(2005-11-07) Chicken Little 3D

Saw Chicken Little in "Disney Digital 3-D" (by Real D). Wow, amazing step for the Film Industry. Too bad the story was thin. All true 3D films require having a double image--one frame for the right eye and a slightly different frame for the left--in order to create the illusion of depth. Old 3D films typically did this with two projectors. The new generation of digital projectors do it with just one machine, alternating rapidly between images meant to be seen by the right and left eyes. The Real D technology used in the Chicken Little film shows 144 frames per second, for example. In the case of "Chicken Little," the alternating left eye, right-eye images are projected with polarized light--essentially meaning that the light waves carrying each image are lined up in an orderly fashion, but each side is lined up in a slightly different way. The green 3D glasses I'm wearing have polarized lenses, so that each side lets in only the images that are meant for that eye. Using the Real D technology, the projector shows 144 back-and-forth frames per second, half of which are seen by each eye.