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The advent of Hollywood's relationship with 3D technology saw a new type of sales pitch for film, which promised that the audience could feel an active part of the experience, both emotionally, and through their environment.

The poster for the "first" 3D feature Bwana Devil displays a common dynamic used by promotional material for 3D in the 1950s. It presents two polar opposites, one positive and the other negative. The first is aggressive and a threat: 'A LION in your lap!'. The second is 'A LOVER in your arms!': pleasant and comforting. The disproportionate emotional response elicited by these extreme situations "tricks" the viewer into expecting an emotionally turbulent viewing experience which mirrors reality.

The poster portrays the crowd of seated cinemagoers in the centre as immobile and lifeless. Monochromatic and shrouded in darkness, the unsuspecting "traditional" audience have their experience forcibly enhanced by the injection of life (both colour and action provided by the lion and woman) into the cinema. This stand-in audience are being assaulted on multiple fronts, and the poster assures the same for the real audience.

United Artists - 1952
Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044462/mediaviewer/rm862441984/

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The emphasis is emphatically on the word ‘you’ throughout, as with the House of Wax poster. However, the longform aspect of the trailer allows the word to repeat enough times in its 2-minute duration to develop into a slogan, appearing 13 times on screen; in almost every sentence. The word is blown up large, underlined and punctuated with exclamation marks. YOU become ‘part of the living drama’ ‘when YOU join [the cast] in HOUSE OF WAX’. The agency implicit in the word ‘you’ is being weaponised against an audience who have recently elected the comparatively functional home television set the dominant form of visual entertainment, over the dormant experience associated with traditional cinema.

It is the manipulation of a particular image that audiences had of their own entertainment-consumption passivity that is integral to this advertisement’s effectiveness as movie marketing. There are several phrases that overtly suggest to the audience that 3D cinema is an involved activity - just shy of explicitly stating that this would be an interactive screening. ‘You actually sense its chilling menace’ – this dispels the idea of the inactive audience in the mind of the viewer. An ordinary cinema experience offers second-hand senses, but House of Wax actually provides ‘sense’.

The inclusion of 'you' in the drama that is alluded to, is seen in screenings of the film, where viewers act in accordance with the action on screen. Whether flinching or ducking or reaching out, the 'viewer actively engages the image, responding in a direct and physical manner' (Ross, 2015, pp. 42).

Warner Bros. - 1953
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5RkKx-9tEM&t=1s

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In the year following the inception of 3D, advertising priorities shifted from tried-and-true methods like showcasing "the stars"; moving away from marketing what was behind the screen and instead concentrating on what was in front of the screen. Vincent Price, the film's star, is relegated to a small spot at the bottom of the poster and details about the film's story are scarce. The House of Wax poster is not selling House of Wax but 3D itself.

It does not communicate the synopsis or logline through its text but instead again attempts to manufacture audience engagement through its continued use of 'YOU!' as a buzzword. ''The hand is at your throat...' and 'The kiss is on your lips...' is a similar use of the negative/positive dichotomy used to elicit both fear and lust in the advertisement for Bwana Devil. John Belton explains in Film History that modern technologies in the 21st century can create 'powerful illusions of active participation, but they take place "within a heavily programmed mise-en-scène and set of scenarios"' (2012, p. 188). With this 1950s 3D technology, it is not so interactive, however, it shares a similar effect. A comparative, but more rudimentary illusion accomplished through mise-en-scène and a set of specially designed scenarios.

Warner Bros.
Source: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/House-of-Wax

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1953 - Those Redheads from Seattle - Poster 

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1953 - Those Redheads from Seattle - Poster 

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The poster for Those Redheads from Seattle offers a new angle on 3D viewing. The idea of participating in an enhanced reality as a form of escapism. In the frame behind the three central redheads, is a world portrayed as violent and colourless: this is a traditional 2D cinema experience. But those redheads from Seattle are providing more. They step through the frame, out of fantasy and into our reality, where they introduce colour, music and sex appeal. Their bright pink outfits and bare legs tempt through the screen. For some, this would be an idyllic environment and worth the price of admission to engage with.
Murray Smith writes about emotion and cinema in Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Smith, 1995), exploring the additional element of empathy not typically afforded to 2D film characters. The audience's heightened emotional response in relation to one of the redheads from Seattle is a result of "added dimensions". The more closely a simulation resembles us, the greater the emotional attachment, and because 3D blurs the line between fiction and reality, a deeper emotional connection can form between character and viewer.

