Colin Low and Transitions 3D: Innovating immersive cinema

Transitions 3D is significant to film scholars because it is the first stereoscopic live-action IMAX film. The film also anchors important histories of Canadian film innovation and culture. From a technical perspective these histories include the development of large format cinema cameras and projection systems, early computer animation, and immersive cinema exhibition architecture. From a cultural perspective, Transitions 3D was the culmination of a prolific and wide flung collaboration of Canadian film-makers and technologists that was forged in response to the cultural mandates of the NFB and the national showcase agendas of successive world expositions. Low’s nuanced modernist ideology coupled with his sustained artistic and technical experimentation were central to these developments, driven in particular by his quest for an immersive cinema that would unite the film viewer and film subject in a stereoscopic cinematic space.