Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Tangible Media: Removable Storage of Image, Sound, Motion and Data
Frames
Cinemiracle

Title:

Windjammer

Artist:

Louis DeRochemont (producer)

Date:

1958

Material:

Cellulose acetate

Dimensions:

35 mm × 3

Company:

Cinemiracle Corp.

Location:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Cinemiracle was a variant of Cinerama that addressed the visibility of the seams between the three projected images. The right- and left-hand cameras had a mirror in front of the lens, positioned so they filmed from the same optical center as the middle camera, thus avoiding the parallax error encountered by Cinerama. Similar mirrors were positioned in front of the projector lenses. The strips were also printed with a fall-off close to the seams, which made the slight overlap of the projected images less visible. To avoid Cinerama patents, the screen was less curved, which allowed all three projectors to be in a single booth, although a significant number of seats were still displaced.

Only one film was made in Cinemiracle: Windjammer. The example here is the middle strip from that movie. The two formats shared many of the same issues inherent in stitching together three frames side by side. By the time Cinemiracle arrived, less finicky and less expensive single-camera widescreen formats like Cinemascope and Todd AO were in the ascendant. The Cinerama Co. bought the patents and buried the format, shortly before three-strip Cinerama itself disappeared.