'FOUR TAKES ON THE NARATIVE'
by Al Razutis 2022
ANAGLYPH 3D PHOTO OF TRAIN THROUGH THE MONTPARNASSE STATION 1895
Chapter: "Is 3D film a concept? Is that ALL it is?"
"If so, it is faux",
now take that to the bank,
"as is"
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'FOUR TAKES ON A NARRATIVE'
"Four takes on a postcard and the interpretations that flow"
TAKE ONE:
Al Razutis -- March 30, 2020 ·
""Ways of seeing and remembering what was."
It is not that simple, but here it goes:
1895 Train goes through walls of Gare Montparnasse, Paris* (a common post-card, this one was converted to anaglyph 3D by Ray Zone for Al who wanted to talk some more about this train business).
1896 Train Arriving At the Station by Lumiere Brothers (well, that's in Al's film)
2014 Al has a conversation with Martin Rumsby about this, that, and 3D, and offers some "thoughts regarding Ken Jacobs' work in 3D film".**
2020 Al's film "Lumiere's Train (Arriving at the station" is 'somewhere in Brazil' on exhibition tour, but all exhibitions are 'shut', so somewhere is nowhere, but the show must (and will) go on.
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TAKE TWO:
Al Razutis --- March 30, 2014 ·
Now this is a good story, from what I just shared (which apparently doesn't last...):
Al Razutis - Visual Alchemy
"This image is a 3D anaglyph by Ray Zone, as a favor to me, from a postcard that I bought in Paris of a train going 'through the station' at Montparnasse in 1896, which is around the year the Lumiere Brothers presented 'A Train Arriving at a Station' first film projections in Paris. Ray and I used to joke that the Lumiere audience was 'rightly nervous' when Lumiere projected the 'Train Arriving At The Station' on the wall of that theater that night."
--- of course this is an anaglyph 3D image for red-cyan glasses which many people will have 'trouble finding at 6 20 am on a sunday... but not I.
RIP Ray!
But to paraphrase - no, to mutilate - Frost's poem:
"this 3D, 4D, 5D is wonderous and deep,
but we have promises to keep
and trains to run before we sleep"
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TAKE THREE:
It's 5 am on a Sunday and we're talking 3D and avant-garde film (with Martin Rumsby). Why not? It's not going away.
And later today the Amerikans are having an avant-garde roast, while the Visual Essayists reveal what's behind all this 'structuralist' film-making and thinking (at the U) that has invaded the cine revival clubs (at the U).
Al Razutis - Visual Alchemy --- March 30, 2014 ·
From a conversation with a friend on the other side of the world. Martin Rumsby is writing a piece on the 3D films of Ken Jacobs, recently screened in NZ. He asked Al for some thoughts on 3D, so here they went from one island (Saturna BC) to another (NZ)
"Here's some thoughts regarding Ken's work. First, and I am refering to what I saw in Paris in '97 not the film you talk about or other works, his project is about 'film' (cinema - the apparatus, the viewing of, etc.) and implicates 3D (the viewing of) in a rather conceptually disengaged way. He doesn't 'shoot stereoscopic 3D', he reassembles projectors, or films, sometimes subjecting them to re-printing, sometimes projecting them upside down and backwards, as elements in an experimental procedure on what I would call 'pseudo 3D' -- that is, stereoscopic 3D with only certain components preserved and/or celebrated. Stereo 3D is not holographic 3D (never has been) - in fact it is not full 3D, since it lacks vertical parallax, is shot from fixed points of view (therefore image follows moving viewer), is best suited for a fixed seating theatre, and most importantly relies on 'stereopsis' in the viewers brain to fuse two side-by-side stereo-pair images into 'one 3D image'.
Stereopsis is well known and written about, way back from the 1800's if not before. Stereo 3D is a simulation of 3D by virtue of two horizontally (in our human case) displaced 'views' of a scene which are 'fused' into a 3D representation in our brains (nowhere else!).
So, holographics (which is true 3D, and doesn't care how many eyes we have) is not stereo 3D, and I do both (since the 70's).
