8mm Forum: Murder In 3D Super 8mm question

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Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 01, 2017, 09:57 PM:

Pictures added a few posts below ...
I recently watched my Super 8mm films I have in 3D - Mad Magician,Creature From The Black Lagoon and Murder In 3D.
The first 2 still work well with the 3D glasses but Murder In 3D had terrible 3D!
The picture had double images as well as the colours for the effect,so what you end up is double everything in 3D.
I'm not alone with this as someone else on a Facebook page has the same.
Anyone know why this is,why they did it,and what type of 3D glasses will work? (if any)
I would be interested to hear what other people find with their copy [Smile]

https://www.facebook.com/clinton.hunt/videos/10154913130857742/

[ September 02, 2017, 09:01 PM: Message edited by: Clinton Hunt ]

Posted by Larry Arpin (Member # 744) on September 02, 2017, 12:48 AM:

I think the problem is they made a negative from a print. I had the same problem and also with Derann's re-release of CREATURE in 3D.

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 02, 2017, 01:08 AM:

Luckily my Creature is fine Larry Arpin ...
it makes me wonder why they released them knowing the 3D effect won't work!
Even though it's not really watchable I will still keep it in my collection [Smile]

Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on September 02, 2017, 01:39 AM:

I think if the color has faded it will also loose its 3D effects.

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 02, 2017, 02:07 AM:

Hi Winbert,the colours are very good,it's more to do with the actual picture that the 3D effects are added to.
I will add a pic to show how it is [Smile]

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on September 02, 2017, 02:45 AM:

The double image is a strange one, Clinton. These movies were originally designed to be projected using two film prints and the polarized 3D system, which is much superior than anaglyphic 3D, but can't recall seeing an anaglyphic print with double image plus the 3D colours - not surprised it doesn't work.

As you probably know, the anaglyphic, two colour 3D prints were actually cheap versions made in the 60's and 70's to cash in on the 3D effect by being projectable in a normal cinema.

If you've seen the Blu-ray releases of these titles you'll know that they do a much better job of recreating the original 3D image as was intended.

With the anaglyphic super 8 prints being reductions and mass produced it was presumably quite tricky to reproduce the exact colour balance of the red / blue or red / cyan and print density of the originals, so I think the 3D effect in my experience is best described as variable.

My own copy of Creature from Universal 8 works ok to a point, as does It Came From Outer Space, with a couple of jump in your seat moments...although overall it is pretty much headache inducing with a lot of double imaging.

I had a print of The Mad Magician once which just didn't work at all; one problem was that it was printed far too light.

Also, not all anaglyphic systems the same colours. The most common version I think is red / cyan, but some 3D glasses use different coloured filters intended for different prints (red / green, red / blue), so it's worth checking that the glasses are correct for the print being shown and indeed that the orientation of glasses is right for the print - I have some 3D paper specs which are labelled right eye / left eye, but actually need to be the other way around for the super 8 prints!

And as we all know, colour fade of the cyan / green element will not help at all. [Frown]

Posted by Melvin England (Member # 5270) on September 02, 2017, 04:28 AM:

Rob - You have provided me,and this forum,with some valuable information regarding the 3D image and effect, so thanks for that.I,for one,was unaware that there were different combinations of coloured glasses ( red/green, red/blue, red/cyan)for different prints. My "creature" film works wonderfully so thankfully have got the right colour combination glasses.

Clinton - If you are in possession of the various combinations of glasses, I would be interested to know the outcome after you have tested them all, and whether you found a pair suitable.

.

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on September 02, 2017, 08:54 AM:

I just recently got It Came From Outer Space 400' with red/blue glasses but it didn't work at all....double image the whole time...tried with red/green and as Rob points out backwards and got about 80% good 3D and 20% double image.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on September 02, 2017, 11:30 AM:

I wonder if I've been using the wrong glasses on my "It Came From Outer Space" print as, I've used red blue, but I wonder if it would actually look better with those more red greenish color glasses?

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 02, 2017, 05:40 PM:

Here's the screen shots,as you can see it has double images as well as the colours for the 3D effect.My other 3D movies have the 1 image and the colour edges to make the 3D effect.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on September 03, 2017, 03:26 AM:

I agree with the different glasses. I bought a copy of the mad magician and used an aftermarket pair of glasses that i bought five pairs of from derann. The effect was rubbish so thinking it was the film i sold it on. Some weeks later i popped on my creature print, a u8 release not the derann re realease and using the derann glasses the effect was again virtually no 3d. I changed the glasses for the one that came with the film, black card glasses with the left and right markings, the full 3d effect was fine. The red and green of the derann supplied glasses are definatly a slightly different shade of red and green. I never gave it a thought that the glasses were the problem.
And i bought that mad magician for a song because it didnt have any glasses. Neednt have sold it.
Fortunatly my creature and outer space films both came with many sets of the original glasses.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on September 03, 2017, 04:29 AM:

All red/green or red/ blue stereoscopic pictures have double images. That's the way the system works. However the term "Double imaging" means that one or both eyes can see both of the images spoiling the effect as each eye should only see its own image.

