With all the advances in sound over the last 20 years, is it not time that the industry made some leaps forward in picture resolution? Vista Vision, TODD-AO, Technirama which all date from the 1950's had higher resolution pictures than what we see today.

No, I'm not saying go digital, I'm saying lets develope film, 35mm or 70mm, to the ultimate quality that can be achieved today in a cost effective manner.

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If that's what you're seeing, then I think the projector is a hair bit out of frame. The way I understand it; with the advent of polyester film stock, they have to use an ultrasonic splicer to cut the movie (negative) together. The splicer leaves a white mark on the frame line, right at the joint. That MIGHT be what you are seeing.

The way I understand it, when polyester film became the "standard" the dimensions of the SCOPE aperture plate were supposed to be changed to cover up that mark. Of course, "old timers" who had the aperture dimensions memorized kept filing apertures out to the "old" sizes. Also, a lot of places kept their old plates (too "expensive" to replace), or in OUR case, didn't know about the change.

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Now, that's pretty weird- I've never heard of that before. I would think that would be a one-of-a-kind error.

John P. explained that the reason you sometimes see a white line "breaking" at the screen top or bottom is due to the way they duplicate prints at the lab. The lab does not bother rewinding the negative after making/copying a reel; they just make another copy by running the negative backwards through the printer. (Which must be why you sometimes get mixed "heads-up" or "tails-up" reels in the can.) The image is shifted slightly up or down (relative to the sprocket holes) because of film to sprocket "backlash."

But anyway, I think there must be some problem beyond these reasons to include a note in the can about framing. But, I don't know what it could be, as our print seems
OK framing-wise.

As to the wavey lines: Greg is right; it looks like TV hum bars. There's a scene where Mel gets his friends released from the British, and encounters the guy who killed his family. The "hum bars" are very noticable then.

Brad wrote:
"Hmmmm. And how would you know what a video-taped picture looks like???"

"There was a note in the can with "The Patriot," that said to move the framing up as far as it will go with out seeing frame lines. At first I thought it was to compensate for theaters that run 2:1, but after Francis' comment about the frame line wandering, I wonder."

I noticed when one of my projectionists framed "Patriot" just a bit low that the boom mic wandered in and out of frame. Specifically in the scene where Gabriel signs up for the Continentals without permission. I fixed the framing after that scene so I don't know if it happened again.

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Dave Cutler

The horizontal "hum bars" are likely "printer bars", caused by slight variations in the printer speed as the film is moved past the printer aperture. In a continuous contact printer, the negative and print stock are brought into intimate contact and moved past an illuminated aperture. If the printer speed is not perfectly constant, there will be a slight change in exposure time, producing a horizontal density fluctuation on the print. "Printer Bars" are most likely to occur in underexposed scenes, where the printer vanes (printer lights or tape setting) are closed down, making the slit of light at the printer aperture very narrow.

The current "scope" projectable image area is 0.825 x 0.690 inches (per standard SMPTE 195). The image height of the original CinemaScope format was 0.715 inches, and a special narrow overlap splicer had to be used for splicing the negative to not show the splices on screen. But the narrow overlap (0.030 inches, 0.76 mm) CinemaScope splices were not as reliable as the standard splices. The standard splices (SMPTE Recommended Practice RP 111), have an overlap of 0.040 inches (1.02 mm), so the anamorphic image height was changed from the original 0.715 inches, to 0.700 inches, and finally to the present 0.690 inches, to minimize the visibility of the negative splices.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

If the horizontal bars are indeed "printer bars", they may have happened at any stage that was printed on a continuous contact printer. As I noted, printer bars are more likely to occur in scenes that were underexposed, requiring the printer vanes to be closed down to produce a very narrow slit of light at the printer aperture.

Kodak's web site provides good information regarding motion picture printing technology:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h1/printing.shtml

...Funny, they're not mentioning Godzilla in any of the advertising...