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 is the President of Oculus3D, a company that has created an innovative technology for projecting high quality 3D images using the world's existing 140,000 35mmm projectors. Lenny Lipton became a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in 2008.

With more than 40 patents granted in the field, another 50 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.

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. In July of 2007 Lipton was the featured physicist in Physics World magazine because of his contributions to stereoscopic displays. After founding StereoGraphics Corporation he invented the ZScreen® electro-optical modulator, at the heart of today's 3D theatrical projection.

During his tenure as Chief Technology Officer of RealD, which acquired StereoGraphics in 2005, Lenny helped perfect the RealD projection system, which has become the leading technology delivering the ultimate 3D experience. Dominating the feature film market with almost 5,000 cinemas all over the world (with commitments for thousands more), RealD is the current de facto commercial digital standard for digital 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. Active eyewear are at the heart of today's stereoscopic TV sets, as is another of Lenny's inventions, side-by-side multiplexing.

With Avatar, the largest grossing movie in history, and a recent spate of high grossing 3D releases, the stage has been set for the dominance of the stereoscopic film. Beyond the nuts and bolts of tech, Lenny has worked as a technical and creative production consultant for the studios helping them finesse the subtle nuances of 3D, which requires an unusual blend of artistic sensitivities and scientific understanding. For example, Lenny worked with director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) to develop the camera system being used to shoot Laika Studio's 3D stop motion feature, Coraline, which opened to rave reviews.

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 remains the definitive book on the subject, and where he first enunciated the method of stereoscopic cinematography used by theatrical filmmakers and 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.

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 45 years, and now makes his home in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon with his wife, three children, two dogs, cat, and ill-tempered bird.

Lenny's News, Blog & Archives   << ACTIVE >>
Lenny's Gallery of Paintings
Lipton3D(@)Gmail.com
+1 (415) 279-7736 & ask for Lenny!