I would put the reels into the viewfinder and watch, as Mickey Mouse and Goofy seemed to come alive before my eyes.

As a child, I vaguely remember trying on the red and blue glasses for the first time and not understanding what the big deal was until I saw Jaws in 3D at the movie theater the next week; I still have a hard time seeing the shark exhibit at the aquarium.

At sixteen, I had the chance to go to Disney World and experience the Muppets in 3D, a mix of 3D and animatronics. Of course my most recent experience with 3D was seeing James Cameron’s AVATAR in the theater, as did about forty million others.

However, when I heard that soon we all could be watching 3D television shows and commercials from the comforts of our living rooms I wanted to find out when and how that was going to be possible. This isn’t your mom and dad’s 3D; this is the future!

Leslie Ekker, Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor of the Commercial division at Zoic Studios has been working with 3D technology for many years.  In fact, Ekker worked with James Cameron on Terminator 2 3D, the ride at Universal Studios.

Ekker worked as the model shop crew chief on the project and supervised the miniatures during the shoot.  With his vast knowledge and experience, Ekker alongside Steve Schofield, Executive Producer and Co-Founder of Zoic Studios, decided to begin a tour around the country to different commercial agencies to educate and inform them about the 3D process.

“There is very little knowledge about Stereo image presentation and Stereo production and we are trying to help educate agencies about what is involved in producing 3D commercials,” says Ekker.  In this first part of my series on 3D, I will give you the I Design Your Eyes readers a glimpse at how 3D technology works and how the commercial world is responding to the technology.

The nationwide tour began in Chicago a few weeks ago with a presentation given to Leo Burnette and Draft FC.  Then, it was onto Minneapolis with Fallon and Carmichael Lynch, then San Francisco with Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Venablesvon.

Zoic partnered with Executive Producer Jan Jacobsen and Director Roger Tonry, co-founders and partners of 3DFilmland.  The group brought a consumer 3D screen with them around the country. The group took the television on the plane and then proceeded to take it in taxis in the cities as they met with the various agencies. I kept thinking it would look something like this:

On November 11, 2010, Zoic takes the tour to NYC at the Crosby Street Hotel.  Doors open at 6:30pm and there will be presentations at 7:00pm and 8:30pm.

For someone like me who has no understanding of how the process of 3D works, I asked Ekker to go into greater detail about how the process of seeing 3D actually works.   “On most 3D or Stereoscopic screens, which is the proper term for it, there are two different systems to allow you to see Stereo on a screen.  What you need to do first to create a Stereo image is to isolate the right eyes image from the left eyes image.

Each eye sees a different image, which is displaced slightly.  This is the way human vision works with the innerocular distance, the distance between the eyes.  That separation can be achieved in a variety of ways, but the most common way is to have a pair of glasses called shutter glasses that alternate their transparency from the right eye to the left eye, right eye to the left eye etc.

They switch back and forth sixty times per second.  An infrared light beam sent from the monitor synchronizes them.  The monitor in synchrony with the glasses, displays the right eye image and the left eye image, right eye image, left eye image etc. on the screen so each eye sees only its designated image.  It’s a very clean way of displaying 3D and it’s considered the best way at the moment to see it with glasses.  The second method we use is polarized.

That is a system where the screen itself has very thin stripes of polarized filter over it that alternates A, B, A, B, one is right eye and one is left eye.  The image is then broken up into stripes that align with those filtered stripes on the surface of the screen so you now wear polarized glasses that block the image of the left eye from the right eye and reverse for the other eye.  That segregates the left eye and right eye and that image, that striped or interlaced image, is displayed at any frame rate.   That is a more straightforward system because you don’t have an infrared beam; you don’t have an electronic pair of glasses.  We used a JVC polarized monitor and it was a pretty discrete filtration where you don’t have a lot of crossover from right eye into left eye.   It was a very slight amount of bleed through the lenses.   That is why it is not considered as good a quality an image as shutter glasses. Shutter glasses completely block the left eyes image from the right eye and vice versa.  With polarized there is a very small amount of leakage because the filtration is not perfect, but it worked very well.  The down side of the polarized system also is you are essentially wearing sunglasses so you have to have a much brighter screen in order to achieve the same sense of brightness.  Your eyes do adjust, but when you get into dark detail it can be a little tricky at times.”