Paramount
Source:
http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/those-redheads-from-seattle

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The first minute of The Maze trailer is both an explanation and light demonstration of the ability of 3D. Richard Carlson warns of 'something from the great beyond reach[ing] right out of the screen' while extending his hand out toward the camera - he is taunting the audience by hinting at a collapse between diegetic screen space and audience space (Leeder, 2011, p. 777).

As with the House of Wax trailer, The Maze employs phrases such as 'so close they almost touch you!', establishing a sensory connection with the audience and a sense of actual physically. The function of 3D is to bring the audience to the same space as the action and challenge 'the diegetic closure that we associate with the classical Hollywood style' (p. 777).

Allied Artists
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2WRNCQox3M

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Year Unknown (1952-1955) - Polaroid Glasses - Trade Ad

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Year Unknown (1952-1955) - Polaroid Glasses - Trade Ad

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The wording and presentation of 3D technology in a trade ad, an advert intended for retailers as opposed to consumers, is vastly different to that of the public posters. There is no longer a facade masking 3D as a magical system beyond comprehension, and the condescension around the level of involvement 3D affords the audience is gone. It is now reduced back to its original intended form: a technology designed to make 'PROFITS!'.

Despite much of the notion of the 'active audience' being an illusion, there was one feature unique to the medium of 3D cinema which did require genuine participation from the audience: the (somewhat) interactive practice of attaining, and then wearing, specialised viewing glasses.
Polaroid's 3D glasses were the most frequently complained about aspect of the medium and there was 'loud outcry' against the involvement of viewing glasses as a part of the 3D experience, with 55% of people polled in a 1953 issue of Film Bulletin commenting on the discomfort of the glasses (pp. 378). Here, It is the heightened sensory experience which proved problematic, as they broke the illusion of authenticity. The discomfort negated the desired effect of the 3D screening, re-assigning a passive role to the audience. But their agency as an audience unit was reclaimed in their reaction to the negative experience, with many writing complaints and comments of criticism, like those published in Film Bulletin 1973 (pp. 363-386) after a screening of House of Wax.

Polaroid
Source: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/top-10-3-d-myths

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Year Unknown (1952-55) - 'Magic-Vuers' - Trade Ad

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Year Unknown (1952-55) - 'Magic-Vuers' - Trade Ad

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These cardboard spectacles showcase another "invisible" element of agency: 'doubled spectatorship' (Ross, 2015, pp. 42-45), a subconscious process of decoding and understanding the contradictory information presented in 3D screenings. The wearer knows that viewing glasses are manufactured technology despite advertisers' insistence that they have fantastical properties. Like with 3D screen technology, the audience are 'both aware of the auditorium and immersed in the film' (pp. 42). They are constantly working as an audience to suspend their disbelief despite evidence of the charade.

By advancing the technology, they are simultaneously enhancing the 'magic'. This new model of 3D eyewear boasts features such as: improved viewing, eliminated back reflection, and 'see[ing] color best'. They also claim to be so comfortable that 'patrons put them on and forget them'.

Depth-Viewers Inc.
Source: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/top-10-3-d-myths

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1955 - Revenge of the Creature - Trade Ad

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1955 - Revenge of the Creature - Trade Ad

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Giving audience members agency inside the cinema proved a failed Hollywood experiment, now 'it's back to basic "showmanship"' for Revenge of the Creature. Just 3 years prior, promotional material would not have advertised the fact that it is in standard two dimensions, yet the size of the lettering here suggests that they are illuminating the fact that it can be screened gimmick-free.

As evident by Revenge of the Creature, the huge marketing push for 3D cinema technology and a participatory audience experience is now non-existent just 2 years after the sensationalism of the House of Wax campaign. 3D's dwindling relevance could be attributed to its novelty factor and the hollow promise of agency. 'The procedural rhetoric that is characteristic for video games is not applicable to cinema' so a 1950s audience can never experience a truly involved scenario or process, they have no choice but to 'sit back and experience the argument passively' (Mirjam Vosmeer, 2014, p. 141).

Universal Studios
Source: https://silverscreenreflex.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/svengoolie-to-present-revenge-of-the-creature-1955-this-sat-on-me-tv/

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Anon., 1953. What Does The Public Think of 3D?. Film Bulletin, Volume 21, pp. 363-386.

Belton, J., 2012. Digital 3D Cinema: Digital Cinema's Missing Novelty Phase. Film History, 24(2), pp. 187-195.

Leeder, M., 2011. Collective Screams: William Castle and the Gimmick Film. The Journal of Popular Culture, 44(4), pp. 773-795.

Mirjam Vosmeer, B. S., 2014. Interactive Cinema: Engagement and Interaction. Interactive Storytelling, Volume 8832.

Ross, M., 2015. 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences. s.l.:Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Smith, M., 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press.