1992 VHS • Reading Rainbow: Optical Illusions and A Three Hat Day 60 FPS
The Vista Group®
Clips are not offered for this film: no licence or public-domain mark is recorded for it.
Parts
About
Reading Rainbow: Optical Illusions and A Three Hat Day is a PBS Home Video release of a Reading Rainbow episode hosted by LeVar Burton. The program opens with a behind-the-scenes demonstration of television special effects, showing how plastic snow, wind machines, foam rocks, and chroma-key blue-screen photography combine to simulate a mountain blizzard in the studio. Burton then introduces the concept of optical illusions using the picture book Opt: An Illusionary Tale by Arlene and Joseph Baum, walking viewers through several classic illusions including the Muller-Lyer arrows, the impossible trident, equal-length lines appearing unequal in different contexts, figure-ground reversals with an old and young woman, and a box-counting illusion. A segment on camouflage in nature covers flounder, horned lizards, walking sticks, leaf-mimic insects, and caterpillars.
Guest child reviewers recommend three additional books: Hide and Seek, an Oxford Scientific Films book on animal camouflage; If at First You Do Not See by Ruth Brown, a caterpillar's-eye-view picture book with figure-ground illusions; and Lenses: Take a Closer Look by Siegfried Aust, covering color blindness tests and optical phenomena. The second program on the tape presents Burton visiting a specialty hat store and reading A Three Hat Day by Laura Geringer, illustrated by Arnold Lobel and read by actress Zelda Rubinstein, the story of R.R. Poddle III, a lonely hat collector who finds love in the largest hat store in town. Funding credits name the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Dayton-Hudson Corporation on behalf of Target, Mervyns, Dayton-Hudson Department Store Company, and Lechmere. Closing credits list Kellogg's as a presenting sponsor for the optical illusions episode.
- Archive
- Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault
- Licence or status
- The Internet Archive states none for this item.
- Credit
- The Vista Group®
- Language
- English
- Subtitles
- English
- Who can watch
- The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed