Sounds like the first new media branching narrative to me...
"Anaglyphic 3-D was used in motion pictures long before its use in graphics and comic books. The earliest feature film in this process used two projectors and was called The Power of Love debuting in Hollywood in 1922. The films using this early process were called plasticons and plastigrams. A plasticon opened at the Rivoli theater in New York in 1922 which made novel use of the anaglyphic process. Two endings to the film were shown simultaneously. If the audience member desired a happy ending he simply viewed the film through the red filter. If a tragic ending was more to his liking he viewed the film through the green filter."

That's what your flash piece made me think of, Erin - using the filters as a process of revealing/concealing information. All stereoscopic 3D lends itself so much to this use; I'm surprised we don't see more of it outside of the mall =)

This was one of the most fun seminars we've had all semester. I think it helped that I got to make a piece to present beforehand--man, that was a good deal more difficult than I thought it would be, but it's always worth it in the end when the audience reacts well.

Ray's quite an interesting guy. I didn't realize that stereoscopy was invented as early as the 1830s. The 3D comics were a blast to look at!

As a final note, special thanks to Perry for all his help with our stereo projects.

He was a genuine enthusiast. Aaron asked a question about whether prolonged wearing of red/green 3D glasses is bad for you - Ray replied immediate to the contrary. Wearing his own deluxe, custom 3D shades, he told us he believes 3D spectacle focus is actually good for you. Aaron remembers him saying, it makes you "an optical athelete."

It was a display of total immersion. I asked him "whycome 3D has such a boom and bust cycle in popular entertainment?" His answer, best I recall, was that digital technology was going to make better 3D possible, and thereby, more popular. After a few hours of 3D I felt a little woozy myself. Perhaps it was due to all the varying light levels and different presentations pulling my eyes around with their varying 3D systems. A little turbulence is fun. But hours of 3D? I'll be eager to see how they balance the velocity of 3D experience in the upcoming Star Wars 3D rereleases.

There must be reasons why stereoscopic cinema hasn't taken over the entertainment lines, as popular as the conventional. The question is: is the lack of interest in real stereoscopic cinema rooted in financial and equipment problems, that is, like any 'special format', how do you attract a mass audience and make enough money? Need special cameras, special theatres and special films which are all too expensive? No!

Fortunately the problems the panoramic had don't apply to the stereoscopic. Instead, while we were suprised knowing the panorama theatre of LA is shut down during Perry's class tonight, the stereoscopic short films are actually on show all the while. Of the whole lecture, I think the most valuable(however only slightly mentioned) brought forth is that the "Grammar" finally became the topic - after all, the only "new" element added is the real Z-depth. I'd forward my research of it by making a stereoscopic film, hopefully right fit into a project of some course of the next academic year.

It's interesting that steroscopic experience is sort of a process to cheat our body's visual system and the strange feeling or a little bit of disturbance is a part of the whole experience which is really immersive for the moment. But because it's actually against our natural way of visual recogintion, the fatigue and disturbance is big problems when it needs to be seen for a long time. FPS games are especially very visually intensive and scenes in the game change real fast and need high framerates. I think that's the main reason why stereoscopic graphic cards for FPS games were not that popular.

Ray said that stereoscopy is all about slowing down and giving your eyes a chance to adjust to the image. I think that's a really neat idea, but I also wonder if that's just because we're not used to 3D viewing yet. I mean, the first movies were full of long takes to let you get a good view of what you were looking at. Now flashy jump-cuts are cool. Will the same thing happen as we become more 3D literate? I was at Disneyland over Spring Break and saw their 3D movie "Honey I Shrunk the Audience". Yes, it was a cheesy premise and the presentation had a lot of "cheap tricks" and the glasses were beat up, but when an explosion in the "middle of the air" suddenly shot a piece of shrapnel at us, everyone in the theater ducked. And then the adults laughed at how silly they'd just acted. I couldn't help but think of the stories of people running away from the trains in the first movies. I think I now know how they felt.

Also, what pieces or genres are best served by stereoscopy?

Just a quick note: I got really sick on the night of this seminar. My eyes were hurting for at least 15 hours afterward...

I know I have a somewhat "off" ability of depth perception; my left eye is quite a bit stronger than my right, and I've never been able to see some of the cool stuff in those RDSGs, magic eyes and whatnot. I noticed that when Perry was looking through some stereo images I had made, he was flipping them back and forth with the horizantal mirror, despite the fact that I made all the images the "right" way, and with special care to controlling where the plane of the screen would occur.

I just can't do it. At most, I can feel that things are...something that the French call: I don't know what. Something that looks subtle might be totally extreme to the rest of the class while something that I think is perfectly subtle enough for texture looks totally out of whack to the majority...and it's just a bit frustrating.

And I think that's why we're just not going to see stereoscopic cinema. There's just too many people out there who perceive depth just differently enough. It will take off once you get guys like me out of the gene pool, maybe...

Ray Zone's talk and Perry's subsequent 541b immersive module have given me some inspiration in regards to the power of stereoscopic imagery. Putting together anaglyph images for me is a fresh new way to approach image-making and I know I have barely even begun to tap into their power.

Whether or not stereoscopic movies have a big future is difficult to speculate about. BUT... in not too much time, Doox was able to add code to his engine that rendered 3D scenes in anaglyph stereo in real-time and the effect was very cool. Since the devtime on this seems to be so short, I think game makers ought to take the initiative in making anaglyph stereo a default option for 3D games. Sure, people usually don't have the stomach to look at things in red/blue for that long, but considering how apparently easy (trivial) it is to integrate, it might be a good novelty feature to include that would prime us for the future incarnations of stereoscopic interactive media.

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