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Author
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Topic: Tarantino Gets 50 70mm Projectors For The Hateful Eight
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-25-2015 10:21 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
There is no shortage of kids wanting to do this, and many of them have gone through (or are going through) film archiving school, have shot stuff on super 8, collect 16mm movies they show at home, and so already have an aptitude and inclination for careful film handling. Unlike some multiplex kids, they have an affinity with the medium and get that it needs to be handled carefully. For these sorts of people, the sort of training method Brad describes wouldn't be necessary, because they'd be motivated to put themselves through that process without anyone looking over them.
If the budding filmmaker types are self-taught they still need to learn the right ways to handle film from an expert, like Brad. Self-taught people can teach themselves plenty of wrong ways to do something.
Hopefully they would be open minded enough to listen to someone who really does know better.
OTOH, the scary thing is the budding filmmaker types would get lessons from fake experts steeped in handling 70mm in a wrong way.
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Paul H. Rayton
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 210
From: Los Angeles, CA , USA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 08-26-2015 08:49 PM
There is exactly **ONE** print of "Mad (4) World" that's available for use these days. It was made in about 2003, for MGM, and those MGM titles are currently being distributed domestically by Park Circus. It is the sole print that has DTS, and it's the same print that played at the Dome for sure.
Yes, the 1.25 squeeze of Ultra Panavision is less severe than the 2.0 squeeze of regular anamorphic film, but it will sure make everyone look very skinny if projected minus the correct anamorphic lens.
It would be extremely expensive to re-render the film from the original neg to a non-Ultra Panavision print, so don't hold your breath to see one created!
Tarantino, and the people working with him to try to achieve some kind of distribution in this format this time around will (we can hope) thoroughly check out the venues, and equip them with the correct set of lenses, according to the dimensions of the venue. (And to do so will be a real challenge, but really only one of many challenges facing the "H8" project!)
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-27-2015 10:04 AM
Hopefully the people setting up The Hateful Eight 70mm shows have a complete check list to follow rather than attempting to do shit from memory.
I'm just hoping one of the theaters in Dallas that were set up by Brad to run Interstellar in 5/70 will be running The Hateful Eight. I'd feel pretty secure about the show going off without a hitch then.
quote: Paul H. Rayton
So, if no one in the entire audience there in NYC made a fuss about "Mad (4) World" being projected "squeezed" -- in time to get it corrected for the main part of the show -- it makes me wonder how docile (or stupid) audiences have become.
I think it's more of an endurance contest.
While most of the audience is blissfully unaware something is wrong, more than a few know there is a problem. But they're all comfortable in their seats and don't feel like getting up.
It's better to wait and let some other fool deal with it. After all they have a complicated situation already, like a lap filled with a tub of popcorn, oil drum sized soda pop and anything else that could be stacked into that calorie bomb. Then there's all those people sitting to the left and right -the penalty of sitting in the "sweet spot" of the theater. Not many technically astute movie-goers are going to choose an aisle seat for a quick escape.
Plus, it's not like anyone in the booth is going to rewind the movie back to the part you missed while leaving the auditorium. Not even with digital.
I've gone through this. I'd be watching a movie and then some problem would pop up, like a frame line going through the middle of the screen. I'd wait for a moment. No one else budges in the slightest. Then I mutter to myself, "fuck, I guess I gotta be the one to deal with it."
quote: Rick Raskin
Not to wonder. Just look at how may people stretch their TV's image to fill the 16X9 screen and think there is nothing wrong.
And then they shoot all their iPhone videos vertically. To top it off they think it's someone else's fault when their fucked up videos are severely pillar-boxed on their TV or computer screens (that is if the videos even play at all).
Elementary school kids can usually tell the difference between a square or a rectangle. They play those games where they fit geometrically shaped objects into matching holes on a board. Perhaps it's somewhere around puberty that a bunch of these people forget all those basic elementary school lessons and become fucking idiots when it comes to the concept of aspect ratio. How do all these legions of morons manage to pass geometry class?
This problem is so pervasive it even infects broadcast control rooms. The video doesn't fit? We'll run it anyway! It's digital after all! It's fun to watch a hi-def channel where some of the TV commercials are window-boxed, the joy of letter-boxing and pillar-boxing at the same time. The TV commercial is produced in hi-def, but passed to the TV network in a letter-boxed SD version. Then they pillar-box that.
