Iain Crawford – Photographer

Iain Crawford - Photographer

A superb many work and shootings on the sober portfolio of the photographer Iain Crawford, currently based in London. A whole of capture of images moving, with always much of colors. To discover in the continuation.

15 Tips and Tricks for 3ds max - Nimalkanth

Tip 1

Did you know that "architectural materials" and "self illuminated" materials are light emitting (for Mental Ray & Vray) ? If you apply them on a box you will get a similar effect as a "photometric area light" or a "Vray light".

Tip 2

Try to use always soft shadows in your renderings if possible. Hard shadows are looking always very fake. In "Mr Omni/Spot" scale the size of the light in the area light parameters (mental ray).
In Mental Ray you have to use the "RAYTRACED shadows" !
In Vray enable in the Omni/Spot the "area shadow" and scale the size of the light. Soft shadows will take more render time !

Tip 3

To have perfect shadows it is necessary to create all objects with real dimensions.

Tip 4

How to decrease render time for test-renderings:
a) The main setting to decrease the render time is the image size. Normally I use 150x112 pixels as size. It is too small to see the object's details but it’s perfect to understand the light conditions.
b) Lower the Shadow quality !
c) Reduce the polygon number of the objects (try to use the optimize modifier if you don't have any mesh smooth modifier on the objects)!
d) Reduce the photon number or/and the "sample" settings in the render engines. Vray/MentalRay/Brazil RS/FinalRender/ etc.
e) Be careful with the amount of lights (too many lights will make the rendering very slow)!

Tip 5

Do not use editable MESH but ALWAYS editable "POLY".
Editable Poly is optimized for advanced modeling , creates less errors than editable mesh and has many more settings than editable mesh.
If you were working on a object with editable mesh , you can without problems convert it into an editable Poly object.

Tip 6

Instead to mesh smooth a box, use from the "extended primitives" a "chamfer box"... the result is the same, but the chamfer box" has less polygons !

Tip 7

Sometimes all your Vertexes disappear during modeling of an object. To fix this bug try this options:
a) Convert your object again to an editable poly.
b) Convert your object to an editable mesh and then to an editable poly.
c) Save the file, Exit from 3Ds max and open again the file.
d) Save the file, Exit from 3Ds max and merge the object in a new file.

Tip 8

The best light to create Highlights is the Omni light (or MR Omni).

Tip 9

Do not use "area shadows" in Mental Ray, they are very slow and not optimized for Mental Ray.
The best/fastest result is visible when you use Raytrace shadows.
If you are working with the "light-tracer" than you can use "area shadows". The result is the same as in MentalRay with Raytrace shadows.

Tip 10

(For beginners) When you are working sometimes you can't anymore move your object.
Probably you have pressed the key X. Press again X to enable the move tool (GIZMO).
Similar problem: You can select only one object, all other objects can't be selected anymore: probably you have pressed SPACE and locked the object. Press again SPACE to unlock it.

Tip 11

When you create a "loft" object it can happen that the end or beginning of the object has an error.
To fix the problem you should choose "CORNER" vertex on the first and last vertex of your spline.

Tip 12

Download ALWAYS the last service-pack for your 3Ds Max version. It will fix important bugs.

Tip 13

There can be only 2 mistakes when your extruded (spline + extrude modifier) object has an error:
a) you have overlapping segments in your spline.
b) the shape is not closed-check where you did not weld the vertexes.

Tip 14

If you use splines to create shapes, try to use a very small number of vertexes.
If you convert the vertexes in smooth/bezier/bezier-corner you can create very organic and round shapes without a too high number of vertexes (same tip for loft in deformations-scale-panel).

Tip 15

If your interface/panel disappeared you have this options to fix the problem:
a.) Maybe You are in the "expert" mode...press CTR+x...
b.) Customize > Customize User Interface > Toolbars Tab > Reset!
c.) "Start" button on windows > Autodesk > 3Ds Max > change graphics mode !
d.) There should be a 3dsmax.ini file in ur max folder...delete it and start 3Ds Max again...
e.) Customize > load custom UI scheme.

