Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, they you're welcome to or Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says something witty.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, Lauren fock o'bama, I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we wanted to talk about some of the gimmicks
Speaker 1: and techniques used in Really in cinema is mostly in film,
Speaker 1: and there's some television bleedover as well other entertainment forms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we really wanted to talk about what it's like
Speaker 1: to create an experience for a film beyond just these
Speaker 1: are moving images or apparently moving images and sound that's
Speaker 1: coming at you. And uh, to really start with that,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess would be fun to talk about
Speaker 1: some of the wacky, crazy ones that theater, uh, theater
Speaker 1: owners and and film producers experimented with, mainly like back
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties. Yeah, older listeners might remember
Speaker 1: traces of some of these. But if you've seen some
Speaker 1: movies like Mattenee, which has a character who is very
Speaker 1: much like William Castle, we'll be talking about about Castle. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you've seen that, then you may be familiar with
Speaker 1: some of these as well. I think this was mostly
Speaker 1: driven back when television started to come out in movie
Speaker 1: theaters were panicking a little bit and going like, no
Speaker 1: one will come see movies anymore. Everyone has this television
Speaker 1: in their house, even though it's only a twelve inch screen.
Speaker 1: We we need to do something impressive. This is uh,
Speaker 1: this may sound really familiar to people today because it's
Speaker 1: the same sort of stuff we see movie the movie
Speaker 1: industry thinking about now in the in the realm of
Speaker 1: the digital world. But you know, we'll get into that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So some of these crazy gimmicks. Huh.
Speaker 1: How about smellow vision? How about did you guys? Did
Speaker 1: you guys see what? What was the earliest example Not
Speaker 1: not of smellow vision itself, because that was that was
Speaker 1: technically patented, but the idea of the idea of coupling
Speaker 1: smells with viewing of something in the cinema. What was
Speaker 1: the earliest example you found? Do you know? I know what?
Speaker 1: I can tell you what here? Nineteen o six was
Speaker 1: the earliest example. It was it was according to the source,
Speaker 1: it was a Pennsylvania theater owner who used a fan
Speaker 1: to diffuse the smell of rose oil while showing off
Speaker 1: footage of a Rose Bowl football game American football. So
Speaker 1: it was just this idea of trying to create a
Speaker 1: more immersive experience theoretically or released by rumor, Disney was
Speaker 1: looking into incorporating smells in the cinematic experience, but ultimately
Speaker 1: dismissed it for being too expensive and not reliable enough. Disney, huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't stop other people from trying. I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's just so stupid. What smell a Vision really? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's that's obvious, but it No, what's not obvious is
Speaker 1: the extent of the stupidity. What on earth? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a joke. Well, I can't believe this
Speaker 1: was real. I don't know, Joe. I'm not so harsh
Speaker 1: on it as you are, but that's because I've I've
Speaker 1: had this, I've seen seen I've smelled this sort of
Speaker 1: approach in other forms, not not movies. I've never gone
Speaker 1: to a Smell a Vision film, although I think I
Speaker 1: did go to something at the University of Georgia Midnight
Speaker 1: Movie where they handed out scratch and sniff uh little
Speaker 1: uh pamphlets for a film, and if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: it was pink flamingos anyway, so well, no smell. A
Speaker 1: vision itself was invented and patented by a guy UH
Speaker 1: named Hans Slaub and was used in a film. The first,
Speaker 1: the earliest version I could see that was used in
Speaker 1: the actual commercially released film, was in nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: and the movie was called Scent of Mystery. Of course
Speaker 1: it was right, and apparently the smells involved things like
Speaker 1: pipe tobacco, the smell of pipe tobacco, and then use
Speaker 1: special pipes to pipe in smells into the theater. Now, Joe,
Speaker 1: I agree, like if I were watching a movie, I
Speaker 1: would just find this distracting. I wouldn't necessarily find it immersive. However,
Speaker 1: I have been to things like um certain like amusement parks.
Speaker 1: Disney has a few amusement parks where they have three
Speaker 1: D movies where they will pipe in smells when something
Speaker 1: is happening. Or on Spaceship Earth at Epcot, which was
Speaker 1: opened in nineteen eight two, I believe they have a
Speaker 1: couple of different portions of the ride where you know
Speaker 1: you're going through an orange groves, they pump in orange
Speaker 1: scent or yeah yeah, and then there's a Sore in
Speaker 1: which in Florida is called Sore and over californ In
Speaker 1: California it's just called Son. But it's a ride where
Speaker 1: you are it's like you're gliding over the landscape of California,
Speaker 1: and as you go over certain landscapes, they pipe in
Speaker 1: certain smells, like if you're gliding over a pine forest,
Speaker 1: you get the pine smell. Over an orange grove it's oranges,
Speaker 1: you know over Yeah, and despair, Yeah, those are the
Speaker 1: smells you get over l a U point. We were
Speaker 1: winning fans all over the place today. So anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that has been used. I don't think it
Speaker 1: will ever go anywhere beyond novelty. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: obviously something that was meant to try and grab people.
Speaker 1: There's funny because there was a competing technology at the
Speaker 1: same time as smell, a vision called a roma rama
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, and they had they had. I think
Speaker 1: we all lost, Joe, I think we all lost. Not
Speaker 1: only did not only are those no longer really active,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure there were some spectacular failures. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's lots of psychological research about how closely we associate
Speaker 1: memories with smells and how deeply people do associate smells
Speaker 1: with feelings, and that therefore, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: the reasoning here somewhere was a we need a gimmick
Speaker 1: and be I think the problem is that most people
Speaker 1: be like you remember that stinky movie we saw a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Um, so when you're listening to this
Speaker 1: forward thinking podcast, remember to drive past a paper mill.
Speaker 1: You can drive wonderful memories. Drive past my hometown which
Speaker 1: was not was sandwich between paper mills and chicken uh farms.
Speaker 1: So I would say that that really what we smell
Speaker 1: like is is mints, warm, electronics and occasion occasionally t
Speaker 1: but not today. All right, So let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the other gimmicky stuff. So I mentioned William Castle.
Speaker 1: William Castle, Yes, he was known, famous, famous for coming
Speaker 1: up with these really gimmicky things to try and pull
Speaker 1: people into the theater. So if you don't know William Castle,
Speaker 1: you've probably the one. You would know his house on
Speaker 1: Haunted Hill, right. He did some He did some stuff
Speaker 1: that has you know, not not even cult following, like
Speaker 1: legitimate film like it like this is this is a
Speaker 1: movie that you wouldn't necessarily call it a great film,
Speaker 1: but it's such a great example of a certain era
Speaker 1: and a certain type of movie making that it's it's
Speaker 1: got a warm place in many critics. Hearts House on
Speaker 1: Haunted Hill is I mean cheesy as hell, plastic skeletons
Speaker 1: and all that, but it's it's fun. Yeah, you should
Speaker 1: see it, you know, so filmically it I'd say it's
Speaker 1: interesting at least, but you know, it's pretty high art
Speaker 1: for that kind of got Vincent Price just doing his thing,
Speaker 1: ye yep, being being super Vincent Price in that movie,
Speaker 1: like Vincent Price at his priceiest. I don't know that
Speaker 1: he actually charged a lot for that film. But uh,
Speaker 1: you mentioned The Tingler, which used percepto, and Percepto was
Speaker 1: a gimmick that Castle came up with that was very clever.
