Fw:Thinking in 3D

and there's some television bleedover as well other entertainment forms. Yeah, but we really wanted to talk about what it's like to create an experience for a film beyond just these are moving images or apparently moving images and sound that's coming at you. And uh, to really start with that, I guess, I guess would be fun to talk about some of the wacky, crazy ones that theater, uh, theater owners and and film producers experimented with, mainly like back

in the fifties and sixties. Yeah, older listeners might remember traces of some of these. But if you've seen some movies like Mattenee, which has a character who is very much like William Castle, we'll be talking about about Castle. Uh, if you've seen that, then you may be familiar with some of these as well. I think this was mostly driven back when television started to come out in movie theaters were panicking a little bit and going like, no

one will come see movies anymore. Everyone has this television in their house, even though it's only a twelve inch screen. We we need to do something impressive. This is uh, this may sound really familiar to people today because it's the same sort of stuff we see movie the movie industry thinking about now in the in the realm of the digital world. But you know, we'll get into that kind of stuff. So some of these crazy gimmicks. Huh. How about smellow vision? How about did you guys? Did

you guys see what? What was the earliest example Not not of smellow vision itself, because that was that was technically patented, but the idea of the idea of coupling smells with viewing of something in the cinema. What was the earliest example you found? Do you know? I know what? I can tell you what here? Nineteen o six was the earliest example. It was it was according to the source, it was a Pennsylvania theater owner who used a fan to diffuse the smell of rose oil while showing off

footage of a Rose Bowl football game American football. So it was just this idea of trying to create a more immersive experience theoretically or released by rumor, Disney was looking into incorporating smells in the cinematic experience, but ultimately dismissed it for being too expensive and not reliable enough. Disney, huh, yeah, didn't stop other people from trying. I mean, I'm sorry,

it's just so stupid. What smell a Vision really? I mean, it's that's obvious, but it No, what's not obvious is the extent of the stupidity. What on earth? I mean, it's it's like a joke. Well, I can't believe this was real. I don't know, Joe. I'm not so harsh on it as you are, but that's because I've I've had this, I've seen seen I've smelled this sort of

approach in other forms, not not movies. I've never gone to a Smell a Vision film, although I think I did go to something at the University of Georgia Midnight Movie where they handed out scratch and sniff uh little uh pamphlets for a film, and if I'm not mistaken, it was pink flamingos anyway, so well, no smell. A vision itself was invented and patented by a guy UH

named Hans Slaub and was used in a film. The first, the earliest version I could see that was used in the actual commercially released film, was in nineteen fifty nine and the movie was called Scent of Mystery. Of course it was right, and apparently the smells involved things like pipe tobacco, the smell of pipe tobacco, and then use special pipes to pipe in smells into the theater. Now, Joe, I agree, like if I were watching a movie, I

would just find this distracting. I wouldn't necessarily find it immersive. However, I have been to things like um certain like amusement parks. Disney has a few amusement parks where they have three D movies where they will pipe in smells when something

is happening. Or on Spaceship Earth at Epcot, which was opened in nineteen eight two, I believe they have a couple of different portions of the ride where you know you're going through an orange groves, they pump in orange scent or yeah yeah, and then there's a Sore in which in Florida is called Sore and over californ In

California it's just called Son. But it's a ride where you are it's like you're gliding over the landscape of California, and as you go over certain landscapes, they pipe in certain smells, like if you're gliding over a pine forest, you get the pine smell. Over an orange grove it's oranges, you know over Yeah, and despair, Yeah, those are the smells you get over l a U point. We were winning fans all over the place today. So anyway, you know, it's something that has been used. I don't think it

will ever go anywhere beyond novelty. I mean, it was obviously something that was meant to try and grab people. There's funny because there was a competing technology at the same time as smell, a vision called a roma rama I'm not kidding, and they had they had. I think we all lost, Joe, I think we all lost. Not only did not only are those no longer really active,

but I'm sure there were some spectacular failures. I mean, there's lots of psychological research about how closely we associate memories with smells and how deeply people do associate smells with feelings, and that therefore, you know, I think that the reasoning here somewhere was a we need a gimmick and be I think the problem is that most people be like you remember that stinky movie we saw a

few years ago. Um, so when you're listening to this forward thinking podcast, remember to drive past a paper mill. You can drive wonderful memories. Drive past my hometown which was not was sandwich between paper mills and chicken uh farms. So I would say that that really what we smell like is is mints, warm, electronics and occasion occasionally t but not today. All right, So let's talk about some of the other gimmicky stuff. So I mentioned William Castle.

