AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL

Today I received two large envelopes with clippings and other documents which Bill had been keeping. As I sort through these I will share all that is appropriate. The first item is an interview with something called the Global Video Guide. The interview is not dated, but based on the discussion, I would have to guess that it occurred sometime around 1983. The photo included seems almost like an illustration. It was probably just due to the poor quality of the copy of the article, but I thought it had an interesting feel to it so I have included it.















BB: I'm Bill Bukowski, inventor of the OPTIMAX III process. It's a 3D process for 35mm that records two stereoscopic images on motion picture film. It's a single system process - one strip of film in filming and one strip in projecting.


GVG: How does the image register on the film?

BB: Each of the two images is two perforations high and the width of the frame (35 mm film frame is designated by four perforations.) It is bisected on the horizontal. It requires no camera movement modification, you shoot the same way, but in the viewfinder of the camera, you'll see one image stacked above the other.


GVG: So how do you compose your picture?

BB: You see what you get on the frame; so you position your actors, adjust the lens to record the images in relationship to each other. The key to it is the placement and relationship of one image to another. The top half of the frame is the left eye image and the bottom half is the right eye image. Projection, by means of a projection attachment device, has the beam split, polarized at different axis, and converged on the screen. That's why you wear the glasses. The polarizing material in the glasses block out the image that's not intended for that eye and transmit the one that is, and vice versa with the other eye. It's basically facsimileing the experience of human site.


GVG: Why does your system allow less light and longer focal length?

BB: Because of the optics and design of the process. We have four lenses: 16, 24, 32 and 64mm.


GVG: Why has no one else developed it?

BB: A question you should ask them. It's a question of dedication, and being financed. I did not have access to a lot of funds in developing the OPTIMAX III process at the filming of "Comin' At Ya". I consider it to be a prototype and in fact the lenses don't even exist in that form anymore. The process goes on.


GVG: I was amazed by the effect in "Comin' At Ya". I flinched every time an arrow came at me. I sat centre/centre and the arrows would come between my eyes, same with the rats and the gun barrel.

BB: Yes, it's a total exploitation of the effect in the picture, and it's certainly overkill. But at least it's a demo of 'we can do this', but we don't have to do it every 10 seconds.


GVG: What kind of films would you like it incorporated in?

BB: We were conducting investor screenings and Gloria Swanson had come up to me - she's a very big supporter of the medical industry, and a living testimony to nutrition as viable for combating illness - her thought, an it's a very valid one, she could foresee the time when medical schools would use stereoscopic films for operations, because 3D photography can help establish the spatial relations between the organs. I can see it used for training films, for the military, industry, computer repair. As well as detailing the distance between things, and making it obvious, it's also a catching kind of thing that will remain in the person's mind longer than a boring demo film, that could be enriched so much in 3D.


GVG: How did you develop the process?

BB: I'd always been interested in 3D's, since I'd been given a view master very early on. I think it's a fascinating thing. I met a man named Michael Findley who had started to do some actual research into 35mm motion picture stereo systems, trying out different things. We collaborated on some ideas. He was killed in a helicopter crash on the Pan Am building in New York City. After his death the financiers of his work invited me to come in and pick up where he left off. And my continuing effort has resulted in the OPTIMAX III method.


GVG: And this is something no one else has ever done before?

BB: No one has been able to achieve the kind of effects we can achieve with the OPTIMAX process.


GVG: Has it been attempted before?

BB: Yes, "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein" movie was an attempt at it. It was a 65mm system (released in 70mm). "The Stewardesses", in the early 70's was an attempt at bringing effects off the screen. These systems were limited in that they only had one focal length lens. And a very high absorption in these lenses so they had to use a lot of light or have a very dim image. And they didn't have a lot of versatility in moving the camera around. Both were single lens systems.

Double system 3D has other problems. Projectors must have equal brightness and colour temperature. Film must be processed in the same bath. There is the added expense of neg matching. Cost of film doubles, must interlock both projectors at the same speed. Have the same number of frames on each film. And there is the need to have an intermission to retread the projectors.


GVG: What about art applications?

BB: My bottom line hope is that 3D does eventually get out of the hands of the cheap exploitive producers and directors and developed as an art form unto itself, in as much as 'sound films' in their infancy were silent films with a sound track, then sound became an integral part of it. I certainly haven't invested 7 years of my life to have done a spaghetti western.


GVG: How about 3D video?

BB: 3D video works somewhat the same way as primitive 3D film works. Modern 3D uses a polarizing process - beams are polarized at the projection booth and the viewer wears polarized lenses to filter out the unwanted image. In the old days it utilized a system where the left and right eye image were coded with a colour, the film was shot in black & white, tinted with red and blue-green, and was projected with filters, or the print itself colour coded, and the viewer wore red & blue-green glasses which filtered out unwanted images. So on the screen you had two images - one coded in red, the other green. When you put on your glasses, the red eye lens will only see the blue-green images, and the blue-green image will only see red.

3D TV works basically the same way - two images are transmitted simultaneously, one coded red, the other blue-green. And the viewer puts on glasses and each eye only sees the opposite color-coded images. There's 3D TV in Japan for children's programmes. In L.A., select TV cable networks have screened "Sadie Thompson" in 3D, distributing the glasses in Sears, using coupons distributed in TV Guide. Full colour 3D is on the horizon, but they won't be able to bring things off the screen, but will give depth.


GVG: How do you get things so far off the screen in film?

BB: It's very simple - we constructed a metal frame and secured it with pegs and wire. In the frames was a square of crystal, which is a lot stronger than glass and won't break. Crystal served as a mount and as a protection for the lens. In the crystal we drilled a small hole, and put a wire filament which was stretched taut to a point out of sight of the camera's field. The hole in the crystal was placed between the two lenses that make up the first element of the OPTIMAX filming device, so it could not be seen by either of the two lenses. The arrow was hollow and the filament was placed in the arrow and the arrow rode on that with the filament to a point between the eyes.


GVG: What is your next picture?

BB: It will be with Alan King and Rupert Hitzig in the swamps of Louisiana, a psychological terror film ala "Psycho" rather than "Friday The 13th", called "The Louisiana Swamp Murders". It has a $3.5 million budget and will use 3D effects judiciously. There'll be lots of sound, music, art direction and alligators as well. It'll be beautiful going through the swamps. A dozen special 3D effects are worth 25 indiscriminate ones. "Comin' At Ya!"'s primary purpose was to exploit the effect without regard to storyline. It had 52 lines of dialogue in the whole picture.