By Mike Kirsch, Director of DotLot

Trends can be dangerous. The cooler and more obscure a new concept is, the more dangerous it can become. A trend gave us mullets in the 80s. A trend brought us endless examples of bad morphing in the post-T2 world. Trends often cause something that is new and interesting to become tired and old very quickly. 3D film and video is something that has gone in and out of vogue a lot over the years, but it is making a resurgence once again. It can be dangerous to get too excited about kitschy new technologies, because by so doing we risk creating content that becomes comically irrelevant before it even launches. With the knowledge of this danger firmly in mind, it is with curiosity and caution that stereoscopic imagery for the web is worth a look.

As digital cinema proliferates, the production of stereoscopic 3D movies is increasing. Recent releases such as U2 3D and Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert have utilized refined technologies and polarized glasses to make stereoscopic imagery much better as well as more accessible to a wider audience. From a digital creative agency standpoint, this means that 3D is starting to take on a wider presence with potential web clients.

Before we go any further, a definition is in order. “3D” can be a misleading term, since it can refer to several types of images. 3D graphics and animations can be defined as any image that provides the illusion of depth through the use of shading and perspective. Stereoscopic images on the other hand provide a separate image for each eye. With the use of special glasses the brain can combine these images into one picture that has the illusion of multiple planes of depth. Images may appear to break through the screen or disappear into the background.

Maybe the most well known form of stereo viewing is anaglyph, which takes two images and colors them differently; the left eye image is red, the right eye image is blue or cyan. The audience uses red and blue glasses to view the image, which creates an illusion of depth. Anaglyph imagery is probably the most affordable solution where production for the web is concerned. Theoretically, a two camera rig with some special processing in post would allow for the production of stereoscopic video for the web.

The main drawback of anaglyph imagery is that they are composed of overlapping red and cyan images that look blurry if not viewed through special glasses. This means that only users with special anaglyph glasses can watch videos prepared using this process. From a user-end perspective, one solution to this would be to prepare a left or right eye only image with no color treatment for users without glasses. Another challenge is getting glasses into the hands of consumers. This might be achievable with larger clients through the use of direct mail or in-store campaigns, but would be a tough hurdle for many to overcome.

Another 3D process worth noting is Chromadepth, which uses prismatic glasses to separate colors into different planes according to the visible light spectrum. Through this process red will appear in front and blue will fall to the back. The benefit of the Chromadepth system is that images appear normal to the eye without glasses. Design and color palette are affected with this system, though, since images must be composed on dark blue or black backgrounds. This can be quite limiting, but offers an interesting alternative to the anaglyph method.

Creating images with planar depth would help bring a new set of tools to video creation for the online space. It is a concept fraught with problems, but worth exploring. Maybe this new trend of 3D movies will pass quickly and fade away. If the web has taught us anything, though, it’s that true acceptance of any new technology is determined by the web community as a whole and it is only those technologies that are never tried that are destined to fail.

If you have done any stereoscopic projects specifically for the online space, we’d love to hear about them. Please post a comment or send us an email. Over the next few months we’re planning to do some research and testing on this subject. We’d love to include you if you’re interested.