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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Boom mics in flat films
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Marja Jarvio-Jolivet
Film Handler
Posts: 2
From: Helsinki / Finland
Registered: Jun 2004
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posted 06-17-2004 06:24 AM
I am quite surprised to hear that the aspect ratio apparently wouldn't be mentioned on the cans. In France it always is. If the original distributor doesn’t print it on, the local one puts their sticker on it. (The only time I had a surprise was with "Habla con ella" d'Almodovar: on the cans it was said to be 1.85 and when I built it up it was 2.35... Luckily enough the difference is obvious). It would be really welcome to have it always printed on the leader too however.
Another strange manner in America (and even in Finland, where I work now) is just to mention that the film is flat or scope. Anybody can see that difference on the first glance. In France it’s always shown with the exact term (2.35, 1.85, 1.75, 1.66, 1.37…) and you can prepare the proper optics before the first performance.
I have noticed that a difference between European and American flat films seems to be that European films are hard matted (hope I understood right the word "matt" meaning that only the wanted area can be seen and the rest being black?) and in American ones the whole frame is filled with the picture. However, if the framing is right in the middle, in what I have experienced, the mics and other not wanted stuff stay out of sight.
Please, don’t blame the flat films too much, for many types of direction it is a most suitable way of shooting in my opinion. And also it’s too often that a scope film just can’t be well focused the shooting not being done well enough.
What comes to the subtitles, in Finland where at least 90% of films are foreign (and subtitled), they are very accurate in their position. No bad surprises having the text cropped at any moment once the framing has been determined. The text laboratories (or how do you say it?) must have established a good system. The only bad thing about subtitles is that their focus isn’t always exactly the same as in the picture itself. Operator has to often choose between a bit blurred subtitles or a bit blurred image. I prefer to choose a sharp image, but too many spectators complain then that the movie is blurred. ![[uhoh]](graemlins/uhoh.gif) Will I manage to re-educate the Finnish public? But that would be another topic:
“Can we ever re-educate them?” ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
I wouldn’t trust any definitive framing; there are too many differences on the copies, even in some 2.35. Still the best assurance of correct framing is an operator knowing his job!
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-17-2004 08:03 AM
Presumably the subtitling industry in Finland is a big enough business that they're doing it all the time and therefore make sure they get it right. If you had thousands of cinemagoers mieowing and hissing every time subtitles were printed outside the projected frame area (as distinct from a few hundred arthouse buffs), I can imagine that the cock-ups would stop pretty quickly.
I would further speculate the French are more careful about aspect ratios because, unlike in the UK and USA, 1.1.85 is not the universal 'flat' standard, and that therefore it is acknowledged that projectionists need to be told what the intended aspect ratio is.
The problem here is that because 1:1.85 is a universal standard, anything which doesn't conform to it has a hard time being shown correctly. Many venues simply don't have the lenses and plates for 1:1.75, 1:1.66 or Academy; so much so that the rare mass-rereleases of an older title are even sometimes 'windowboxed', i.e. optically reduced to fit inside the height of a 1:1.85 mask. Throwing away over two thirds of the frame area seems stupid, but I suppose that compared to cropping the projected image, it's the lesser of two evils.
But even when the right lens and plate is available, quite often the projectionists here don't know when to use it; especially when you get someone who trained in a multiplex environment who then moves on to a venue with more diverse programming. If producers and distributors were more careful about marking the aspect ratio on each reel of release print (and if this was written directly onto the leader of each reel of cut camera negative, the information would find its way onto every print without fail, meaning that the distributor wouldn't have to worry about labelling up the cans), this would at least start to address that problem.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-20-2004 05:45 AM
leo wrote:
quote: Leo Enticknap
Throwing away over two thirds of the frame area seems stupid, but I suppose that compared to cropping the projected image, it's the lesser of two evils.
Then there was the alternative of releasing an anamorphic print, with the Academy image windowboxed within it, as was done with most prints of the last release of 'Gone with the Wind'.
I ran 'The Station Agent' yesterday, and found this taped to the projection box wall:
We ran the same film last month, and I didn't see the same instructions then, whether they just got lost before the priint got got to us, I don't know.
'Playing' a film isn't a phrase you often hear over here; that, and the use of the hash sign for 'number', suggests that these instructions were circulated in the U.S. as well. Did anybody else get them, and has anything similar been issued with other films? I haven't seen it before. At least we do know for certain what ratio to project this film in, the bottom picture is almost exactly 1.85, the top one about 1.88.
A couple of things about these instructions seem rather odd:
Firstly, why do they specify 30 seconds? If you are going to adjust the framing to match the reference frames then you have to do it while those shots are on screen. Why speciify a time?
Secondly, we are told to adjust the framing to match the first reference frame, then we are instructed to project this much or more headroom. Well, which is it, 'this much' or 'more'? how much more? Should we come down all the way until the top of the printed frame is visible?
Then we are told that two shots later the character's shoes may touch the bottom af the screen, but not disappear. Since we have already been told to set the frame with as much headroom as possible, the effect of these two instructions seems to be that the shoes should be at the bottom edge of the screen, no higher, and no lower. Why not just give this one instruction, forget about the first one, and the 30 second timing, both of which are unnecessary. Why move the framing twice, when all that is required is to move it once, to the correct position, and then leave it there?