From my research everyone seems to be saying that 3D is the future.  I even talked about it in a post about NASA’s use of 3D in their government film projects, 3D The Final Frontier. However, if the future of 3D is now does that mean we all are going to run out and buy the 3D television sets coming out this Christmas?

That’s right, if for some reason you have been living under a rock, all the major brands will be selling 3D television sets just in time for the holiday season.  However, can even Santa afford the price tag?  Back in March Panasonic said it would be selling a 3D television package for $2899.99, 2499.95 for the TV, $399.95 for a Blu-Ray disc player and $149.95 for a pair of 3D glasses.  A study about consumer attitudes toward 3-D television found many who were less interested in the technology after they actually experienced it.  Still, 52 percent of consumers who tried out 3-D televisions said it was a better experience than they had expected, according to a study conducted by The Nielsen Co. for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.  The study was released on September 9, 2010, Concerns About 3D TV sets.  Ekker says, “This is an early adopter phase; early adopters of 3D are often gamers, people who are comfortable with new technology.  Many are the same people that bought hi def screens before there was hi def content available.  Now they are probably the ones buying 3D screens when there isn’t a lot of 3D content available yet.”   The big brands that you will be seeing pushing 3D television sets are JVC, SONY, Samsung, Panasonic and Phillips. All of these sets for now will rely on 3D glasses.  I wonder ultimately what will be the chicken and egg in this scenario?  Will consumers need to buy 3D television sets to then get companies to produce 3D content or will commercial and production companies need to create the content in order for consumer to begin buying the sets in order to consume it?  Ekker believes that consumers will have to buy the televisions in order to see more 3D content being produced.  “We will need to see some market penetration of these sets in order to stimulate commercial production.  We have cable stations coming out with Stereo versions of themselves like ESPN, Discovery Channel, Sky and others and they all need content.  However, there aren’t eyeballs for the content because the screens aren’t out there yet. They are coming and they are selling, but they aren’t being adopted too rapidly.  Mostly because we all went out and bought the fifty inch plasma screen for our living room 1 – 5 years ago so that will slow us down a bit.  In a way it is a healthy thing because the gradual adoption of a new technology like this will ensure that the standards will fall into place that there won’t be a systems war like Betamax situation. Also it will give all the production entities time to learn how to do it right.”

So how do you do it right?  That brings us back to the nationwide 3D tour.  The point was to break down the process from production through post for the agencies to have them better understand what the process entails.  Essentially in order to successfully produce a 3D spot you need to have a company behind it that knows and has experience in the technology from production through post. Ekker said that the agencies are really open to Stereo commercials, but there are challenges.  “The clients and the agencies often aren’t prepared for how expensive and time-consuming Stereo can be.  At the moment, and this is evolving as we speak, it is more expensive and takes longer depending on the content and what is desired.  There is a gap in knowledge at the agencies so when they see a job come in or request for a 3D spot they will send it out to the usual production companies and directors and they get back bids.   The trouble is that these production companies nearly always have no experience producing 3D work and that is an essential flaw in their system. That is one thing we are trying to make sure the agencies understand you need a company that has knowledge and experience in Stereo production from concept to delivery.  There are so many ways to get tripped up and I want them to understand those ways.”

The biggest way to get tripped up is simply the technology.

“The only camera systems available right now are twin camera systems with beam splitters or binocular side by side systems, and they are all prototypes.  There aren’t stock manufactured systems.  They are all bulky, heavy and complex. You need a convergence puller as well as a focus puller so your crews are bigger.  Reloading film or digital media takes twice as long. You have double the rate of camera failure; lenses themselves don’t match.  You can have ten different 50mm lenses to put on a cine camera and only two of them will match close enough to use for Stereo production because lens manufacturers never had to make them match.  Lens manufacturers are struggling to come up with new manufacturing standards that will make their product much more uniform.  When we bring these image streams into our post production process, we have to make sure they match.  If they don’t we have to be creative in how to make them match.   Any mismatching will cause eye strain and then it is about viewer experience.”  Obviously no one wants eye strain when viewing content.  Can you imagine watching a 3D commercial and then having to leave the room because you just got a headache?  I for one would not be happy about dropping a bunch of money on a television set to then only view content that caused me to pop an aspirin.

