Large outdoor 3D display at Sony’s NAB booth in April.
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All photos by D.W. Leitner

Last November I wrote a column, EX3 x 2 = DIY 3D, about two talented and resourceful New Jersey filmmakers who fashioned a homebrew 3D rig from two Sony PMW-EX3s in order to film a striking 6-minute paean to Newark in the mold of Paul Strand’s classic Manhatta (1921) for the Newark Museum.

What a difference a year makes.

Avatar hit theaters in December, becoming, in one month, the highest grossing film of all time.

April’s NAB waxed giddy with 3D fever. Nothing like a box office bonanza to plant dollar signs in the eyes of broadcast manufacturers, consumer electronics giants, Hollywood, anyone seeking the next big thing. more

Wait-list line in front of the Eccles Theatre.
Photo D.W. Leitner

Sundance remains the preeminent festival for independent filmmaking anywhere. I ought to know. I’ve attended virtually every one since 1987.

In past years I’ve written daily blogs from Sundance for Millimeter, but this year, with a dramatic feature in the New Frontier section (my sixth Sundance premiere as producer), reporting wasn’t in the cards. So I’ve decided to dedicate the next four columns to a look in the rear view mirror at Sundance 2010.

In these paragraphs I’ll note tech trends and shifts in the culture of indie filmmaking, last-minute techniques invoked to finish our own super low-budget film, differences between cinema and video as elaborated by legendary editor Walter Murch before a packed morning session at the Filmmakers’ Lounge, and a brunch on Main Street I had with Illya Friedman of Hot Rod Cameras, for a sneak-peek at his Canon EOS 5D Mark II mod for PL-mount lenses.

Sundance was once a laid-back gathering of the indie film tribe in a declining 19th Century silver mining town. Then came Miramax, Hollywood, a dot-com bubble, the 2002 Winter Olympics, major corporate sponsorship. As quaint Main Street was doubled in length, development exploded in the surrounding Wasatch Mountains. A local library, a high school, a hotel, a racquet club, even a synagogue were pressed into service as screening venues for the ballooning festival. more

A battery of flatpanel TVs, looking very much the same, at J&R in lower Manhattan.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

In Cinematography Corner #4, “Screens large and small,� I wrote about the centrality of scale to classic Cinema and, conversely, the recent adoption of the A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV Standard, poised to usher in an era of wallet-sized TVs.

Similar thoughts regarding screen size and digital wizardry filled my head as I helped a close friend shop for a large flat-screen TV in the run-up to Christmas.

In a basement showroom at J&R, a large electronics emporium in lower Manhattan, we stood mesmerized in the glow of dozens and dozens of large fluorescing LCDs, tiled across walls, along aisles, in every visible direction.

All the usual Japanese and Korean suspects were there: Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, JVC, Toshiba, Coby, Vizio, LG, and Samsung. more

Basilica, from New Work: Newark in 3D.

Stereoscopy, or 3D imaging, has been around as long as photography, at least since1840, when the English inventor Sir Charles Wheatstone, who first explained binocular vision, fashioned his original stereoscope for displaying photos in stereo pairs. Stereoscopes were widely popular, even common, throughout the second half of the 19th century, as evidenced by their easy availability at flea markets today. I have two wooden models from that era on my bookshelf.

By comparison, theatrical 3D movies enjoyed only two brief spikes of popularity, first in the early 1950s (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder), then in the 1980s (Friday the 13th Part III, Jaws 3-D). Regarded as curiosities, they never achieved mainstream status, either with production crews, audiences, distributors, or exhibitors. Loading and equally exposing two strands of motion picture film was never a picnic, never mind the added interaxial and convergence lens issues unique to 3D. Dual-strip projection (in the ’50s) and funny glasses that induced headaches failed to endear the format to anyone.

But as virtually everyone attending movies today knows, 3D is experiencing a vigorous revival, propelled this time by digital technology. Compact HD cameras are easily mounted side-by-side at the human interocular distance of 55mm to 75mm (when appropriate to the image). For instance, you can strip down and slap together two Sony HDC-F950s as 3D innovator Vince Pace did for Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour and James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar, or position a pair of Flip UltraHD cameras in your backyard, as you wish. more

Prototype Samsung handheld ATSC Mobile DTV receiver at NAB 2007.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Cinema is scale. Last spring, I saw again Hitchcock’s gothic thriller Rebecca on the towering 40ft.-tall screen of a classic movie palace, Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, N.J. (where a skinny teen named Sinatra grooving to Bing in concert had an epiphany and found his calling). Perhaps it was the antiquated 1.33 aspect ratio that made Hitch’s silvery black-and-white images appear to loom far above. Certainly it was the fact I sat up front, every dimension of my peripheral vision occupied by the magnificent 50ft. wide "display."

Rebecca, produced by David O. Selznick and adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name, hardly lacks for dramatic force. It starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine and collected two Oscars out of 11 nominations in 1940. It plays on Turner Classic Movies often enough to be familiar to many. But no television can convey the full measure of its cinematic intensity or sheer graphic power, which verge on the operatic. more