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Topic: Tarantino Gets 50 70mm Projectors For The Hateful Eight
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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 08-21-2015 09:22 PM
"The Hateful Eight" now seems to be slipping off the radar, at least to judge from a recent article by Michael Cieply in the New York Times about a week ago. The article also contains current screen counts for some flavors of specialized projection.
The text of the article is down below, and note that QTs show is not mentioned at all (though there is a reference to the new "Star Wars".) To summarize the gist of it: it seems most studios, if they are thinking "big" at all, they are aiming for Imax (or Imax-type), and the various proprietary flavors of "big screen", and 3D, to hype the shows. Unless there is something really eye-popping in "H8", all the effort is just going to drift into irrelevance (IMHO).
Even more ominous is that, wouldn't you know it, there is even **another** western-type movie (a "frontier action-thriller") from Fox, opening on Dec. 25, "Revenant", from the Director of last year's "Birdman", Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. While "we" here on F-T are all aware of this 70mm project, in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Moviegoer it will largely boil down to which one, generally, is the better "frontier action-thriller". (Maybe QT doesn't want his show described that way, but from the look of the trailer, that description seems not far off the mark.) And if Revenant is not well-received, it could dampen the market for another dose of the same genre so soon afterwards.
Here's the article link, which has several images and a trailer or two embedded: NY Times article
quote:
Hollywood Uses Bigger Screens to Tell Sophisticated Stories
By MICHAEL CIEPLY -- Aug. 14, 2015 --- The New York Times
LOS ANGELES — In the literal sense, it is going to be a spectacular film season.
Though top Oscars have gone lately to tightly spun dramas like “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave,” Hollywood’s major studios are preparing to flood festival screens and commercial theaters with an unusual, year-end wave of grown-up movie spectacles — shown in the 3-D or large-screen format that is usually reserved for action blockbusters with younger audiences.
“There is a kind of show business in the fall that we’ve never had before,” said Greg Foster, the chief executive of the IMAX Corporation’s entertainment unit. He spoke of the confluence of films aimed at adults, many in 3-D, that will be delivered in IMAX and other large (and premium-priced) formats this year, pointing toward higher seasonal ticket sales, and perhaps a significant shift in viewing habits.
Sales in premium-ticket buying have surged in recent months, but to sustain momentum, studios will have to attract more adults, especially in the United States, while regaining younger viewers who had drifted away from 3-D after an initial expansion over five years ago.
On Sept. 2, the Venice Film Festival will open with a 3-D thriller, Baltasar Kormakur’s “Everest,” about love and death in the Himalayas. A few weeks later, Robert Zemeckis’s “The Walk,” about Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974, also in 3-D, will open the New York Film Festival.
The Toronto International Film Festival almost went the same way for its opener: Programmers flirted with showing Ridley Scott’s “The Martian,” a 3-D interplanetary adventure from 20th Century Fox, at the first-night gala on Sept. 10; instead they went with Fox Searchlight’s “Demolition,” saving the space film for another of their showcase premieres.
Some film executives see potential for industry transformation, if mature viewers indeed flock to a more sophisticated lineup of event films. “The word I would use is ‘necessary,’ ” Tom Rothman, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s motion picture group, said of the envisioned change.
By commanding a premium of several dollars per ticket — more easily paid by adults than teenagers — the enhanced screens promise expanded revenue for the companies involved. In the quarter that ended June 30, the average movie ticket price shot to $8.61, up 6 percent from the preceding three months, partly because of premium-ticket buying for “Jurassic World.”
If adults are more willing to don 3-D glasses — among those ages 50 to 59, 3-D viewing hit a peak in 2013, when Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” was a hit — that is partly because film exhibitors and related companies have been courting them to fill newly created capacity.
This year RealD, a supplier of 3-D technology, pushed its screen count past 27,000, up more than 6 percent from last year, even as 3-D viewing among the young fell sharply from a high in 2011, when “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2” was a draw, before rebounding this summer. Similarly, the Cinemark, Regal and AMC theater chains now operate more than 430 proprietary premium large-format screens, up 34 percent from 320 in 2013.
IMAX, a giant-screen pioneer, has pushed its global screen count to almost 1,000. At the same time, it has urged studios to join in creating event films for adults, especially for release in a September-October period that had previously been a dead spot, short on fantasy blockbusters.
On Sept. 18, Universal will thus release an IMAX-only version of “Everest” a week before the movie’s wide release, while Sony will offer an early IMAX release of “The Walk” on Sept. 30.
“What they are doing is replacing the 70-millimeter showcase theaters that supported a David Lean or a Stanley Kubrick,” Fox’s domestic distribution president, Chris Aronson, said of large-format screens, many of which will carry Mr. Scott’s “The Martian” on Oct. 2.