William Castle, Yes, he was known, famous, famous for coming up with these really gimmicky things to try and pull people into the theater. So if you don't know William Castle, you've probably the one. You would know his house on

Haunted Hill, right. He did some He did some stuff that has you know, not not even cult following, like legitimate film like it like this is this is a movie that you wouldn't necessarily call it a great film, but it's such a great example of a certain era and a certain type of movie making that it's it's got a warm place in many critics. Hearts House on Haunted Hill is I mean cheesy as hell, plastic skeletons

and all that, but it's it's fun. Yeah, you should see it, you know, so filmically it I'd say it's interesting at least, but you know, it's pretty high art for that kind of got Vincent Price just doing his thing, ye yep, being being super Vincent Price in that movie, like Vincent Price at his priceiest. I don't know that he actually charged a lot for that film. But uh, you mentioned The Tingler, which used percepto, and Percepto was a gimmick that Castle came up with that was very clever.

So the Taklers actually even worse of a gimmicks and smell a vision. I love this this gimmick, It's so ridiculous. So The Tingler was a movie about this this weird parasite that could attach itself to people's spines and you would kill them by screaming. The idea that if you screamed that they couldn't handle that and they would fall over dead. But they you would get this weird, tingling, shocking sensation if they were to attach themselves to you.

And in the movie and the course of the film, the narrator says that there's one of these alien creatures has escaped and made its way into the very theater that you are sitting in. That's incredible. So what William

Castle did was they did not believe that. So Castle went to several theaters and convinced okay, alright, settle down, children, Castle into several theaters and convince them to install these these little vibrating motors that would cause the seats to vibrate at a very high frequency, almost like it was an electric shock. If you think it was time, well, I mean it wasn't. I guess it could scare you,

but it couldn't actually hurt you. It's like, have you ever been to, uh, you know, an arcade or one of those amusement part places where they have the thing about, you know, do you dare to hold onto these electrodes. It's it's usually set up so it looks like it's an electric chair, and the it's all based on like the your sense of fear and daring, like are you going to hold on as the as it continues to increase the voltage. Well, there's no actual electric current running

through you. No one wants to get sued. It's just little motors that are vibrating, just like the ones that you have in your typical cell phone. But the idea was they put these underneath the seats, and the projectionist was supposed to activate these buzzers at this point in the movie so that people sitting there in the theater would suddenly think, oh, I'm being attacked by a tingler and they have to scream. And you don't even have

to install them on all the seats. You just have to do a good scattering of the seats so that you hatch a few people they start screaming against everyone. Screaming makes it an interactive experience, and the Castle was hoping that would mean that there'll be more butts in those seats as opposed to butts jumping out of the seats because there's somethly buzzing. Um. It was called Percepto. That was the name of that particular gimmick. There was

another one called illusion. Oh. I think he might be detecting a trend with William Castle's approach. So illusion, oh, was similar to what I'll be talking about when we get to three D. Spoiler alert, We will be talking about three D in this episode. But you know, the the traditional, the old style three D glasses, the anaglyph glasses, the ones that would have a red lens in a cyan lens. He gave filters that were similar to this, So it wasn't it wasn't a pair of three D glasses.

It was like a little piece of cardboard and you would view the movie through one of the two lenses, either the blue one or the red one. And the reason for this was that it was for a film called thirteen Ghosts, and if you were to use the blue one, I think it was the blue one, it would filter out the ghosts because the ghosts were all in blue, so you couldn't that that would show up as white if you're looking through a blue filter, so

you wouldn't see the ghosts through the blue filter. But if you were to look through the red filter, you could see all the ghosts because they would show up as as black instead of white. And so, uh, you know, if you wanted to be terrified, you would look through the red lens but if you were too scared, you can look through the blue lens and just watch his characters are reacting to absolutely nothing on screen as far

as you can tell. Again, total gimmick, but an interesting little approach to trying to make movies more than just and something you could replicate at home. Uh. That that gets us into the idea of the four D experiences that we've I've kind of alluded to with some of the Disney rides. Disney is big about this with their three D stuff. They have a three D film called It's Tough to Be a Bug, which is based on

the characters from a bug's life. Um, and that involves things like smell like a stink bug at one point goes off, so you get sprayed with a stinky kind of smell. Uh. There's also part where rain drops are falling, so you get hit by a little bit of water. There's a bit where hornets are flying around, you get poked in the back. There's there's a there's not really a sharp stick by the way, spoiler alert for anyone

who was playing on saying this and hasn't yet. They're also the best part, I think is at the very end where the lights go off, and then it tells I think flick tells the cockroaches that's time to clear out. And they're a little actuators on the seat underneath where your butt is, and then those go off and so you feel like this movement under your butt of the cockroaches running away. My wife refuses to watch this because she is really really scared of bugs, even cartoon ones.

