Fun to watch, 3D movies have a great deal of science behind them. Making a 3D movie involves angles, interocular distances, how the brain works and movie tricks to make the audience believe that the 2D image on the screen is up close an personal.

If you need to have a review of how 3D movies work, click here.

The problem with 3D movies is that digital is far cheaper and easier to shoot 3D movies but the pixelation can cause problems when shown on a larger screen such as IMAX.

If celluloid film shot on IMAX cameras is the cleanest, crispest image possible, then why not use pure film?

The physical film strip for Oppenheimer was 11 miles long! Imagine if it were filmed in IMAX 3D. The film would have had two film strips totaling 22 miles in length if you put the left eye and right eye film strip one after another.

With the IMAX 3D film projector, the film strips are copied into a computer, then projected using a laser 3D film projector.

This means that the film is clearer and is not quite as physically demanding, but it is subject to pixelation.

3D Single Film Strip Technology

What if you used the science behind how the eyes and brain works to create an illusion using only one film strip? And what if this technology does not require the use of 3D glasses?

Several companies have played around with splitting the frame where they have both the left eye and right eye image in a single frame, then use a filter to help the eyes and brain to understand the images.

One of these techniques was Technicolor’s Over/Under approach. By doing this, it allows the film to be a single strip, but the audience still needs to use 3D glasses.

Using the concept of creating one film strip and the physics of flip books and mutoscopes where the brain remembers the image that is seen for a fraction of a second but long enough to connect the next image and create the illusion of movement, it is possible to create a single film strip for a 3D film without the use of 3D glasses.

The key is in the order of the film frames to continue on with the illusion of movement and create the overlay effect, which is what traditional 3D technology uses with two projectors, within the audiences’ head.

This 3D Single Film Strip technology can be projected on a normal 2D projector and does not require a filtering system (such as 3D glasses) to aid the brain in understand which image is left eye/right eye.

Pretty cool, huh?