Speaker 1: So the Taklers actually even worse of a gimmicks and
Speaker 1: smell a vision. I love this this gimmick, It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So The Tingler was a movie about this this weird
Speaker 1: parasite that could attach itself to people's spines and you
Speaker 1: would kill them by screaming. The idea that if you
Speaker 1: screamed that they couldn't handle that and they would fall
Speaker 1: over dead. But they you would get this weird, tingling,
Speaker 1: shocking sensation if they were to attach themselves to you.
Speaker 1: And in the movie and the course of the film,
Speaker 1: the narrator says that there's one of these alien creatures
Speaker 1: has escaped and made its way into the very theater
Speaker 1: that you are sitting in. That's incredible. So what William
Speaker 1: Castle did was they did not believe that. So Castle
Speaker 1: went to several theaters and convinced okay, alright, settle down, children,
Speaker 1: Castle into several theaters and convince them to install these
Speaker 1: these little vibrating motors that would cause the seats to
Speaker 1: vibrate at a very high frequency, almost like it was
Speaker 1: an electric shock. If you think it was time, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't. I guess it could scare you,
Speaker 1: but it couldn't actually hurt you. It's like, have you
Speaker 1: ever been to, uh, you know, an arcade or one
Speaker 1: of those amusement part places where they have the thing about,
Speaker 1: you know, do you dare to hold onto these electrodes.
Speaker 1: It's it's usually set up so it looks like it's
Speaker 1: an electric chair, and the it's all based on like
Speaker 1: the your sense of fear and daring, like are you
Speaker 1: going to hold on as the as it continues to
Speaker 1: increase the voltage. Well, there's no actual electric current running
Speaker 1: through you. No one wants to get sued. It's just
Speaker 1: little motors that are vibrating, just like the ones that
Speaker 1: you have in your typical cell phone. But the idea
Speaker 1: was they put these underneath the seats, and the projectionist
Speaker 1: was supposed to activate these buzzers at this point in
Speaker 1: the movie so that people sitting there in the theater
Speaker 1: would suddenly think, oh, I'm being attacked by a tingler
Speaker 1: and they have to scream. And you don't even have
Speaker 1: to install them on all the seats. You just have
Speaker 1: to do a good scattering of the seats so that
Speaker 1: you hatch a few people they start screaming against everyone.
Speaker 1: Screaming makes it an interactive experience, and the Castle was
Speaker 1: hoping that would mean that there'll be more butts in
Speaker 1: those seats as opposed to butts jumping out of the
Speaker 1: seats because there's somethly buzzing. Um. It was called Percepto.
Speaker 1: That was the name of that particular gimmick. There was
Speaker 1: another one called illusion. Oh. I think he might be
Speaker 1: detecting a trend with William Castle's approach. So illusion, oh,
Speaker 1: was similar to what I'll be talking about when we
Speaker 1: get to three D. Spoiler alert, We will be talking
Speaker 1: about three D in this episode. But you know, the
Speaker 1: the traditional, the old style three D glasses, the anaglyph glasses,
Speaker 1: the ones that would have a red lens in a
Speaker 1: cyan lens. He gave filters that were similar to this,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't it wasn't a pair of three D glasses.
Speaker 1: It was like a little piece of cardboard and you
Speaker 1: would view the movie through one of the two lenses,
Speaker 1: either the blue one or the red one. And the
Speaker 1: reason for this was that it was for a film
Speaker 1: called thirteen Ghosts, and if you were to use the
Speaker 1: blue one, I think it was the blue one, it
Speaker 1: would filter out the ghosts because the ghosts were all
Speaker 1: in blue, so you couldn't that that would show up
Speaker 1: as white if you're looking through a blue filter, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't see the ghosts through the blue filter. But
Speaker 1: if you were to look through the red filter, you
Speaker 1: could see all the ghosts because they would show up
Speaker 1: as as black instead of white. And so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be terrified, you would look through
Speaker 1: the red lens but if you were too scared, you
Speaker 1: can look through the blue lens and just watch his
Speaker 1: characters are reacting to absolutely nothing on screen as far
Speaker 1: as you can tell. Again, total gimmick, but an interesting
Speaker 1: little approach to trying to make movies more than just
Speaker 1: and something you could replicate at home. Uh. That that
Speaker 1: gets us into the idea of the four D experiences
Speaker 1: that we've I've kind of alluded to with some of
Speaker 1: the Disney rides. Disney is big about this with their
Speaker 1: three D stuff. They have a three D film called
Speaker 1: It's Tough to Be a Bug, which is based on
Speaker 1: the characters from a bug's life. Um, and that involves
Speaker 1: things like smell like a stink bug at one point
Speaker 1: goes off, so you get sprayed with a stinky kind
Speaker 1: of smell. Uh. There's also part where rain drops are falling,
Speaker 1: so you get hit by a little bit of water.
Speaker 1: There's a bit where hornets are flying around, you get
Speaker 1: poked in the back. There's there's a there's not really
Speaker 1: a sharp stick by the way, spoiler alert for anyone
Speaker 1: who was playing on saying this and hasn't yet. They're
Speaker 1: also the best part, I think is at the very
Speaker 1: end where the lights go off, and then it tells
Speaker 1: I think flick tells the cockroaches that's time to clear out.
Speaker 1: And they're a little actuators on the seat underneath where
Speaker 1: your butt is, and then those go off and so
Speaker 1: you feel like this movement under your butt of the
Speaker 1: cockroaches running away. My wife refuses to watch this because
Speaker 1: she is really really scared of bugs, even cartoon ones.
