3D Meet Bob Furmanek: HTF Golden Age 3-D Consultant (1 Viewer)

[moviebear1]

How exciting. Great news. I'm really looking forward to both the event and the 3D Blu-ray. Thanks to Greg & Bob for all your hard work to bring these films out the right way. Great that you located Stereo elements.

Not bragging. . . but am surprised that my 3D titles are now slightly over 200 discs. Amazing that there are that many. 3D is not dead. but I am worried about how hard it is getting to get a reasonably price 3D TV these days. My VISIO passive 3D 65 inch set still looks great. . . . but with a collection this big I'm concerned.about how much it would cost to get another set.

Oh . . . Just watched The Mad Magician plus Spooks & Pardon My Backfire.
I'm on a 3D high at the moment.

GRIN.

 

[Charles Smith]

The good news just keeps coming. Congratulations and thanks, yet again, to Bob and Greg and the Archive!

 

[Dick]

And I'm thrilled to hear the news! Love to have another golden age 3D musical to enjoy. Makes up for The Stewardesses.

And A*P*E.

But, being a 3D supporter, I'll buy them all.

 

[gazadams]

Love all these 3d films

 

[Interdimensional]

I don't know if anyone can answer this, but I have a question after watching The Mad Magician and Pardon My Backfire:

Title cards and opening credits overlayed on 3D backgrounds - the 3-D effect seems to be reversed in quite a few of these. At first I thought it was a mistake in post-production, but they all seemed to be like that. I believe I may have seen the same in other films too, so is there a chance it was intentional?

If I flip my glasses, the backgrounds will look perfect, but the titles won't be well placed.

I just checked and it was the same on Spooks.

 

[Mike Ballew]

Ed, I wonder whether the people in charge of titling at Columbia were hostile to 3-D, or simply indifferent and careless. You may have noticed that the background art for Man in the Dark is likewise psuedoscopic (that is, switched left for right), and the zooming titles are out of sync.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

I think every Golden Age 3-D title from Columbia - features and shorts - has this problem.(Maybe not SADIE, I can't recall.)

We can fix it if they have textless left/right elements but I'm not optimistic we will be given that opportunity.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

BTW Bob I hope you're doing something, ANYTHING to reverse the discontinuation of 3D-capable displays.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

It's out of my hands (I shared the petition) but we're battling it the best way we can; by prepping more vintage 3-D for Blu-ray release!

 

[David Wilkins]

I don't understand why 3D capable hardware is dying so quickly across the board. I haven't seriously shopped for a TV for a couple of years, but at that time it looked like 3D would be a standard feature, like trying to buy a cell phone that DIDN'T have a camera. I recently shopped for and bought an LG 4K OLED display, and went out of my way to make sure it was 3D capable in support of my 3D Blu-ray library. The market sure as hell is chasing 4K, so you'd think they'd continue with a feature that seemed near standard equipment not too long ago. There seem to be about as many 3D features at theaters, so I don't understand why the "suddenly" repellant response to 3D at home.

But…honestly, I do understand why there's hesitation in spending significant money to convert older 2D titles to 3D, with the much harder to achieve parity with newer productions.

 

[SFMike]

I don't understand why 3D capable hardware is dying so quickly across the board. The market sure as hell is chasing 4K, so you'd think they'd continue with a feature that seemed near standard equipment not too long ago. There seem to be about as many 3D features at theaters, so I don't understand why the "suddenly" repellant response to 3D at home.

It's all about corporate profit. 3DTV wasn't selling well, which isn't surprising because the manufactures and retailors weren't marketing them at all for the last three years. So just save very little money on production of a feature that you hardly acknowledge to put into 4K which isn't as big a step visually in my opinion. It's all corporate BS and another indication that corporations no longer care about customer satisfaction or loyalty.

 

[Mike Ballew]

A friend of mine has suggested that an additional, unspoken reason behind LG's decision might be a patent dispute. Seems LG licenses some key aspect of its 3-D technology from a company in Japan, Arisawa Manufacturing.

http://www.arisawa.co.jp/en/products/3d01.html

 

[Interdimensional]

Ed, I wonder whether the people in charge of titling at Columbia were hostile to 3-D, or simply indifferent and careless. You may have noticed that the background art for Man in the Dark is likewise psuedoscopic (that is, switched left for right), and the zooming titles are out of sync.

It may well have been sloppiness, or carelessness. It just seems a bit of a coincidence that it happened so much. Maybe someone had a habit of getting their left and their right mixed up, or maybe people were just bad at labeling film. I didn't notice this in any other scenes in the body of the films, although it would've been an easier fix.

