3D Meet Bob Furmanek: HTF Golden Age 3-D Consultant (9 Viewers)

[RolandL]

Roland,

Your memory is correct. There is pop-out, but I suppose I was so turned off by the film, it didn't phase me.

BTW, Experiments in Love gives a great homage to classic 3D releases. I noticed several posters on the wall in the "sex lab"

Interesting ad below from 1969. $5 to see the movie and did play for three months (maybe more) at this theatre in LA. I can find ads from 1969 to 1972 for this title in newspapers.

 

[SFMike]

Just finished watching THE STEWARDESSES.
What a god-awful film. Probably the worst film I have ever seen.

Thanks Ron somebody had to say it. I refrained because I'm negative enough on this thread and didn't want to add to my reputation. This mess of a film is a real untalented soft core money grab done by clueless amateurs. That it made so much money shows the power of 3D and boob shots to bring in the suckers. I only bought it to support Blu-ray 3D in it's final gasps before the industry kicks it totally to the curb for 4K. The bad news is APE is coming giving The Stewardesses a run for the money as worst 3D movie ever. I made better films than these in my basement while in junior high school.

Thanks for your unvarnished opinion.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Thanks Ron somebody had to say it. I refrained because I'm negative enough on this thread and didn't want to add to my reputation. This mess of a film is a real untalented soft core money grab done by clueless amateurs. That it made so much money shows the power of 3D and boob shots to bring in the suckers. I only bought it to support Blu-ray 3D in it's final gasps before the industry kicks it totally to the curb for 4K. The bad news is APE is coming giving The Stewardesses a run for the money as worst 3D movie ever. I made better films than these in my basement while in junior high school.

Thanks for your unvarnished opinion.

Isn't APE one of those "it's so bad it's good" movies?

 

[SAM33]

I'm hoping so as I've never seen it...

As to STEWARDESSES, this is the one "vintage" 3D Blu I didn't bite on for all that's been stated above.
I did in fact see this when I was in college, but have little memory of it to be honest, just that I wasn't impressed.

Most likely my recall impairment was caused by a few beers, and I do now regret that for some things I first saw at the old flea-pit I went to on campus those bygone days, but in this case it may be a mercy.

I'm not a prude and do find some amusement in FRANKENSTEIN (although less as an "adult" than as a callow youth), and would certainly sign on for a restoration of it, but this, sorry, I just can't...

S A M 33

 

[Bob Furmanek]

THE STEWARDESSES is now on sale at Amazon for $15.99.

Hurry, hurry!

Oh, the "widescreen" version was the flat release. They basically cropped the hell out of it. All 3-D screenings - include the 70mm blow-up - were 1.37:1.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

IIRC, this was one Chris Condon's single strip experiments, where the 3D prints were produced in side-by-side anamorphic and "unsqueezed" in projection, meaning the end result would be two roughly 1.37:1 frames packed on each frame of the print. Am I mistaken?

 

[RolandL]

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.

This article says:

"Now, having seen that determined complaint can make LG listen, some fans of the brand’s 4K TVs are once again working to push the company into fixing another major issue that these TV buyers have. Namely, LG’s decision to exclude 3D technology of any kind from its 2017 lineups of OLED and Super UHD LCD TVs"

and

"As for LG’s response, according to Forbes reporter John Archer, who contacted company representatives about the petititon and 3D support for a 2018 OLED TV, the answer was less than favorable for fans of LG 3D. The company claimed that it decided to forego 3D support in favor of much more widely popular and thus arguably more important technologies like HDR."

 

[Quatermass II]

This seemingly indecent haste to get rid of 3D is quite depressing. Taking away a technological feature seems like a backward step - a bit like making Blu ray players that won't play DVDs or CDs. I don't know about manufacturing costs, but now the technology for 3D TV exists, does it really cost that much more to include it as standard, compared to 4K.? Can the two features not exist side by side, I wonder.
We were steered away from vinyl records, but at least they kept making the turntables (sadly not so for cassette and 8-track cartridge, unfortunately) and now they're coming back, apparently, so what do they really know?
I understand that technology evolves and improves - like Laserdisc to DVD for example, making the older system less attractive; but the films that were available on Laserdisc eventually became available in the new formats, so no problem.
4K Ultra HD is not 3D by any stretch of the imagination, so how do they expect us to play our 3D Blu rays when the last 3D TV disappears? I'm also not convinced the the take up of 4K is as great or as rapid as they would have us believe - and curved screens are a pointless gimmick, in my opinion.
I'm sorry if this post is a bit of a ramble verging on a rant, but I just find it completely baffling that a brilliantly effective feature can be snatched away, purely to make way for The Next Big Thing.
Yes, I'm going to take my tablets, now...

