Inside the 3-D cinema experience at U-M
You’re seated in the movie theater, wearing a pair of battery-powered LCD lenses that look almost like sunglasses. The film begins. The credits roll, garish yellow block letters styled to look like melting wax. And because this is a 3-D film (Vincent Price’s 1953 horror hit House of Wax, to be exact), you are about to be fully immersed in the hair-raising tale. You can almost feel the damp gloom of the turn-of-the-century New York City street as a wisp of fog floats off the screen and over the heads of those gathered here in the close dark of the theater space. You begin to forget about the theater itself as the opening scene takes you inside Professor Henry Jarrod’s wax museum. It is full of countless wax representations of historical people, sculptures that he says he has lovingly created with his own hands–Cleopatra, John Wilkes Booth, Marie Antoinette–down to the last hair on their heads.
Jarrod’s business partner Matthew Burke, also in the scene, does not share Jarrod’s reverent approach to history, however. In an unsettling series of inciting events, tension between these two characters mounts. They disagree about what sorts of exhibits should be shown. Burke says they would make more money if they “sensationalize” the exhibits a bit more. Jarrod disagrees. Deciding he can make more money from an insurance payout than Jarrod’s boring historical sculptures, Burke decides to burn the wax museum down.
A physical fight between the two ensues as Jarrod panics and tries to stop Burke, to no avail. The struggle–and the flames–mount after Burke sets fire to a few sculptures in quick succession. In an attempt to immobilize Jarrod, Burke throws a chair, and then a medieval axe. These fly past your head, causing you to flinch. Jarrod’s prized waxen “friends” (as he calls them) go up in the blaze, their faces melting grotesquely, seemingly all around you. You feel as trapped and powerless as Jarrod in the scene as you watch. And, perhaps most importantly, you notice that you are fully invested in the macabre revenge story that follows.
The new course
The theater experience that has just been described is just one of the powerful learning experiences that Professor Matthew Solomon’s FTVM 460 (3-D Cinema) class has had so far this semester in a brand-new course that has been made possible by a new 3-D projection installation in 1105 North Quad. Although Solomon has been using 3-D films to some extent in his courses for at least the past 12 years, this is the first time the Department of Film, Television, and Media (FTVM) has offered a 3-D cinema course taught entirely in 3-D. The Innovate newsletter team was lucky enough to visit the class this semester to see 3-D in action, as well as speak to several of the people who are currently benefitting from the space.
Solomon, a professor of film studies at the University of Michigan since 2011, has been the driving academic force behind 3-D innovations on campus. A large team of LSA Technology Services staff has also assisted him along the way as this vision has been brought to life.
The academic need
There are key differences between 2-D and 3-D film representations that can help us understand why 3-D specifically needs to be studied in academic spaces. Paul Klein, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who is auditing the new course, explains that “3-D cinema has an added sense of dimensionality and an additional set of cinematic effects to draw on in order to bring out audience response. You don't get the sense of depth or the feeling of immersion that 3-D cinema produces simply by watching the film in a 2-D, or flat, presentation.”
Klein, who studies film exhibition specifically, is engaged in research examining the impact of space and technology on film culture. He believes that “...3-D cinema [is] particularly compelling because it cannot be fully experienced and understood without specific spaces and technologies. You need a 3-D-capable projector and glasses to see a 3-D film as it was photographed and as audiences originally saw it.”
The evolution of 3-D in FTVM
But 3-D viewing was not always so accessible in the College of LSA. Despite the fact that Professor Solomon has used 3-D in his teaching for many years, it was previously much more logistically challenging to access these films for viewing and project-based learning.
The Innovate newsletter team spoke with Jan Stewart, Lead Academic Technology Strategist for LSA Technology Services, who has been around since the birth of 3-D on campus, to get an understanding of how it progressed over time. He explained that, in the early days of 3-D in FTVM classes, Monika Dressler (LSA Technology Services, Director of Academic Technology Services) would periodically pay to rent out the Michigan Theater on Liberty Street for 3-D showings for Professor Solomon’s classes.
