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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Topic: Widescreen Weekend 2008 (UK)
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Ramon Lamarca Marques
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 186
From: Edgware, England, UK
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted 02-03-2008 05:56 AM
Ben, it must be difficult for them to please all the delegates. I think you are right that delegates mainly prefer 70mm and cinerama. However, it surprises me how they would prefer a blow-up film like Edward Scissorhands which is not widescreen in conception to restorations in 35mm like the Big Country, which were shot in the larger Technirama 35mm negative. Many of Grover Crisp’s restorations in 35mm of Columbia titles are much better than some of the faded blow-up 70mm prints. Nevertheless, I think you are absolutely right, many people like myself would not like to see “old titles” in digital and the Bradford population would not bother seeing those titles that they can see electronically on their flat screen televisions. I think old films should be preserved in the film domain, if places like Bradford stop showing the 35mm prints the studios won’t be producing any and frankly, who will like to see electronic versions of classic films? Have you seen old black and white films in digital? I have seen clips of Casablanca and they are very different from a 35mm print in texture and I won’t pay £8 in London for that ever.
In all fairness to bring many of those titles from the USA must be very expensive and there might be budget considerations.
I, for one, would like more new 35mm prints or old good 35mm dye transfer Technicolor prints of scope or VistaVision films. Pictureville is one of the best cinemas in the UK and the projection team is amazingly good. I think they should keep the digital examples limited to new films.
Ben, you have seen 4k, would you say it is better than a proper 35mm print? Would you say it is better than a new 70mm print of 65mm material?
Also, have you noticed that in digital, the stillness inherent to the system is a bit odd some times?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-03-2008 09:21 AM
The only 4k I've seen is a longish clip from Chinatown which was shown at the AMIA conference in Austin a couple of years ago. My response was similar to that of seeing Paul De Burgh's restorations of the Powell & Pressburger Technicolor films from the '80s - it almost looked 'too' good. I sort of grew up with those restorations, and then, as a trainee film archivist, seeing a nitrate IB print of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp for the first time was a hell of a shock. The colours were duller than I thought they'd be, and several reels were notably misregistered. The stability of the picture on the slightly shrunk nitrate stock wasn't great, either. Those really dense, saturated colours, good (as 35mm can be on a good print, properly projected) stability and pin-sharp registration was probably a lot better than your average 1943 cinemagoer would have seen.
Likewise, the 10-minute 4k digital clip from Chinatown I saw blew away my memories of all the 35 'scope prints I've seen. The colours had been super-saturated (the transfer had been done from YCM separation elements made as preservation masters and then recombined digitally), there wasn't a spec of dust and the picture looked like it had been nailed to the screen, like a modern video projection. Even more disconcerting to me was the constant light flow - even at 24fps with a two-blade shutter, the back of your mind is conscious of a slight flicker, even though it isn't enough to disrupt the perception of movement. But this constant illumination just looked wrong to someone who is used to the light of film projection. I wonder if you put a rotating two-blade shutter from a film projector in front of the lens of a d-cinema projector, timed for the blades to pass as the DLP chips change the frame, if it really would look film-authentic?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-04-2008 07:07 AM
Sooner or later we're going to be seeing pre-digital era films screened digitally whether we want to or not. Depending on whose figures you believe, release print stock now accounts for between 90-95% or all 35mm film base manufactured. When the market for that collapses (which will happen as the big cinema chains start going digital en masse), film will no longer be viable for mass-manufacturing, and that'll be the end of release printing. It's possible that film manufacturing capacity will be maintained on a small scale, as a boutique operation for camera negative stock and the intermediate stocks used in preservation copying. But the cost will be astronomical, and the difference in price between making a viewing print on film and a 4k viewing copy on a hard drive will be like the difference between a DVD and a film print now.
I would hope that a few cinematheques and arthouses will aim to maintain screenings on film for as long as possible, but I fear that being able to see things on film is going to get progressively more and more difficult.