She's gonna kill me that I said this. Unfortunately, I don't think she listens to my podcast, so I think I'm okay, but um and that you know that those sort of gimmicks are still kind of uh around, but for the most part they're limited to things like amusement parks or or specific experience something where you can build out a theater to include those like a again at Disney, the the Alien Encounters ride that I think is now Lelo and Stitch themed, but the same uses the same

sort of stuff though in both cases. Yeah, where where something's a permanent installations that you're not wasting money having, you know, a theater tech put buzzers underneath all your seats right for one for one movie and then you never use it again. Yeah. There there's some other examples of stuff that was used in a more trying trying to roll it out in a more wide format, like a sense around. You guys have heard, I'm sure the term sense around. Sense around is not the same thing

as surround sound. Okay. Sence around was essentially using sub woffers to generate super low frequency sounds like very low on the base register, lower than what most people would be able to hear. Knowing that there are always outliers in the human experience, so some people can hear frequencies

beyond what most of us can hear. But you could feel it because you know, sound is a physical, physical effect, and so it's that low, low, low rumbling where it makes your seat rumble, and in fact was rolled out

along with the film Earthquake. But Earthquake came out around the same time as another film that was received pretty well called Godfather Too, and so apparently there were a lot of complaints from Godfather to viewers who were saying, like, I wanted to enjoy the movie, but the earth kept quaking because of your sense around system that you had installed in the next theater next door showing Earthquake. Yeah, a lot of bleed over there. Because it was just

this low rumbling and uh, you know low rumbling and earthquake. Fine, Godfather too, not so great. Um So, but there's there are other theaters right now that are installing things. I know there's one in at least one in Austin. Uh and I'm sure there are theaters and and very there has to be one in l A. I don't know if any in Georgia that are installing seats that give haptic feedback as you watch a movie, where they'll vibrate

along with the soundtrack. Like there's one company called trimmer f X that does these where they'll install these seats where, uh like, if a gun shot goes off, you'll actually feel a little impact on your back. Or if someone is like in a horror movie and you can hear their heartbeat, the seat will throb at the same frequency

as the heartbeat, that kind of stuff. Uh. I was thinking while you were saying that that this is how it sounds stupid, sounds like a fad, but actually haptic feedback is caught on in other realms, like the Rumble

controllers totally standard. And I would say that um as a as a survival horror gamer fan, or game fan the gamers are nice to um uh, you know know, having a having that that feedback when when your heart is beating is is a really useful for not having to look off the screen or to a corner of the screen to a to to see what your health

meters like can be. Um, it's so scary, it's so immediately. Well, yeah, they've actually turned that into a true gameplay element where it's not just enhancing, it's become part of the gameplay like there are Another good example is a game where you are trying to complete a particular task and the controller will rumble as you get closer to failing that task. So it's an actual alert system telling you, hey, you're

you're you're doing this wrong. You need to rethink it. Um. I do this all the time as I play things like Skyrim and I'm trying to pick to pick a lock, you know. Um, it's useful stuff. So we've talked about all these gimmicks. Yeah, here's the real question. Okay, I think three D all right, uh, mega high definition, high frame rates. Are these true advances that are going to stick around and stand the test of time, or are

they gimmicks like the others. Uh, let's take them case by case, right, So let's start with three D. I have to start off going on the record, don't like it. Joe does not like three D. Not a fan, I I don't. I don't mind it. I prefer if I have the chance to see a movie not in three D, I take it. Um. But but but but I did. But I did very much enjoy core Line and three D because I have read the book multiple times. I wasn't needing to pay attention to the story, and it

was pretty well. I like if a movie was made with three D in mind, I enjoy the three D experience. If it's a movie that's been converted for three D, I almost never enjoy that. I also did enjoy my Bloody Valentine in three D because, like Ladies, head went right at the screen. Okay, here's my one exception. Yeah, if if the three D is treated as a joke in a stupid movie, be like Jaws three D. Yeah, okay,

or I was thinking Friday the Thirteen Part three example. Yeah, on the third, movies have to be in three D, oh they just do. They somehow often fall in a three D craze. Um. So if the movie is horrible anyway. If the movie itself is sort of a novelty or a gimmick, I can sort of get behind it. Then anything where I at all want to feel immersed in the storytelling and has any real dramatic element I am. I think three D is just stupid. I don't like it at all. It takes me out of it very much.

It all makes me more aware that I'm watching a movie. It all depends on the the the execution. For me. In some cases, I've really much enjoyed that where I wasn't you know, after that initial oh, this is three D, I just totally forgot about and enjoyed the film for what it was. And then there are other cases, like I've seen some nature films that were shot in three D that were gorgeous because you could get this crazy depth of field, and it was really more about the depth,

not stuff coming out at you. That's the way a lot of those early three D implementations were right. It's the it's it's it's the character saying here, take my hand and reaching out at the screen the way nobody does. More often, it's like, have some coffee reached towards the screen. My favorite ones Jaws three D, where it was a hypodermic needle where they're testing the needle by you know, squirting out just a little bit from it. And so they they hold the needle right out to the camera

and then squirt it. And it's hilarious to see those movies not in three D because they're just all these random shots that are lingering for way too long and are just completely unnatural. Yeah, um okay, But so we we've sort of blended all three D together. Three D actually has had some fairly distinct technological uh phases. Let's talk about what's happening first. So, so it was was stereoscopic first. Anaglyph really was first. The anaglyph glasses, which

are the red blue that you're red. Science. But but to understand how these all work, let's just because they all followed the same basic premise. It's just that they do it in different ways. And that premise is to present each eye with its own set of images, and then your brain does all the rest of the work. Your brain takes in these two sets of images and combines it into a full picture, just the way our actual eyes work all the time. So for three D

to work. First of all, you need two eyes. So you need two eyes, and you need to have relatively normal vision. It's it's the idea that our eyes are positioned on our heads in such a way that they are taking in information from slightly different positions binocular vision right, So your left eying right eye, because they're not located immediately on each other, means that the information they're receiving

is slightly different. So if I'm looking at an object, my eyes converge on that object, and then the information I get back lets me make judgments like how far away that object is. There are other cues that also tell us how far away something is, things like perspective and all that kind of stuff. But parallax, which is what I'm talking about right here, is a big one. The further away an object is, the closer to parallel your eyes are, and so parallax becomes less and less important.

