3D Stereoscopic Movie Craze

Stereoscopic films, more commonly referred to as 3D movies, have been popular since the 1950s, when the "Golden Era" of 3D films took hold of the nation. Recently, this type of movie has seen a surprising resurgence in popularity, with moviegoers flocking to stereoscopic films such as the 2010 movies Avatar and Alice in Wonderland.

In a stereoscopic film, the right side of the movie (usually red in color) is superimposed on the left side (usually a color contrasting the right side). When the film is viewed through glasses with one red lens and one blue lens, a three dimension effect is created and the viewer's depth perception is enhanced. This leads to the feeling of having objects in the film "pop out" at the viewer.

How does this work? The technology behind the stereoscopic film is actually rather simple. Since human eyes are placed several centimeters apart from each other, each eye views a somewhat different image of the world. However, the brain and the eyes work together much like a binocular, so that the differences between the perceptions of the two eyes are cancelled out. In a stereoscopic film, separate cameras record from a slightly different perspective, imitating how each eye sees objects from a slightly different perception. When wearing the specially designed 3D glasses, each of the camera images is separated, thanks to the contrasting colors of the lenses.

Other methods for separating the images of stereoscopic films have been developed. One of the more popular types of 3D glasses feature polarized lenses. Polarized lenses work much the same way that traditional 3D glasses do, except that instead of featuring lenses of contrasting colors, they utilize two lenses with very different polarizations. As in colored 3D glasses, the different polarization of each lens causes each eye to see a different image. Polarized lenses are most commonly used in the popular 3D movies at Disney World and Universal Studios.

So, if 3D movies have been around so long, why are they just now becoming popular again? The answer lies in the recent development of digital 3D, which combines advanced digital technology with new designs of 3D glasses to create an image even more shocking than those seen in traditional 3D films.

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