens, and our right eye, the other one.

Anaglyph

Ana… what? You may ask. Surely if I say “those ratty granny glasses with a red cellophane eye and the other blue”  will be more familiar to you. It is the cheapest and hence the less quality to see in 3-D cinema.The 2 movies are recorded on the same roll, one applying to them a red filter, and the other a cyan (blue) filter. If you try to see one of those movies and take off your glasses, that is what you will see: a double image, with blue and red parts.

The glasses are simple filters, so that one eye only sees the part of the film that was applied the red filter, and the other eye, the blue filter. The sense of depth is not great, but neither bad.

Polarized glasses

I won’t bore you with the theory behind these glasses. This is the most used technique in theaters today, because it gets much better quality than with anaglyphs, and glasses are disposable. The glasses are polarized, one horizontally and one vertically. The one that is vertically polarized, passes only the part of the film that is polarized vertically, and vice versa. However, this technique requires a special projector. Therefore, although you get these glasses and you download a movie in 3-D, you won’t see anything, anything in 3-D, I mean (as opposed to the anaglyph).

The super-glasses

I haven’t had the pleasure of trying them, but it is definitely an option for the future. It requires a TV or movie projector that goes twice as fast (double photograms per second). Then, the images of the 2 films are inserted, thus remaining in the frame pairs the images to see the right eye and the odd frames that ones to see the left. The glasses have an infrared receiver that is synchronized with the projector (to have precision). These glasses also have a LCD crystal in each eye, which totally obscures if it receives an electrical impulse. Thus, when the spectator must “see” a frame with the right eye, the left lens darkens, becoming opaque, and vice versa. The problem: Each pair of glasses costs more than 60$, and the projector also has to be special (ultra-fast). However, this technique gives better picture quality because you’re REALLY seeing 3-D, a different movie for each eye.

TVs with built-in 3-D

There are televisions, launched recently, and therefore reserved for this sector of the population that does not look at the prices, which incorporate 3-D without glasses (besides TVs with the super-glasses technology commented above). Although no-one seems too good, I have called attention to 2 types of technology:

• The first one is based on the same as the Pokemon “Pogs” that evolve, or in general, those stickers that if inclined more or less, the picture changes. These televisions, with convex crystals, they make the image that reaches each eye is different. What is the problem? For that to happen, you have to be in an exact position in front of the TV. So, no moving, and no inviting some friends to a movie 3-D. Strictly one-man.
• The second has a much simpler approach. Instead of display a flat image as “traditional” televisions, it displays multiple layers (8, I think, model dependent). For example, the background lanscape is displayed in a layer, the trees in another few millimeters fore, and the person who is in the foreground, fore. Thus, according to the manufacturer, you get a sense of depth of 20 inches. Yes, I too think it’s few, but remain 20 inches MORE than we already have in today’s televisions.

We are seeing numerous 3-D movies in our billboards, some of them animation movies. What is the reason? Apart from the sudden fad that has just emerged, of which James Cameron has a good share of the blame, the fact is that more computer-generated scenes are increasingly being used  (in the case of animated films, the entire film). In 3-D design programs, it’s relatively easy to place a second (virtual) camera few inches from the original to create a second film. It can be done even in the post-production stage, unlike the “traditional” films, which need to have the expensive stereoscopic camera from the beginning of filming. Since add 3-D to an animation film has no overrun, an to add “3-D” at the end of the movie name is an added value, I would ensure that 80% of animated films, from now will be in 3-D. I firmly believe too, that many “classic” animation films will be remastered in 3-D.

As for the domestic market, I see a lot more long term, at least in Spain. The Spanish are sick of buying DTT decoders (or TVs with it integrated), then pay-DTT decoders, to continue broadcasting all the same shit on TV (nor even broadcast a movie in 720p…). Naturally, it would be interesting to see a movie in Blu-ray with a TV that supports 3-D, but for that to be affordable to the general public, still miss it… at least 8 years. This reminds me of Home Cinema systems with 6 or 7 speakers: An invention for the rich people, but now that is affordable, few people have it at home, because man, while watching a newscast is not going to notice.

The truth is that I look forward to lower prices, and in a few years buy a Full-HD TV with 3-D, a PS4 (I guess by then it will be out), a surround sound system, and play GTA 7 feeling the bullets coming towards me… although it will take time until all that cost us less than the room on which it will be.