Mars in 3D (review)

Errata

On 6 September 2012, the newly reconstituted Mars in 3D film and sound track were shown in Dolby Laboratories' state-of-the-art screening room in San Francisco. The occasion was the release of a new 3-D Blu-ray disc of the film, originally written and produced in the 1970s by Elliott C. Levinthal for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Featuring images radio-transmitted from the two Viking spacecraft's missions to Mars in 1976 (Viking 1) and 1979 (Viking 2), the film presents the first stereoscopic views of the Martian surface, giving viewers a visceral and immersive experience of this alien world.

Mike McNabb and Bill Schottstaedt, composers of the original soundtrack, have restored this historic footage, and have resynthesized their soundtrack, achieving truly astonishing video and audio clarity. The result is a tour de force on all levels—artistic, aesthetic, cultural, scientific, and technical.

Each Viking spacecraft consisted of an orbiter and a lander. The orbiters took stereoscopic, still images far above the Martian surface with a single camera by photographing the identical area from precessing orbits (whereby rotational axes were used). The landers took stereoscopic movies of the Martian surface using two on-board cameras. Close-ups of the landing sites provided geologic detail and were intended to help determine whether life existed on Mars; panoramic shots supplied meteorological information.

After the mission, Levinthal, who had been a member of the Viking imaging team, was commissioned by NASA to produce a film that would allow the public to experience the amazing three-dimensional images of the surface of Mars, captured by the Viking missions. The original format of the film required two synchronized 16-mm projectors and stereoscopic glasses to be worn by viewers. The remastered film is encoded for Blu-ray 3-D high definition (1920 × 1080 at 23.98 Hz) with Multiview Video Coding (MVC format, an amendment to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC). Because MVC can encode sequences captured simultaneously from multiple cameras using a single video stream, it is the ideal contemporary medium for this restoration. The audio can be set to either multichannel Dolby TrueHD, or stereo Dolby TrueHD.

As it pans and zooms stereoscopically across the Martian surface, the film allows the viewer to feel as if he or she were physically present on the surface of Mars. These images are the stars of the show. Levinthal's narration, in contrast, is delivered in a studied monotone at least as dry as the parched Martian surface, as he explains the imagery, the mission, and its results. But even his stilted delivery does not undo the gripping power of the Martian footage.

Levinthal clearly knew that his film needed music to bring it to life, and he knew that not just any music would do. A Stanford professor at the time, he was aware of the work of John Chowning, then director of the brand-new research project called the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He approached Chowning, asking that a computer music score be written to accompany his film. Chowning introduced him to then-CCRMA graduate students Mike McNabb and Bill Schottstaedt, who together composed original music for the film using the new Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer (Samson Box) that had been built by Peter Samson for CCRMA in 1977.

After the film had served its purpose, it was curated in the archives of the History Office at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and was all but forgotten as subsequent space adventures captured the world's imagination.

Thirty years later, in 2010, McNabb wanted to revive the film for a concert series of computer music honoring Chowning's 75th birthday, to be held in amovie theater. McNabb contacted NASA Ames, and found the director's prints in their archives, but discovered that they could not be projected in a modern theater. And so McNabb and...