 

[Ronald Epstein]

4k may be the next big thing, but will it survive?

We have numerous discussions in the Blu-ray area right now about Sony's announcement of the rapid decline of the Blu-ray and DVD format.

What chance has 4k in surviving -- especially when broadcasters still have not adopted it?

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I own a grand total of 2(!) UHD BD titles, which I bought for the following reasons:
1. The Deadpool UHD BD was not much more than the BD version, and is held up as an excellent exploitation of HDR
2. The Ghostbusters (2016) UHD BD is the ONLY way to get the 3D version
I am still very much on the fence about 4K. FWIW, I have well over 100 3D BD titles, and am seriously considering LG's short throw LED projector, the PF1000U, before investing in ANY 4K equipment. 3D is simply higher priority for me, and I'm really starting to notice the limitations of my Panny 3D plasma.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This seemingly indecent haste to get rid of 3D is quite depressing. Taking away a technological feature seems like a backward step - a bit like making Blu ray players that won't play DVDs or CDs. I don't know about manufacturing costs, but now the technology for 3D TV exists, does it really cost that much more to include it as standard, compared to 4K.? Can the two features not exist side by side, I wonder.

They absolutely could, and the 3D quality in the 2016 models of LG has been highly praised. They think people aren't using it, therefore they don't want to put the effort in. Some people have cited as a possible reason for removing it that the filters in the TV to create the polarized effect reduce overall light output, so by removing that filter, they can get even more HDR brightness into the set. To me, that might be a somewhat misplaced priority - brightness and the ability to reproduce a wide range of colors and lighting conditions are important, but to me, not at the expense of 50% of the picture (one of the two 3D "eyes" being thrown away).

I think, in terms of technology, that we're also entering an era of forced obsolescence on products. Setting aside BD3D/4K/HD for a moment, I've been an Apple user since 2004, and when I started using Apple, their product line perfectly matched my wants and needs. Since that time, they've stopped supporting optical drives for CD/DVD, never supported BD, eliminated all connections to their MacBook Pro and iDevices that aren't proprietary, etc., etc. When I got my first Mac laptop in 2004, it could do everything I wanted in a Mac and read all of my PC data. Now, if I were to buy a new Mac, I'd need to get all sorts of external drives and adapter cables just to have the functionality that used to be built in. And all of that was for what? To make it a millimeter thinner? An ounce lighter? I'd trade all of that just to be able to use a headphone jack. Doesn't sound that much different than LG eliminating 3D so that it can be a "nit" brighter. There's obviously a lot that new technology can do that old technology can't, and I certainly don't mean to be all "get off my lawn" about this stuff, but I also wonder if the next generation might look back and the things I had in 2004 vs what's available today or ten years from now, and maybe bemoan some of the choice that's been lost. Or maybe they'll be happy with everything as it comes out of the box, who knows.

What chance has 4k in surviving -- especially when broadcasters still have not adopted it?

