Lenny Lipton

Recognized as the father of the electronic stereoscopic display industry, Lenny invented and perfected the current state-of-the-art 3D technologies that enable today's leading filmmakers to finally realize the dream of bringing their feature films to the big screen in crisp, vivid, full cinematic-quality 3D.  Lenny Lipton became a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in 2008.

With more than 30 patents granted in the field, another 40 pending, and a lifetime of passion for advancing the art, his breakthroughs have transformed 3D motion picture projection beyond the flawed methods of the past and make the exhibition of beautiful 3D a reality for audiences worldwide. In 1981 he invented the first flicker-free electronic stereoscopic display (U.S. Patent No. 4,523,226), the basis for three-dimensional products for engineering, science, and the movies.

In May of this year, Lenny received the Society for Information Display Silver Display of the Year Award, on behalf of Real D, for his invention of the digital stereoscopic cinema, while Apple's iPhone took the gold. As chairman of the SMPTE working group that established the international standards for projection of film-based 3D movies, he was at the forefront of today's industry standards. After founding StereoGraphics Corporation he invented the ZScreen® electro-optical modulator, at the heart of today's 3D theatrical projection. And as Chief Technology Officer of Real D, which acquired StereoGraphics in 2005, Lenny helped perfect the Real D projection system, which has become the leading technology delivering the ultimate 3D experience. Dominating the feature film market with 1,400 cinemas in over 20 countries (with commitments for 2,250 more), Real D is the de facto commercial standard for 3D projection.

Lenny received an award from the Smithsonian Institution for his invention of CrystalEyes®, the first practical electronic stereoscopic product for computer graphics and video applications such as molecular modeling, aerial mapping and medical imaging. CrystalEyes has been in production for two decades. NASA selected it to remotely pilot the Mars Rovers, while some of the newest drugs on the market owe their introduction to CrystalEyes.

With Hollywood's top directors now turning their sights to this new technology, the modern era of the 3D experience has arrived. Some of the recent feature films exploiting his 3D process include Disney's Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Paramount's 3D Beowulf. Also released in 3D was Oscar-nominated Monster House, which used 3D motion-capture techniques to digitally record the actors' physical performances.

U2 rocked the 2007 Cannes Film Festival with its stunning U2 3D live concert film shot during their "Vertigo" tour through Latin America, projecting the high-definition 3D film to an astonished audience using the Real D system. And to date, James Cameron, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Robert Rodriguez, and Peter Jackson have all voiced enthusiastic support, while Cameron is currently in production on his 3D science fiction film Avatar.

Lenny has independently produced 25 films that have aired on PBS, Italian television and the BBC, and are now in the Pacific Film Archive collection at the University of California. His film Let a Thousand Parks Bloom was selected for exhibition in Summer of Love at the Tate Liverpool Museum (2005) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007). He received a grant from the American Film Institute to produce his film Revelation of the Foundation. He has acted as an American filmmaker representative for the US Department of State to countries abroad, and has served as a juror at many film festivals around the world.

Lenny created Puff the Magic Dragon, Jackie Paper, and the Land of Honalee, when as a college freshman in 1959 he wrote the poem which became the song made popular by the group Peter, Paul and Mary.  Today it's the number one selling children's picture book in the United States and is being translated into fourteen languages.

He has authored three books for Simon & Schuster, including Independent Filmmaking, which was the early standard text in many film schools and remained in print for 20 years. He has also authored Foundations of the Stereoscopic Cinema for Van Nostrand, which was the definitive book on the subject, and where he first enunciated the guiding engineering principal for stereoscopic 3D system design—the principal of binocular symmetries.

Lipton has written articles for American Cinematographer, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Journal and other industry-related publications, and was an editor at Popular Photography. He is also a frequent presenter at conferences in the field of stereoscopic imaging and filmmaking, and was the featured physicist in Physics World magazine's July, 2007 issue.

During the chaos and adventure of 1960's American counterculture, Lenny was the film reviewer for the Berkeley Barb underground newspaper, hung out with the likes of Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, and was a frequent contributor to Paul Krassner's free thought magazine The Realist, the radical publication that lampooned many taboos of the times.

Lenny Lipton was born in New York City and graduated from Cornell, where he majored in physics. He has lived in California for 43 years, and now makes his home in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon with his wife, three children, two dogs, cat, and ill-tempered bird.

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