Back in the 1950’s 3-D movies were all the rage. Whenever a studio would release a new B-movie horror feature they were faced with the question of whether or not they would make the movie in 3-D or not. Showing a 3-D movie in the 1950’s was very hit or miss, as sometimes the technology would work and sometimes it would not. Patrons were asked to put plastic or paper special 3-D glasses over their eyes to get the full effect of the 3-D movie and when the movie started you could not move your head or you would lose the effect. Thousands of sore necks later the movie industry started to abandon the idea of the 3-D movie and soon the whole concept was lost and forgotten for a little while. That was until the idea of 3-D movies in your home was created.
The concept of the 3-D movie was revived in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s by television. Many television stations would make large events out of being able to show you 3-D movies in your home and you can feel like the action is coming right at you. This was short lived though as the television stations made one catastrophic error in their logistics. The television stations were using the 3-D movies from the 1950’s as their 3-D features and people soon started to realize that 3-D movies from the 1950’s looked just as bad on television as they did in the theaters. The 3-D movie started to make a small comeback in the mid-1980’s but, once again, without any major feature films using the format it just drifted away into obscurity.
The idea behind the 3-D movie was never really forgotten but the two major problems with creating mass popularity with the 3-D movie needed to be addressed before it would get any kind of real funding. The first problem is the idea behind not allowing viewers to move their heads to get the 3-D effect. If something was designed to fly past a person’s face then they should have the option of looking off to the side and still seeing that image. The other problem was getting major studios to buy into the format and start releasing major motion pictures in 3-D to get the public’s attention. All of that was solved in the early 2000’s with the IMAX.
The IMAX theater is the creation of a Canadian company called, simply enough, the IMAX Corporation. The idea is to present movies in a format that is higher resolution, and larger screen format, than any other theater. They also added to that the largest sound system ever put into a movie theater and suddenly you had the perfect venue for 3-D movies. Soon Hollywood studios started to experiment with creating movies in both a standard format and a 3-D format for IMAX. IMAX soon started to develop their own way of creating 3-D projections from standard movie prints and soon people were flocking to the IMAX to see the 3-D version of their favorite new release.
With the IMAX revolutionizing 3-D movies it is very possible that seeing a movie in 3-D could be as common in the next few years as putting in a DVD at home and watching your favorite movie in the comfort of your living room.
For more information on 3D Movies, visit http://www.3-dmovies.com.
John Parks
http://www.articlesbase.com/movies-articles/youll-be-able-to-watch-them-right-in-your-home-702590.html
A Mad Half Hour. A piece of writing. What do you think?
I wrote this about 10 years ago. I wanted to see if I could write in the present tense….it is a lot harder than it looks. I would value any constructive criticism you may offer me. (sorry it goes on so long!)
A Mad Half-hour
Ben notices Luke watching television, scoops him up and charges off, weaving in and out of the furniture like a rugby scrum-half.
‘For God’s sake, Ben, be careful. You’ll bang his head and make him dafter than he already is.’
Luke screams with delight, as his Uncle Ben shouts ‘Out the way, out the way. Let me pass. Child on board.’
Ben is six-foot with a loose-limbed look that comes from growing too fast. His face has an open cheerful look which he disguises with a designer beard and moustache.
I watch this, my youngest son, with concern as he charges through the french windows and gallops down the garden with my precious grandson hanging from under his arm. Two minutes later they are back with a crash, rushing past me up the stairs.
Ben dangles Luke over the banisters by his ankles his shout of ‘I’m going to drop you’ almost drowned by Luke’s hysterical screams.
‘Ben, Ben now don’t be silly, you really could drop him. What would your sister say if she came home and found him dead?’
I know my pleas won’t do any good. The mad half hour is in full swing. I return to my lovely warm kitchen and the task of creating my one culinary masterpiece, a huge blackberry and apple crumble. I love being the kind of Mum I always read about in books. The kind who doesn’t go out to work, doesn’t lose her temper and who cooks good wholesome food for her brood of cheerful, rough-and-tumble children. It is a role I am only able to play now and then, usually on Saturdays such as this, since mainly I am office-bound, short of time and temper and I am the world’s least interested cook.
I turn the radio on full and begin to sing along ‘…..Mitch Miller, I will not let you go, will not let you go. Mitch Miller…’ My twenty-year old daughter Laura appears at my elbow
‘Mum, how many times must I tell you it’s ‘Bismillah….’ She begins to do a Sonny Liston around the kitchen sparring with me for no reason that I could possibly ever explain.
A blast of cold air causes me to drop my guard and Laura accidentally hits me painfully hard ‘Sorry, Mum’ she giggles and backs out quickly before I can retaliate. The cold air is my husband Rob staggering under the weight of four or five mail-bags. He drops them on my kitchen floor, turns the radio down and complains
‘Are you deaf, or something?’
I ignore his remark ‘Do you have to leave those sacks there?’ my tart response. ‘You know this kitchen is only six feet wide and I can’t be stepping over sacks all morning’
He shrugs his shoulders and picks up one of the sacks and goes out again. ‘Water’ and ‘ducks-back’ come to mind. I become aware that the television is on in both down-stairs rooms. No-one is watching either. They are both tuned to Cartoon Network.
‘Luke, Luke!’ I yell ‘Are you watching this or what? No response.
On my return to the kitchen I naturally check the down-stairs loo, flush it and turn out the light. Back in the kitchen the cat appears from no-where, right under my feet.
‘For God’s sake, Rimmer. I’m going to step on you one of these days. And don’t think I’m going to feed you, you’ve already been fed once this morning’ His soulful eyes look at me and I fill his bowl. ‘He’s not even my cat’ I mutter to myself.
A bounding noise alerts me to the return of my youngest son. This time he’s got
Luke on his shoulders, his head narrowly missing the ceiling. The hall light-fitting swings alarmingly as they pass by.
‘Nanny, why is the television switched off? I was watching that’ Luke complains
‘How can you be watching a programme if you are in the attic, on the stairs and down the garden?’ He is saved the necessity of answering by the ‘toot’ of a car horn.
‘It’s Uncle John. Let me down.’ The sound of Michael Jackson blasts at me from the opened front door.
I love this son with a passion. But, I don’t understand him. He talks like a university professor, and addresses me as ‘Mother’ as in ‘Mother, don’t you know anything? Pixels are the number of dots per square inch on a PC screen. Everyone knows that’ And there was me thinking they were tiny fairy-folk. Ben disappears outside and all I can see is two pairs of feet protruding from under John’s multi-coloured Peugeot. Luke is doing a good imitation of a galloping horse, leaping round and round the car talking to his imaginary friend Conn. I wave to Rob across the road as he walks back from his first delivery in the multi-storey flats opposite. I perform the pantomime of drinking from a cup and he waves and makes a thumbs-up sign.
He hurries over to join me in the kitchen, the apple crumble filling the air with a delicious toffee smell, and we stand drinking coffee and making small talk.
Edit A!Y Missed off last sentence
Heaven isn’t somewhere in the sky, it is here on earth on days like this.
C’est Brilliant! I reckon you’ve done a great job considering the trouble present tense gives us … you keep forgetting that it isn’t past! We’ve been brought up with the past and so you’ve done brilliant.
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My Brain
A wonderful peek into the life of your family, and I hope everyone has had the opportunity and blessing to see the joy and the satisfaction in the extraordinarily ordinary things!
I’m not sure that it mattered whether this was written in the past or present tense. Very good either way! Congratulations on this well written work.
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This was a most enjoyable read.
A slice of heaven in its most hectic and loveable form.. family.
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My constructive criticism would be to capitalize the word French (and watcha the commas).
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