The eye-popping, pioneering history of 3D cinema | Little White Lies

The eye-pop­ping, pio­neer­ing his­to­ry of 3D cinema

06 Jun 2018

Words by Matt Turner

Creepy humanoid figure with glowing eyes, outstretched hands, and rough, textured skin in a monochrome image with 3D effect.
Creepy humanoid figure with glowing eyes, outstretched hands, and rough, textured skin in a monochrome image with 3D effect.
Whether cheap trick or clever gim­mick, the use of stereo­scop­ic tech­niques has con­stant­ly pushed the bound­aries of the medium.

From vir­tu­al­ly the begin­ning of cinema’s his­to­ry, film­mak­ers have found new ways to push the bound­aries of the medi­um. While recent think­ing often resists the pre­sump­tion that images should be a cer­tain height and width, housed with the square or rec­tan­gu­lar con­tain­ers they’ve become con­tained to, much ear­ly exper­i­men­ta­tion fought in the oth­er direc­tion: against the flat­ness of the frame, and towards depth – towards 3D. Why should the world’s three dimen­sions, through cap­ture, be reduced to just two?

Indeed, one of the most well known works of ear­ly cin­e­ma, the Lumière broth­ers’ L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Cio­tat has a 3D equiv­a­lent. Reshot with a stereo­scop­ic cam­era, L’arrivée du Train is believed to have been first pre­sent­ed at the Paris World Fair in a sin­gle-view­er stereo­scop­ic booth, and then lat­er shown in a cin­e­ma along­side oth­er 3D Lumière exper­i­ments at a meet­ing of the French Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in 1935.

The first record­ed pub­lic screen­ing of stereo­scop­ic film occurred in 1915, when Edwin S Porter and William E Wad­dell showed an audi­ence at New York City’s Astor The­atre var­i­ous test reels filmed in anaglyph 3D. Sev­en years lat­er, Har­ry K Fairall and Nat G Dev­erich pre­miered The Pow­er of Love in Los Ange­les, a silent fea­ture gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be the first com­mer­cial­ly released 3D film.

Although exper­i­men­ta­tion con­tin­ued through­out the decades that fol­lowed —notably in the form of nov­el­ty’ shorts such as EW Ham­mons’ Plas­ti­grams, a series of short­form exer­cis­es explor­ing extra-dimen­sion­al­i­ty, Jacob F Lev­en­thal and John A Norling’s Audio­scopiks, a meta­tex­tu­al exer­cise that explained stereo­scop­ic tech­nol­o­gy while demon­strat­ing it, and John Nor­lings’ New Dimen­sions, a three-colour 3D stop-motion Chrysler com­mer­cial – it wasn’t until the 1950s that 3D became more wide­ly popular.

Faced with falling audi­ence fig­ures and the advent of tele­vi­sion, US stu­dio exec­u­tives turned, along­side oth­er tech­nolo­gies such as Cin­e­maS­cope and Cin­era­ma, to 3D in the hope of tempt­ing view­ers back to the big screen. Arch Oboler’s Bwana Dev­il – pro­duced using a new pro­duc­tion method (Nat­ur­al Vision 3D) and and fea­tur­ing full colour and sound – kick­start­ed a craze in mass mar­ket 3D. Mar­ket­ed with the tagline A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!’, the film made $2.5m at the US box office upon its release in 1952.

Among more than 50 pro­duc­tions released with­in a two-year spell, one of the more renowned titles is Andre De Toth’s Vin­cent Price-star­ring House of Wax, a stereo­scop­ic film made by a direc­tor who, iron­i­cal­ly, only had one eye. Oth­er high­lights includ­ed Jack Arnold’s It Came from Out­er Space, a sci-fi romp based on a Ray Brad­bury treat­ment, Roy Ward Baker’s crime noir Infer­no and George Sidney’s musi­cal Kiss Me Kate.

Even Alfred Hitch­cock suc­cumbed to stu­dio pres­sure, releas­ing Dial M For Mur­der in 3D. Now regard­ed as one of the most cre­ative exam­ples of the for­mat, with the sto­ry unfold­ing with­in a sin­gle apart­ment, the film ful­ly ren­ders the uneasy con­tours of that con­fined space through the extra visu­al space afford­ed. That film arrived around the same time as Arnold’s fol­low-up suc­cess, Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon, a mon­ster flick that spawned a quick­ly and cyn­i­cal­ly pro­duced sequel, Revenge of the Crea­ture, which sig­nalled the end of the 1950s 3D epoch.

Vintage stage scene featuring two adults, one in a dark coat and the other in a light dress with elaborate hair, against a dark curtain backdrop.

After two decades of rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty, the tech­nol­o­gy utilised only spo­rad­i­cal­ly in genre and erot­ic con­texts, Steve Miner’s Fri­day the 13th Part III, Joe Alves’ Jaws 3‑D and Richard Fleischer’s Ami­tyville 3‑D became emblem­at­ic of 3D cinema’s return to the com­mer­cial lime­light. Also released in 1983, Lam­ont Johnson’s Space­hunter: Adven­tures in the For­bid­den Zone was made with a bud­get com­pa­ra­ble to Star Wars, though it was nowhere near as successful.

IMAX 3D was devel­oped par­al­lel to this, and the company’s co-founder Roman Croitor direct­ed We Are Born of Stars, while Col­in Low and Tony Ianze­lo made Tran­si­tions – both pio­neer­ing if for­get­table 3D offer­ings fea­tur­ing com­put­er ani­ma­tion. A year lat­er, in 1986, Dis­ney released Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Cap­tain EO, a Michael Jack­son vehi­cle made specif­i­cal­ly to be installed in their theme parks, with all man­ner of lasers, water jets, fog and hydraulic appa­ra­tus attached. By this point 3D was less an exper­i­ment than an attraction.

