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Key words: 3D, Stereoscopy, Stereography, Hugo (2011), Coraline (2009), Henry Selick, Martin Scorsese, Immersion, motion picture technology, IMAX, Digital Cinema.
New representational technologies often follow a path that John Belton has aptly described (with regard to silent-film color) as moving "from novelty to norm".1 Artificial lighting in the teens, synchronized sound in the 1920s, Technicolor in the 1930s, CinemaScope in the 1950s, all successfully made the leap from novelty to standard practice. The transition can be relatively swift(as with sound and artificial lighting) or extended (as with color), but in each case, after momentary disruption, popular cinema regained a sort of aesthetic equilibrium in which the device became familiarized as a narrational tool. Lea Jacobs captures the dynamic particularlywell in her discussion of Cecil B.DeMille's "Lasky Lighting" in the teens, when she writes that within a few years artificial lighting went from being an "effect" to being "a fact of mise-en-scène".2
3D has the distinction of, thus far, failing to make the leap. As Bill Paul demonstrates in his now seminal essay "Aesthetics of Emergence", 3D has been introduced and run its course as a short-lived gimmick at regular intervals since the 1950s. The first wave, from 1952 to 1955, was substantial, delivering 46 features, including major studio productions like House of Wax (1953) and Dial M for Murder (1954). The second wave was longer but more diffuse. It ran from about 1972 to 1978 and was dominated by exploitation fare like The Chamber Maids (1972) and Blonde Emmanuelle (1978). The third wave began with the surprise success of an Italian western, Comin' at Ya, in 1981, and crested in 1983 with Jaws 3D and Amityville 3. In each case, audience interest in the process eroded before it could gain a foothold as a significant alternative to 2D, much less a norm.
Stereoscopy's current digital incarnation, initiated by The Polar Express in 2004 and Chicken Little in 2005, has lasted longer and produced more films than past booms, but its future is far from secure.3 Interlocking technological, economic and aesthetic determinants will surely shape 3D's destiny. This essay concentrates on the aesthetic side of the equation: the quest for a sustainable formal response to new technology. In particular, it considers Henry Selick's 2009 stop-motion...