I hope that this tips will help you.

Saab TV Ad Change perspective

The latest TV commercial from Saab, part of the Changing perspective campaign that launch the new Saab 9-3X. Soundtrack is called Time Is Now by the the Swedish singer Asha Ali.

Tiny Invention for TMBG – Electric Car

Mild mannered animation studio, Tiny Inventions, have lifted the veil on their latest opus and introduced Electric Car – a stop-motion style music video for the sugary children’s band, They Might Be Giants (TMBG). Showcasing a foxy sense of craftsmanship, Tiny Inventions is true to form, and has a knack for detail that’s put up for show in each one of their rustic-themed characters and makeshift environments.

The aesthetic here is homestyle – nothing too pretentious or embellished in flowery trimmings. Instead, Electric Car is a throwback to the good ol’ days of educational shorts; when Saturday mornings were for play; when School House Rock was a staple. Electric Car keeps it simple, but does it in a big way – a watermark to their authenticity, and a badge of honor for the studio.

“Making of”

Imagining Peace at the Colombo Art Biennale

50 artists are participating in the Colombo Art Biennale, displaying their work over 14,000 sqft of space. In addition there are 25 other locations which will act as satellites to the main event and have mini-shows. You can read more about the event on their website here.

The theme for this years biennale is “Imagining Peace”

Peace – to encourage peace between and within nations, communities, families and individuals.  This is not so much about showcasing Sri Lankan art; this is a project with a vision. This is to show the world that despite the fact that Sri Lanka is a seemingly politically, ethnically polarized society, artists can work together as collectives, a sign of peace in itself. “Imagining Peace”- Imagining that people can work together. Source : CAB Mission
 
 

12 Essential Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo

The logo is the face of any brand — the very first impression — so its design is extremely important.

When executed correctly, a logo is a powerful asset to your client’s brand.

However, creating an effective visual representation of a brand requires much more than just graphic design.

Like any line of work that involves a set of specific skills, logo design requires plenty of practice and experience for it to be successful; knowledge is definitely power for any graphic designer.

For this reason, we have outlined 12 essential rules to follow in order to design an effective logo.

1. Preliminary Work Is a Must

Preliminary sketches are an important first step in designing an effective logo.

These can be as simple as paper and pen drawings or drafts made using a vector program, such as Illustrator.

The bottom line is that you compromise the final result if you rush, or skip, this step.

Start with 20 to 30 sketches or ideas and then branch out to create variations of the original ideas.

If nothing seems to work, start over and begin sketching new ideas.

An effective graphic designer will spend more time on this preliminary work than any other step in the design process.

2. Create Balance

Balance is important in logo design because our minds naturally perceive a balanced design as being pleasing and appealing.

Keep your logo balanced by keeping the “weight” of the graphics, colors, and size equal on each side.

Though the rule of balance can occasionally be broken, remember that your logo will be viewed by the masses, not just those with an eye for great art, so a balanced design is the safest approach.

3. Size Matters

When it comes to logo design, size does matter. A logo has to look good and be legible at all sizes.

A logo is not effective if it loses too much definition when scaled down for letterheads, envelopes, and small promotional items. The logo also has to look good when used for larger formats, such as posters, billboards, and electronic formats such as TV and the Web.

The most reliable way to determine if a logo works at all sizes is to actually test it yourself.

Note that the smallest scale is usually the hardest to get right, so start by printing the logo on a letterhead or envelope and see if it is still legible.

You can also test for large-scale rendering by printing a poster-sized version at a print shop.

4. Clever Use of Color

Color theory is complex, but designers who understand the basics are able to use color to their advantage.