Speaker 1: She's gonna kill me that I said this. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: don't think she listens to my podcast, so I think
Speaker 1: I'm okay, but um and that you know that those
Speaker 1: sort of gimmicks are still kind of uh around, but
Speaker 1: for the most part they're limited to things like amusement
Speaker 1: parks or or specific experience something where you can build
Speaker 1: out a theater to include those like a again at Disney,
Speaker 1: the the Alien Encounters ride that I think is now
Speaker 1: Lelo and Stitch themed, but the same uses the same
Speaker 1: sort of stuff though in both cases. Yeah, where where
Speaker 1: something's a permanent installations that you're not wasting money having,
Speaker 1: you know, a theater tech put buzzers underneath all your
Speaker 1: seats right for one for one movie and then you
Speaker 1: never use it again. Yeah. There there's some other examples
Speaker 1: of stuff that was used in a more trying trying
Speaker 1: to roll it out in a more wide format, like
Speaker 1: a sense around. You guys have heard, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: term sense around. Sense around is not the same thing
Speaker 1: as surround sound. Okay. Sence around was essentially using sub
Speaker 1: woffers to generate super low frequency sounds like very low
Speaker 1: on the base register, lower than what most people would
Speaker 1: be able to hear. Knowing that there are always outliers
Speaker 1: in the human experience, so some people can hear frequencies
Speaker 1: beyond what most of us can hear. But you could
Speaker 1: feel it because you know, sound is a physical, physical effect,
Speaker 1: and so it's that low, low, low rumbling where it
Speaker 1: makes your seat rumble, and in fact was rolled out
Speaker 1: along with the film Earthquake. But Earthquake came out around
Speaker 1: the same time as another film that was received pretty
Speaker 1: well called Godfather Too, and so apparently there were a
Speaker 1: lot of complaints from Godfather to viewers who were saying, like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to enjoy the movie, but the earth kept
Speaker 1: quaking because of your sense around system that you had
Speaker 1: installed in the next theater next door showing Earthquake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of bleed over there. Because it was just
Speaker 1: this low rumbling and uh, you know low rumbling and earthquake. Fine,
Speaker 1: Godfather too, not so great. Um So, but there's there
Speaker 1: are other theaters right now that are installing things. I
Speaker 1: know there's one in at least one in Austin. Uh
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there are theaters and and very there
Speaker 1: has to be one in l A. I don't know
Speaker 1: if any in Georgia that are installing seats that give
Speaker 1: haptic feedback as you watch a movie, where they'll vibrate
Speaker 1: along with the soundtrack. Like there's one company called trimmer
Speaker 1: f X that does these where they'll install these seats where,
Speaker 1: uh like, if a gun shot goes off, you'll actually
Speaker 1: feel a little impact on your back. Or if someone
Speaker 1: is like in a horror movie and you can hear
Speaker 1: their heartbeat, the seat will throb at the same frequency
Speaker 1: as the heartbeat, that kind of stuff. Uh. I was
Speaker 1: thinking while you were saying that that this is how
Speaker 1: it sounds stupid, sounds like a fad, but actually haptic
Speaker 1: feedback is caught on in other realms, like the Rumble
Speaker 1: controllers totally standard. And I would say that um as
Speaker 1: a as a survival horror gamer fan, or game fan
Speaker 1: the gamers are nice to um uh, you know know,
Speaker 1: having a having that that feedback when when your heart
Speaker 1: is beating is is a really useful for not having
Speaker 1: to look off the screen or to a corner of
Speaker 1: the screen to a to to see what your health
Speaker 1: meters like can be. Um, it's so scary, it's so immediately. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've actually turned that into a true gameplay element where
Speaker 1: it's not just enhancing, it's become part of the gameplay
Speaker 1: like there are Another good example is a game where
Speaker 1: you are trying to complete a particular task and the
Speaker 1: controller will rumble as you get closer to failing that task.
Speaker 1: So it's an actual alert system telling you, hey, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're doing this wrong. You need to rethink it. Um.
Speaker 1: I do this all the time as I play things
Speaker 1: like Skyrim and I'm trying to pick to pick a lock,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it's useful stuff. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: all these gimmicks. Yeah, here's the real question. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think three D all right, uh, mega high definition, high
Speaker 1: frame rates. Are these true advances that are going to
Speaker 1: stick around and stand the test of time, or are
Speaker 1: they gimmicks like the others. Uh, let's take them case
Speaker 1: by case, right, So let's start with three D. I
Speaker 1: have to start off going on the record, don't like it.
Speaker 1: Joe does not like three D. Not a fan, I
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't mind it. I prefer if I
Speaker 1: have the chance to see a movie not in three D,
Speaker 1: I take it. Um. But but but but I did.
Speaker 1: But I did very much enjoy core Line and three
Speaker 1: D because I have read the book multiple times. I
Speaker 1: wasn't needing to pay attention to the story, and it
Speaker 1: was pretty well. I like if a movie was made
Speaker 1: with three D in mind, I enjoy the three D experience.
Speaker 1: If it's a movie that's been converted for three D,
Speaker 1: I almost never enjoy that. I also did enjoy my
Speaker 1: Bloody Valentine in three D because, like Ladies, head went
Speaker 1: right at the screen. Okay, here's my one exception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if the three D is treated as a joke
Speaker 1: in a stupid movie, be like Jaws three D. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: or I was thinking Friday the Thirteen Part three example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the third, movies have to be in three D,
Speaker 1: oh they just do. They somehow often fall in a
Speaker 1: three D craze. Um. So if the movie is horrible anyway.
Speaker 1: If the movie itself is sort of a novelty or
Speaker 1: a gimmick, I can sort of get behind it. Then
Speaker 1: anything where I at all want to feel immersed in
Speaker 1: the storytelling and has any real dramatic element I am.
Speaker 1: I think three D is just stupid. I don't like
Speaker 1: it at all. It takes me out of it very much.
Speaker 1: It all makes me more aware that I'm watching a movie.
Speaker 1: It all depends on the the the execution. For me.
Speaker 1: In some cases, I've really much enjoyed that where I
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, after that initial oh, this is three D,
Speaker 1: I just totally forgot about and enjoyed the film for
Speaker 1: what it was. And then there are other cases, like
Speaker 1: I've seen some nature films that were shot in three
Speaker 1: D that were gorgeous because you could get this crazy
Speaker 1: depth of field, and it was really more about the depth,
Speaker 1: not stuff coming out at you. That's the way a
Speaker 1: lot of those early three D implementations were right. It's
Speaker 1: the it's it's it's the character saying here, take my
Speaker 1: hand and reaching out at the screen the way nobody does.
Speaker 1: More often, it's like, have some coffee reached towards the screen.
Speaker 1: My favorite ones Jaws three D, where it was a
Speaker 1: hypodermic needle where they're testing the needle by you know,
Speaker 1: squirting out just a little bit from it. And so
Speaker 1: they they hold the needle right out to the camera
Speaker 1: and then squirt it. And it's hilarious to see those
Speaker 1: movies not in three D because they're just all these
Speaker 1: random shots that are lingering for way too long and
Speaker 1: are just completely unnatural. Yeah, um okay, But so we
Speaker 1: we've sort of blended all three D together. Three D
Speaker 1: actually has had some fairly distinct technological uh phases. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's happening first. So, so it was was
Speaker 1: stereoscopic first. Anaglyph really was first. The anaglyph glasses, which
Speaker 1: are the red blue that you're red. Science. But but
Speaker 1: to understand how these all work, let's just because they
Speaker 1: all followed the same basic premise. It's just that they
Speaker 1: do it in different ways. And that premise is to
Speaker 1: present each eye with its own set of images, and
Speaker 1: then your brain does all the rest of the work.