It's really more important for things that are within like a couple hundred feet of you, and the closer it is, the more your eyes are converging on that point. So that's the basis for the three D films. They want to present you with these two sets of images that are engineered in such a way as to give you the illusion that an object is closer or further away

from you, the viewer. And it's important to do this so that it estimates about how far apart the average person's eyes are, which is why two people could go into a three D movie. One person thinks it's a great effect and the other person doesn't because one person's eyes are closer to the average as far as the spacing goes than the other person. That can totally happen

now and a glyph glasses. The red blue ones are those old ones that you think about when you see, you know, any any sort of like the nineteen fifties people all gasping in their seats as something is coming out of the screen. Um And essentially it uses the same sort of technique that that filter approach did, the one I talked about illusion oh with William Castle. So anything that is blue on the screen or cyan really I should say, scion on the screen through the Scion

lens is going to show up as white. Anything that's red on the screen shows up as black. The opposite is true for the red lens. Anything that ssion will show up as black. Anything that's red will show up as white. You end up showing these two different sets of images on top of whatever it is you're showing, and that's your brain does the rest of the work. Your your right eye gets one set, your left eye gets the other set. Your brain combines them together to

get the full picture. Now, if you're talking about polarized classes, you're talking about polarized polarized light polarization, and uh, this is a concept. It's uh that waves that can oscillate with more than one orientation. Sound is not one of those sound travels. It propagates across, uh, the same direction as the medium that's vibrating. But light you can actually polarize into different orientations, and so you generally will polarize it in a ninety degree offset from one to the other.

Um And then you have lenses that will accept one set of that polarized light but deny the other, and the other lens does the opposite. So again, each eye gets its own set of images. Both of them are being projected just slightly offset both in space. Like if you were to take the glasses off, it would look how that blurry look to it. That's so that these two different sets of images will come in slightly different

to simulate that parallax. Uh. And it will also be because you know y're not wearing those glasses to block off half of them. The problem with polarized glasses, at least if you've got just simple polarized glasses, is that if you tilt your head, the effect goes away because

you're actually matching that angle, that that polarized angle. So if you start to tilt your head while watching a film or TV show using polarized lenses, and they are regular polarized lenses for three d uh, the effect goes away if you want to do something like recline on

your couch like I do all the time. But if you have circular polarized lenses, then they end up polarizing it in what's called a left handed or right handed fashion, and that would actually allow you to tilt your head because it's not dependent upon that that same angle as the regular ones. Then we get to the most advanced type as far as the glasses version, which are active lenses, and active lenses have little L C D shutters in them essentially that open and close at a ray that

is undetectable by a person. So if you were just to look through your glasses, you wouldn't be able to tell that. Essentially, the the right side or left side becomes opaque at a really quick rate. It's so fast that to us it just seems like there's no interruption. Meanwhile, the images on the screen are synchronized to the shuttering that's going on on your lenses. So when the left lenses quote unquote open, it's getting the left set of images.

When the right lenses open, it's getting the right set of images. And so you have to have a really good refresh rate on your television screen, and you have to have um glasses that are attuned to that system. You can't just you know, and also you can't switch any of these glasses out for any of the other systems. That won't work because it's only for uh content that's been made with that system in mind. So that's how they all work. Then you have glasses free three D.

Have you guys ever seen glasses free three D? Uh? I went on a tour of a local there's a place here in Atlanta that does glasses free three D screens for things like casinos or movie theaters or whatever. It's not meant for uh, like a full film or television show. It's meant to kind of show a looping like uh commercial type thing. It was really really convincing, very effective. If you were standing in a sweet spot. UH.

These use so you're not wearing glasses. Essentially, the the technology of the glasses is built into the screen itself. But this means that light is being directed so that your left eye again is getting one set of images and your right eye is getting the other set of images. But only if you're standing in these certain little sweet spots.

If you're in between sweet spots, you're getting conflicting information and then you start not feeling so good, or at least the images look all blurry and chunky and nothing seems to be working. Um, So it's it's good if you have control over where your audience is. This is the same sort of technology that the Nintendo and Hindo

three D s uses. Um. The three D display uses the same sort of thing because the thought is, well, the player is pretty much guaranteed to be directly in front of the screen because that's how you hold a mobile gaming system. But if you were to be offset a little bit to the left or right, the effects starts to get a little messy. So, uh all, that's

called auto auto stereoscopy. But there are different versions of that as well that don't involve the glasses free three D approaches I've talked about that use things like the holographic cube type approach, you know, stuff we've talked about in our previous podcasts. But I wanted to really hit the ones that I've seen implemented into television screens at least. Uh So that's how they all work. Now comes the discussion of is three D legit or is it a gimmick?

