Pretty girls in underclothes interact with flower petals, blue gloves, dollar bills, and white crumbs on a mirror. Tattooed Woman is a video by 99thmind, a troupe of performance artists in Boston. Their first video in 3-D, it is less campy and more subtle than the girls' prior work (such as stabbing pumpkins while wearing fishnet lingerie and rubber Bush and Cheney masks). Six and a half minutes.
"Glory to the Conquerors of Space" is a short fantasy in 3-D anaglyph by Ryan Suits, of Atomic Cheesecake Productions. It is a story of a female Soviet cosmonaut who voyages to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. She is alone on her ship, and seems not to have any radio contact with Earth. (There is no dialogue in the movie.) Since the USSR collapsed in 1991, this seems to have been a long, long space flight that everyone, including her former Soviet colleagues, simply forgot about. Upon her arrival on Titan, she finds it inhabited by blue-skinned humanoids.
And, well, it gets weird. The themes of abandonment and isolation are obvious, but the narrative itself is cryptic, and the symbolism is not always clear. The cosmonaut is red (even Red, as it were) and the aliens are blue. And of course the viewer will see them through a red lens and a blue lens. So is this a deliberate reference to the opposition, or the complementarity, of the two races? And are the events allegorical of anything really existing in our own world? According to the credits, seven of the Titan women are "Virgin Mothers." Which seven? Form your own theories; I wouldn't presume to guess.
Nudity advisory: some of the blue women are topless, though they are covered in blue paint. If brief glimpses of naked blue female chests would violate the rules of wherever you are unlucky enough to be, then watch this movie elsewhere.
I see that Suits has posted this movie to YouTube and Vimeo, but I won't embed them here, because I want you to see the high-quality MP4 version he has embedded on his own website. That's the way to see this.
This short 3D time-lapse movie of lilies blooming is much cooler than the cheesy opening titles would lead you to expect. It's a minute long, have a look at it. Shot by Dan Jacob, also called "DanD3Dman." Music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
A one-minute 3D anaglyph CGI test by Paul Allan of Fungus Film Productions. The plot seems to involve gigantic lighter-than-air cargo ships. It's good direction: it feels tense, as though some major event, such as a surprise attack, is counting down. (The music heightens this mood too.) And I always appreciate a movie where I can tell who's good and who's evil from their costumes and hair.
There is also a shorter 20-second anaglyph test, in color.
The full title is, "The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from Outer Space," a parody of a 1950s science-fiction B-movie by Elmer Kaan and Alexander Lentjes of 3-D Revolution Productions.
This video was optimized for red/green glasses, which is why it has that pink cast. But since it has no color, red/blue glasses will also work.
A 3-D video of a staged performance of a scene from The Rover, a 1677 Restoration comedy by Aphra Behn. You can watch the video in compressed FLV format online at veoh.com, but to see the best quality, you should see the full-resolution WMV download. For that, you have to have a Veoh account, and install the Veoh Player software, and then click the "Download Video" button on the movie's page. It's all free, but a lot of work.
In Act III, Scene III, Florinda (Laura Yandell) is alone in her garden at night. Willmore (John Patrick Berry) wanders in, seeking a spot to sleep off his drunkenness. But noticing Florinda, he tries to force his attentions on her. You can read the script here.
The 3-D camera work (by Phil Brown of Media55) is expert. The blocking and framing of the shots tell the story well without intruding. Excellent work.
The performances lack range -- Florinda is disgusted by Willmore, but never seems to express the outrage appropriate to such an insult -- but are not bad. And besides which, Laura Yandell in her 3-D nightgown would be a fine film with no script at all, so I consider the acting an added gift.
The music, for some reason, plays annoyingly through the whole scene. The play, and the playwright, are overrated today, but of genuine historical interest: Aphra Behn was one of the first female professional writers in England.
I hope to see more (and better) work of this sort from Media55.
A freshly minted etiological myth:
"There once was a doll named Jack,
Who had an evil streak running up and down his back.