The basic rules to keep in mind are:

• Use colors near to each other on the color wheel (e.g. for a “warm” palette, use red, orange, and yellow hues).
• Don’t use colors that are so bright that they are hard on the eyes.
• The logo must also look good in black and white, grayscale, and two colors.
• Breaking the rules sometimes is okay; just make sure you have a good reason to!

Knowing how colors evoke feelings and moods is also important. For example, red can evoke feelings of aggression, love, passion, and strength.

Keep this in mind as you try out different color combinations, and try to match the color to the overall tone and feel of the brand.

Playing around with individual colors on their own is another good idea. Some brands are recognizable solely by their distinct color.

For example, when you think of John Deere, you think of the “John Deere green” color, and this sets this brand apart from its competitors and, more importantly, makes the brand all the more recognizable.

5. Design Style Should Suit the Company

You can use various design styles when creating a logo, and to pick the right one, you should have some background information about the client and the brand.

A recent trend in logo design is the Web 2.0 style of 3D-looking logos, with “bubbly” graphics, gradients, and drop shadows.

This style may work well for a Web 2.0 website or tech company, but may not be effective for other kinds of brands.

Research your client and its audience before you begin your preliminary work.

This will help you determine the best design style from the start and save you from having to return repeatedly to the drawing board.

6. Typography Matters… a Lot!

Choosing the right font type and size is much more difficult than many beginner designers realize.

If your logo design includes text, either as part of the logo or in the tagline, you will need to spend time sorting through various font types — often, dozens of them — and testing them in your design before making a final decision.

Try both serif fonts and sans-serif fonts as well as script, italics, bold, and custom fonts.

Consider three main points when choosing a font to accompany your logo design:

• Avoid the most commonly used fonts, such as Comic Sans, or else your design may come off as amateurish.
• Make sure the font is legible when scaled down, especially with script fonts.
• One font is ideal, and avoid more than two.

Strongly consider a custom font for your design. The more original the font, the more it will distinguish the brand. Examples of successful logos that have a custom font are Yahoo!, Twitter, and Coca Cola.

7. The Goal IS Recognition

The whole point of creating a logo is to build brand recognition. So, how do you go about doing this?

Well, it varies from case to case, but the goal with the logo is for the average person to instantly call the brand to mind.

A few examples of this are the logos for Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, and Nike.

Just a glimpse of any of these logos is all you need to recognize the brands.

The key to making a popular and recognizable logo is to combine all of the elements discussed in this article: size, style, color, typography, and originality.

Overlooking any of these during the design process will impair the quality of your final design. Examine your own logo design and see whether it meets all of these criteria.

A quick test to determine if your logo is recognizable enough is to invert it using any graphic design software and see if you can still recognize the brand. Additionally, you should mirror the logo and see if it’s easily recognizable in this state.

Keep in mind that logos aren’t always seen head-on in real world situations, for example, on the side of a bus or a billboard that you drive by.

Therefore, you should make sure to view your logo design from all angles and ensure that it’s recognizable from any direction before submitting it to your client.

8. Dare to be Different

To stand out from the competition, you must distinguish yourself as a designer with a distinct style. Rather than copy another design or style, be innovative and stand out from the crowd.

So, how can you be different? Try breaking the rules of design and taking risks.

Try a variety of styles to find the one that works best for your client. Try different color combinations until you find one that makes your design truly original.

Have fun with the design program you use, and keep tweaking the design until you feel you’ve got it right.

9. K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple, Stupid)

The simpler the logo, the more recognizable it will be.

For example, the Nike swoosh is an extremely simple logo and is also one of the most recognizable in the world.

Follow the K.I.S.S. rule right from the start of the design process, when you are brainstorming ideas and doodling sketches.

Often, you’ll find that you start with a relatively complicated design and end up with a simpler version of it in the end.

Work the design down to its essentials and leave out all unnecessary elements.

10. Go Easy on Effects

Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop, and other graphic design programs are extremely powerful tools and have many filters and effects that you can apply to your logo, but don’t get carried away!