So what do you guys think, Joe, We know what you think. Well, I mean, here are a few things to consider. Um, three D M three D phase is come and go movies. Oh yeah, there's like yeah, there's usually a cycle. Yeah, it's in for a while, people get sick of it, it goes away. They also tend to coincide, I think with times when the movie business is looking for a way to get more people into the theaters. Um, and there's usually some ulterior motive you

can explain. It's it's not like you have filmmakers very often saying, as an artistic choice, I would like to film this in three D. That's my vision for the audience. There are a few, but it's first of all, it's hard to tell how sincere they are. I think that's pretty rare. I think it doesn't really enhance the drama of any serious story. And it's even when it's good technically, and often most of the three D I've seen doesn't

look very good to me. You've seen a lot of films have been converted to three D which are terrible. It's just kind of silly. But even if it's really good, why why? Yeah, Well, I mean the there are a couple of answers I would give. If I were an artist who was making films. My why would be would be to create an experience that you could not replicate elsewhere. And part of that is going into the whole movie

going experience in the first place. This idea of seeing a film with a community of viewers as opposed to sitting at home, So making it more of an experience and less of this is me trying to tell you a story. It goes beyond that, right, I'm creating something beyond just just sitting you down. To tell a story to you. Although that's still, in my mind the most important part of any film, it's just a part of

it now. Um. And of course there's also for film for movie studios, there's a great incentive to go three D, which is it's a lot harder for people to uh to bootleg films that way because they can't replicate the

actual three D nous of it. You know, if they get the actually it's a movie that's only distributed that way, and it's only distributed that way digitally, then that doesn't do anyone any good, uh, if they try and get hold of the digital file, because you know, you can't really view it on something that wasn't designed to project it and you don't have the right kind of glasses or whatever. Although if someone is willing to watch an entire movie that someone records on their cell phone, then

probably they're willing to watch. Yeah, there's that too, but you know, it's one. It's just one of those ideas of another way of combating piracy. I mean, it's that's not the only thing, but that is a factor. Um. Um. My bottom line is I can only put up with it for camp factor. Yeah, I if it's done well. Uh, and it's only been done well a few times. In

my experience, I enjoy it. I've I've seen some demo reels where there were specific instances where I thought, Wow, if I really like sports, three D would be amazing because there's some great like foot page of football games in three D where it felt like I was on the field with these guys watching them play and and it was really exciting. But I'm not a football fan,

so I wouldn't want that. I did, however, once see a demo reel that included footage from a WrestleMania and I was like, I am all over that, and I Am not even kidding. If I had a three D television and I had a three D version of Royal Rumble, I would be watching that on repeat. I think I think it's a gimmick in the long run, but um but I mean but, but, but but a clever one and interesting one for for certain applications. I think it's going

to be a pervasive gimmick. I think it's certainly shown that like the three D television craze, and by craze, I mean from manufacturing side lasted about two or three years at c E s like that was the big thing. Every every television there was a three D TV this year at CS it was it was really scaled back. There were a lot of them that were three D capable, but they were not being they weren't being marketed as

a three D television. And I think the one of the reasons for that is that a lot of manufacturers have discovered what a lot of tech journalists were saying is that people just don't really want to have glasses that they have to keep track of and where when they watch their TV. Uh not. Of course, not all content would be in three D unless you had a television that converted everything into three D. And I have

seen those and I was not a big fan. Um, but it's just, you know, it's just one of those things that I think most people just don't want to have to keep up with that stuff, and it's just the content that they're getting, the experience they're getting isn't compelling enough to justify the expense and the frustration of having to keep up with not just a remote control,

but glasses as well. I was more interested in the series c S. They were showing off a couple of three D TVs that that didn't show images in three D, but you could have two people sitting next to each

other watching different shows on the same television. Yeah yeah, because and that was again using polarized light or even active well yeah, I guess you could use active shutters, but you have to have headphones and you have to have your own glasses and having the best implementation I saw that was for video games where you have two people playing, like say a racing game, where without a split screen right right the whole screen, you would have the whole screen for you and you could not see

what your opponent was doing, so you couldn't cheat. Like let's say we're all playing first person shooters part of the game. So we're all playing first person shooters, and we can't tell that Lauren is just camping yet again behind the little teleporter. I don't camp. I strategize. Yeah, it's a legitimate strategy camping with rockets, let me tell you anyway, So, uh, but you wouldn't be able to tell that because you would all have the full view

of the screen for yourself. Um, and if, but only if you took the glasses off, all you would see is just a big mishmash of all the different images, um grant. I don't know that you could do. I guess you could the heretically do that with more than two people. You would just have to polarize the light in various ways and in a way that wasn't going to interfere with the other players you have. Would be interesting.