The examples above merely indicate that the objects are meant to be seen as very close to the spectator (almost touching the face). Images that look as if there is just fringing means that the object is supposed to be at nearly the distance of the screen from the viewer. Anything that should be the screen distance away will have both images co-incident. If they are the other way round (that is the colours are reversed or the glasses put on the wrong way round) they will appear to be to be further away than the screen.

This is a very complicated technique (there are several books written on the subject and I went to an evening's talk on it many years ago at the NFT) and can be used to make small objects near the camera seem very large and far away and large objects seem very small and close with manipulation of the camera separation.

By the way my copy of Murder in 3D is also very hard to watch properly.

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 03, 2017, 06:07 AM:

According to a guy who has this on 16mm,his picture is the same,so it's not faulty but meant to be that way.
He said it's all to do with what you focus on on the screen,with your eyes.He also said it's much better if you are focusing right but never perfect.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on September 03, 2017, 07:05 AM:

Some directors made things do close to you that it was difficult to both keep the images together and focus on them your brain not naturally having to cope with that situation. Eyes focused on a distant screen but toed in as if looking at something inches away, that is why people complained of headaches when watching.

Posted by Joe Taffis (Member # 4) on September 03, 2017, 08:25 AM:

Hi Clinton,
The left/right image alignments are way off on all the 3-D super 8 films I've seen. No matter what color glasses you wear it's not going to correct the problem. They were printed that way. Those screenshots look like the 16mm print of Third Dimensional Murder I saw a while back on eBay. I tried looking at them with anaglyphic glasses, and just from those screenshots I saw there was no way it was going to improved during projection.
The red/green glasses did seem to help a little with the effects on the Creature From The Black Lagoon and Pardon My Backfire super 8 Derann digests, but the mis-alignment is printed in. None of these should have been sold because of this problem. What a ripoff [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on September 03, 2017, 12:28 PM:

The double image is normal for the super 8 releases, Channel 4 broadcast a few films like this several years ago, the glasses were available at newsagents, if you didn't sit on top of your telly it didn't work, if you took the glasses off you had the same double image as you get with these releases. [Wink]

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on September 03, 2017, 12:58 PM:

U8's Creature from the Black Lagoon is a really well edited 400ft digest, which would have been wonderful if it had been a flat black and white print. But the super 8 3D version is only marginally acceptable, and I take a Tylenol before I watch it.

Posted by Doug Stratton (Member # 5923) on September 03, 2017, 01:13 PM:

This is a total abomination of the wonderful 3d process. Basically looks as if each half was parallaxed (distance between right and left images) to hell and then they used those over parallax images to combine and create a new 3d image which is virtually unviewable.

To give you a better example of whats going on I took the image of your dog and converted it to side by side (parallel) using SPM (stereophotomaker). You can convert anaylgph images that are black and white to side by side with no loss since they have no color to begin with

You can see that for the left and right side each view frame is already doubled and out of focus with a huge parallax. So when viewing in 3d you will see literally 4 images with a lot of mess.

Now fixing it as best as possible you get a 1% 3d return but still virtually unwatchable. Give your eyes a second (in my case after 5 seconds of starring at it) to adjust to it and using red/blue glasses with the red over your left eye, but as mentioned literally unwatchable

Now for sake of argument this is a 3d image I made some years back, this is how it should have looked normally and below that is how it would look side by side. Use that as a guide to see how screwed up the company botched this super 8 3d film's release

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on September 03, 2017, 02:15 PM:

Paul your spot on with creature, it is a very good cut down, the 3D is better than some of the other releases and the best effects are in the last part when they go through the caves. Nothing more than a novelty but good to have some in the collection. [Wink]

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 03, 2017, 08:00 PM:

Great replies on this matter,good explanation on the process.
This film was sold to the public with probably most not getting good 3D results,if that was released today I would think they would be returned or at the very least Facebook postings!
I don't plan on getting rid of my Murder In 3D Super 8mm film,it's part of my collection and it's sort of a novelty 🙂
My copies of Mad Magician and Creature From The Black Lagoon work quite well so not all 3D films are useless 🙂

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on September 03, 2017, 11:37 PM:

I had another go this afternoon,tried different lenses,different colours,swapped them from one eye to the other.
I also,as suggested,didn't concentrate too much on any one point on the screen and got better results,still slightly double imaged but watchable, have to admit that watching the whole short film was a mission and not one I will watch again for a while.
And as I've said before,I am still happy to have it in my collection [Smile]

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on September 06, 2017, 02:20 AM:

Looking through old "Film for the Collector" mags I found the review for this film, which is very revealing of the problem,

"This is a Pete Smith M-G-M special made to cash in on on of the 3D crazes. At this stage 3D had not been perfected and director George Sidney was at a loss as to how to make such a film. He constructed a primitive camera set up with two Bell & Howells, but there was no viewfinder. He had to guess if an object was in frame......the hit and miss method resulted in some very variable effects". He also mentions that the instructions given on the film for which colour lens goes over which eye are wrong, which causes other problems - pseudoscopy, where the objects supposed to be near you are seen as far away and vice versa.

No viewfinder and obviously very wide separation of the lenses possibly little adjustments make the troubles seen in the final print very understandable.

[ September 09, 2017, 03:50 PM: Message edited by: Brian Fretwell ]

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