There’s a time and place for these powerful tools, but it is not necessarily to design a logo.

Of course, playing around and seeing whether they enhance a logo is fine, but just remember that simplicity is key.

11. Develop a Design “Assembly Line”

To produce consistently high-quality logos, you need to develop your own design process, or “assembly line.” This should include the following steps:

• Research
• Brainstorm and generate ideas
• Preliminary sketches
• Develop vector designs
• Send to client
• Add or remove anything the client wants
• Finalize the design and resubmit to client

Although you may want to tweak the order slightly, you should follow these basic steps with each logo design.

This will help you streamline your work, stay organized, maintain focus, and deliver better quality and more consistent results with each job.

12. Use Other Designs for Inspiration Only!

The last rule for designing an effective logo is quite simple: don’t copy other designers’ work! While there’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other designers, copying another person’s ideas or work is morally and legally wrong.

Gallery websites exist that let you use vector art images free of charge, with proper attribution under the Creative Commons License, but I strongly recommend not going this route.

These websites can be helpful for getting ideas during the brainstorming stage, but you’re better off starting your design from scratch and making it 100% original.

Written exclusively for WDd by Jarkko Laine.

Do you follow these rules when designing your logos? Why or why now? Please share your comments with us…

The 3D Zone: Its Past & Its Future by Ray Zone

Ray Zone Los Angeles, CA ©2009 Ray Zone and CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

Article Focus: The world expert in the history of 3D imaging looks at its past to see into its future. Along the way, he looks at the role of comics in the evolution of 3D storytelling, the importance of anaglyph even today, and why 3D is going to stick around this time.

There are several compelling reasons why 3D is not going to go away this time. The train has left the station.

The first compelling reason driving studios and independent producers to make 3D feature films is that the 3D version makes three times the box office — and sometimes even more than that. The 3D version of “My Bloody Valentine” earned closer to seven times more than the 2D version.

The second overriding reason is the technology itself. The tools for making both live action and computer-generated 3D movies are so sweet. Previously, producers have had to deal with these humongous 35mm cameras, and had to contrive to get the lenses close enough together to make the films viewable. That has really changed with smaller cameras from Silicon Imaging and Iconix. Live action stereoscopic productions no longer need to be limited in the kinds of things they can shoot, including handheld. The form factor of even 4K RAW imaging is so small, that you can easily make 3D movies that eliminate the difficulties of eye strain and visual errors that were seen in the past.

In exhibition, the great watershed which was inaugurated on November 4th 2005, with the release of "Chicken Little 3D" from Disney on 84 RealD cinema screens, using a single projector solution. Frames are triple-flashed -- 24 frames per second for each eye, flashed 3 times each, for a total of 144 frames per second. This creates a very high rate of intermittency, where you don't notice any flicker at all. It's a beautiful solution, almost 100% error free, and that eliminates many of the errors from the 50s. Even if the projectors stayed in sync, film weave would create an unpleasant kind of stutter to the image, or one of the films would break and then there would be a problem for the projection of putting them back in sync with the splice.

So, previous exhibition obstacles have been solved with RealD, Dolby Digital 3D, ExpandD and then IMAX 3D, which of course is a wonderful platform for watching 3D movies.

The third factor is a new generation stereoscopic filmmakers that is successfully creating 3D movies that are simply more immersive. Although they have imagery that comes off the screen, which you expect in a 3D movie, it happens in a way that is coherent and fits in the story.

We have at times seen this before. The 3D films of the 50s had noteworthy examples of a marriage between stereoscopic imaging and storytelling. “Kiss Me Kate” was a wonderful musical, and it was designed for 3D. “Inferno,” starring Robert Ryan, was a great example of 3D being used as an integral part of the narrative. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” is certainly a 3D film that stands out even in 2D.

Another wonderful 3D film that had a great influence on many people — including me — was “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” which is actually a kind of poetic love story, along the lines of “Beauty and the Beast.”

