Why the 3D Super Bowl Ads Were a Total Disappointment to You

Why was the Super Bowl XLIII 3D extravaganza both a major success and a big failure?  Who’s to blame?

If you watched the super bowl and enjoyed the 3D effects of PepsiCo’s Sobe Lifewater and Dreamworks’ Monsters vs. Aliens commercials created using InTRU 3D, you are probably lucky.  But for the rest of us,  it felt like Dreamworks and their 3D execution consultants pulled a stunt and the audience took the bait. Are they to be blamed? Sam Ramadan believes they are partly culpable.

Dreamworks CEO Jeffry Katzenberg, in his own words in a video interview aired on YouTube, confirms that Dreamworks “pulled a stunt,” also mentioning, “We were using 3D in the Super Bowl for the first time,” which is not very accurate.

In reality, another not-so-exciting 3D was used before during a Super Bowl way back in 1989 during the live half-time musical show, which also included a Coca-Cola 3D commercial using the Pulfrich 3D glasses technique.  This is a technique Sam likes to call 3D Stereo TD Vision, for Stereo Time Delay Vision and is quite different than anaglyph (color filtering).  To give Mr. Katzenberg credit, Super Bowl XLIII was the first time they used the anaglyph yellow/blue filtering.  Mission3-D’s trademark name for this technique is 3D Stereo YB Vision, just as Stereo RC Vision is for red/cyan filtering and Stereo MG Vision is for magenta/green filtering.

By the way, Stereo RC Vision is best used to view anaglyph real-life images of real nature scenes since it does as good a job as YB  in showing more colors than traditional red/blue anaglyphs, plus Stereo RC Vision also has a high-luminous consistency for right or left eyes under both daylight and dim-light conditions.  However, we do agree that Stereo YB Vision does better with colorful kids’ 3D animation films where use of reds and oranges are abundant - the question is just a matter of what colors you are using more in your production.

3 reasons for its major success:

1)   Dreamworks and organizers were able to get almost everyone worked up and seeking a pair of 3D glasses.
2)   American Paper Optics made its largest order of “Color-Code 3D” glasses (reportedly 125 million pairs) and benefited both financially and by getting major publicity.
3)   The movie got a lot of attention, people waited to watch the commercial, and many actually did view it.

3 reasons for its huge failure:

1)   Most people who watched the 3D footage did not see the 3D effects very well.
2)   Many did not notice any 3D effects at all.
3)   A substantial number of people experienced headaches that could have been avoided by providing the 3D glasses with very simple instructions.

Unfortunately, as Sam Ramadan explains, this stunt has had negative impact on 3D glasses adoption by the mass market and distances people further from enjoying stereo 3D safely and properly through better understanding.  While IMAX 3D and REAL 3D, using controlled-distance-view polarized technology, have encouraged acceptance and increased the demand for Stereo 3D visual entertainment, misuse and misunderstanding of stereo anaglyph 3D technology in a chaotic, uncontrolled-view-distance environment is disappointing and discouraging many.

click here to find out what Sam Ramadan thinks caused this failure or click on the following post:
Why is stereo 3D not Ready for broadcast TV?