3D Tabletop Photography Tricks of 1948
How did they get a 3-D photo of a Christ figurine suspended above his disciples in time for the Easter sales season of 1949?
View-Master released “Stereo-Stories” in the fall of 1948 to drive sales. It was a simple marketing trick that revolutionized their business: they packaged three single reels of kid-friendly content together in a packet to goose sales.
According to View-Master’s dealer newsletter, the Dealerscope, in October 1948: “The colorful new Stereo-Story Reel Packets…are ideally suited for center aisle promotions and should return big dividends to those dealers who utilize them for island selling.”
A big marketing push accompanied the release of the packets. View-Master put ads in the Saturday Evening Post, Coronet and MacLean’s magazines ahead of the Christmas buying season.
November’s newsletter touted the success of the previous month’s efforts: “In slightly more than a month, dealer response to the Stereo-Story campaign has swelled to proportions greater than ever before in View-Master history. Stereo-Story sales, up to now, have at least doubled the initial sale of any other reel ever released.”
The newsletter also offered something dealers could take into the field: information on how the diorama scenes were photographed and on how the creatives at View-Master were using “skill and ingenuous techniques” to create special effects in tabletop stereophotography.
Photographing the Easter scenes created by Florence Thomas fell to Thomas L. Dixon, the company’s technical stereo photographer, and his assistant Roland Simard. Dixon’s chief task at View-Master was color film duplication processing at Sawyer’s corporate, where “a battery of film duplicating camera machines turn out thousands of color transparencies an hour—transparencies that go immediately into View-Master Reels…
[Dixon] assists Florence Thomas, talented creator of the Stereo-Story figurines, in arranging sets for the best photographic effects, takes the pictures and supervises subsequent production all the way through until the finished transparencies roll out of the camera duplicating machines ready for mounting on reel discs.”
At the time, Dixon and Thomas were photographing their latest collaboration: The Easter Story packet, to be released early in 1949, just in time for the spring holiday. The packet culminates, of course, in the ascension of Christ.
From the November Dealerscope (all block quotes below are from the same article):
As in the filming of all View-Master Stereo-Stories, the setting of the Easter Story scenes requires the maximum ingenuity and detail preparation. A battery of powerful flood lights is used to guarantee proper lighting effects, various techniques being employed to eliminate shadows and provide the proper emphasis where needed.
From there, the newsletter highlights the challenges of the show-stopping packet scene: “In it, the figure of Jesus had to be shown rising in a beam of light above the heads of his disciples.”
So how did they get this shot in 3D well before Photoshop existed?
To begin with, it was impossible to get a stereo photograph of the ascending Christ actually suspended in the sky above the other figures. The Christ figure had to be taken separately against a black background with the figurine projected forward towards the camera. Suspension of the figurine from a black string would have been possible in two-dimensional photography. In stereoscopic photography, however, even a black string becomes discernible regardless of the darkness of the background.
Dixon, therefore, improvised a rod—one end attached to a pure black background, the other fastened to the back of the Christ figurine. By fixing his camera at a certain position in front of his subject, he was thus able to photograph the Christ figurine without showing any part of the rod.
The resultant effect was a stereoscopic picture showing Christ suspended in the air in all the depth of three dimensions.
The halo about Christ’s head was created by fastening a circular plate of lucite illuminated with a miniature light bulb to the head of the figurine.
Dixon’s next job was to transpose, through double exposures, the three-dimensional figure of Christ to the ascension scene in just the right position and depth. A beam of light, too, had to be superimposed upon the suspended figure.
To accomplish this, Dixon first set up the scene of the disciples gazing up with a beam of light shining down on them. The light beam was projected against the background by a slide projector placed approximately 6 feet in front of the scene.
Then, to give three-dimensional depth to the beam itself, it was moved laterally between exposures.
Finally, by an ingenuous use of double exposures…the figure of Christ was transferred to its desired position above the heads of the disciples.
And that’s how they did it!
Hope you have a lovely Easter if you celebrate. And, even if you don’t, hope you enjoyed this little lesson in 3D tabletop photography innovations of 1948.
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