HOLY SCHNIKIES...!!!

Did you see the Superbowl Halftime Monsters vs. Aliens 3D commercial?!!

Actually, when I arrived at work I had already missed Halftime, so I didn't see it...

...but...

Since I had the free 3D glasses, and since NBC programming is often repeated on Hulu, I decided to check the Net and see if maybe the 3D trailer was available...

I glanced through Hulu's TV directory and didn't see anything titled "Superbowl Spots" or "Monsters vs. Aliens Superbowl Spot" or anything, so I just Goggled "Monsters vs. Aliens 3D". This lead me to their site where the "New Superbowl trailer" was available to watch.

I got to the page, and the trailer started up immediately... but it wasn't in 3-D. :(

BUT THEN...

I noticed a button offering for me to view the trailer in 3-D!!! :D

I clicked it, and it took me to a page that blew my mind!!!

The page had that double-vision effect that let's you know you're looking at a 3-D image without your glasses. But what was curious was that I was looking at a YELLOW-ISH image overlapping a PURPLE-ISH image!

If you're a fan of 3-D you know that the 2nd oldest way to view a three-dimensional image is a process called anaglyph. (The oldest way is called "stereoscopic" and it works the same way View-Masters work.)

This process simulated the way our eyes produce the perception of depth -- one eye sees one image and the other eye sees a very similar but slightly different image, and the brain combines those two images to create an image in three dimensions (hieght, width and depth -- by overlapping a blue image over a red image.

The viewer then dons a pair of glasses with a red lense and a blue lense. The red lense makes the red image look white to that eye, and similtaneously makes all the blue in the image appear black to the eye. The blue lense does the oposite. Thereby, one eye sees one black-and-white image and the other eye sees a very similar but slightly different image, and the brain puts them together into a three-dimensional image.

... a black-and-white image three-dimensional.

This used to work just fine, because just about all movies and images were in b/w. People were simply used to looking at b/w photos and films.

When film went to color, 3-D film producers came up with a new way called "polarization". But the mechanics of this process don't work on a single-projector system, like a TV broadcast, so in the '80s when a TV network wanted to cash in on the 3-D revival, they were forced to broadcast b/w 3-D movies.

Because anaglyph 3-D only creates depth with b/w images. The only colors the eye can be allowed to view through the anaglyph glasses are white, blue and red. The reason is simple: Red colors are made to turn white in the red lense, blue colors are made to turn white in the blue lenses, and every other color does whatever the hell it's going to do in either lense.

So if you're looking at an anaglyph image that is created by simply putting a blue and red filter over the right-eye and left-eye images, you're actually seeing three images. All the additional colors create a third image that exists somewhere in between the right-eye image and the left-eye image.

In effect, the images overlap with the glasses on just as they do when you're looking at the image without the glasses. The only difference is that you get this sort of ghost of a 3-D image when you're wearing the glasses. It's like your looking at a 3-D image AND you're looking at a flat image AS WELL. If you have a copy of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D at home, you know the effect I'm talking about.

And at first TV stations understood this and only broadcast b/w 3-D movies like The Mask (the original) and Gorilla at Large. Bad movies, to be sure, and the 3-D never worked ideally because you could never get your TV's color adjusted to that color-synchronization screen they threw up before the movie, BUT... it was 3-D! :)

But then, apparently, folks just lost their damn minds, and TV started broadcasting "3-D" movies in color! It sucked the worst! It wasn't 3-D! It was lame it it hurt your eyes and it was just too annoying to sit through! I mean, I hear people complain that 3-D -- real 3-D, the stuff that works -- gives them a headache and just is too annoying to deal with. But I have never experienced such discomfort from an actual, effective 3-D process! But this anaglyph-from-full-color-images crap was just worhtless!!!

(Yes, I'm throwing a temper tantrum, but as a 3-D addict, I have every right to!)

Okay, so...

The Superbowl last night...

I go to the Monsters vs. Aliens website, and I see that the color image is made up of a yellowish image overlapping a purple-ish image...

:O

So I immediately throw my 3-D glasses on to have a look...

...and...

IT'S REALLY IN 3-D!!!

IT'S IN COLOR, BUT IT'S ALSO IN 3-D!!! :D

So I eagerly watch the movie trailer, and giggle with delight as I watch a 3-D trailer online!

The geniuses, these brilliant, brilliant people at Dreamworks have somehow figured out a way to use the anaglyph process with full-color images in such a way that each eye only sees a single image!!! The way 3-D works!!! :D

I watched the trailer maybe 5 times! :)

And then I had to come online and tell you about it!

If you haven't yet, get yourself a pair of the free 3-D glasses, then hop over to the Monsters vs. Aliens website and watch you a REAL 3-D movie trailer!!!

If you're like me, you may enjoy simply staring at the real 3-D image on the download page for a while, lol. :)