Inspired by recent predecessors like “Gravity” and Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” some of the visually ambitious films will most likely figure in the annual movie awards race.
The early festival entries from Mr. Kormakur, Mr. Zemeckis and Mr. Scott are to be joined later by “In the Heart of the Sea,” also in 3-D, a 19th-century sea adventure from Ron Howard for release by Warner Bros. on Dec. 11, and “The Revenant,” a frontier action-thriller from Alejandro González Iñárritu, for release by Fox on Christmas.
Mr. Iñárritu won this year’s best picture and best director Oscars with “Birdman,” which was set almost entirely within a Broadway theater production. But he is now using natural light and newly designed digital cameras to follow his star, Leonardo DiCaprio, through a Western mountain wilderness. The film promises to be as expansive as “Birdman” was contained.
“We’re finishing the final battle scenes right now,” said Brad Weston, chief executive of New Regency Pictures, which also backed “Birdman.”
Along with the more expected 3-D and large-screen presentations of fan-driven sequels like “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2” from Lionsgate and Walt Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” studios will surround their big-scale festival and awards bets with another tier of 3-D or giant-screen films that appeal to adults but are rooted in action, horror or family genres.
Those include the James Bond film “Spectre” from Sony Pictures and MGM; the Peter Pan fable “Pan” from Warner Bros.; the horror-romance “Crimson Peak,” from Universal; and the caper film “Point Break,” from Warner and Alcon Entertainment.
“Point Break,” which reimagines Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 surf-heist thriller of the same name, aims to transform the original story by connecting with an expanded world of extreme sports. It relies heavily on real stunts rather than digital tricks, but also capitalizes on evolving technology, including giant 3-D screens.
“You can do a lot more now with spectacle,” said Broderick Johnson, who joins his fellow Alcon co-president, Andrew A. Kosove, as a producer of “Point Break.”
For some filmmakers, the merger between special formats and adult themes points toward the realization of long-deferred dreams.
“Everest,” with Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Kelly and Josh Brolin, will be in 3-D as well. Photo Credit: Jasin Boland/Universal Pictures
“Everything I’ve done in my entire career is culminating in making this movie,” Mr. Zemeckis said, referring to “The Walk.” He spoke of advances in filmmaking technology that, to his mind, had finally erased the distinction between live action and digitally created images.
(Mr. Rothman predicted that the movie would supersede old wisdom that says films require a willing suspension of disbelief. “There is no disbelieve, you believe!” Mr. Rothman said of the movie’s re-creation of the now-destroyed World Trade Center towers.)
That makes it possible, Mr. Zemeckis added, to tell strikingly visual stories cheaply enough to let studios bet on sophisticated viewers, rather than relying on a teenager-driven mass market or a predefined fan base. “The Walk,” he confirmed, cost well under $50 million to produce, though he invested nine years in developing the project, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Mr. Petit.
For Mr. Kormakur, the grandeur of large screens should help forge a link between the spirit of his earlier Icelandic films, like “The Deep” — about a fisherman adrift in the icy sea — and a potentially vast audience.
“I wanted to match the intimacy of independent movies and the spectacle of an epic blockbuster,” said Mr. Kormakur, speaking by phone from Denmark. He added that he was “pleasantly surprised” to find “Everest,” which has backing from the family-oriented Walden Media, at the Venice festival (where “Gravity” had its debut).
Mr. Howard said he was similarly struck by a seeming paradox: That the overwhelming power of advanced screen techniques can make a film as large as “In the Heart of the Sea,” which involves deadly encounters with a sperm whale, more emotionally accessible to viewers, who seem to share the characters’ experiences.
“The more palpable and immersive the experience,” he said, “the more personal the film feels.”
I find it telling that they are discussing what they call as "event" shows, but their mindset is exclusively on what the theater chains are selling as their "big screen" cinemas (and 3D). Other stuff just doesn't seem to get much attention.
All that work for so little payoff.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 08-21-2015 10:32 PM
Sadly the lies about fake large format have been repeated enough by so many people they just believe it to be fact anyway, no matter how many times anyone says the typical IMAX Digital screen has a pixel count hardly any different than an ordinary television set.
Hollywood studios are only too happy to keep repeating the "premium large format" lie, since they're making a lot of money off of the lie.
I might be willing to budge on some of the stuff a little, like if the premium big screen is equipped with a minimum of dual projectors. The "premium" title might be able to fly, but it still isn't large format. Native resolution isn't any better than that of an average theater screen. The same holds true even if lasers are involved. They can call it "better" or "brighter" or "more colorful," but they can't truthfully call it large format.
The Ultra Panavision 70mm process and 70mm projection of that process is truly large format.
quote: Paul H. Rayton
Even more ominous is that, wouldn't you know it, there is even **another** western-type movie (a "frontier action-thriller") from Fox, opening on Dec. 25, "Revenant", from the Director of last year's "Birdman", Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. While "we" here on F-T are all aware of this 70mm project, in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Moviegoer it will largely boil down to which one, generally, is the better "frontier action-thriller".