Speaker 1: Your brain takes in these two sets of images and
Speaker 1: combines it into a full picture, just the way our
Speaker 1: actual eyes work all the time. So for three D
Speaker 1: to work. First of all, you need two eyes. So
Speaker 1: you need two eyes, and you need to have relatively
Speaker 1: normal vision. It's it's the idea that our eyes are
Speaker 1: positioned on our heads in such a way that they
Speaker 1: are taking in information from slightly different positions binocular vision right,
Speaker 1: So your left eying right eye, because they're not located
Speaker 1: immediately on each other, means that the information they're receiving
Speaker 1: is slightly different. So if I'm looking at an object,
Speaker 1: my eyes converge on that object, and then the information
Speaker 1: I get back lets me make judgments like how far
Speaker 1: away that object is. There are other cues that also
Speaker 1: tell us how far away something is, things like perspective
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. But parallax, which is
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about right here, is a big one.
Speaker 1: The further away an object is, the closer to parallel
Speaker 1: your eyes are, and so parallax becomes less and less important.
Speaker 1: It's really more important for things that are within like
Speaker 1: a couple hundred feet of you, and the closer it is,
Speaker 1: the more your eyes are converging on that point. So
Speaker 1: that's the basis for the three D films. They want
Speaker 1: to present you with these two sets of images that
Speaker 1: are engineered in such a way as to give you
Speaker 1: the illusion that an object is closer or further away
Speaker 1: from you, the viewer. And it's important to do this
Speaker 1: so that it estimates about how far apart the average
Speaker 1: person's eyes are, which is why two people could go
Speaker 1: into a three D movie. One person thinks it's a
Speaker 1: great effect and the other person doesn't because one person's
Speaker 1: eyes are closer to the average as far as the
Speaker 1: spacing goes than the other person. That can totally happen
Speaker 1: now and a glyph glasses. The red blue ones are
Speaker 1: those old ones that you think about when you see,
Speaker 1: you know, any any sort of like the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: people all gasping in their seats as something is coming
Speaker 1: out of the screen. Um And essentially it uses the
Speaker 1: same sort of technique that that filter approach did, the
Speaker 1: one I talked about illusion oh with William Castle. So
Speaker 1: anything that is blue on the screen or cyan really
Speaker 1: I should say, scion on the screen through the Scion
Speaker 1: lens is going to show up as white. Anything that's
Speaker 1: red on the screen shows up as black. The opposite
Speaker 1: is true for the red lens. Anything that ssion will
Speaker 1: show up as black. Anything that's red will show up
Speaker 1: as white. You end up showing these two different sets
Speaker 1: of images on top of whatever it is you're showing,
Speaker 1: and that's your brain does the rest of the work.
Speaker 1: Your your right eye gets one set, your left eye
Speaker 1: gets the other set. Your brain combines them together to
Speaker 1: get the full picture. Now, if you're talking about polarized classes,
Speaker 1: you're talking about polarized polarized light polarization, and uh, this
Speaker 1: is a concept. It's uh that waves that can oscillate
Speaker 1: with more than one orientation. Sound is not one of
Speaker 1: those sound travels. It propagates across, uh, the same direction
Speaker 1: as the medium that's vibrating. But light you can actually
Speaker 1: polarize into different orientations, and so you generally will polarize
Speaker 1: it in a ninety degree offset from one to the other.
Speaker 1: Um And then you have lenses that will accept one
Speaker 1: set of that polarized light but deny the other, and
Speaker 1: the other lens does the opposite. So again, each eye
Speaker 1: gets its own set of images. Both of them are
Speaker 1: being projected just slightly offset both in space. Like if
Speaker 1: you were to take the glasses off, it would look
Speaker 1: how that blurry look to it. That's so that these
Speaker 1: two different sets of images will come in slightly different
Speaker 1: to simulate that parallax. Uh. And it will also be
Speaker 1: because you know y're not wearing those glasses to block
Speaker 1: off half of them. The problem with polarized glasses, at
Speaker 1: least if you've got just simple polarized glasses, is that
Speaker 1: if you tilt your head, the effect goes away because
Speaker 1: you're actually matching that angle, that that polarized angle. So
Speaker 1: if you start to tilt your head while watching a
Speaker 1: film or TV show using polarized lenses, and they are
Speaker 1: regular polarized lenses for three d uh, the effect goes
Speaker 1: away if you want to do something like recline on
Speaker 1: your couch like I do all the time. But if
Speaker 1: you have circular polarized lenses, then they end up polarizing
Speaker 1: it in what's called a left handed or right handed fashion,
Speaker 1: and that would actually allow you to tilt your head
Speaker 1: because it's not dependent upon that that same angle as
Speaker 1: the regular ones. Then we get to the most advanced
Speaker 1: type as far as the glasses version, which are active lenses,
Speaker 1: and active lenses have little L C D shutters in
Speaker 1: them essentially that open and close at a ray that
Speaker 1: is undetectable by a person. So if you were just
Speaker 1: to look through your glasses, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: tell that. Essentially, the the right side or left side
Speaker 1: becomes opaque at a really quick rate. It's so fast
Speaker 1: that to us it just seems like there's no interruption. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the images on the screen are synchronized to the shuttering
Speaker 1: that's going on on your lenses. So when the left
Speaker 1: lenses quote unquote open, it's getting the left set of images.
Speaker 1: When the right lenses open, it's getting the right set
Speaker 1: of images. And so you have to have a really
Speaker 1: good refresh rate on your television screen, and you have
Speaker 1: to have um glasses that are attuned to that system.
Speaker 1: You can't just you know, and also you can't switch
Speaker 1: any of these glasses out for any of the other systems.
Speaker 1: That won't work because it's only for uh content that's
Speaker 1: been made with that system in mind. So that's how
Speaker 1: they all work. Then you have glasses free three D.
Speaker 1: Have you guys ever seen glasses free three D? Uh?
Speaker 1: I went on a tour of a local there's a
Speaker 1: place here in Atlanta that does glasses free three D
Speaker 1: screens for things like casinos or movie theaters or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's not meant for uh, like a full film or
Speaker 1: television show. It's meant to kind of show a looping
Speaker 1: like uh commercial type thing. It was really really convincing,
Speaker 1: very effective. If you were standing in a sweet spot. UH.
Speaker 1: These use so you're not wearing glasses. Essentially, the the
Speaker 1: technology of the glasses is built into the screen itself.
Speaker 1: But this means that light is being directed so that
Speaker 1: your left eye again is getting one set of images
Speaker 1: and your right eye is getting the other set of images.
Speaker 1: But only if you're standing in these certain little sweet spots.
Speaker 1: If you're in between sweet spots, you're getting conflicting information
Speaker 1: and then you start not feeling so good, or at
Speaker 1: least the images look all blurry and chunky and nothing
Speaker 1: seems to be working. Um, So it's it's good if
Speaker 1: you have control over where your audience is. This is
Speaker 1: the same sort of technology that the Nintendo and Hindo
Speaker 1: three D s uses. Um. The three D display uses
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing because the thought is, well,
Speaker 1: the player is pretty much guaranteed to be directly in
Speaker 1: front of the screen because that's how you hold a
Speaker 1: mobile gaming system. But if you were to be offset
Speaker 1: a little bit to the left or right, the effects
Speaker 1: starts to get a little messy. So, uh all, that's
Speaker 1: called auto auto stereoscopy. But there are different versions of
Speaker 1: that as well that don't involve the glasses free three
Speaker 1: D approaches I've talked about that use things like the
Speaker 1: holographic cube type approach, you know, stuff we've talked about
Speaker 1: in our previous podcasts. But I wanted to really hit
Speaker 1: the ones that I've seen implemented into television screens at least.