He was never nice to the other toys;
In fact, you could say he ruined all their joys."
So begins, and so continues, this storybook fable of an unruly doll who terrorizes the other toys, until he is finally brought to justice, albeit tempered with mercy. The filmmaker describes the consciously retrograde style as "3-D expressionism." Nine minutes.
This bold and artistic film by CompanyOf (website under construction) explores that defining moment in every woman's life, when she must either dance in her underwear with mannequins, or stand in a horse pasture in a cocktail dress. Some women dare to do both. "3xperimentia" (a combination of 3D, experiment, and dementia?) also involves mirrors. Nine and a half minutes.
Very strange, disturbing and creepy concept video in anaglyph 3D. I sure didn't understand it, but the 3D effects were done well. Seven and a half minutes, if you make it through.
People sometimes complain that the news media have no depth. This complaint cannot be applied to 3D Science News, the only video newscast in three dimensions. Say what you will about them, but you cannot say they lack depth.
Covering science-related news stories, 3D Science News posts videos of about three minutes in length, about six times a month. The footage is shot in 3-D, and often includes 3D animation or renderings to illustrate the topic being covered. You can view the anaglyph videos at low resolution in a Flash-powered player on the website, or you can download high-resolution MPEG files in three different formats: anaglyphic, interlaced, or separate left and right views.
I wish I could show you a still from the hi-res download, but I couldn't get Quicktime or any other software to crack it open. All I can show you is my error message. Oh, well. Presumably, it works just fine on Windows machines.
[EDIT: I got the MPEG file to open in VLC. Here is a full size still (720 x 540 pixels) to show the quality.]
The service -- including all the hi-res downloads -- is free, for now. ("We hope to keep this site free," they say somewhat ominously on their "About Us" page.)
Also free for now are 3-D glasses!
The 3D Science News sidebar says, "No Red/Blue Glasses? Contact Us and we'll send you a free pair. If you live outside the United States, we may request a small donation to cover postage."
As long as you are in the U.S.A., they're paying the postage to send you free glasses! I had never heard of such a generous offer, and could scarcely believe it.
But it's for real. On the evening of June 29, I used their comment form to request a free pair. The next morning, the 30th, I got an email reply from Elaine, saying she would mail the glasses that very day. Three days later, July 3, I had them in my hands. The glasses they sent me were identical to the ones sent by Rainbow Symphony with their free offer. But this free offer is so much better than that one -- I never had to address an envelope or use a stamp, and it came in three days instead of nine!
Obviously, this offer is intended for people who lack 3D glasses, so they can start enjoying the website, not for people like me who already have a hundred pairs just looking for a freebie. I requested mine to verify that the offer was genuine so I could report it to you, but now I will send them a couple bucks to compensate them for their trouble. (If I can figure out how to donate; their site says, "please consider making a donation in the box to the left." What box to the left?)
[EDIT: The donation link is back up in the sidebar on the site now. I sent them a little something.]
I hope 3D Science News becomes a huge success.
Funny stuff:
A silly 3D video by Mukpuddy Animation, in New Zealand.
The latest video from diminutive Icelandic songstress Björk is in anaglyphic 3D. I won't post the video here (because I don't think I have permission), but I will post a link to the Quicktime movie you can watch:
I would recommend that you do not click on the link, but instead right-click it and save the movie to your own computer. That way, you can view it in your preferred Quicktime player rather than your Web browser.
It gets weird after 30 seconds:
"Moving Still" is a short video by artist Santiago Caicedo, in anaglyph 3-D. You're riding in a train through an urban landscape, looking out the window. You might not notice anything very unusual for the first 30 seconds (things happen, but they are subtle). After awhile, though, you witness dramatic upheavals as the city frantically destroys and rebuilds itself.
I think it's a comment on our passivity and inattention, as we shuttle from point A to point B, largely ignoring the miraculous events of creation and rebirth going on around us all the time. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Whatever it means, it's a quite watchable video.
(Don't forget, the player has a "full screen" button near the lower right corner. Full screen is the way to go here.)