Most filmmakers aren't using it either. And even when you've got a studio like Disney releasing their big Rogue One movie to theaters in 4K, if you look behind the scenes, you'll discover that all of the effects were done at 2K, so it's not entirely 4K. I'm not saying that to suggest the movie is therefore worthless, or that being partially in 4K doesn't yield a nicer result than not being in 4K at all. But if the filmmakers producing movies for exhibition on the world's largest screens don't feel that they need full 4K, it seems to follow that my living room or bedroom TV doesn't need it either. Heck, broadcasters aren't even at 1080p yet; they're a mix of 1080i and 720p. I think some of this at least is the hardware manufacturers trying to get televisions and display equipment onto an upgrade cycle similar to phones and computers. And I'm not sure that's really appropriate. For almost 100 years, 35mm film was the standard way of exhibiting movies in theaters, and for about 50 years, NTSC video was the standard way of showing movies at home. Now, I'm not saying that technology should forever remain at a standstill. But how is it that the film standard was fine for 100 years, and then in the last ten or fifteen years, we've gone from early digital projectors in theaters that didn't even do full HD to 2K to 4K. At home, in that same period, we've gone from NTSC to 720p/1080i to 1080p to 2K to 4K and now manufacturers are testing 8K. I'm not saying it's all without merit or that there haven't been worthwhile improvements; but it seems that instead of the artistry driving the technology, it's the other way around. I don't think it's sustainable to expect everyone to upgrade their TVs every couple of years, and I don't think the theaters can be expected to upgrade their projectors that often. The manufacturers can double the "K"s on the TV every couple years, but the content is not going to follow that quickly.

It may just be the TVs keep coming out with increased resolution, the way that computer monitors did, but that the broadcast and video standards stop being upgraded as frequently.

But bringing it back to 3D, I look, for example, at something like an Oppo Blu-ray player (or their new UHD player). Besides playing all of the current formats, they're excellent legacy players, which handle discontinued formats like SACD, DVD-A, etc., etc. I think there would be value in at least one television manufacturer having a comparable legacy display which could handle formats that the mainstream displays have phased out.

 

[moviebear1]

THE STEWARDESSES is now on sale at Amazon for $15.99.

Hurry, hurry!

Oh, the "widescreen" version was the flat release. They basically cropped the hell out of it. All 3-D screenings - include the 70mm blow-up - were 1.37:1.

THE STEWARDESSES is now on sale at Amazon for $15.99.

Hurry, hurry!

Oh, the "widescreen" version was the flat release. They basically cropped the hell out of it. All 3-D screenings - include the 70mm blow-up - were 1.37:1.

Wait a minute. Did I read that right? There were 70mm prints of The Stewardesses?

 

[Bob Furmanek]

I've never seen one but yes, there were!

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I've never seen one but yes, there were!

Would the 70mm actually be a blow-up? I know 35mm release prints were anamorphically squeezed, but was it shot that way as well?

 

[SFMike]

I think, in terms of technology, that we're also entering an era of forced obsolescence on products.
I don't think it's sustainable to expect everyone to upgrade their TVs every couple of years, and I don't think the theaters can be expected to upgrade their projectors that often.

Josh, great thoughts on the crazy world of tech marketing. I think it all boils down to the usual culprit of corporate capitalism gone wild where if your company isn't showing an increase in profit each quarter you are considered a failure. This striving for increased profits is a constant struggle and goal of corporations that takes precedence over quality and customer service or satisfaction. They have to create a reason to upgrade every couple years because corporate profits don't rise on a quality product that will last ten years or more. That CEO will be voted out by the investors who could care less about products, quality, happy customers or employees. Bottom line is always the almighty dollar. 3D didn't cut the mustard in raising revenue shares so drop it. The board of directors could care less about customer satisfaction.

 

[TJPC]

Remember Beta VCRs had much better picture and sound than VHS.

 

[Gary16]

Remember Beta VCRs had much better picture and sound than VHS.

That's debatable.

 

[John Hermes]

Remember Beta VCRs had much better picture and sound than VHS.

Once each format went to hi-fi sound they sounded the same.

 

[bob kaplan]

I am still a big fan of 3D and the 50's sci fi/horror works. Do recent "events" kill any hope of seeing THE MAZE or REVENGE OF THE CREATURE on blu ray 3D?.....just a wild guess would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[ahollis]

I am still a big fan of 3D and the 50's sci fi/horror works. Do recent "events" kill any hope of seeing THE MAZE or REVENGE OF THE CREATURE on blu ray 3D?.....just a wild guess would be appreciated. Thanks.

I hope not. I'm a huge fan also and have every 50's and 70's 3D blu-ray issued along with a few present day releases. I want more classic 3D titles and that's why I did purchase The Stewardess and have APE on order.