Samsung launched their 3-D television sets this week in New York. Sony, Panasonic and LG all have advanced plans to bring 3-D sets to our homes and, as I blogged recently, Sky is pushing forward with an ambitious 3-D offering. Despite the Academy's snub to Avatar last Sunday, it's time to get a little more clued-up about 3D films and television as well as their precursors in stereo photography and the like. My aim here today is just to start a page of essential links that I can add to from time to time, building up a resource that hopefully will prove useful as we explore the third dimension both as viewers and, with luck, as producers. I would welcome pointers to other articles via the Comments below (although you'll have to be imaginative about urls, as the essential anti-spam measures mean you can't post them directly).
Essential reading
• Third way: the rise of 3-D
Anthony Lane's essay for The New Yorker about 3-D and the movies is just about the best place to start.
• The illustrated 3D movie list
Extensive listing, with links to trailers where appropriate, of 3-D films from 1915 to 2011.
• Coming at you! 3-D studies
Great page of links from Film Studies for Free.
• Introducing Sky 3-D
Micro-site about Sky's plans, now including videos from the launch I blogged in February.
History
• 'You see them WITH glasses!'... A short history of 3-D movies
Very thorough historical overview.
• 'The stereoscope and the stereograph', Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859
Extract from Holmes' pioneering essay about stereoscopy, the full text of which from The Atlantic Monthly is available here.
• Stereoscopy
from Wikipedia, strong on tech-y stuff, with a good list of further links.
• 3D film
Another valuable Wikipedia article, particularly good on the history of 3-D features.
Critical studies
• Bwana Beowulf
Thoughtful dialogue from December 2007 about 3-D films between Kristin Thompson (broadly pro-) and David Bordwell (largely anti-) with an excellent historical understanding.
• Has 3D already failed?
Further thoughts from Kristin Thompson in August 2009, with a good analysis of the industry's understanding at that point.
• Avatar, the French New Wave and the morality of deep-focus (in 3-D)
Enormously rich article by Jim Emerson, with an engrossing sequence of comments.
There's more to come, but for the moment, let's close with an exchange from the dialogue between film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Bwana Beowulf (also linked above), 7 December 2007. Ah! The pleasures of hindsight.
Kristin Thompson: Eventually somebody -- James Cameron or Peter Jackson, perhaps -- will make the first great 3D film, and then maybe the passion will spread.
David Bordwell: I’m doubtful that there will ever be a great 3-D film, and especially from those directors.
Image: The audience at the Paramount Theater, Hollywood, attending the first night of Bwana Devil, 1952, the first full-length colour 3D feature film. Detail of a photograph by J R Eyerman, courtesy of the LIFE archive hosted by Google; © Time Inc.