The continuous technological innovations have been changing the society ever since and covers a broader aspect of the existing technologies used by humans. The television and film mayhem which continued to bring fun and entertainment into the faces of the movie goers is constantly undergoing a process of change and innovation. In the early years since the invention of the camera and television, many filmmakers and producers have tried to produce films for the society’s entertainment and also as a replacement for the traditional vaudeville and theater plays. Cinema had become a greater advantage since it attempts to portray the real world on the big screen and the usage of technical effects added color and depth to the mood and character meaning.
Beginning from 1915, 3D technology had been widely used to make films more realistic and the incorporation of scientific and mathematical elements such as the plane figures and lightning patterns; thus, film directors were able shoot high quality black and white movies conveying illusions of depth and perception. With the use of a special anaglyph glasses audiences were able to capture scenes and perceive them as being ‘real’ because these lenses actually consists of one red and green lens (Belton 203). These special lenses create an illusion which is seen using the eyes and processed by the brain and in turn create special effects of realism.
The Beginnings of 3D
Before cameras were invented, people could only record images by drawing or painting them. The late 18th century paved the way for the invention of photography. At first it was a slow process, and all pictures were in black and white. However, the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird first demonstrated that cameras use in portraying living things through the use of a special box called television. He made his first live TV demonstration in public in 1826. Baird’s original machine was made from an old box, knitting needles and a cake tin and a bicycle lamp. The first picture of a human face was a blurry image of fifteen-year-old William Taynton. Following these innovations, the American inventor Thomas Edison was the first person to film moving pictures, but the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere were the first to show a ‘movie’ to an audience. The brothers made ten films in 1895 and built a machine to show them on screen to audiences in Paris clubs and cafes. Early movies were silent, and actors had to be very good mime artists. Words came up on the screen to explain the action and an organist played mood music to liven up the film. The first full-length movie with sound was The Jazz Singer, shown in the United States in 1927. It was very popular that silent movies soon lost their appeal and ‘talkies, a colloquial term for talking pictures dominated the film industry. Back then, the movie industry in order to attract more audiences came up with another innovation to make every picture on the screen appear more realistic. 3D or three dimensional movie platforms technically known as the SD3 which is actually a motion picture created to further enhance the depth, space and establish a perception of an illusion of a certain place, era or simply to add a tinge of realism. The term three dimensional is very broad in all aspects of mass communication ranging from print, film and in animation. The 3D technology is not new at all. There are already evidences that even in as early as the 1920’s (O’ Connor, n.p). Furthermore, the topic of three dimensional aspects in cinematography is thoroughly discussed in a journal article written by John Belton a professor of English at Rutgers University. In his essay entitled, Introduction: 3-D Cinema, Belton summarizes all the movies portrayed using the three dimensional technology. Belton points out the historical evolution of the cinema especially during the early 19th century. A screening held at the Egyptian Theater at Los Angeles California in September 2003 allowed movie critiques to study the film and cinematography of each of the movies presented with dates ranging from the beginning from 1915 and up to the present time. Belton narrates the movies that used the 3D technology in order to add realism in their storyline. In addition, over the last fifty years since its creation, many film directors and producers have been continuing the trend of making revival movies out of the old ones (Belton 203). For example, the 1933 movie King Kong, which introduced stars such as Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, uses several techniques in order to create the giant ape, King Kong by using the principles of depth, illusion and the Cartesian Coordinate Planes. In addition to several different camera angles adjusted at various tricky positions, the audiences were able to capture every movement made by King Kong whilst in the film without ruining the whole story line. The props and the backdrop were controlled with proper lighting to portray a certain mood in which the scene takes place. The jungle and fight scenes between human and animal were clearly portrayed following the principles of illusion and depth which makes the movie realistic in terms of production. “William Paul’s essay on Kiss Me Kate explores ways in which the film ‘conventionalizes’ the emergence effect of 3-D, exploiting it to explore the theatricality of the film’s production numbers. Shifts in filming from 3-D images that extend from the surface of the screen into depth to those that emerge through the 3-D ‘window’ into the space of the auditorium mark the shift from narrative to musical spectacle. Paul contextualizes the film’s use of 3-D in terms of the history of theatrical space as it evolves from the containment of the drama within the proscenium to the abolition of the proscenium in theatre-in-the round productions of the post-war era. Paul connects the increased sense of audience participation in post-war theatre to that taking place in 1950s cinema. Drawing on the concepts of platea and locus, Paul explores the interplay in Kiss Me Kate between two dramatic realities – one naturalistic, the other theatrical. This interplay engages the film’s audience in a complex process that both reinforces and subverts the theatrical notion of a fourth wall” (Belton 204).
Furthermore, various essays pertaining to the evolution of the 3D movie technology such as Sheldon Hall’s Dial M for Murder, describes the cinematography of the movie through its technical aspects by adjusting camera position and distances in order to obtain a wide range view and to give the spectator from the actual action happening in the movie. These intricately established distances had allowed audiences to gain a better viewing experience to witness Tony (a character from Alfred Knott’s play) in devising a cunning plan for a perfect murder (Belton 204). John Belton argues that the creation of three dimensional based movies was indeed a booming practice amongst film directors and video editors. Cases of image distortion resulted from the curved screen projection made the movies lose its realistic approach at certain times. Various movies of the present time have already dominated the big screen because of their extensive state of the art graphics and realistic settings such as James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic. Though the Avatar is mostly fictitious in nature, the graphics seen in the film itself are three dimensional animations controlled by computers to match the character and to add mood to the story. Titanic, on the other hand, is a story that had its historical roots on the actual ship named Titanic which sunk into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The wide-range cameras allowed audiences to view the majestic greatness of the ship labeled as the ‘unsinkable’ and by adjusting the camera far from the subject, the audiences were able to see the size and perceive the width of the ship. Moreover, the 3D technology is not only relevant in the field of industry but also in other fields of mass communication especially in news. A recent innovation such as the hologram interference allows reporters to communicate with field news anchors with ease. In the field of music, hologram technology is used to create an image of Michael Jackson in the music video ‘We Are the World for Haiti’ by using laser interference and camera techniques.
Works cited
Belton, John. 'Introduction: 3-D Cinema'. Film History 16 (2004): n. pag. Print.
O' Connor, Rebecca. 'Your Brain At The Movies: The History Of 3D'. Nat Geo TV Blogs. N. p., 2013. Web. 26 May. 2014.