Finally, since Ken does not shoot 3D, never has as far as I know, but maybe you know different, his interests are to 'recreate the 3D experience' by using various elements of cinema technology (the apparatus) and cinema history (the language) and to present conceptual puzzles and/or provocations which are less to do with '3D' and more to do with how we perceive space, time, people, events, and so on.
I could get into specific techniques of shooting and post-producing stereo 3D to explore specific areas of aesthetic and perceptual possibilities (see my 'Statues' which features time-smear and 2D/3D morphings, or my 'Virtual Flesh' which features shapes coming off the screen morphing) but this is not the time.
I didn't see the film by Ken so can't say more about its intentions or value.
TAKE FOUR:
This whole topic of 'what is 3D', what is '3D film', and what is the experimental and or avant-garde versions of it are most fascinating to me and will result in some more writing this year. I'm pursuing this both in new works in stereo 3D (HD video) and new holographic works which feature images projected in space, moving, and in color."
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Ken Jacobs doing his faux thing in an L.A. art museum in 2018, because that's what it has always been about:
http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/3d_last_dance.html#jacobs
This was a show that avoided showing contemporary stereo 3D film art, or even real holographyic art, because those 'consulting' didn't know much about it, and were peddling their own curious curios instead. While that may not be a flattering way to end this essay, how else to explain what we were denied seeing.
The fakery of the 'Pulfrich Effect' masquerading as 3D and getting away with it:
Appendix B 'Pulfrich'
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"yes, I know all the fans of 'structural film' will be wetting their pants in anticipation with some cum...." (anon.)
APPENDIX A
Never trust commercial exploitation cinema to tell the truth about history
At the start of this essay I told the story of me and Ray Zone discussing Lumiere's Train Arriving At the Station, and my complaints that people had abused this history when it came to 'the first 3D movie!'. And I also asked him to convert a 2D postcard of a train 'going through the station in 1895 Paris' which he converted for me to anaglyph 3D.
The claim that it was the 'Lumiere Brothers' who made the first 3D film and projected it as a 'train arriving at the station' was peddled by Ben Stassen and his 'contrived educational - entertainment featurette' 'Encounters in the Thrid Dimension' which got it ALL wrong... and I was one of the first to denounce this in public. It was around this time that Ray Zone got on board that one too. Ben Stassen first tried to defend it, then lost interest, but presuably never forgot his disdain for me for bringing this error up. (A.R.)
Here is an article - revue about this film and the historical error. As for the meaning of the anaglyph 3D converted postcard I'll leave that up to you.
ENCOUNTERS IN THE THIRD DIMENSION (3D)-- Dir: Ben Stassen, Sean MacLeod Phillilps
https://rexregent.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/encounters-in-the-third-dimension-3d/
"Encounter In The Thrid Dimension…
"NO! There is no spelling mistakes, okay well there is a deliberate one, one which appears in the film’s title as a moment of, (cough) comedy…
"Originally presented back in 1999 on duel-strip 70mm IMAX 3D, this short 40 minute contrivance is a so-called comedic documentary, the sort that children would have been shown on a trip to a museum with an IMAX screen back in the day. It supposedly takes a look at the history of 3D cinema through a CGI laboratory in which the film is set. This is a blending of CGI and real photography with our host, guide and mad scientist (Stuart Pankin) who will lead us through the world of the third dimension.
"But this tour begins on the wrong foot. One of the first so called historical 3D clips is the Lumiere’s and their “Train pulling into the station”, often regarded as the first real public presentation of film.
"Later in the 1930’s, they would revisit this footage and convert it into early 3D though the footage has yet to be recovered, but this film not only claims that they were making 3D films in 1896, which is WRONG as last year saw the centenary of 3D, with the first public showing taking place in New York City in Jun of 1915. It also decides to replace the original footage with a terrible 3D CGI abomination!"
FOR THE HISTORICAL RECORD -- EASILY SEARCHABLE:
"It’s one of the most iconic films in all cinema, a 50-second shot of a train arriving into a station, now resurrected in 4K using Artificial Intelligent interpolation.