So much restoration work is now done using digital intermediate technology (in crude terms, a 'scan survivng element(s) - digitally bugger about with the scanned images - burn out to new film negative' workflow), that it's debatable what we can now regards as original, at least in terms of the restoration itself - the data which comes out of the computer and is projected directly, or going through the extra step of burning a film print.
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Thomas Hauerslev
Master Film Handler
Posts: 451
From: Copenhagen, Denmark
Registered: Aug 2000
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posted 02-04-2008 07:49 AM
Ben, what's this?: "....while there are so many 70mm Films and New Cinerama prints that don't get screened in the UK."
I'm one of "them", and I work hard to get whatever is new on 70mm and Cinerama for the WSW. So far we have screened most of the new material which has been made available to us.
We have guests who travels to Bradford, BEACUSE we are showing "The Great Escape" in digital.
"The Sand Pebbles" is the first 4K restoration, and I would have preferred to show it in digital, but we had to settle for a brand new 35mm print thanks for Fox in Hollywood.
I remember my first Showscan experience with "New Magic". With 60 frames per second (and each frame only shown once!), it was completely different from anything I've seen before (or since). It had a video-like texture which looked like the real world, but not like cinema. No flicker or stobing, the resolution was fantastic, brightness & sharpness was incredible and depth of field astonishing.
What I'm saying is, 35mm 24 fps pales completely compared to Showscan. 35mm is soo bad compared to what a high-impact system like Showscan looks like. All of us have just gotten used to 35mm the past 100 years.
I embrace digital because it is rock steady, and has the look of 70mm. In a few years when 35mm, 70mm, 2k and 4k can be found in museums, we will all be dazzled by 8k and 12k movies. We have just seen the beginning...and we try to show you the "state of the art" at the Widescreen Weekend.
Looking forward to the beer Ben - skål! ![[beer]](graemlins/beer.gif)
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Ramon Lamarca Marques
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 186
From: Edgware, England, UK
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted 02-05-2008 03:47 PM
Thomas,
You definitely have a point about technologies evolving, albeit change is not always evolution as was proven when they dropped dye transfer prints for Eastman colour prints. In the future they will have hologram-like Cinerama, albeit probably it will be at home with virtual reality.
It may look like sometimes I am against new technologies. I am not. Digital sound is now very good, but when the first CDs appeared they were worse than LPs, so it took a while until they could be compared to LPs. I think the same applies with 2k digital. I personally think they should have waited until getting a better imaging device. In any case, I am one of those who value the artistic merits of film as a medium and an artistic tool and not just a technology.
As to your reference to museums… well, this is precisely my point, if “museums” like Bradford stop showing the oldies in 35mm then we will not have anywhere to see them and believe me, many of us like to see the oldies on film texture. This is what museums and restorers do, they show us how history was.
As for resolution (only one of the aspects of image quality) I do not know what the maximum the eye can perceive is. I would imagine they will stop there. Many directors of photography will still prefer a rougher look though. Nevertheless, the most expensive and fundamental piece of hardware for 70mm-like cinema does not exist anymore (with some exceptions) and this is a cinema with a large screen. This is a very expensive piece of technology, which I fear belongs to the past, together with film. Well, I must go now, I want to put on an old LP. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Carl Martin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1424
From: Oakland, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 02-05-2008 05:07 PM
there are in fact 35mm prints of the "final cut" version of blade runner, but since they're simply output from the digital file i wouldn't bother to see one of those either.
there seems to be a lot of talk about what is better than what. colors can be tweaked and whatnot to make an image more saturated, and steadiness can be enhanced. that may be perceived as better even if it is less authentic. but to me, the authenticity is paramount. the work can't be abstracted from its means and its technologies without becoming aesthetically different.
great paintings end up in coffee-table books, but nobody confuses them with the original, and nobody makes the original inaccessible because the picture in the book is good enough or better.
as for lp's, i see new re-issues all the time, for about the same cost as anything else. problem is, though they may come out on heavier vinyl, often they are either poorly pressed or mishandled and have scratches and noise from day one. a used copy can sound much better. our fickle obsession with the latest technologies causes us to forget how to use the older ones properly.
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