So the 3D films of the 50s were not just B pictures. There were some true A-list pictures that used 3D in a way that was seamless with the narrative.

3D filmmakers today have devised a number of storytelling innovations that are taking this even further forward. Brian Gardner developed the idea of a floating stereo window. Brian, Phil McNally (who came from ILM to Disney, and later moved to DreamWorks), and Bernard Mendiburu put this together on Disney's "Meet The Robinsons" in a way that animated the position of the 3D frame in a way that audience doesn't notice, but that makes 3D easier to create, and easier for the audience to view.

[Ed. note: You can read more with Phil "Captain 3D" McNally at Creative COW here. You can read the online version of Brian Gardner's article for Creative COW Magazine on 3D storytelling, here.]

Another wonderful device they implemented was the idea of multi-rigging -- different figures in the foreground or background all had different interocular settings. For animated films, this is just math, but it adds a richness to the 3D experience. They also used this control to animate interocular distances over the course of a shot.

The combination of additional box office generated by 3D feature films, new ease in making them, improvements in exhibition, and new, more immersive storytelling are a few of the compelling reasons that 3D filmmaking will not go away this time.

STEREOGRAPHY

I like to use the term “stereography,” because it means literally rendering the forms of volume on a flat plane. It happens that the discovery of stereography preceded the invention of photography as well as motion pictures.

Stereography, as discovered by Charles Wheatstone in 1838, preceded the invention of both photography and motion pictures.

In fact, the realism of the very first stereo view cards drove the invention of motion pictures. These inventors looked through the stereoscopes and a saw a 3D image, and asked themselves, “What’s missing?” Well, motion was missing, so as utopians of the image, they set out to add not just motion, but sound, and color, and depth.

The first three-dimensional motion pictures were developed by William Friese-Green in 1889. He devised a dioptic camera with twin lenses that took two pictures, side-by-side. The remnants of his system survive today in still versions as the View-Master — still in production, primarily with cartoons and 3D movie promotional tie-ins.

But well before Friese-Green’s invention, the stereoview card had become the great mass medium of the 19th Century — far more popular than newspapers or anything else. It was only the proliferation of the motion picture which led to the eclipse of the stereoview card as a mass medium in the 20th Century.

A stereographic image of a stereograph factory, from 1905. Click image for larger.

ANAGLYPH: YESTERDAY AND TODAY

We will have anaglyph for as long as there is imaging.

Many people in production who champion newer platforms think it’s necessary to denigrate or put down the anaglyph and its red and green glasses — but it conveys a very strong stereographic experience when done carefully. It is simply one of several different ways to display what is essentially two movies: one for the left eye, and one for the right eye.

I wrote my book [“Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952”] to show how 3D cinema preceded the release of “Bwana Devil” by 100 years, and to show how important anaglyph technologies and techniques were as a part of that period.

[Ed. note: Ray has also written "3D Filmmakers: Conversations with Creators of Stereoscopic Motion Pictures." Both of these books are highly recommended.]

Since its discovery and perfection by Louis Ducos du Hauron – he patented it in 1895 – anaglyph has been continuously in production. It has been the universal solution for making, exhibiting, and displaying 3D images, both in movies -- because it works with standard projections and a standard white screen --and print media, which often supported the movies even in the 20s.

Anaglyph was used initially for Magic Lanterns Slideshows, as well as some of the first movies made in America, I suspect shown using dual projectors. In the 20s, there was a wave of very popular anaglyphic short films, along with a 3D shadow show called the Shadowgraph, invented by Lawrence Hammond, also the inventor of the Hammond Organ.

The earliest anaglyph feature film was “The Power of Love.” debuting in Hollywood in 1922, and shown using two projectors. 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. Audience members who desired a happy ending simply viewed the film through the red filter, with a tragic ending seen through the green filter.