"‘L’arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière made its debut in 1896. It was filmed using the Cinematographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a printer and film projector and was remade in the 1930s by Louis in stereo 3D – a moment to which Martin Scorsese paid homage in the opening sequence to his 3D feature 'Hugo'."
APPENDIX B
PULFRICH EFFECT 3D is not true 3D, and for the explanation I take you on a 'Hollywood Tour'. That this was first 'foisted on FB' will give you an indication as to how it can be read. And how it is contrived. And why I repeat it here for our edification.
(ROLL TOUR, continuing on 'Hollywood Boulevard' and those 'walks of fame')
"WHAT IS IT? What are we talking about here?"
"The Pulfrich effect is a psychophysical percept wherein lateral motion of an object in the field of view is interpreted by the visual cortex as having a depth component, due to a relative difference in signal timings between the two eyes."
---- : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich_effect
"What did the TOUR GUIDE BOOK SAY?"
"Because the Pulfrich effect depends on motion in a particular direction to instigate the illusion of depth, it is not useful as a general stereoscopic technique. For example, it cannot be used to show a stationary object apparently extending into or out of the screen; similarly, objects moving vertically will not be seen as moving in depth. Incidental movement of objects will create spurious artifacts, and these incidental effects will be seen as artificial depth not related to actual depth in the scene. Many of the applications of Pulfrich involve deliberately causing just this sort of effect, which has given the technique a bad reputation. When the only movement is lateral movement of the camera then the effect is as real as any other form of stereoscopy, but this seldom happens except in highly contrived situations. It can, however, be effective as a novelty effect in contrived visual scenarios." (Wikipedia)
"Now, for our FIRST STOP -- The Pulfrich Museum!"
"In 1989, Super Bowl XXIII featured a halftime show that utilized the Pulfrich Effect - an illusion caused by placing a dark filter over one eye, which creates a slight delay between the eyes in the visual cortex. Due to this tiny temporal difference, the viewer can perceive depth from sideways movement in a 2-D video.
"Coca-Cola had produced a 3-D commercial that was planned to air during the popular TV show MOONLIGHTING, but a television writer's strike caused the cancellation of that 3-D broadcast. With millions of branded Pulfrich glasses already manufactured, Coca-Cola turned to the big game. The show, entitled BEBOP BAMBOOZLED, included an Elvis impersonator performing magic tricks, and dancers in poodle skirts, and was quite an oddity.
"You can watch the entire half time show here, including the introduction and explanantion of 3-D by sportscaster Bob Costas. So grab some Pulfrich glasses (or just find some old sunglasses and POP OUT THE LEFT LENS) and check it out!"
---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5IMFsx-pvs
"Previous peddled pulfrich effect works include those seen in 'LASERIUMS' in the 1970's, the laser having been invented in the 60's, so nobody better claim it was in their light shows, eh?"
"Pufrich ain't holo, not even full 3D it is. It's 'cardboarded planes in depth', and as the explanations offered it relies purely on a 'psychological effect'. But interestingly enough, 'it is related to laser art and holography', in that holography pioneers such as Lloyd Cross and Jerry Pethick experimented with bouncing laser beams off vibrating acoustically driven mirrors, creating patterns in sync with real time vibration, music, eh?"
The fakery of the 'Pulfrich Effect' masquerading as '3D film art':
"As for previous peddled pulfrich effect works in art, specifially the "avant-garde 3D films" of Ken Jacobs, this tour guide promised you a visit to the place of fine arts fakery, once shown in Paris (at the Louvre auditorium!), and that's on this page 3D Video Art in France 1997 which talks about Razutis' film tours and mentions Ken Jacobs presention with his 'projector' and 'pulfrich glasses'..." (A.R.)
'3D The Last Dance' - more on 3D Holography, Stereo 3D and Ken Jacobs, 2020 essay
[FILMS AND VIDEOS] [3D VIDEO] [HOLOGRAPHY]