What is the strange object that can be seen at the left hand side of both of these pictures, the thing that looks like the roof of a small building at ground level.
Where were the locations for this film? I've used NJ Transit between Newark Penn Station and Trenton, and between Hoboken Terminal and Suffern, New York, but I don't think either of these lines was used.
Newfoundland yard, is mentioned in the credirs, as is the bar, something lane, so I assume that these are real, but Newfoundland doesn't seem to appear on the NJ Transit map.
There's a great line near the start of the film, where a group of trainspotter types is sitting in a room, watching 8mm films of trains in Canada. A character with a rather boring voice is narrating his film, in which the train goes into a tunnel, and total blackness. 'This is one of the darker tunnels in Canada', he remarks.
Edited to correct typing errors.
The bar was the 'Mill Lane Tavern'.
[ 06-24-2004, 04:38 AM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 06-23-2004 05:01 PM
So was this film actually composed for a 1.85 crop? I don't understand....if the picture has "tight" frame composition, why didn't Miramax just hard matte the release print at 1.85 and be done with it? If the composed image center is not the actual frame center (a cinematographer error?), then make the adjustment in the hard matte to correctly position it for the composed image center. The projectionist would then only have to center the hard matte as soon as the first frames hit the screen -- no mistaking it at all.
The SMPTE recommended practice is NOT to print a hard matte down to 1.85 so as to have a margin of safety for theatres that might not be hitting 1.85 exactly on the money. But if the film was not composed correctly and a hard matte will ensure that it be projected the way the filmmaker intended, then if matte lines show in theatres not correctly lensed, so be it.
Or perhaps this print was actually composed at 1.66; if the were the case, then it could be projected at 1.66 without any composition problems at all. Problem solved.
Miramax has been know to claim a picture is 1.85 only because that's what the desk guys are familiar with and because that is where they stick the subtitles, ignoring the fact that the IMAGE, not the subtitles, was composed for 1.66 (CINEMA PARADISO, for example). So it wouldn't surprise me if this film was also composed for 1.66 and all that nonsense about off-center adjusting is only valid if it is being forced to play incorrectly at 1.85. Play it at 1.66 and I bet this issue disappears.
Given the gobbledegook instructions, I wouldn't put any bets on the paper-pushers at Miramax to know what they are doing with regard to proper framing.
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Ron Yost
Master Film Handler
Posts: 344
From: Paso Robles, CA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 06-23-2004 10:45 PM
Regarding "The Station Agent" a.r.: (Frank's right.) ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I played the Region-1 DVD on my computer and measured the rectangle. It's near 1.66:1 .. actually about 1.70:1 on my machine, but my monitor isn't perfectly calibrated, so I'd say 1.66 would be truthful, with a little wiggle-room. It's certainly -not- 1.85:1, as the DVD insert says. The headroom is, indeed, very tight (to non-existant) on many shots.
The DVD has a thin, black 'hard matte' at both the top and bottom of the frame (which I didn't count in my measurement). Not sure if that means anything, tho. Is the film hard-matted?
Great film, IMHO. Hard to believe it was shot on 16mm as the image is very nice.
Oh .. the credits say the railroad is The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway Corporation.
Ron Yost
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-24-2004 02:59 AM
Since making my previous post, I've had another look at this film. I normally believe in runniing a film as instructed, where instructiions are given, but in this case, I just wasn't able to do so. If I set the headroom to the minimum shown on the first picture, then the shoes were cropped on shot 7. Since the ratio of the reference frames shown on the sheet is almost exactly 1.85, this suggests that our 1.85 plates may be slightly undercut, but I haven't checked them, so I can't be sure. I found that I had to adjust the framing at several points during the first show on Sunday. I hadn't done this on Saturday, as I was too busy making up another print, (my disaster one), to stand by the projectors throughout the show. For the second, and last, show that day I ignored the instructions, and ran it at 1.66, which looked much better. At least some of the shots were hard-matted to slightly wider than 1.66, but I only had to drop the top masking by a few inches. Shown this way, it looked fine. If anybody else is running this, and is able to do so, I recommend that they ignore the instructions from Miramax, and run it at 1.66. It looks much better that way.
I am pretty sure that this film wasn't intended to be run at 1.85. Given that it is a U.S. production, it seems less likely that it was intended to be 1.66. Could it be that this film was originally intended for television or video release only, with the theatrical release coming as an afterthought, and it was composed for 16:9? Was it shot on Super-16? If so, what is the aspect ratio of this format?
If this is the case, then on one of the few occasions where we are given instructions on how to project a film, they are wrong. What they should have said is:
"This film is intended to be shown at an aspect ratio of (whatever it should have been), and should be shown that way if possible. If you are unable to project the film at this ratio then you should project it at 1:1.85, and adjust the framing during shot 7 so that the character's shoes just touch the bottom edge of the screen, as shown below"
(Insert the second picture from the printed instructions)
(edited, because during the original typing I pasted a paragraph in the wrong place, and it didn't make sense. Also extra text added.)
[ 06-24-2004, 04:58 AM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]
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