Two would be easy. More than that would be difficult. Also, you're talking about you know, every time you talk about having to do two images or two streams, you're doubling the amount of information you have to handle to which kind of brings us to these discussion about high deaf, you know, talking about high deaf, high definition what it's

called high deafe, that's what it's a thing. Um Yeah, High Definition TV, HDTV and Ultra high Definition and all of those designations and these crazy, crazy resolutions that we're seeing coming out on televisions in the near future. Uh, doesn't bother me. I'm cool with it. No, I'm cool with it. It's well, no, okay, I'll say, I don't think it's a gimmick. I think that there is certainly

a way in which high definition enhances the viewing experience. Yeah, I don't I don't think it's like totally necessary like that, you know, the resolution of a DVD on a you know, normal I don't know what TV does not drive me crazy. Okay, it drives me crazy, but then I have a big TV, so it also depends on the size of the television, right. Every time the technology improves, you know, every time a

new gaming console comes out or or whatever. Um, you know, we we look at these things and we say this, this is amazing, this is more better than I have ever seen video games. B and and then you know when we go back and play things on the previous console and we can't imagine that this ever looked good. But then another five years later it's it's the same thing over and over again. My favorite thing is the

earliest c g I effects from the nineties. You remember how how awesome people thought these looked back and now they look just beyond crappy. Do you remember check out what Go back and watch the movie Mortal Kombat and see if you were remember what people were saying about it in the nineties, Like, these c g I effects will blow your mind. They are so good. Do you remember the film that had Probably I think it's one of the earliest full c g I characters UM only

in one scene. It wasn't like a full character that was throughout the whole film, uh, Young Sherlock Holmes, because it had this uh you never saw it, Young Sherlock Holmes. There was a there's a stained glass night that becomes um animated through a person's hallucination and it attacks the person. The person is actually just hallucining that's happening, but you're

seeing it from their perspective. And it was all c g I and at the time was incredibly advanced and super cool, and today you think, wow, that looks like something from a super cheap video software demo reel. But getting back into high definition, I mean, there are a lot of different types out there, and it really it really does depend upon things like your screen size. You know. It's it's if I have a if I have a twelve inch screen, that's that's at ten AP, and I

have a sixty inch screen that's at ADP. That's two different experiences, sure, And that's also how your eyeballs work. I mean, the human eye, although certainly not as good as many other animals eyeballs in terms of visual acuity.

UM studies done back into the nineteen forties showed that of the you know, say a hundred and twenty million rods that we've got in our eyeballs, um, only about five to fourteen of them really need to be activated for us to recognize that something is happening visually in front of us. Um, So we we see a lot. One Doctor Roger Clark, who's an imaging specialist who's working on spectromedy, like with Cassini and stuff like that, did a bunch of the math and uh, you know it,

it depends on how big the images. You know, if we're talking about a twenty by thirteen point three inch print viewed from twenty inches away, we only need about seventy four the pixels to approximate the humanized resolution. All right, So seventy four million pixels essentially only only um, you know, and so well, and I can give you, I can give you an indication of what that is as far as resolution for video screens, keeping in mind that video

and still images are different. Uh, and also the idea that that you know, when you're talking about improvements it all, it's a very it's a very subjective experience. I will say that personally for me, I I have looked at two K screens, I've looked at four case screens. I've even seen an eight K screen at c e s and for me, the difference was not incredibly noticeable, not that there weren't differences. If I really really looked, I could probably tell. And the closer you get, the more

you would be able to tell. But again that's because the resolution is not just how many pixels are in the screen, it's how big is the screen, Because if the screen is smaller than those pixels, it just gives you that like a seven twent display or U might be justice find as ten eighty depending upon the size of the screen you know, and how far away you are. The further away you are, then the less it matters

for the actual screen. So to give you some numbers, old high definition, the seven version, the way that a lot of the old video game consoles, that's as that's as good as they could show UM is twelve eighty by seven pixels, or about nine twenty one thousand six pixels per image. So when it's showing an image, that's

how many pixels are active. Then if you go up to ten eighty, whether it's interlaced or progressive um, which really only matters in the way that the video is played back and how how those the progression of video is shown. The resolution is nineteen twenty by ten e D, so that's about two million, seventy three thousand, six hundred pixels,

so you know, getting bigger there. A two case screen is actually not that big of an improvement over ten e D and this might be why it didn't seem to really strike me as revolution when I first saw two K screens. Two K screens tend to be two thousand, forty eight by ten eighty pixels, which is about two million, two thousand, eight hundred forty pixels, So really you're talking about two hundred thousand more pixels than the ten eight.

That's not that big a jump, because if you were to go to four K ultra high definition that's three thousand and hundred forty by two thousand, hundred sixty pixels, that ends up being eight million, two hundred, four thousand,

four hundred pixels. So you know, you're not you're you're just increasing the lines of pixels, uh that you can show on a screen, But those lines end up meaning that the total number of pixels that are displayed increases that I'm a faster rate because you're looking at the area.