Speaker 1: Uh So that's how they all work. Now comes the
Speaker 1: discussion of is three D legit or is it a gimmick?
Speaker 1: So what do you guys think, Joe, We know what
Speaker 1: you think. Well, I mean, here are a few things
Speaker 1: to consider. Um, three D M three D phase is
Speaker 1: come and go movies. Oh yeah, there's like yeah, there's
Speaker 1: usually a cycle. Yeah, it's in for a while, people
Speaker 1: get sick of it, it goes away. They also tend
Speaker 1: to coincide, I think with times when the movie business
Speaker 1: is looking for a way to get more people into
Speaker 1: the theaters. Um, and there's usually some ulterior motive you
Speaker 1: can explain. It's it's not like you have filmmakers very
Speaker 1: often saying, as an artistic choice, I would like to
Speaker 1: film this in three D. That's my vision for the audience.
Speaker 1: There are a few, but it's first of all, it's
Speaker 1: hard to tell how sincere they are. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty rare. I think it doesn't really enhance the drama
Speaker 1: of any serious story. And it's even when it's good technically,
Speaker 1: and often most of the three D I've seen doesn't
Speaker 1: look very good to me. You've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: films have been converted to three D which are terrible.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of silly. But even if it's really good,
Speaker 1: why why? Yeah, Well, I mean the there are a
Speaker 1: couple of answers I would give. If I were an
Speaker 1: artist who was making films. My why would be would
Speaker 1: be to create an experience that you could not replicate elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And part of that is going into the whole movie
Speaker 1: going experience in the first place. This idea of seeing
Speaker 1: a film with a community of viewers as opposed to
Speaker 1: sitting at home, So making it more of an experience
Speaker 1: and less of this is me trying to tell you
Speaker 1: a story. It goes beyond that, right, I'm creating something
Speaker 1: beyond just just sitting you down. To tell a story
Speaker 1: to you. Although that's still, in my mind the most
Speaker 1: important part of any film, it's just a part of
Speaker 1: it now. Um. And of course there's also for film
Speaker 1: for movie studios, there's a great incentive to go three D,
Speaker 1: which is it's a lot harder for people to uh
Speaker 1: to bootleg films that way because they can't replicate the
Speaker 1: actual three D nous of it. You know, if they
Speaker 1: get the actually it's a movie that's only distributed that way,
Speaker 1: and it's only distributed that way digitally, then that doesn't
Speaker 1: do anyone any good, uh, if they try and get
Speaker 1: hold of the digital file, because you know, you can't
Speaker 1: really view it on something that wasn't designed to project
Speaker 1: it and you don't have the right kind of glasses
Speaker 1: or whatever. Although if someone is willing to watch an
Speaker 1: entire movie that someone records on their cell phone, then
Speaker 1: probably they're willing to watch. Yeah, there's that too, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's one. It's just one of those ideas
Speaker 1: of another way of combating piracy. I mean, it's that's
Speaker 1: not the only thing, but that is a factor. Um. Um.
Speaker 1: My bottom line is I can only put up with
Speaker 1: it for camp factor. Yeah, I if it's done well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's only been done well a few times. In
Speaker 1: my experience, I enjoy it. I've I've seen some demo
Speaker 1: reels where there were specific instances where I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: if I really like sports, three D would be amazing
Speaker 1: because there's some great like foot page of football games
Speaker 1: in three D where it felt like I was on
Speaker 1: the field with these guys watching them play and and
Speaker 1: it was really exciting. But I'm not a football fan,
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't want that. I did, however, once see
Speaker 1: a demo reel that included footage from a WrestleMania and
Speaker 1: I was like, I am all over that, and I
Speaker 1: Am not even kidding. If I had a three D
Speaker 1: television and I had a three D version of Royal Rumble,
Speaker 1: I would be watching that on repeat. I think I
Speaker 1: think it's a gimmick in the long run, but um
Speaker 1: but I mean but, but, but but a clever one and
Speaker 1: interesting one for for certain applications. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be a pervasive gimmick. I think it's certainly shown
Speaker 1: that like the three D television craze, and by craze,
Speaker 1: I mean from manufacturing side lasted about two or three
Speaker 1: years at c E s like that was the big thing.
Speaker 1: Every every television there was a three D TV this
Speaker 1: year at CS it was it was really scaled back.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of them that were three D capable,
Speaker 1: but they were not being they weren't being marketed as
Speaker 1: a three D television. And I think the one of
Speaker 1: the reasons for that is that a lot of manufacturers
Speaker 1: have discovered what a lot of tech journalists were saying
Speaker 1: is that people just don't really want to have glasses
Speaker 1: that they have to keep track of and where when
Speaker 1: they watch their TV. Uh not. Of course, not all
Speaker 1: content would be in three D unless you had a
Speaker 1: television that converted everything into three D. And I have
Speaker 1: seen those and I was not a big fan. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's just, you know, it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things that I think most people just don't want to
Speaker 1: have to keep up with that stuff, and it's just
Speaker 1: the content that they're getting, the experience they're getting isn't
Speaker 1: compelling enough to justify the expense and the frustration of
Speaker 1: having to keep up with not just a remote control,
Speaker 1: but glasses as well. I was more interested in the
Speaker 1: series c S. They were showing off a couple of
Speaker 1: three D TVs that that didn't show images in three D,
Speaker 1: but you could have two people sitting next to each
Speaker 1: other watching different shows on the same television. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: because and that was again using polarized light or even
Speaker 1: active well yeah, I guess you could use active shutters,
Speaker 1: but you have to have headphones and you have to
Speaker 1: have your own glasses and having the best implementation I
Speaker 1: saw that was for video games where you have two
Speaker 1: people playing, like say a racing game, where without a
Speaker 1: split screen right right the whole screen, you would have
Speaker 1: the whole screen for you and you could not see
Speaker 1: what your opponent was doing, so you couldn't cheat. Like
Speaker 1: let's say we're all playing first person shooters part of
Speaker 1: the game. So we're all playing first person shooters, and
Speaker 1: we can't tell that Lauren is just camping yet again
Speaker 1: behind the little teleporter. I don't camp. I strategize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a legitimate strategy camping with rockets, let me tell
Speaker 1: you anyway, So, uh, but you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: tell that because you would all have the full view
Speaker 1: of the screen for yourself. Um, and if, but only
Speaker 1: if you took the glasses off, all you would see
Speaker 1: is just a big mishmash of all the different images,
Speaker 1: um grant. I don't know that you could do. I
Speaker 1: guess you could the heretically do that with more than
Speaker 1: two people. You would just have to polarize the light
Speaker 1: in various ways and in a way that wasn't going
Speaker 1: to interfere with the other players you have. Would be interesting.