I think every Golden Age 3-D title from Columbia - features and shorts - has this problem.(Maybe not SADIE, I can't recall.)

We can fix it if they have textless left/right elements but I'm not optimistic we will be given that opportunity.

Don't know if it's representative of the original, bt Sadie doesn't have this problem on the Twilight Time release. Although the background images for those were set well back from the text.

If the background image for Spooks! were in correct 3D, objects in the foreground would conflict with the titles. To repost your image from elsewhere, the bat would be in front of the letters rather than behind. The obvious solution would be to push the letters further forward, if not out of the screen, 80s style. One theory is that perhaps they wanted to keep titles on the screen plane with the titles of one image perfectly overlapping the other to enable projector alignment similar to the flat titles of Gog. But that's just baseless speculation on my part.

At any rate, we notice this stuff, but ultimately it's no great significance. When it happens in the context of the film, it can be far more detrimental.

 

[Interdimensional]

But…honestly, I do understand why there's hesitation in spending significant money to convert older 2D titles to 3D, with the much harder to achieve parity with newer productions.

It's an insignificant amount of money compared to what it costs to do an actual 3-D conversion, as happens every year for numerous flops and blockbusters. What is regularly spent on just one of these conversions would cover the costs of scanning and digitizing a significant portion of the Golden Age and other historic 3-D films that currently languish in vaults inaccessible to audiences.

With these vintage 3-D films, they're not being 'converted' to 3D, so much as being transferred from analog film 3D to digital 3D. And somehow they regularly put modern productions to shame.

 

[StephenDH]

It's an insignificant amount of money compared to what it costs to do an actual 3-D conversion, as happens every year for numerous flops and blockbusters. What is regularly spent on just one of these conversions would cover the costs of scanning and digitizing a significant portion of the Golden Age and other historic 3-D films that currently languish in vaults inaccessible to audiences.

With these vintage 3-D films, they're not being 'converted' to 3D, so much as being transferred from analog film 3D to digital 3D. And somehow they regularly put modern productions to shame.

This because the vintage movies were made to get the best from the 3D process in every single shot rather than add the process to a movie that neither needs it nor was intended for it.
Modern 3D seems to be intended to prevent piracy via cameras in the cinema and/or a feeble excuse overcharging.
Whether or not it's an improvement to the movie itself seems to be way down the list on considerations.
Even some modern native 3D movies make me wonder why they bothered.
Directors who hand their movie over to a post-production company to convert it into 3D clearly aren't too bothered about the results. Jack Arnold would be ashamed of them.

 

[RolandL]

And we're busier than ever. But sometimes it's one step forward and two back.

I recently got the green light from someone that we've worked with in the past to license and release a very rare Golden Age title. I pulled favors and secured a deal with the studio that owns the copyright to access left/right elements and we were going to include a rare short as well. Everything was in order and ready to go.

I just got an e-mail from the distributor that he's changed his mind and does not want to release it. I don't want to go into details but to say this is frustrating and disappointing is an understatement. The same exact situtation happened with MONEY FROM HOME last year.

Unlike Greg and myself, some people are motivated purely by profit and if they don't feel they're going to make enough to justify their participation, they pull the plug.

In short: any release of a vintage 3-D film on Blu-ray is cause for celebration!

3D is not available on any 2017 TV sets. Now is the time for all distributors to release there 3D titles. If they wait any longer, there will be less of a demand.

 

[RolandL]

I think every Golden Age 3-D title from Columbia - features and shorts - has this problem.(Maybe not SADIE, I can't recall.)

We can fix it if they have textless left/right elements but I'm not optimistic we will be given that opportunity.

Just watched Sadie Thompson and the opening titles do pop out of the screen a bit and no problems with the background 3D.

 

[gazadams]

Love all these 3d films ! Please keep the Vintage ones coming Bob

 

[Bob Furmanek]

We're doing the best we can and have many Golden Age titles in the pipeline.

That being said, if they don't move enough units then distributors will pull the plug. If a title we release is not your cup of tea (The Stewardesses, A*P*E, September Storm, Those Redheads from Seattle, etc) I would still encourage aficionados to support them in order to insure that more vintage titles are released on 3-D Blu-ray.

It's now or never!

 

[Douglas R]

3D is not available on any 2017 TV sets.

Is that true? LG may not be manufacturing OLED sets with 3D but their website in the U.K. for example lists around 40 3D sets. I'm sure they are not about to pull the plug on all of those this year.