And and so if you go all the way up to an eight K television, that's seven thousand, six eighty lines by four thousand, three hundred and twenty lines of pixels, which ends up being thirty three million, one seventy seven thousand, six hundred pixels or about a little less half of water eyes could tell based upon that that example that Lauren gave. So these are increasing levels of resolution. The only question is is it detectable to a casual observer

and doesn't matter that much? And uh, I guess maybe if you have like a like a truly enormous television screen, then it would matter, and if you're sitting really close to it, then it would matter. Here's an interesting question, though, do we want the highest possible level of resolution or um at some point does the lack of resolution actually add to our enjoyment of visual media. It's a good question.

I think it's hard for me to answer that. I would say that resolution is less important to me as far as that goes, Like if you go super high resolution, that doesn't bother me so much. It's the frame rate that bugs me. Well, the example that I always use in this kind of situation is is a silent Hill. The first Silent Hill game, um was for the PlayStation one.

It was they were the processor was unable to create, uh, create the visual background, so they added in fog effects to blur, to blur out the stuff that they couldn't process, and it wound up being terrifically creepy and a really great addition to the film. And I would argue that in many filming aspects like a like, like the entire field of noir came from the fact that they didn't

have money to light sets, um. So it was dark by necessity, so dark by necessity, and uh and and and it's gorgeous, and people replicate that these days with a lot of power and light and film and and all of these gorgeous things that we that they literally could not use back in the day but have become this stylistic thing. So yeah, I certainly it depends. I certainly don't think that resolution, like like a high resolution film is better than a lower resolution film. There's no

evidence to me that that's true. It's technically you might be able to argue it, but as far as its ability to tell a story in a way that impacts its audience, it has very little to do with it for me. Now, granted, if a movie is just in truly bad repair and you're watching like a terrible print

of an old film, that can be distracting. That can take you out of a movie, just like that three D experience you were talking about, Joe, kind of it alerts you to the fact that you're watching a film and you don't lose yourself into That same kind of thing can happen if it's a really really bad uh copy of a film. That's one of the reasons why I love digital because you don't have to worry about degrading over time, like the film itself is not going

to degrade. But I don't think that the high resolution would bug me so much. But let's let's let's talk about frame rate a little bit. So, Lauren, you haven't seen a movie in forty eight frames for a second, I have not either. Oh yeah, okay, so well tell us all, but how wonderful. Let's talk about Let's talk about frame rate for a second first, So the earliest frame rates were kind of all over the place. I

mean like way back in the era. For one thing, you if you go back far enough, you had cameras that were hand cranked, and so you had a hand cranked you know, like a camera operator who was trying to crank a camera at a uh yeah, constant speed, sometimes a little faster, a little slower on purpose in order to create a specific effect on the film for playback. Playback was going to be constant because the projectors they

used were motorized. They didn't have someone actually turning a crank for the projector for for actual film films, not just the little novelties that came out, yeah, not the not the little novelty animations that came out, or the the penny arcade type stuff that you would see, um, but the actual movies that you would go to a cinema. Well, those frame rates back in those early days might be

anywhere between twenty to twenty six frames per second. So that means that within one second your I would see between twenty and twenty six distinct pictures. And it's the playing back of these pictures at this speed that gives us that illusion of movement, that there are things on the screen moving around as opposed to the fact that we are actually looking at a series of individual still photos, right. Uh,

so that's the whole basis of film there. Once sound came along, then they really had to standardize things because while you can mess around with the the visual element of how many frames per second are being played back sound, We detect changes in sound and it bothers us. So like if the pitch changes throughout a movie. I mean, if you've ever seen any kind of film where they had a problem with the sound, that really gets your

attention pretty quickly. So that's when they settled on twenty four frames per second really and said this is the standard, you know, for for films from here on out. And uh and so this kind of set into our minds what a movie is, what a movie looks like, beyond you know, the how crisp or clear it is. The playback to us felt like this is the way a movie should go. It has this kind end of element to it that no matter what genre you're watching, you

get this kind of experience. And there's a certain amount of motion blur that goes into that, Like if something is moving very quickly and it's moving faster than what the twenty four frames per second can handle to give you that smooth feeling. Uh. That became part of the cinematic experience, and it's kind of something that we just

sort of accept now. I suspect if you were to show a kid a movie at forty eight frames per second and the kid had never really experienced twenty four frames per second, it would be a totally different story than someone like me who grew up watching twenty four frames per second. So I go see The Hobbit at forty eight frames per second and it. You know, the reasons for that that frame rate tend to be cited as a way of removing this flickering and uh motion

blur stuff and making it a more smooth experience. To me, what it really seemed to do was make it all look like I was looking at movie sets. Not I wasn't losing myself in a world, a fantasy world. I was looking at a bunch of sets on a on either on a location or in a studio. In fact, I got to a point where I could identify. I knew which shots were shot on location versus inside a sound stage, because I could tell because that level of detail was so great that I was like, this looks artificial.

