A look at the history and modern culture of Saudi Arabia, Arabia 3D has opened at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Filmed in stunning 3D IMAX, the film explores a nation which the filmmakers felt may be often misunderstood by Westerners in vivid detail. The first major international film to ever be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, this production comes from the team that previously made such popular IMAX movies as To Fly – the first-ever IMAX which has been showing at the Smithsonian since its 1976 release – and Everest – the most-viewed IMAX to date.

Though the subject matter might initially seem less compellingly visual than an ascent up Mount Everest, the medium is put well to use. The camera soars over vast deserts and modern, glittering cities and deep below the Red Sea. Camels and coral appear convincingly dimensional just in front of the viewer’s eyes. Most stunning, though, is the footage of pilgrims at the Hajj. Taken from close within and from far, far above, the viewer gets a visceral sense of the intensity of the single largest annual gathering of humanity in the world.

Arabia is a continuation of a collaboration between the anthropology staff of the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Saudi Arabia, which has previously resulted in a joint exhibition presented in English and Arabic in both countries. The film crew received academic and historical advising from popular British author and historian Robert Lacey who wrote the influential The Kingdom in 1979, which was recently recently followed-up by Inside the Kingdom. Dame Helen Mirren provides the film’s narration – a choice the film’s producers made very intentionally, feeling that, with many viewer’s conceptions of the treatment of women throughout the region, a very pleasant, English, female voice would be an appealing choice and set people more at ease.

The role of women in Saudi life is itself the focus of much of the last segment of the 45 minute film. The female activist and poet Nimah Nawwab is prominently featured, in what is a generally very positive portrayal. The film offers some light criticism of the culture’s treatment of women, but focuses instead on the considerable gains made within recent years in women’s autonomy, and, particularly access to higher education, with a nod at continued efforts toward gender equality.

It is this light, positive brush with which the Kingdom is painted throughout that most likely to leave some viewers uncomfortable with the film. Particularly in an over-long portion dedicated to the new Alfaisal University, the movie can take on an air more of tourist center promotional film (albeit one with extraordinarily high production values) rather than serious documentary. That said, as a piece primarily intended to be shown to school-children, it would seem to achieve its goals of counteracting negative stereotypes that the children might have been fed by today’s media or yesterday’s Eurocentric tellings of world history.

Besides, one may recall To Fly! being pretty soft on Big Hot Air Balloon, too.

By Brittany, 10:00 am March 4th, 2011

See the original story here: http://www.welovedc.com/2011/03/04/new-imax-film-arabia-3d-opens-at-smithsonian/

(Philip Lelyveld comment: Jukka Hakkinen is a friend of the ETC 3D Lab)

Viewing 3D movies on small screens could lead to radically different perceptions of relative depth when compared to seeing them in the theater or on a television, conclude Nokia engineers.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of Stereoscopic Displays and Applications, Jukka Hakkinen and colleagues tested three short animations on viewers. What they discovered is a direct consequence of how we perceive depth and how it is recorded via dual cameras when creating 3D films: the closer you are to a display and the smaller it is, the greater the perceived difference of depth of features in a scene.

This effect was not seen when viewers were shown the same animations on a television or in a cinema, at viewing distances typical for those formats. The effect comes about because 3D is generated via two different cameras (or camera views, in the case of digital effects): When viewing a 3D movie, the user’s eyes are effectively the same distance apart as the cameras used to shoot a scene, other enhancements notwithstanding.

This enhances the effect of 3D at short viewing distances and is lessened for greater viewing distances. In addition, the researchers discovered that effects that went beyond one degree of visual angle simply weren’t perceived at all on television or in a cinema, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

The researchers note that those creating 3D media must therefore take into account the various viewing distances and screen sizes at which that media might be viewed, and limit the depth effects they’re trying to generate so that they are acceptable in all contexts. An alternate solution would be to re-master — perhaps even dynamically, in the case of video games — a 3D scene so that it looks best on whatever size screen it’s viewed.

The bottom line is that viewing a 3D movie on a Nintendo DS might be a very different experience than seeing it on a television or in a movie theater. Whether or not that experience is better or worse will depend on the film — it’s going to be interesting to see how users perceive individual works once they are available on both smaller devices 3D televisions.

See the original story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26471/?p1=A5