Based on the research it looks like 3D is happening whether you like it or not.   I am someone who is not an early adopter.  I still don’t own a Blu-Ray player, I held onto my dial up Internet as long as I could bare it, and I still would rather buy a CD rather than download music.  However, I am excited to see more 3D content.  Would I want to see the next World Cup games broadcast in 3D?  OF COURSE!  Would I want to buy a television to do that?  Probably not, but I would buy my friend’s beer and pay for a set of glasses to go watch the games on their television set because I know people who would buy a 3D television at Christmas.  All of this said, I ultimately agree with Leslie Ekker, gradual adoption ultimately means the standards can fall into place and there won’t be system wars; anyone remember HD DVD?  Well as of 2008 it was discontinued and Blu-Ray is now the standard.

Stay tuned for part two of this article where I talk about what happens when you convert 2D to 3D (I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t pretty!) and when you can expect to see your favorite cable networks expanding into more 3D content.

It all started in the music industry, when Napster, the original digital music sharing service, was launched in June of 1999. With music freed from the baryonic prison of vinyl, polyester tape and polycarbonate plastic, consumers could copy, edit, sample, decode and redistribute it and other copyrighted content at will.

Rights holders had always controlled their intangible product by controlling the tangible media – records, cassette tapes and CDs, as well as radio frequencies, for music; television channels and chunky videotapes for video; multiple 40-pound reels of motion picture film for movies; floppy disks and CDs for software; plus dead-tree books and photographs. Suddenly, their control of intellectual property was just gone, vaporized in a mist of ones and zeroes. On one side, many music executives saw digital media as a tremendous new opportunity for both creative expression and for business. Zoic’s Jeff Suhy, a former record company executive, was quoted in the May 2000 Village Voice: “I love that the world is quite obviously changing before our eyes and no one really knows how it’s going to play out!”

Suddenly, control of intellectual property was gone, vaporized in a mist of ones and zeroes.

On the other hand, some rights holders saw any perceived change to their traditional revenue stream as a threat to be destroyed at all costs. They dug in their heels and fought the future – engendering numerous disasters, from Circuit City’s Digital Video Express, which sold consumers DVD movies that “expired” after two days, to the RIAA’s litigious pogrom against file-sharing college kids and soccer moms. And money spent to develop various copy-protection and DRM schemes was almost always wasted, as consumers found ways to defeat protection, or avoided protected products altogether.

But some in the business world saw opportunities, not enemies. When Steve Jobs first laid eyes on the Xerox Alto in the late 1970s, with its GUI user interface and mouse controller, he saw the future of computing. Decades later, Jobs understood that the original Napster, driven out of business by the record companies, was the template for media distribution in the new millennium. With Apple’s iTunes software and online store, Jobs went from computer mogul to media mogul, taking advantage of record companies’ desperation to gain control of digital music, and appointing to himself the power to single-handedly set prices for online entertainment. But iTunes by itself would not have been enough to compete with free MP3s – it was the convenience, portability, style, incredible ease of use, sound quality and price point of the iPod that gave Apple control first of the personal music player market, and then of legitimate online music and video distribution.

Now the media industry has reached another watershed moment of change, as file-sharing endangers the revenue models of film and television creators, as well as publishers and journalists. But media moguls have absorbed the lessons of the music industry’s tribulations in the last decade, and there is a new humility in the face of change — a willingness, even an eagerness, to adapt to the new digital world, rather than to deny it. In the last few years, movie and television creators have moved their product online, to free video sites like Hulu, which will soon experiment with for-pay models; and are offering high-definition, appointment-free content on demand to home televisions through cable companies and Netflix.

There is a new humility in the face of change — an eagerness to adapt to the new digital world.

In 2010, how else are media producers taking control of the future of their own industry? What are they doing to reimagine their businesses, and insure that the media world of 2020 is profitable and stable?

Some of the answers were on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Publishers are betting that consumers will gladly pay to read their content on a new breed of flat, portable, easy-to-read e-book products. Just as the iPod saved music, publishers hope that Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook will save literature and journalism, at least until true e-paper is developed.

The greatest buzz at CES was elicited by a whole crop of new HDTVs with 3D capabilities. The motion picture industry and the movie theater chains are increasingly turning to 3D and IMAX as ways to lure audiences into theaters, and the current success of James Cameron’s Avatar demonstrates that even in a serious global recession, moviegoers are willing to pay extra for a high-tech movie experience they can’t get at home.

