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Happy New Year from Greg Kintz, Jack Theakston and Bob Furmanek of the 3-D Film Archive.
2014 was a great year for the Archive. We were honored to have our restoration of THE BUBBLE premiered in New York City on November 7 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of “To Save and Project: the 12th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.”
Our first two releases on 3-D blu-ray – DRAGONFLY SQUADRON from Olive Films and THE BUBBLE from Kino-Lorber – were a great success and have opened many doors for us. As a result, 2015 will be the best year yet for vintage 3-D on blu-ray as we celebrate the centennial of stereoscopic motion pictures.
We begin the New Year with big-screen premieres of THE BUBBLE in Los Angeles at the Aero Theatre on January 22 and Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center on January 30. THE BUBBLE will also return to MoMA in New York for a full week beginning January 18.
Our next restoration project will begin in February. We’ll be working with the Toronto International Film Festival on preserving THE MASK, a classic 1961 horror film with incredible 3-D sequences originally conceived by Slavko Vorkapich.
The first documented exhibition of stereoscopic motion pictures took place on June 10, 1915 at the Astor Theatre on Times Square in New York. The 100th anniversary celebration will begin with our release of 3-D RARITIES from Flicker Alley in June. This amazing collection has taken thirty years to amass and will include 2-1/2 hours of shorts, tests and trailers dating back to the earliest extant stereoscopic footage from 1922. You’ll be seeing some incredibly rare material that has not been shown anywhere in more than sixty years. Meticulously restored shot by shot for flawless 3-D alignment, this unique archival material has never before looked this good.
Starting in the fall, there will be a steady stream of vintage 3-D releases on blu-ray. I’m not at liberty to announce the titles just yet but rest assured: there will be some amazing Golden Age gems coming to 3-D blu-ray in the near future. It’s all very exciting and we could not be happier.
Here’s a photo of Greg and I with an original 24-inch 35mm reel used for projecting 3-D films theatrically in 1953. In fact, that reel holds part one of the left side of a feature that we will soon be restoring…
Thank you very much for your interest, encouragement and support of our 3-D preservation efforts. Greg, Jack and I wish you peace, happiness, and abundant good health in 2015.
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As a 3-D enthusiast and owner of two 3DTVs, this is good news for me. Older 3-D films often had much more aggressive stereoscopic camera work, better even than many modern natively-filmed films. The trend these days is to dial the stereoscopic effect down, probably in an effort (a futile one, IMO) to appease people who don't like the format, but hoping they'll still pay extra for the 3-D tickets if the effect isn't so extreme. Personally, I often find myself disappointed by new 3-D releases as a result, but back in the day (and even in the 80s), they really seemed to know how to get the most of out it. I hope this year sees releases from both the 50s and 80s, although I suppose 80s movies might be harder to acquire the rights to release.
Though his movies leave something to be desired, Michael Bay at least seems to know how to film in 3-D. The latest installment of Transformers, as well as his version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, had better 3-D than most modern live-action.
If you guys are working with TIFF for your next release, I hope that means it'll screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox at some point. I'd love the chance to see it there.
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I agree 100%. To my eye, most of the new 3-D films are more 2.5-D with minimal depth. At that point, why bother?
As it looks right now, our restoration of THE MASK will premiere in Toronto at TIFF sometime in September/October. Keep an eye on our website for updates. www.3dfilmarchive.com
Thanks!
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As Bob knows, I'm a big fan of vintage 3-D and thoroughly enjoyed THE BUBBLE and DRAGONFLY SQUADRON. The major studios have been slow to release their '50s films on 3-Dbut fortunately the expertise and enthusiasm of the 3-D Archive team are keeping these films alive so that they can be seen as originally intended and I'm certainly looking forward to THE MASK and especially to the 3-D RARITIES collection which should be fascinating. Bob also had involvement in Panamint's excellent 3-D Blu-Ray/DVD of Fox's INFERNO, which is well worth seeing.
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Thank you, Doug. We met with most of the studio bean counters several years ago and there was no interest in their 3-D holdings. Thankfully, new licensing arrangements for blu-ray have opened some doors so the work will get done.
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The only way to do that is to convert the image to low quality anaglyphic (red/blue) 3-D.
That would not only distort the historical record as the post-1936 films were originally shown polarized, it would severely deteriorate the quality of the restored image.
The technology finally allows us to see high-quality 3-D at home and there's no need to go back to the 1980's when polarized 3-D had to be denigrated to anaglyph for TV broadcasts.
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By the way, he thinks that the 3D on his $2500 + system is not that good - so he seldom watches any 3D. You can add 3D to non 3D films with this tv, as you probably know.
If the majority of his 3-D viewing has been via the conversion feature of his TV, I'm not surprised he doesn't consider it that impressive. While I can understand why manufacturers include it as a feature, 2-D to 3-D conversion on 3DTVs is just a cheap, consumer-tier algorithm that yields shoddy results. It's the poorest of the poor man's 3-D; even worse than the red/blue anaglyph 3-D as that at least has a genuine left and right image. Conversion of a Hollywood film costs tens of thousands of dollars per minute, and even those usually end up looking (at best) adequate. A cheapo algorithm that works on the fly is going to be a whole lot worse.
You also don't need to spend anywhere near $2500 to get a 3-D system. My first 3DTV (a Best Buy exclusive 47" budget model manufactured by LG) is about 3.5 years old, and cost about $800; yet its 3-D is still fairly impressive. The second one I purchased for the living room, so I went a bit larger and higher-end, but still waited for a good sale. I ended up paying about $1200 after an $800 discount for a 55" LG, and that has a great 3-D image.
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Screeners and literature are sent and the programmers make their decision. Of course, we're limited to theaters with 3-D projection capability. The Siskel Film Center had it last year but it was not a permanent installation.
We're talking with a venue in Chicago as we speak.
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I hope this makes its way to Toronto, as well. You guys have dealt with the TIFF Bell Lightbox before, haven't you?
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