Speaker 1: Two would be easy. More than that would be difficult. Also,
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, every time you talk about
Speaker 1: having to do two images or two streams, you're doubling
Speaker 1: the amount of information you have to handle to which
Speaker 1: kind of brings us to these discussion about high deaf,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about high deaf, high definition what it's
Speaker 1: called high deafe, that's what it's a thing. Um Yeah,
Speaker 1: High Definition TV, HDTV and Ultra high Definition and all
Speaker 1: of those designations and these crazy, crazy resolutions that we're
Speaker 1: seeing coming out on televisions in the near future. Uh,
Speaker 1: doesn't bother me. I'm cool with it. No, I'm cool
Speaker 1: with it. It's well, no, okay, I'll say, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a gimmick. I think that there is certainly
Speaker 1: a way in which high definition enhances the viewing experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think it's like totally necessary like that,
Speaker 1: you know, the resolution of a DVD on a you know,
Speaker 1: normal I don't know what TV does not drive me crazy. Okay,
Speaker 1: it drives me crazy, but then I have a big TV,
Speaker 1: so it also depends on the size of the television, right.
Speaker 1: Every time the technology improves, you know, every time a
Speaker 1: new gaming console comes out or or whatever. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we look at these things and we say this,
Speaker 1: this is amazing, this is more better than I have
Speaker 1: ever seen video games. B and and then you know
Speaker 1: when we go back and play things on the previous
Speaker 1: console and we can't imagine that this ever looked good.
Speaker 1: But then another five years later it's it's the same
Speaker 1: thing over and over again. My favorite thing is the
Speaker 1: earliest c g I effects from the nineties. You remember
Speaker 1: how how awesome people thought these looked back and now
Speaker 1: they look just beyond crappy. Do you remember check out
Speaker 1: what Go back and watch the movie Mortal Kombat and
Speaker 1: see if you were remember what people were saying about
Speaker 1: it in the nineties, Like, these c g I effects
Speaker 1: will blow your mind. They are so good. Do you
Speaker 1: remember the film that had Probably I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the earliest full c g I characters UM only
Speaker 1: in one scene. It wasn't like a full character that
Speaker 1: was throughout the whole film, uh, Young Sherlock Holmes, because
Speaker 1: it had this uh you never saw it, Young Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: There was a there's a stained glass night that becomes
Speaker 1: um animated through a person's hallucination and it attacks the person.
Speaker 1: The person is actually just hallucining that's happening, but you're
Speaker 1: seeing it from their perspective. And it was all c
Speaker 1: g I and at the time was incredibly advanced and
Speaker 1: super cool, and today you think, wow, that looks like
Speaker 1: something from a super cheap video software demo reel. But
Speaker 1: getting back into high definition, I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different types out there, and it really it
Speaker 1: really does depend upon things like your screen size. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's if I have a if I have a
Speaker 1: twelve inch screen, that's that's at ten AP, and I
Speaker 1: have a sixty inch screen that's at ADP. That's two
Speaker 1: different experiences, sure, And that's also how your eyeballs work.
Speaker 1: I mean, the human eye, although certainly not as good
Speaker 1: as many other animals eyeballs in terms of visual acuity.
Speaker 1: UM studies done back into the nineteen forties showed that
Speaker 1: of the you know, say a hundred and twenty million
Speaker 1: rods that we've got in our eyeballs, um, only about
Speaker 1: five to fourteen of them really need to be activated
Speaker 1: for us to recognize that something is happening visually in
Speaker 1: front of us. Um, So we we see a lot.
Speaker 1: One Doctor Roger Clark, who's an imaging specialist who's working
Speaker 1: on spectromedy, like with Cassini and stuff like that, did
Speaker 1: a bunch of the math and uh, you know it,
Speaker 1: it depends on how big the images. You know, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about a twenty by thirteen point three inch
Speaker 1: print viewed from twenty inches away, we only need about
Speaker 1: seventy four the pixels to approximate the humanized resolution. All right,
Speaker 1: So seventy four million pixels essentially only only um, you know,
Speaker 1: and so well, and I can give you, I can
Speaker 1: give you an indication of what that is as far
Speaker 1: as resolution for video screens, keeping in mind that video
Speaker 1: and still images are different. Uh, and also the idea
Speaker 1: that that you know, when you're talking about improvements it all,
Speaker 1: it's a very it's a very subjective experience. I will
Speaker 1: say that personally for me, I I have looked at
Speaker 1: two K screens, I've looked at four case screens. I've
Speaker 1: even seen an eight K screen at c e s
Speaker 1: and for me, the difference was not incredibly noticeable, not
Speaker 1: that there weren't differences. If I really really looked, I
Speaker 1: could probably tell. And the closer you get, the more
Speaker 1: you would be able to tell. But again that's because
Speaker 1: the resolution is not just how many pixels are in
Speaker 1: the screen, it's how big is the screen, Because if
Speaker 1: the screen is smaller than those pixels, it just gives
Speaker 1: you that like a seven twent display or U might
Speaker 1: be justice find as ten eighty depending upon the size
Speaker 1: of the screen you know, and how far away you are.
Speaker 1: The further away you are, then the less it matters
Speaker 1: for the actual screen. So to give you some numbers,
Speaker 1: old high definition, the seven version, the way that a
Speaker 1: lot of the old video game consoles, that's as that's
Speaker 1: as good as they could show UM is twelve eighty
Speaker 1: by seven pixels, or about nine twenty one thousand six
Speaker 1: pixels per image. So when it's showing an image, that's
Speaker 1: how many pixels are active. Then if you go up
Speaker 1: to ten eighty, whether it's interlaced or progressive um, which
Speaker 1: really only matters in the way that the video is
Speaker 1: played back and how how those the progression of video
Speaker 1: is shown. The resolution is nineteen twenty by ten e D,
Speaker 1: so that's about two million, seventy three thousand, six hundred pixels,
Speaker 1: so you know, getting bigger there. A two case screen
Speaker 1: is actually not that big of an improvement over ten
Speaker 1: e D and this might be why it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to really strike me as revolution when I first saw
Speaker 1: two K screens. Two K screens tend to be two thousand,
Speaker 1: forty eight by ten eighty pixels, which is about two million,
Speaker 1: two thousand, eight hundred forty pixels, So really you're talking
Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand more pixels than the ten eight.
Speaker 1: That's not that big a jump, because if you were
Speaker 1: to go to four K ultra high definition that's three
Speaker 1: thousand and hundred forty by two thousand, hundred sixty pixels,
Speaker 1: that ends up being eight million, two hundred, four thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred pixels. So you know, you're not you're you're
Speaker 1: just increasing the lines of pixels, uh that you can
Speaker 1: show on a screen, But those lines end up meaning
Speaker 1: that the total number of pixels that are displayed increases
Speaker 1: that I'm a faster rate because you're looking at the area.