Over the years, different technologies were also used to aid learning about 3-D. These included the classic anaglyph (blue and red lens) glasses and eventually VR headsets, which students were able to use for viewing 3-D films in class as well as to facilitate projects. VR headsets were introduced on campus about three years ago.
However, these approaches tended to feel more like workarounds than a permanent solution. Anaglyph glasses, although low in cost, tend to result in a lower-resolution viewing experience, and they often have poorer color representation when compared to other technologies. Additionally, Stewart explained, VR headsets are a less-than-ideal way to view a movie. Due to being consumer products, they are also difficult to maintain in the enterprise environment. So around this time, discussions began with Karl Aldag, Engineering and Design Manager for LSA Technology Services, to set up a projection system that might solve these challenges.
Shutter glasses: The 3-D solution
Chris Elly, an LSA Technology Services Engineer, took point in researching what it might take to achieve a quality 3-D viewing experience in the most cost-effective way. Although several possible paths were considered, the solution ended up being found in shutter glasses, also called “active glasses” due to the battery-powered LCD lenses that darken, or “shutter,” each eye in alternating fashion. The 3-D film is projected, and an infrared sync light sends out a synchronizing pulse to the glasses, which are worn by everyone viewing the film. The synchronizing pulse causes the glasses to alternate darkening each eye perfectly in sync with the projector, which also alternates showing either the right- or left-eye image depending on which eye is able to see in that specific micro-moment. This process happens very quickly, 30 times a second. The shutter effect is not at all perceptible to viewers, who only notice the spectacular 3-D.
To execute 3-D successfully, Kirk Scarborough, LSA Technology Services Project Engineer, spearheaded the main installation and programming of the 2-D podium in the front of the room and the 3-D booth in the rear of the room. The room can easily switch back and forth between these projection sources so that the room can also function as a normal classroom. There are LSA Technology Services staff on hand to ensure everything works seamlessly, and Frank Uhle is the LSA Technology Services technician who runs operations for the course.
Klein described the quality of the new theater as superior: “The new space…has an incredible presentation in terms of technical quality and fidelity. It offers crisp images, great sight lines, and surround sound. I’ve truly never experienced a traditional classroom space with a better set-up for viewing movies… To properly study 3-D, you really do have to watch movies the way they were meant to be seen: exhibited fleetingly, and with other people in a dark room.”
A community effort
Professor Solomon highlighted just how many different University of Michigan groups have cooperated to make this vibrant learning experience possible: LSA FTVM, the Donald Hall Collection, LSA Technology Services, Duderstadt Center Emerging Technologies Group, the Special Collections Research Center, and the Clements Library. According to Solomon, “...the course has provided a concrete opportunity for different units to collaborate and work together to achieve the common goal of offering a truly innovative, one-of-a-kind, unlike-any-other-anywhere course for U-M students.”
Stewart, for his part, described his role in bringing the film theater to North Quad as “project owner or sponsor.” In his words, he “[brought] the right people together, [feeding] them the…things they [needed] to do to make it all work.”
The learning and research impact of 3-D
The course, now underway, is in its first semester. Professor Solomon explained that the course has received overwhelming positive feedback from current students. They are extremely engaged in the learning, and one student even plans to propose an FTVM honors thesis on 3-D.
Of course, there are also benefits to research. Klein reports that his research into film culture is already being helped immensely by the availability of the new 3-D theater. He shared that without the new space, he would be limited to watching 3-D films in their 2-D versions, which is not ideal, or seeing 3-D films whenever they may happen to be shown by commercial cinemas. He said that he hopes to make extensive research-related use of this space over the next few years.
Klein also says, “My big [research] question is, ‘Why do we go to the movies?’ Sure, it can be to see a story, or to identify with characters. We can go to be scared during a horror film, or to cry during a drama. But we also go because we enjoy going to the movies as an act itself, to sit in that space, and to revel in their artifice and their effects.”