Things changed in 1939, when the New York World’s Fair showed Edward Land’s newly-patented linear polarizing material projected on a silver screen.

Click image for larger.

That was the point at which polarizing technology for 3D movies become a standard – but the anaglyph is still the most versatile way to look at a 3D movie.

Even though 3D TV is going to be using some newer technologies that allow for full-color imaging will surpass the anaglyph, anaglyph is being produced in greater numbers today than it ever was before. Just go to YouTube and search for anaglyph 3D movies. You’ll be surprised that how many there are. These films are coming from every corner of the world, from desktop 3D moviemakers — and anaglyph works great in the RGB colorspace of computers.

So while there have been other important platforms for people to discover 3D, anaglyph remains the de facto way for most young people to discover 3D, as I did when I was six. When done with care, it really can convey a powerful 3D experience.

HANDMADE 3D

I first saw 3D images in the first issue of “Three Dimension Comics,” by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer, featuring Mighty Mouse, in September 1953. It sold over a million copies, leading to the release of over 50 3D comics, into 1954. They were primarily created by using three or four acetate overlays over a background board, and shifting the layers to create the left and right eye views.

While there were a few examples in between, I worked to reinvent the form in the 80s, and have produced over 130 3D comics -- the first hundred by using a number 11 Exacto blade, and cutting and shifting photostats of the line art. It was a labor-intensive process, but it meant that I was no longer limited to only 4 or 5 planes of depth. I could create as many planes as the art could bear, as many 20 or 30 levels – so many levels, in fact, that the art itself started to appear volumetric! I also started to use techniques that would stretch and twist the image.

This was well in advance of using a computer. When I started using Photoshop to create 3D comics in 1995, they became polychromatic anaglyph, as opposed to the two-color comics used before. They now retained all of the color information of the original four-color images, but also had the 3D embedded into that four-color scheme.

The first comics to use this for the full length of the comic book were a 12 issue run for Image Comics that I did in 1997. The most recent 3D comics that I’ve produced were for DC, “Superman: Beyond Final Crisis,” #1 and #2.

Alongside the full-color anaglyph comics, I’m still doing conversion of comics to monochromatic anaglyph -- essentially a black and white image delivered with the red and blue color selection.

Comic parody of Ray Zone. Click image for full-size version of the entire page.

Right now I’m working with Clive Barker and a writer and a team at IDW (Idea and Design Works) to do an original Clive Barker 3D comic. We are using some unusual techniques with red and blue glasses, to create things like 2-step animation or hidden image, or some visually interesting effects exploiting the differences in color perception between the left and right eye, called retinal rivalry.

I’m also making stereo pairs of paintings by hand, in acrylics and oils. One example is below, I was influenced by a local gentleman named Abe Fagenson who creates left and right eye images on a single canvas, for cross-eye, binocular-free vision. You cross your eyes, and you see it in 3D without a viewing aid of any kind. I’m making my own stereo pairs of paintings, of abstract images. You can use a viewing device, or you can view them in cross-eye, or parallel free vision. You can experience the abstract imagery stereoscopically using any of these methods.

Arcadia, by Ray Zone. Click image for larger.

This is for art gallery display of 3D images, another platform that I’m moving forward on. As a curator, and an art writer, and an artist myself, I want to show people that stereography can, and should, be displayed in art gallery setting, and that there are numerous strategies to show the image in 3D using binocular stereopsis of one kind of another.

THE EXPERIENCE OF 3D FILMMAKING

"Brijes 3D" is the second animated feature to be produced by Ithrax Productions, a motion picture studio based in Mexico City, and will be the first feature-length animated stereoscopic film in Mexican cinema history. Benito Fernandez is the principal at Ithrax, and the director of "Brijes 3D."