Speaker 1: And and so if you go all the way up
Speaker 1: to an eight K television, that's seven thousand, six eighty
Speaker 1: lines by four thousand, three hundred and twenty lines of pixels,
Speaker 1: which ends up being thirty three million, one seventy seven thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred pixels or about a little less half of
Speaker 1: water eyes could tell based upon that that example that
Speaker 1: Lauren gave. So these are increasing levels of resolution. The
Speaker 1: only question is is it detectable to a casual observer
Speaker 1: and doesn't matter that much? And uh, I guess maybe
Speaker 1: if you have like a like a truly enormous television screen,
Speaker 1: then it would matter, and if you're sitting really close
Speaker 1: to it, then it would matter. Here's an interesting question, though,
Speaker 1: do we want the highest possible level of resolution or
Speaker 1: um at some point does the lack of resolution actually
Speaker 1: add to our enjoyment of visual media. It's a good question.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard for me to answer that. I
Speaker 1: would say that resolution is less important to me as
Speaker 1: far as that goes, Like if you go super high resolution,
Speaker 1: that doesn't bother me so much. It's the frame rate
Speaker 1: that bugs me. Well, the example that I always use
Speaker 1: in this kind of situation is is a silent Hill.
Speaker 1: The first Silent Hill game, um was for the PlayStation one.
Speaker 1: It was they were the processor was unable to create, uh,
Speaker 1: create the visual background, so they added in fog effects
Speaker 1: to blur, to blur out the stuff that they couldn't process,
Speaker 1: and it wound up being terrifically creepy and a really
Speaker 1: great addition to the film. And I would argue that
Speaker 1: in many filming aspects like a like, like the entire
Speaker 1: field of noir came from the fact that they didn't
Speaker 1: have money to light sets, um. So it was dark
Speaker 1: by necessity, so dark by necessity, and uh and and
Speaker 1: and it's gorgeous, and people replicate that these days with
Speaker 1: a lot of power and light and film and and
Speaker 1: all of these gorgeous things that we that they literally
Speaker 1: could not use back in the day but have become
Speaker 1: this stylistic thing. So yeah, I certainly it depends. I
Speaker 1: certainly don't think that resolution, like like a high resolution
Speaker 1: film is better than a lower resolution film. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence to me that that's true. It's technically you might
Speaker 1: be able to argue it, but as far as its
Speaker 1: ability to tell a story in a way that impacts
Speaker 1: its audience, it has very little to do with it
Speaker 1: for me. Now, granted, if a movie is just in
Speaker 1: truly bad repair and you're watching like a terrible print
Speaker 1: of an old film, that can be distracting. That can
Speaker 1: take you out of a movie, just like that three
Speaker 1: D experience you were talking about, Joe, kind of it
Speaker 1: alerts you to the fact that you're watching a film
Speaker 1: and you don't lose yourself into That same kind of
Speaker 1: thing can happen if it's a really really bad uh
Speaker 1: copy of a film. That's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I love digital because you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: degrading over time, like the film itself is not going
Speaker 1: to degrade. But I don't think that the high resolution
Speaker 1: would bug me so much. But let's let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about frame rate a little bit. So, Lauren, you haven't
Speaker 1: seen a movie in forty eight frames for a second,
Speaker 1: I have not either. Oh yeah, okay, so well tell
Speaker 1: us all, but how wonderful. Let's talk about Let's talk
Speaker 1: about frame rate for a second first, So the earliest
Speaker 1: frame rates were kind of all over the place. I
Speaker 1: mean like way back in the era. For one thing,
Speaker 1: you if you go back far enough, you had cameras
Speaker 1: that were hand cranked, and so you had a hand
Speaker 1: cranked you know, like a camera operator who was trying
Speaker 1: to crank a camera at a uh yeah, constant speed,
Speaker 1: sometimes a little faster, a little slower on purpose in
Speaker 1: order to create a specific effect on the film for playback.
Speaker 1: Playback was going to be constant because the projectors they
Speaker 1: used were motorized. They didn't have someone actually turning a
Speaker 1: crank for the projector for for actual film films, not
Speaker 1: just the little novelties that came out, yeah, not the
Speaker 1: not the little novelty animations that came out, or the
Speaker 1: the penny arcade type stuff that you would see, um,
Speaker 1: but the actual movies that you would go to a cinema. Well,
Speaker 1: those frame rates back in those early days might be
Speaker 1: anywhere between twenty to twenty six frames per second. So
Speaker 1: that means that within one second your I would see
Speaker 1: between twenty and twenty six distinct pictures. And it's the
Speaker 1: playing back of these pictures at this speed that gives
Speaker 1: us that illusion of movement, that there are things on
Speaker 1: the screen moving around as opposed to the fact that
Speaker 1: we are actually looking at a series of individual still photos, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that's the whole basis of film there. Once sound
Speaker 1: came along, then they really had to standardize things because
Speaker 1: while you can mess around with the the visual element
Speaker 1: of how many frames per second are being played back sound,
Speaker 1: We detect changes in sound and it bothers us. So
Speaker 1: like if the pitch changes throughout a movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen any kind of film where they
Speaker 1: had a problem with the sound, that really gets your
Speaker 1: attention pretty quickly. So that's when they settled on twenty
Speaker 1: four frames per second really and said this is the standard,
Speaker 1: you know, for for films from here on out. And
Speaker 1: uh and so this kind of set into our minds
Speaker 1: what a movie is, what a movie looks like, beyond
Speaker 1: you know, the how crisp or clear it is. The
Speaker 1: playback to us felt like this is the way a
Speaker 1: movie should go. It has this kind end of element
Speaker 1: to it that no matter what genre you're watching, you
Speaker 1: get this kind of experience. And there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of motion blur that goes into that, Like if something
Speaker 1: is moving very quickly and it's moving faster than what
Speaker 1: the twenty four frames per second can handle to give
Speaker 1: you that smooth feeling. Uh. That became part of the
Speaker 1: cinematic experience, and it's kind of something that we just
Speaker 1: sort of accept now. I suspect if you were to
Speaker 1: show a kid a movie at forty eight frames per
Speaker 1: second and the kid had never really experienced twenty four
Speaker 1: frames per second, it would be a totally different story
Speaker 1: than someone like me who grew up watching twenty four
Speaker 1: frames per second. So I go see The Hobbit at
Speaker 1: forty eight frames per second and it. You know, the
Speaker 1: reasons for that that frame rate tend to be cited
Speaker 1: as a way of removing this flickering and uh motion
Speaker 1: blur stuff and making it a more smooth experience. To me,
Speaker 1: what it really seemed to do was make it all
Speaker 1: look like I was looking at movie sets. Not I
Speaker 1: wasn't losing myself in a world, a fantasy world. I
Speaker 1: was looking at a bunch of sets on a on
Speaker 1: either on a location or in a studio. In fact,
Speaker 1: I got to a point where I could identify. I
Speaker 1: knew which shots were shot on location versus inside a
Speaker 1: sound stage, because I could tell because that level of
Speaker 1: detail was so great that I was like, this looks artificial.