Another big goof I see all the time: TV commercials shot in HD with no 4:3 zone protection at all. It's not bad if you're watching in HD. But it's a laugh riot when you encounter a TV that has been fed a SD signal and put into stretch-o-vision. Things like phone numbers and parts of people's heads get chopped at the left and right ends of the screen.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-27-2015 10:58 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
I'm just hoping one of the theaters in Dallas that were set up by Brad to run Interstellar in 5/70 will be running The Hateful Eight. I'd feel pretty secure about the show going off without a hitch then.
There are a few theaters around the place that are operated and maintained by "super-projectionists" such as Brad, and they will do it right, come what may.
The issue is that, as I understand it, Tarantino is taking a different approach from Nolan. For Interstellar, the approach was to put 5/70 prints into the places that could already show them, or were willing to try to regain that capability themselves, without any involvement of the film's production team. In other words, every place which showed that movie either had people who knew what they were doing (theoretically), or the motivation and enthusiasm to get involved in 5/70. Even then, the result was that most of the prints got mangled.
This time, the approach seems to be different. It appears to be to identify theaters that it would be cool to play this movie in, not caring what they are capable of at the moment, and then do what is necessary to make them able to show 5/70.
Unless "doing what is necessary" includes hiring an itinerant "super projectionist", putting him or her up in a nearby hotel as a traveling festival projectionist would be, and having him/her simply project the whole run for venues that don't have the necessary expertise already on their payroll, the result - in some of the theaters at least - risks being so much worse. This is because of the possibility that the team organizing the release will identify and approach venues, the management of which does not buy into the attraction of large format film, UP70 and all the rest of it, and considers it just a geeky distraction from their normal business of playing DCPs and selling popcorn. So they'll be reluctant to give the installers the time they need to do a good job, reluctant to pay any of their own staff for the time needed even for rudimentary training, and generally reluctant to do the whole thing right. But they'll want the movie (especially if they're not getting Star Wars and/or if the release is pushed back), so they will play along, reluctantly.
I hope I'm being overly pessimistic, but that pessimism is based primarily on the scale of print damage that happened during the Interstellar release.
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Paul H. Rayton
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 210
From: Los Angeles, CA , USA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 08-27-2015 10:25 PM
So what, pray tell, is the POINT, then, of all the Ultra Panavision "extra super wide" image, and all the expense and hoopla that is attending this production, if the end result is a "smaller [area] than Cinemascope" image? I.e., as wide as the screen will get, but then made smaller by closing the masking(s) at top and/or bottom.
I thought his idea was IMPACT on a BIG SCREEN! If it's all piddled away in venues with small screens ... well, all I can say is "what a waste".
At the Uptown (which I've visited), yes, it would be really great (an ex-Cinerama theater, as it is), but to purchase a new screen just for this production would seem to be above and beyond the call of duty for most venues -- unless it seems like we'll be seeing a LOT more productions in this mode. Hint: don't hold your breath. It's a lot more likely that there will be additional 3D movies coming down the pike (whether we like 'em or not) so that silver screen is very likely to stay.
I'd love to see something big and wide, or should I say wide and BIG. I recall how a colleague described seeing "Ben Hur" in first run, 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision (branded then as "Camera 65") at the Egyptian, back in 1959: "The picture started up on the logo, and the curtains just went wider, and wider and WIDER! It was incredible!!!"
There must be a few screens that can do this justice, but along with the Uptown (which would need a new screen), the few that come to mind are the Dome (in L.A.) and the Cinerama in Seattle. And maybe a few of the so-called "giant screen" venues around, but all of them that I can think of are digital only (with no film projectionists -- see previous posts in this thread), and would very likely need non-metallic screens as well.
The architecture of older proscenium-stage type houses would preclude such screens, unless they threw caution to the winds and built new screens in front of the proscenium. And all new speakers, possibly. Hell, why not build all new venues from the ground up, using the design hexagons of the Cinerama Dome? But it took about 30 years for Imax to really catch on in terms of a unique brand being available in a lot of places. I don't see that happening now.
Again: don't hold your breath!
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-28-2015 08:52 AM
I have, from the start, questioned why the choice of UP70 was made. It is one extra hurdle that will cost the most and yield the least. SP70 would have done what he wanted (shown the spender of 70mm) without the headaches of a ratio that nobody is set up to handle anymore without shrinking the screen. Why not shoot in CinemaScope 55, while you are at it? Get a 2.55:1 image out there too.