Marius Henry Hoyo is the visual effects supervisor for Santo Domingo Animation, and following a recommendation from Lenny Lipton at RealD, Marius invited me to be the 3D producer for the project. The first time I went down, in August 2008, we set up the stereoscopic team, which was Marius, Benito's brother Diego and two after effects Adobe After Effects wizards. We set up a procedure to take the digital still art as it came into the stereoscopic finishing department, and created pixel-based shifts to place the images both behind and in front of the screen. We then animated along the Z axis in After Effects.

By January 2009 the 3D for the opening 7-minute prologue of "Brijes 3D" was complete. I had it encoded at RealD with the help of Lenny Lipton, Josh Greer and Robert Turner. SDA decided that they wanted to announce the stereoscopic production to the media in Mexico, at a 3D screening. Those chose a Cinepolis theater, Mexico’s largest theater chain, which is quickly rolling out rolling out screens equipped with RealD stereoscopic projection in their multiplexes.

We showed it to the Mexican press on a 50-foot screen with the new RealD XO brighter projection platform, and they were very impressed with the stereoscopic aspect.

Production is underway again. We will be shooting some miniatures in 3D, as well as using some CG elements mixed with the still art. I will be making more trips down to Mexico as we move toward our spring 2010 release.

I also continue to work on my own films. As one example, I wrote and directed a 14 minute short called "Slow Glass" which was an attempt to do a new idea with 3D story telling. It is adaptation of a classic Bob Shaw story, “Light of Other Days.” You see through this slow glass what happened 10 years earlier. The story involves a moving realization that, as it comes to the end of the story, is quite heartbreaking.

Sean Isroelit was the visual effects supervisor, and I had Brian Gardner work on some of the shots. For one of them, I gave him a stereo pair of a mountain forest with snow, and he animated snow falling in it, and he did this amazing push-in into that shot.

We had shot it in only two days, but it had taken two years in post production because of the extensive stereoscopic bluescreen effects. Bernard Mendiburu did two things to save Slow Glass. One, he made this amazing title sequence. He also rescued what all of us came to call The Shot From Hell. We had a live action plate with actors moving through it, and behind them, a number of bluescreen panes of slow glass, each with a 3D movie playing in it. And I told Bernard, lay things in there with garbage mattes, or whatever else you can figure out. And he did!. He finished the shot from hell, and the movie was done.

3DIY

In the excitement over 3D releases from major studios, one thing that doesn’t get discussed as much is that there is, right now, a desktop 3D video revolution going on. People are cobbling together their own solutions using readily accessible hardware and software, and they’re sharing their stories with each other. I’ll coin a term, “3DIY,” to describe it. This is much more important than people realize.

I think of companies with major software and hardware platforms as 800-pound gorillas -- and 800-pound gorillas do not swing as high or as quickly through the forest as chimpanzees. There is this amazing groundswell of 3D movie production with the chimpanzees. They have kludged their own 3DIY stereoscopic solutions, and they’ve actually built in smarter, more sophisticated capabilities than the 800-pound gorillas have.

While the 800-pound gorillas are still undertaking studies, trying to figure out what to do with it, this technology is sweeping along at the desktop level. It’s bottom-up. It’s viral. And unlike a lot of areas where people are waiting for major studio-level tools to filter down to them, this is an area where the 800-pound gorillas have a lot to learn from the chimpanzees.

So as exciting as the top-down forward motion of 3D in cinema is – and it is very, very exciting – one of my concerns as a film historian is access to the couple of thousand 3D screens for the many thousands of independent 3D movie makers.

The solution that friends and I in the Stereo Club of Southern California have come up with is using two smaller digital projectors, a silver screen and linear polarizing glass. Solutions like this are critical for the development for 3D moviemaking now, because I believe some of the great 3D moviemakers of the future are going to come out of this desktop revolution.

People just haven’t seen the full extent of how artistically diverse and conceptually rich stereographic imaging can be. But they are starting to find out, experiencing these new movies and the forward motion of of 3D on every kind of visual display, from mobiles and handhelds to the IMAX screen.