Mike Jordan
The last thing I watched in 3D was the programme that Channel 4 put on with stuff from the Coronation. It was however re-mastered in blue and yellow and special cardboard glasses were available via Sainsburys.
Quite interesting although all the bits in between from the studio were of course in 2D so we were constantly told to “put your glasses on” or “now take your glasses off”.
Some years ago when Sky tried 3D golf, I went into their MCR (courtesy of engineer who used to be a TA in London Switching Centre) to watch.
It was a disaster as all shots with crowds looked like a flat Teletubbies and no chance of doing classic “ball in hole” shots as one’s eyes just gave up.
I believe that [Sky] also had 2 scanners/mixes for football later before they consigned 3D to the bin (again!).
I went to an AP open day when Ravensbourne were showing off their 2 camera system but again that bit the dust. [It] was clever, though, as [it] had to have one camera vertical with a mirror to enable correct eye/lens spacing.
Paul Thackray
The camera above with a mirror was fine until you needed a prompt as well!
You can just use 1 of the 2 cameras for the monoscopic version , unfortunately the cutting needs to be different (3D needs to be much longer shots and slower overall than a normal 2D).
3D will only ever work for big events and films at a cinema.
(I did a Noel Edmonds game show for Sky in 3D – in TC1. He is even more annoying in 3D)
Graeme Wall
I did the 3D training course at Sony and they had clips from Sky sports coverage on both golf and soccer. Very impressive on the wide shots but the close shots were only 2D as it is not physically possible to mount two 100:1 zooms close enough together to make it work.
Terry Meadowcroft
I’ve never considered stereo 3D a gimmick, as, sadly, many do. We live our lives in stereo 3D. Seems such a pity to waste the second eye and ear (smiley face) ! I really appreciate being born with 2 ears and 2 eyes, and living in a stereo 3D world, and ending up with a great big 4k 3D telly, (and of course a great surround system!)
As a Sound Recordist by trade, (BBC for 12 years then YTV for 20 then freelance for another 12), I’ve been sticking personal mics in my ears to record my diaries in binaural ‘surround’ since I ‘discovered’ the technique a long time ago, and was amazed by the involvement it produces!
In 2003 I was recordist on a documentary series “O’Shea’s Big Adventure” (Ch.4 and Animal Planet) in stereo, and they then specified Dolby Surround for the rest of the series.
So I designed and put together a ‘mid-side-mid’ surround microphone-array-on-a-pole. The array fitted (just) inside a Rycote windshield, using Sennheiser MKH406 (forward cardioid), MKH405 (rearward cardioid) and MKH30 (side Fig-of-8) mics. No room for two 406s end to end, so the older, shorter, 405 chose itself. All great mics..
My chosen recording machine was a Deva 4, digital 4-chanel mixer/recorder, recording onto its internal 3.5″ removable hard disk drive – the only 4-channel recorder I could find for over-the shoulder docos. at that time!
A mono (SQN4) mixer shared the bag with this, and did a mono active (and how!) pre-mix of the 3 talents’ personal mics.
This mix went to recorder channel 1; the surround mic array on a pole went to channels 2, 3, and 4 (levels pre-set). It was quite a bagful, along with 3 UHF radio mic receivers and two VHF radio mic transmitters (backup sound to the camera); and when I say that the Cameraman was tall with very long legs, and I am not blessed with either of those features, you can imagine………it was fun!
But the wonderful surround result rewarded the effort.
Pat Heigham
As a freelance recordist, I worked for most of the channels, mostly because Tom Hawkins – Film Ops manager – seemed to have a chequered career, and was constantly moving from one production company to another. I’m sure you must have known him at YTV…
However, I had one job for YTV, which I now regard as a total disaster.
Booked by a cameraman I knew from Thames, it was a doco following three polo playing sisters “The Three Graces”. Cameraman told me that stereo had been asked for. I spoke to the editors at YTV, to ascertain delivery format and they were adamant that A/B stereo (“spaced pair”) was wanted. I should have ignored that and done it M-S (Mid-Side), as one sequence was shot at Smith’s Lawn, Windsor, right under the Heathrow flight path. With discontinuous I/V shooting, it was obvious that the background would not cut together. I never heard anything directly from YTV, but the cameraman never used me again.
Terry Meadowcroft
I am sorry to say that the Head of The Film Sound department at YTV was a taxi-driver who joined YTV through the post-boy route as so many YTV technical staff did. Nice guy, short of training.
He didn’t understand stereo, and dragged me into the canteen and gave me a great rattling for recording sound in stereo, saying that if I presented him with stereo sound , the first thing he would do was to ‘knock it down to mono’.
Imagine the fun I had with him when I suggested using originating ‘Jimmy’s’ in MS to avoid the centre voice waving about from left to right when the two tracks dropped out independently. Recorded in MS, the independent two channel dropout was totally un-noticeable when the MS rushes were converted back to left-right!
That was the nice thing about recording in MS; when converted back to L-R, both L R channels would always have suffered quality distortions equally. No positional wavering about!
Alan Taylor
I’ve never been comfortable with stereoscopic photography being referred to as 3D and it was especially so with the 3D television service.
The fundamental problem for me is that the depth illusion is only there in the side to side plane and there is nothing in the vertical plane. I worked on quite a lot of 3D TV shows and observed the pictures in all sorts of circumstance, but was never happy with what I saw. If you move your head from side to side, you can peep round objects to a certain extent, but if you move your head up and down, there is no way you can peep over or under what is shown. “Stereoscopic” is the correct term when two images are used to create a depth illusion, but it’s not 3D. The most you can reasonably hope to call it might be 2.5D, but not 3D. The real world is seen in 3D and includes the vertical plane.