In theme parks, to name just a few exam­ples, there was Jim Henson’s Muppet*Vision 3‑D, Ran­dal Kleiser’s Hon­ey, I Shrunk the Audi­ence and James Cameron, John Bruno and Stan Winston’s T‑2 3D: Bat­tle Across Time, big bud­get instal­la­tions which stayed on site for years. In the­atres, Brett Leonard’s T‑Rex: Back to the Cre­ta­ceous and Ben Stassen’s Haunt­ed Cas­tle linger in mem­o­ry, as does Col­in Davies and Elaine Despins’ Cyber­world, an omnibus odd­i­ty that fea­tured post-con­vert­ed 3D seg­ments from The Simp­sons and Antz along­side a Pet Shop Boys music video.

Mean­while, the appear­ance of dig­i­tal pro­duc­tion and pro­jec­tion began to see 3D rein­cor­po­rat­ed into the reg­u­lar the­atre­go­ing expe­ri­ence, offer­ing stere­oscopy at scale. James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss, a doc­u­men­tary about an expe­di­tion to the wreck of the RMS Titan­ic, was shot in 3D with a spe­cial­ly built dig­i­tal cam­era. The same equip­ment was also used for Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 3: Game Over and The Adven­tures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl 3‑D.

Robert Zemeck­is’ The Polar Express, a com­put­er ani­mat­ed motion-cap­ture fea­ture released simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in 2D and IMAX 3D, took more than $300m at the box office, with the 3D ver­sion con­sti­tut­ing a major­i­ty of that fig­ure. This seemed high until Cameron released Avatar, which grossed in excess of $2.75bn, sur­pass­ing the director’s own record for the high­est gross­ing film of all time (pre­vi­ous­ly held by Titan­ic). Unsur­pris­ing­ly, this led to many more stu­dio films being made and released in 3D, with count­less oth­ers lazi­ly post-con­vert­ed from 2D.

There is, how­ev­er a dif­fer­ent side to the sto­ry of 3D cin­e­ma, with small­er-scale stereo­scop­ic prac­ti­tion­ers con­tin­u­ing the technology’s tra­di­tion of exper­i­men­ta­tion over the years. Ear­ly com­put­er ani­ma­tion pio­neer Lil­lian F Schwartz made numer­ous films that could be viewed either in 2D, or in 3D with chro­madepth glass­es, includ­ing Pixel­la­tion, Muta­tions and UFO. Hyper-pro­lif­ic exper­i­men­tal­ist Ken Jacobs played con­tin­u­al­ly with glass­es-free stere­oscopy, mak­ing many films that pro­duce three dimen­sion­al effects such as Cap­i­tal­ism: Child Labor, Gift of Fire or Seek­ing the Mon­key King, along­side his mag­ic lantern’ shad­ow performances.

More recent­ly, Japan­ese artist Takashi Maki­no has made sev­er­al works, includ­ing Space Noise and 2012, which expand and con­vulse when viewed through 3D pul­frich glass­es, can­vas­es of ever-mutat­ing visu­al detri­tus that the artist refers to as 1000 lay­er cin­e­ma.” Jodie Mack’s short­form mas­ter­piece Let Your Light Shine fea­tures black-and-white pat­terns which spring into danc­ing colour with the aid of pris­mat­ic glass­es. Ker­ry Laitala’s chro­madepth 3D Chro­mat­ic Fren­zy and Ter­ra Incog­ni­ta are just two colour-bleed­ing exam­ples of 3D exper­i­men­ta­tion amongst a wider expand­ed cin­e­ma career push­ing the edges of stereo­scop­ic projection.

Two recent exper­i­men­tal 3D fea­tures also stand as touch­stones. Jean-Luc Godard, hav­ing delved into the third dimen­sion on sev­er­al past occa­sions, made the tac­tile, muta­ble Good­bye to Lan­guage in 2014, a 3D film that con­tains a sin­gle stereo­scop­ic trick-shot so incom­pre­hen­si­ble and beguil­ing that it has inspired devo­tion since unlike few oth­er cin­e­mat­ic moments, in any dimen­sion. Made by a self-pro­claimed fan of Godard’s film, Blake Williams’ Pro­to­type is a mind-bog­gling devel­op­ment of the filmmaker’s obses­sion with 3D, tak­ing the dev­as­tat­ing 1900 hur­ri­cane of Galve­ston Texas as a start­ing point for a warped, wild trip through the his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy, stere­oscopy and more.

These are but few exam­ples from an expan­sive alter­nate his­to­ry; films which, while cer­ti­fi­ably niche, have been col­lect­ed and appraised in 3D exper­i­men­tal film show­cas­es such as BAMcinématek’s 3D in the 21st Cen­tu­ry’ series, Oberhausen’s theme pro­gramme The Third Image – 3D Cin­e­ma as Exper­i­ment’ or Big Ears Festival’s recent Stereo Visions’ sea­son. Ever vil­i­fied, the hos­til­i­ty direct­ed towards stereo­scop­ic tech­nol­o­gy over the years has always been met with a sim­i­lar­ly intense pas­sion from prac­ti­tion­ers and pro­po­nents. Appear­ing in base­ments, theme parks, gal­leries and the­atres, over more than a cen­tu­ry of fas­ci­na­tion – both pop­u­lar and sub­cul­tur­al – 3D refus­es to disappear.

Blake Williams’ Pro­to­type pre­mieres in the UK on 19 June at London’s Gen­e­sis Cin­e­ma, screen­ing along­side two of the director’s oth­er 3D films.

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