Conversely, there are many venues that can handle 2.2 due to handling 70mm already. The movie can be protected to 2.39 without too much trouble such that it would work everywhere. Protecting to 2.39 from 2.76 is going to be rather difficult. The close ups I've already seen look questionably cropped in 2.76.
Oh, and for the record, the Uptown should lose its Silver screen because the gain and the curve don't work with each other. There are many, many, many more 2D movies that are ruined by the silver screen versus the extremely few movies that require 3D and even in 3D, silver screens hurt the image. The Uptown would be a good venue for 6P laser projection and end its light issues once and for all.
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Steve Kraus
Film God
Posts: 4094
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: May 2000
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posted 08-28-2015 09:44 AM
Article by the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips about continued film exhibition in general. May require registration.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-movies-shot-on-film-reels-preservation-20150827-column.html#
Excerpt that relates to this discussion:
"This Christmas, in 50 or so markets, Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' will cross a bridge many thought they'd never see again. His post-Civil War Western, shot in 70mm, will be screened in select theaters on 70mm equipment. Will enough people care to make a difference at the box office?
Various Chicago exhibitors have contacted the Weinstein Company to express their interest and ability to show it in 70mm. Kerasotes Theatres, based in Chicago, has thrown its hat in the ring, according to chief operating officer Tim Johnson. 'If they give it to us," he says, we'll commit to one of our bigger ICON Theatre auditoriums for four weeks.'
The Music Box Theatre is interested as well. The grand old 1929 Music Box runs digital and film projection regularly in both auditoriums on Southport. 'It's one of the ways we distinguish ourselves from other theaters,' says programming director Brian Andreotti."
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-28-2015 11:52 AM
quote: Brad Miller
Bobby, going head-to-head against Star Wars, it's going to be interesting to see if the existing 3 theaters I installed 70mm for Interstellar at will be willing to play it. I would bet Look will, and they have a sweet auditorium for it too, but I'm thinking the other two locations may pass (or have it moved to a smaller house). I know they want Oscar consideration, but it's really suicide for business and from a 70mm perspective to go against Star Wars.
I'd make the drive to Dallas to see it at LOOK if it gets The Hateful Eight in 70mm. I'm kind of wondering if BL&S is trying to outfit any of Warren Theaters' locations for 70mm. UP 70mm might be pretty cool on that deep curved screen of theirs in Broken Arrow, OK if they can get the image aligned properly.
Star Wars: Episode VII may open to big business. However, I'm not sold on this one being a guaranteed blockbuster.
I remember the giant revisionist shit J.J. Abrams dumped on the Star Trek saga, with the Into Darkness installment having some horrible yet unintentionally funny moments. I cringed when I first heard he was taking over the helm of Star Wars. All of his past movies, no matter how good or bad, have moments in them that defy logic and are merely on screen only because it was supposed to look cool. Suspension of disbelief? What the hell is that?
With the media now predicting a $600 Million+ global opening weekend for Star Wars: Episode VII, I can't help but wonder if a bunch of people are completely jinxing this thing. Disney is already spamming off spin-off movies in addition to 3 regular SW sequels in the pipeline. Expectations are being set very very high. Yet there is a credible chance Star Wars: Episode VII may turn out to be a stinking turd.
Unfortunately there is no guarantee The Hateful Eight will be any good either. I'm really worried about the premise of 8 characters being confined in a log cabin in Colorado during a blizzard. The movie could be a whole bunch of talking in a dark room -not exactly something that lends itself to the Splendor of 70mm, much less something as exotic as Ultra Panavision 70mm.
quote: Paul H. Rayton
There must be a few screens that can do this justice, but along with the Uptown (which would need a new screen), the few that come to mind are the Dome (in L.A.) and the Cinerama in Seattle. And maybe a few of the so-called "giant screen" venues around, but all of them that I can think of are digital only (with no film projectionists -- see previous posts in this thread), and would very likely need non-metallic screens as well.
A Digital-only theater would be automatically disqualified with being able to do The Hateful Eight any justice. Most are mere 2K (including all but 4 of IMAX' branded houses). The severe letter-boxing would yield something barely better than 720p resolution -btw, the 1080p Blu-ray will have less than 700p worth of vertical image area. Add to this the fact so many digital theaters are equipped with (spit) common width screens. If you want an Ultra Panavision sourced image to really look small try projecting it on a common width screen. It would suck in any IMAX-branded house.
Digital can't do 2.20:1 correctly, much less manage the 2.76:1 ratio of UP 70. All of the letter-boxing on the imaging chips makes d-cinema very much TV in public. Fake scope.
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