Hello again! Welcome back to the final part of our 10th episode extravaganza!
For these past three days, we’ve been releasing our pilot episode (which we realize we went way overlong by having it go nearly three hours) in honor of today – Friday the 13th! As you can clearly see, we decided that this would be the perfect time to release this pilot as we covered the first three Friday the 13th movies. So… Yeah, I think you can see how we did the math to figure all this out.
Also, we’ve now moved to releasing WEEKLY episodes! So, now every Wednesday, you’ll get to hear our awesome voices speaking directly into your earholes. Rejoice!
Come back next week as we look at the brand new Rock tour de force film – Rampage!
Film Seizure 
Hey, Geoff,
Your theater would have been able to project red/blue 3D. That format was not screen type specific, because the color is what matters, and it does not get changed, certainly not enough to screw up how the light passes through the glasses. It was polarized 3D, with the barely grayed lenses – what we see in use today – that would not work on white screens. The 80's 3D trend was a polarized lens trend. It's pretty old optical technology; even the 3D craze in the 50's was a mix, some polarized, some red/blue.
Very unscientifically, white screens scatter the light they reflect erratically enough that the light projected through a glass with microscopic, straight lines tilted at one angle (basically aligning the light waves that get to pass through it) does not bounce back at exactly that angle, so the eye with a bunch of lines angled in the other direction can't block them out. Each eye sees both images, and the 3D magic is gone. Silver screens are more perfect in their reflections, bouncing the light back just as it hits, maintaining the angle, allowing the polarized lenses on the glasses to block out the opposite eye images.
I know that projectionist extraordinaire, Steve Blair, now of The Artcraft, tried to make that work with the mirror box he had, that took the top and bottom image in each frame and aimed them at the screen, polarizing each through a big piece of glass as it did. (Ours was bigger than this guy's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJVl5_kEKA ) I recall he came close, but not enough to sell tickets.
At Castleton Arts, the screens had not been replaced since it opened in '76 (I think), which gave us this weird bonus from having been cheap. The second time we ran Friday…3D, I played with the box a little. You could do two things, one of which was to slide it in or out, like a lens, with mere milimeters making a difference, and I don't recall what the other adjustment was, but the results were:
1. Determining where that three dimensional reality appeared in space. I could make every single thing seem to be behind the screen, even Rick's eyeball, or I could make almost everything be in front of the screen, turning all the actors into Free Floating Full Torso Vaporous Apparitions. I opted for anytime the actors were just talking, have them seem to be right behind the screen, as if on a stage.
2. How deep the 3D was. I could make it super shallow, or crazy deep back and to your nose forward. Guess which I picked.
On TV, polarization wasn't an option until… 2010? Maybe? Only the red/blue coloring could work, because both eyes always see the whole screen. There was a dubious flirtation with televised 3D in the 80's, the presentations beginning with a half blue and half other blue screen, during which we were supposed to adjust the color, brightness, etc. on our TVs until, through one of the lenses, the two shades of blue seemed to become one. They did Creature from the Black Lagoon, Hondo, Something Skull Something and a few others before giving it up. Coraline was released this way, with its own specific colors of lenses, and Friday…3D, with good ol' red/blue. I was surprised at how well each of them worked on our newer TVs with more accurate colors and stuff. I didn't watch all of my Friday…3D, though, so I can't deny the headache possibilities. And Coraline gave me other sorts of aches, since it was just so bad.
Most theaters now have silver screens again, to accommodate the current 3D options, most of which still works the same way. Some theaters have alternately shuttering lenses, but for most, it's just the same system from the 80's/50's.
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