The new 3D TVs, including the Panasonic TC-PVT25 series that won the Best of CES award this year, promise to provide an in-home 3D experience for only a few hundred dollars more than ordinary HDTVs. In addition, satellite television provider DirectTV announced at CES that it has teamed with Panasonic to create three HD 3D channels, to launch this spring. Working with media partners including NBC Universal and Fox Sports, DirectTV will offer a pay-per-view channel, an on-demand channel, and a free sampler channel, all in 24-hour 3D and compatible with the current generation of sets.

Like the original HD offerings in the mid-1990s, which focused on sports events and video from space missions, the new 3D channels will offer existing 3D movies, 3D upgrades of traditional 2D movies, and sports. Unlike with HDTV however, there is no indication the government will legislate widespread adoption of 3D TV. And there are issues.

3D will likely establish its foothold in the living room is not with sports or movies, but with video games.

The greatest usability issue is the need for viewers to wear glasses. While there are experimental technologies that work without glasses, today if you want to experience high-quality 3D television images you need to wear pricey shutter glasses. Unlike the polarized glasses patrons wear at theaters, shutter glasses respond to signals from the TV, directing alternating frames to alternating eyes. The glasses are expensive – only Panasonic is promising to provide a pair with your TV purchase, and additional pairs will run around $50. At least one manufacturer is already offering lighter, more fashionable, more expensive replacement glasses.

And wearing special glasses while watching TV at home is not conducive to the average person’s lifestyle. As Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg told GameSpy at CES, “when I play games or watch TV, I’ve got my phone, I’ve got all kinds of things going on… I get up, I get down, I’m looking outside at the weather… I’m not in a dark theater, wearing glasses, staring at a screen.” You cannot walk around comfortably wearing modern shutter glasses, and just happen to be wearing them when you want to watch TV. Until 3D TVs don’t require glasses, consumers are going to have trouble integrating 3D television watching into their lives.

The new 3D TVs also suffer from varying levels of picture clarity and a pronounced flicker, although these issues are expected to disappear as the technology improves. More importantly, 3D media demand changes in how movies and television and produced. Right now, only computer animated films are expressly produced with the needs of 3D in mind, producing stunningly realistic depth-of-field and fine gradations of perceived depth. Film and video produced according to the traditional rules of 2D creates flat, paper-thin figures moving in a 3D environment that can appear shallow or truncated. Sports coverage, intended to be a killer app for 3D TV, particularly suffers from these issues, and 3D broadcasts of sporting events may require drastic changes to the technology used on the field.

Filmmakers are still learning how to deal with changing depth of focus. In the real world, the viewer chooses unconsciously where to focus their eyes; but in a 3D production this decision is made for the viewer. A plane of focus that appears to constantly shift can give audiences headaches and eye strain. A largely different language of cinema is being developed, to produce content in which 3D is a core component rather than a faddish trinket.

And finally, CNN Tech reports that between four and 10 percent of consumers suffer from something called “stereo blindness,” a sometimes treatable condition that makes it impossible to experience 3D movies or television. This is hardly a deal-killer, but one wonders how the spread of stereo music technology would have been affected if 10% of listeners had not been able to appreciate the difference.

Honestly, how 3D will likely establish its foothold in the living room is not with sports or movies, but with video games. Video gamers are already accustomed to buying expensive high-tech peripherals. They are used to content designed for one person, one screen. And when designed properly, 3D does not just add visual excitement to a game, but actually affects and enhances the gameplay itself.

So will 3D television lure viewers away from legitimate free Internet video, and from illegally pirated video files? It is too soon to tell. But there is a key difference to this strategy, as compared to some of the previously unsuccessful responses to piracy and the Internet. As with Steve Jobs and the iPod, 3D TV producers are offering consumers something new and exciting that, once the issues are worked out, will enhance their news and entertainment experiences. Rather than treating customers like the enemy, they are approaching customers as customers. And iTunes proves that people are more than willing to pay for their media, as long as they can experience a clear benefit.

More info: “Keeping Up With the Napsters” on Village Voice; “Why I can’t watch 3D TV” on CNN Tech; “DirectTV to launch the first 3D HDTV Channel” on Device; “Microsoft Exec Not Sold on 3D Home Gaming” on GameSpy; “3D TV? Too Soon Now, but One Day You Will Want It” on Singularity Hub; “I’m Sold On 3D TVs…And I Kind of Hate Myself For It” on Gizmodo.