Its centrepiece is The Queen in 3D, a two-part treasure trove for everyone who’s ever dreamed of seeing young Queen Liz emerge from their TV sets like a more benign version of the ghoul from Ringu. Described by Channel 4 commissioning editor David Glover as “the nearest thing to time travel that I have ever experienced”, the programmes feature hitherto unseen 3D footage of the Queen during her coronation year. Filmed by two young British cameramen, Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster, for a proposed Technicolor newsreel called Royal Review, it chronicles events in the Queen’s itinerary during the six weeks either side of the coronation.
The programmes are presented by the octogenarian Angell and Wooster themselves, who are on hand to tell us about the making of the film and also when to pop on our 3D glasses.
As to why it was never originally released, they explain that, because the complicated 3D process took so long to perfect in those days, they felt they’d missed their moment following the widespread release of 2D newsreels of the coronation.
So where has the film been for the past 56 years? That’s something of a mystery, although Alan Hayling, the editorial director of Renegade Films, who produced The Queen in 3D, discovered it in the British Film Institute’s archive.
“The BFI have got a letter from the early 1960s from Dixons, the electrical store, passing it to them,” he reveals. “Dixons say, ‘We give you this film for your safekeeping for the national archives.’ what we don’t understand is why Dixons had it at all. Anyway, it lay in the BFI archive, like many treasures there.
Part one of The Queen in 3D is followed tomorrow night by Derren Brown Presents The 3D Magic Spectacular, in which the vulpine mentalist invites some of Britain’s leading magicians to perform in three dimensions. He’ll also be showing archive footage of some of the world’s greatest magic tricks. The programme has been kept under wraps, but I can almost guarantee that it will feature at least one example of juggling pins flying towards the screen. otherwise what’s the point?
As well as a rare 3D screening of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein, on Tuesday, you can also savour some of the more notable examples of 3D cinema, TV and music video in Greatest ever 3D Moments on Saturday. It may be just another one of those countdown clip shows, but when else will you get the chance to view 3D snippets of Creature From The Black Lagoon, the hilariously bad Jaws 3D and the indescribably awful 1993 Children in need special, Dimensions in Time, in which the casts of Doctor who and EastEnders collide in a catastrophic orgy of self-indulgence?
According to the programme’s executive producer, Stephen McGinn, the countdown will concentrate on popular 3D footage produced in the past 60 years. “It’s a curious thing with 3D,” he says. “People aren’t that familiar with the history of it.” It’s certainly true that most assume it to be a relatively modern innovation. yet 3D technology has actually been around for almost as long as cinema itself, with the first patent filed as far back as the late 1890s.
Nevertheless, the first commercial 3D feature film wasn’t produced until 1922. Although it has since been lost, it was the first film to utilise the dual-strip anaglyph technique – requiring those 3D glasses – which would be used for decades to come. however, given the complicated technical requirements of shooting and projecting 3D films, the technique was used sparingly during the next 30 years.
3D finally came into its own in the early 1950s, when box-office sales were suffering against the rising tide of television. Desperate to lure audiences out of their living rooms and back into cinemas, the industry seized upon 3D as a way of giving audiences the sort of spectacle they could never experience at home.
3D-mania didn’t last long, however, thanks in part to ongoing confusion in cinema projection rooms. “3D was quite technically difficult to project, because you had to use two projectors firing at the left eye and the right eye simultaneously,” explains McGinn.
“When you’re projecting in 2D you have two projectors and two reels lined up so they can seamlessly be changed over. But with 3D movies, they were running both projectors simultaneously, so they always had to have an intermission to change the reels.” some 3D movies even contained inbuilt intermissions to accommodate the changeover. But if, as so often happened, the two reels weren’t aligned properly, the 3D effects would be ruined, and members of the audience would leave the cinema with a migraine.
Hollywood didn’t exploit 3D again until it faced another threat, this time from the increasing popularity of home video in the early 1980s. a slew of 3D films, including Friday The 13th part III, which you can see on Friday, got bums on seats despite their wretchedness. But again it wasn’t to last.
Nevertheless, 3D recently entered its third successful cycle, thanks to the popularity of IMAX spectaculars such as Monsters Vs Aliens and up. Developments in computer animation and digital projection mean it is now easier to create 3D images than ever before. With films such as James Cameron’s much-anticipated Avatar, Hollywood continues to tempt audiences with the kind of uniquely immersive experience that only 3D cinema can provide.
So why has it endured after all this time? “It still has a fabulous novelty to it,” says McGinn. “It’s still very enjoyable to pop on the glasses. there is still an awful lot of entertainment to get out of that. But you can’t just rely on the 3D to entertain you. It’s got to be more than that. Movies like up are providing 3D and quality entertainment as well.”
Channel 4’s 3D week begins tomorrow with The Queen in 3D and Derren Brown’s 3D Spectacular. See TV listings for more details. 3D glasses are available from Sainsbury’s
This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 15/11/09
Recent Comments