The funny thing is The Revenant could benefit from a 70mm release as well. The movie was shot with Arri's new Alexa 65 camera system, featuring an imager the same size as a 5-perf 65mm film frame. They used prime lenses from Hasselblad to cover the frame.
I say "could benefit," but that is only if The Revenant is shot in full, open gate 6K resolution. For all I know it could wind up being another ho-hum 2K thing. The latest Mission: Impossible movie had portions of it shot with the same camera system, as well as 35mm anamorphic Panavision. Yet it only had a puny near-TV resolution 2K release.
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Bill Brandenstein
Master Film Handler
Posts: 413
From: Santa Clarita, CA
Registered: Jul 2013
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posted 08-22-2015 10:55 PM
quote: Brad Miller
(from way back on page 6)
Bill the most amazing transformation I ever had was with a kid who had just turned 16 years old...
Normally my rule is someone gets 3 shifts practicing basic threading and if they don't get the basics by that point, they're out...
To give you an idea of the way I trained, I would assemble virgin prints of 2 trailers. Each trainee had to "own" that print, and they were the only ones to touch it. This "movie" ran about 5 minutes and it was comprised of one trailer to simulate the trailer pack and another trailer to simulate the feature, with a full set of cues so the automation would do a normal and complete "show". I then made them thread it over and over and over for hours on end over multiple days. I would constantly keep an eye on their threading and techniques, and if there was a mark on the print after being ran repeatedly like that it was considered a failure. Dirt on the print was not tolerated either, as I consider that a mark. This taught them the importance of keeping the projector clean, and most importantly the film cleaner...
I know this is OT for "Hateful Eight," so thanks for the digression. Since I'm only a serious hobbyist, but typically annoyed with presentation issues when I go to a movie, and hoping to play with 35mm someday, this is a valuable glimpse into good training. Thanks for the details, Brad, and I still think a video here on the site showing the most common pitfalls and how to do it right would be gold to people like me on the "fringe" or those who've just never been trained properly. But who needs to train operators any more? So sad. Thanks again.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-23-2015 11:49 AM
quote: Bill Brandenstein
But who needs to train operators any more?
The operators of any arthouse/revival/cinematheque type venue that wants it to be among the few remaining places running film regularly going forward. The problem is that these places are typically nonprofits that don't have the resources available to train their projectionists this thoroughly. Many of them currently survive with people who trained while film was still a mainstream exhibition technology, but some are already facing real problems resulting from projectionists who've moved on (often to jobs requiring similar skills and aptitudes, but which pay more and don't require you to work evenings and weekends) or retired.
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.
The problem is that they've an affinity with film, but not electronics or mechanics, which is what they're really going to need in the dwindling number of film venues. If a ground hum suddenly appears on one of the audio channels, or a lamphouse starts to flicker, even with a new bulb, they don't even have the basic principles and processes in place to know where to start troubleshooting. In short, they've an affinity with the medium, but not the hardware. When I try to explain as diplomatically as possible that I don't care if they can see the difference between an IB and a dye coupler print on a bench (because it makes no difference to the way you show it, assuming both are acetate), but I do care if you know what to do if the sound suddenly goes out, or how you would investigate if a projector started to nick the perforations and an archive complained after we returned their print, that often comes as a big shock.
Of course none of this applies to the 50-venue Hateful Eight release, where the risk is that people will have to project these shows who don't have a particular affinity or enthusiasm for either the medium or the technology.
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 08-24-2015 04:35 PM
On Sunday August 16th, The Museum Of The Moving Image in New York City ran the 70mm Ulta Panavision print of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World with the a non-anamorphic lens. They ran the whole show show that way. I guess what is left of the IA is no better than booth/ushers now days. Scratch another venue off the places I would be willing to pay money to see a motion picture.
Worse, you can't get your money back for poor presentation or canceled shows, because the tickets are for admission to the museum, the movies are free with museum admission. Of course, most of the people who attend are there for the movie, but that is a different issue.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-24-2015 07:42 PM
The intermission audio doesn't come with the DCP (part 1 just fades out, then there is about 5 seconds of black, and part 2 fades in), and so, when I showed that last month, I couldn't have presented it properly, even though I knew how to. I did use our horizontal masking bars to mask the screen to the right shape, though, even though it was 2.39 but shorter.
In fact, if I hadn't taken care to look for the intermission point and put a pause cue in, the show would have run without an intermission. Maybe that's why they supplied the DCP that way - to give theaters the option of playing it without an intermission at all.
I am a bit surprised that someone who knows how to handle 70mm doesn't know about UP70 and the need for anamorphic lenses.
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