how to stereo

the Apple logo and its inferred depth or disparity map

Most of film culture has been built around monocular capture and reproduction. 

A single camera lens produces a flat image.

The flatness of the image has led to significant, lasting conventions in terms of blocking lighting, camera movement, etc. 

Of course, cinema borrows from painting, which in turn contains key developments in abstraction, narrative, etc.

Stereoscopic films appear to have a much narrower culture. 

Despite having the means to produce stereoscopic images for nearly 200 years, a lack of tools to reproduce or display them has severely stunted the growth of the art form. 

Assuming that 400,000 films have been released commercially in the last century, a similarly gross estimate of 1,000 3D films means they represent a quarter of one percent (0.25%) of all movies made.

While one could argue that only 0.25% of all monocular movies are masterpieces, their greatness is predicated on the sheer number of experiments made in that mode. 

The staggering paucity of stereoscopic output all but guarantees a relative lack of technical know-how, audience feedback and thus commercial success. 

And yet humans have enjoyed stereoscopic vision for some millions of years. 

If we want to advance stereoscopic art as quickly as possible we must not only absorb all stereoscopic filmmaking know-how to date but also infer stereoscopic desires implicit in monoscopic art. 

For example:

What we have here is a failure to communicate…

The protagonist of this monoscopic photograph has been made giant in contrast to his powerlessness. The three figures in the background, made small and flat by the lighting and lensing, are his supposed overlords. This “flat” image thus conveys two contrasting if not contradictory messages; it is thus rich with irony or paradox.

Is it easy to imagine a stereoscopic equivalent of this image precisely because it is already rich in spatial meaning.

Yet, because of the financial constraints of filmmaking, such compositions are relatively rare. 

In their stead, most performances are staged flat:

Here, irony is achieved via production design, as one of the three figures is very much not like the other. 

While delightful, this image has less to say to a stereoscopic filmmaker. 

Again, for financial or material reasons, such flat presentations are the norm in monoscopic film, which means the “knowledge set” available to would-be stereoscopic filmmakers is narrower than the 400,000 titles cited earlier.

Fortunately, the millions of years of human vision have left their mark on human culture in other forms.

Theater

The dominance of the Greek tradition in our society belies the fact that we have no record of the vast majority of “plays” performed by humanity. 

But that deficit (in possible points of view) appears dramatically different once we take a closer look at what staging means. 

Here I mean not only the performances that we in 21st century America would recognize as such, but all of the occasions when human bodies are organized in space in order to create meaning; e.g., parades, coronations, weddings, burials, battles, etc. 

The arrangement of bodies in space is a production of points of view: that of the lord, that of the subject, the insider, the outsider, etc. 

By studying the history of spaces (architecture, the meaning of places) the stereoscopic filmmaker can access a tremendous amount of spatial knowledge. 

To put this in more practical—if speculative—terms: 

What the frame was to the monoscopic camera, the building could be to the stereoscopic.