In 1950s Great Britain, Raymond and Nigel Spottiswoode developed and applied existing understandings of stereoscopic film technology to create short documentary-focused films before and during the 1953–55 Hollywood 3-D boom. Their subsequent company, Stereo Techniques, Ltd., utilized four different camera set-ups and rigs across its five-year production heyday. With over 20 short films and 1 feature film produced between 1951 and 1955, this system also had a limited presence in stereoscopic 3-D production in Canada and Britain through the 1970s. Never adopted by a mainstream British studio, Stereo Techniques, Ltd. relied on co-production deals with documentary and commercial producers and was ultimately overshadowed by the 1953–55 Hollywood 3-D feature-film boom.

The production of new stereoscopic 3-D short films was part of the British Film Institute’s contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain, an event designed to replicate the Great Exhibition of 1851. As part of the Festival’s focus on British technological progress, the BFI built the Telekinema, a unique cinema complex on London’s South Bank which, alongside projecting existing film formats, would showcase large-screen television, stereophonic sound and new stereoscopic 3-D productions.

The BFI commissioned Raymond Spottiswoode to produce the 3-D films. An Oxford graduate who had worked as a reader for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and as the technical head of the National Film Board of Canada, Spottiswoode was lured back to Britain to create a foolproof system of stereoscopic production. He recruited his brother Nigel, an engineer and mathematician who had already experimented with 3-D photography. A collaboration with Stereoptics Ltd. Technical Director Leslie P. Dudley led to the creation of a 35mm dual-camera rig that utilized two Newman-Sinclair 35mm cameras in a face-to-face configuration. The resulting film, A Solid Explanation (1951), was a broad and comic introduction to the idea of stereoscopic film that displayed both composition in depth and the intrusion of imagery ‘into’ the audience. Stereo Techniques would continue to use and improve this Newman-Sinclair rig on films such as The Black Swan (1952) and Northern Towers (1952).

Without access to Technicolor Monopack film stock, due to delays with the Stereoptic Ltd. camera, Spottiswoode worked with Technicolor Ltd. in England to develop a second camera rig. Used only for the color short Distant Thames (1951), filming plans were revised to accommodate the stereoscopic restrictions imposed by assembling a rig with two bulky 35mm Technicolor cameras: most notably focusing wholly on long shots of the river Thames. Accordingly, the camera rig was mounted on a barge and floated down the river, capturing images of countryside and Windsor Castle. The resulting 35mm film was recut and extended as Royal River (1951): this version debuted at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 1951 and was subsequently shown in cinemas around Britain and at international screenings.

The final two 3-D films in the Telekinema program were animated films made by Norman McLaren at the National Film Board of Canada. The first film, Now Is The Time (To Put On Your Glasses) (1951), created its stereoscopic effects through the use of movable cut-out artwork and parallax shifts achieved through optical printing. The second film, filmed using a Bell and Howell camera, was Around is Around (1951), which created stereo imagery through the use of cel animation and images of Lissajous figures (the patterns produced by the intersection of two sinusoidal curves that are at right angles to each other) on an oscillograph. The stereo pairs for both films were optically printed at Technicolor England ahead of release (Zone, 2007).

In 1952, the Spottiswoode brothers and Charles W. Smith published their new theory of stereoscopic image production, developing and expanding the work of Professor J. T. Rule. This theoretical approach shaped the creation of the next iteration of the Stereo Techniques camera: the Space-Master. First used on the Stereo Techniques-Associated British-Pathé film of Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 Coronation, Royal Review (1953), the Space-Master would be used on all but one of the subsequent Stereo Techniques 35mm short films and their British 3-D feature film, The Diamond Wizard (1954). The camera was later used by British cult filmmaker Pete Walker for color 3-D sequences in The Four Dimensions of Greta (1972) and a B/W 3-D flashback in The Flesh and Blood Show (1973).

The experience of building the Space-Master also informed the design and creation of a camera that was designed for 3-D filming, not built from pre-existing components. This camera, funded by the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), was used on one Stereo Techniques short film, Power in Perspective (1955). The end of the 3-D boom meant the NRDC camera would be used for 3-D sequences in early 1960s Canadian horror film The Mask, before being donated to the London Science Museum (Smith, 1974; Smith, 1998).

The influence of the Telekinema’s 3-D process was not restricted to the films. Stereo Techniques helped establish a small UK and European 3-D network for its films, with three varied packages of 3-D films (including advertisements, ballet, cartoons, documentaries, newsreel, sports, and travelogue) being exhibited in major cities and towns across the UK and Europe (including Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The four Stereo Techniques’ Telekinema films were also reedited and repackaged by American producer Sol Lesser – with the inclusion of ballet film The Black Swan – under various titles. Initially called Tri-Opticon (for a December 1952 Chicago premiere), then Stereo Techniques’ 3-Dimension (from February 1953; and after an objection from Spottiswoode’s lawyers), Lesser eventually settled on Royal Flush (1953) for a limited roadshow run in the United States including screenings in Cleveland and New York.