So maybe is what we're saying here that at a certain point, too much information is bad? I think I think it. It's too early to say, because it may very well be that this just becomes what we accept movies to be in the future. You know, every time, every time there's been a major actual switch in film, there is a knee jerk reaction to say that this. Yeah.

You know, when when filmmakers started to make the switch from film to digital, there was a ton of discussion about that in films and film communities about does this make sense? Do we want to move away from this, this venerable institution, this medium that has its own artistry, and moved to a fully digital environment. I think thereash against the talkies. Yeah, yeah, so noone's going to see

something like that. That's ridiculous. So while while I'm sitting here and saying, you know, forty frames per second was something I did not at all enjoy, uh, you know, that was it's a subjective experience, someone else might very much like it. And again, if a kid saw it, a kid might think that's awesome, that looks great. And that's if you were to show that kid later on an older movie at twenty four frames per second, maybe that kid would say this is weird, but I mean,

you know it is. Maybe it's one of those things where the further away you get from fantasy, maybe the more effective those forty frames per second will be. Because if it's in a world that is essentially our own world, where they're using really as much real stuff as possible and as few set pieces and props as possible, then it may just be a perfect experience. But when it's something that's in a fantastical world where you have to buy into the fact that you are in a fantasy,

then it's it's very distracting. When you're sitting there and you look at something you think, I can totally tell that that's a prop, as opposed to this is something that has lived in this world, you know, and it has its own history. If you were to ask a character where did you get that, they could tell you, oh, so, so and so the carpenter built this chair for me back in such and such, and you know, you would totally believe it. But in the per second one, where

did you get that? Oh, props made it for me two days ago, you know, so so high frame rate gimmick or not. I don't think it's a gimmick. I think it's sticking around and I think or at least it's going to make a real go at it. I you know, same thing could have been said for three D a couple of years ago, especially in the home market, but that has kind of gone the other way. But there are you know, some major filmmakers who have all talked about this, James Camera and uh Peter Jackson being

the two that you know, everyone has talked about. So maybe if there are a lot of negative reactions, we may see that that switchover happened more slowly. I expected that will eventually happen, though I think I think it's

bound to happen now. The interesting thing to me is that, you know, I saw the hobbit at you know, ultra high definition forty eight frames per second in three D. I want to know how large that file was, And the file had to be enormous three D. So you've got two sets of images ultra high definition frames per second that means twice as many frames than a normal film. How many pixels, Well, you would just look at one once, one image. I think it was of I think they

shot that on four K cameras. They might have gotten higher than four K by the way, interesting little bit of trivia for all of our fans out there. The series Forward Thinking, the first few episodes were shot on the Red one, which is the name of a camera, which is a two K a camera, and then some of the later episodes were shot on a four K camera. So these ultra high definition cameras are what we're using

to actually shoot the video series Forward Thinking. Yeah, and it also makes me feel more than a little self conscious to think of an ultra high definition camera pointed at me. But you are beautiful, thank you. I actually do have to pluck those t M I I've got nothing. Yeah. The beautification process before an episode of Forward Thinking is uh is thorough. It is mostly few, mostly feud, Thank you, Joe. So one other thing I wanted to mention before we

sign off. You know we talked to all about the visual aspects was sound, the idea of using sound to make it a more immersive experience. Did you know that the technically the first surround sound movie, although it wasn't a true surround sound was Fantasia and so back in nine the imagineers over at Disney had come up with this idea that they wanted it to be a very

immersive experience. I mean, this is a symphonic film where they wanted the music to affect the audience and not just be played at the same level throughout the entire UH theater. So any theater that was showing Fantasia in UH in Fantas sound, which is not what a Fantas sounds like when you open it. It's actually the name of what the the sound system they were using. It involved fifty four loud speakers to create that effect. Fifty

four was incredibly expensive. It was meant to help diffuse the sound throughout the theater so that any person sitting in any seat would have that experience of the music coming from the right right location at the right time.

Later on, we would have companies like Dolby come out with their own version of surround sound, which would involve multiple channels like five channel sound, where you would have three main speakers in the front a center one one on the right, one on the left, and two in the back, and that would allow you to soundscape your

films and create that more immersive experience. So that when a character hears something like a twig snap behind her as Mr Vorhees is making his way, you would hear the snap behind you as well, to give you that sense of being put in the character's place and feeling that sense of terror. Or you're just wondering, who's the next person who's gonna get killed in some ridiculously over the top way. Yeah, take my hand, Joe, I'm reaching towards you through the camera. Guys, if you enjoyed this,

please let us not send us some feedback. Tell us what you like about our shows. Tell us what you want us to talk about. What stuff about the future really has you excited? What? What? What are you curious about? You can email us our addresses FW thinking at Discovery dot com or go to fw thinking dot com. That's where we have the blog posts, the podcast, the videos, all sorts of articles are really really interesting. We hope you enjoy them and we will talk to you again, Willison.

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