Speaker 1: So maybe is what we're saying here that at a
Speaker 1: certain point, too much information is bad? I think I
Speaker 1: think it. It's too early to say, because it may
Speaker 1: very well be that this just becomes what we accept
Speaker 1: movies to be in the future. You know, every time,
Speaker 1: every time there's been a major actual switch in film,
Speaker 1: there is a knee jerk reaction to say that this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, when when filmmakers started to make the switch
Speaker 1: from film to digital, there was a ton of discussion
Speaker 1: about that in films and film communities about does this
Speaker 1: make sense? Do we want to move away from this,
Speaker 1: this venerable institution, this medium that has its own artistry,
Speaker 1: and moved to a fully digital environment. I think thereash
Speaker 1: against the talkies. Yeah, yeah, so noone's going to see
Speaker 1: something like that. That's ridiculous. So while while I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here and saying, you know, forty frames per second was
Speaker 1: something I did not at all enjoy, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that was it's a subjective experience, someone else might very
Speaker 1: much like it. And again, if a kid saw it,
Speaker 1: a kid might think that's awesome, that looks great. And
Speaker 1: that's if you were to show that kid later on
Speaker 1: an older movie at twenty four frames per second, maybe
Speaker 1: that kid would say this is weird, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it is. Maybe it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where the further away you get from fantasy, maybe the
Speaker 1: more effective those forty frames per second will be. Because
Speaker 1: if it's in a world that is essentially our own world,
Speaker 1: where they're using really as much real stuff as possible
Speaker 1: and as few set pieces and props as possible, then
Speaker 1: it may just be a perfect experience. But when it's
Speaker 1: something that's in a fantastical world where you have to
Speaker 1: buy into the fact that you are in a fantasy,
Speaker 1: then it's it's very distracting. When you're sitting there and
Speaker 1: you look at something you think, I can totally tell
Speaker 1: that that's a prop, as opposed to this is something
Speaker 1: that has lived in this world, you know, and it
Speaker 1: has its own history. If you were to ask a
Speaker 1: character where did you get that, they could tell you, oh, so,
Speaker 1: so and so the carpenter built this chair for me
Speaker 1: back in such and such, and you know, you would
Speaker 1: totally believe it. But in the per second one, where
Speaker 1: did you get that? Oh, props made it for me
Speaker 1: two days ago, you know, so so high frame rate
Speaker 1: gimmick or not. I don't think it's a gimmick. I
Speaker 1: think it's sticking around and I think or at least
Speaker 1: it's going to make a real go at it. I
Speaker 1: you know, same thing could have been said for three
Speaker 1: D a couple of years ago, especially in the home market,
Speaker 1: but that has kind of gone the other way. But
Speaker 1: there are you know, some major filmmakers who have all
Speaker 1: talked about this, James Camera and uh Peter Jackson being
Speaker 1: the two that you know, everyone has talked about. So
Speaker 1: maybe if there are a lot of negative reactions, we
Speaker 1: may see that that switchover happened more slowly. I expected
Speaker 1: that will eventually happen, though I think I think it's
Speaker 1: bound to happen now. The interesting thing to me is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw the hobbit at you know, ultra
Speaker 1: high definition forty eight frames per second in three D.
Speaker 1: I want to know how large that file was, And
Speaker 1: the file had to be enormous three D. So you've
Speaker 1: got two sets of images ultra high definition frames per
Speaker 1: second that means twice as many frames than a normal film.
Speaker 1: How many pixels, Well, you would just look at one once,
Speaker 1: one image. I think it was of I think they
Speaker 1: shot that on four K cameras. They might have gotten
Speaker 1: higher than four K by the way, interesting little bit
Speaker 1: of trivia for all of our fans out there. The
Speaker 1: series Forward Thinking, the first few episodes were shot on
Speaker 1: the Red one, which is the name of a camera,
Speaker 1: which is a two K a camera, and then some
Speaker 1: of the later episodes were shot on a four K camera.
Speaker 1: So these ultra high definition cameras are what we're using
Speaker 1: to actually shoot the video series Forward Thinking. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it also makes me feel more than a little self
Speaker 1: conscious to think of an ultra high definition camera pointed
Speaker 1: at me. But you are beautiful, thank you. I actually
Speaker 1: do have to pluck those t M I I've got nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The beautification process before an episode of Forward Thinking is
Speaker 1: uh is thorough. It is mostly few, mostly feud, Thank you, Joe.
Speaker 1: So one other thing I wanted to mention before we
Speaker 1: sign off. You know we talked to all about the
Speaker 1: visual aspects was sound, the idea of using sound to
Speaker 1: make it a more immersive experience. Did you know that
Speaker 1: the technically the first surround sound movie, although it wasn't
Speaker 1: a true surround sound was Fantasia and so back in
Speaker 1: nine the imagineers over at Disney had come up with
Speaker 1: this idea that they wanted it to be a very
Speaker 1: immersive experience. I mean, this is a symphonic film where
Speaker 1: they wanted the music to affect the audience and not
Speaker 1: just be played at the same level throughout the entire
Speaker 1: UH theater. So any theater that was showing Fantasia in
Speaker 1: UH in Fantas sound, which is not what a Fantas
Speaker 1: sounds like when you open it. It's actually the name
Speaker 1: of what the the sound system they were using. It
Speaker 1: involved fifty four loud speakers to create that effect. Fifty
Speaker 1: four was incredibly expensive. It was meant to help diffuse
Speaker 1: the sound throughout the theater so that any person sitting
Speaker 1: in any seat would have that experience of the music
Speaker 1: coming from the right right location at the right time.
Speaker 1: Later on, we would have companies like Dolby come out
Speaker 1: with their own version of surround sound, which would involve
Speaker 1: multiple channels like five channel sound, where you would have
Speaker 1: three main speakers in the front a center one one
Speaker 1: on the right, one on the left, and two in
Speaker 1: the back, and that would allow you to soundscape your
Speaker 1: films and create that more immersive experience. So that when
Speaker 1: a character hears something like a twig snap behind her
Speaker 1: as Mr Vorhees is making his way, you would hear
Speaker 1: the snap behind you as well, to give you that
Speaker 1: sense of being put in the character's place and feeling
Speaker 1: that sense of terror. Or you're just wondering, who's the
Speaker 1: next person who's gonna get killed in some ridiculously over
Speaker 1: the top way. Yeah, take my hand, Joe, I'm reaching
Speaker 1: towards you through the camera. Guys, if you enjoyed this,
Speaker 1: please let us not send us some feedback. Tell us
Speaker 1: what you like about our shows. Tell us what you
Speaker 1: want us to talk about. What stuff about the future
Speaker 1: really has you excited? What? What? What are you curious about?
Speaker 1: You can email us our addresses FW thinking at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com or go to fw thinking dot com. That's
Speaker 1: where we have the blog posts, the podcast, the videos,
Speaker 1: all sorts of articles are really really interesting. We hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy them and we will talk to you again, Willison.
Speaker 1: We're more on this topic and the future of technology.
Speaker 1: Visit forward thinking dot com. H brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's go places