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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Hollywood films to hit the big, big screen
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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.
Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 11-28-2002 01:17 PM
I have heard three complaints about these DMR releases:
- There's a black bar at the top of the screen. (Obiously from someone who refuses to buy letterboxed videos thinking bigger is better, regardless of intended composition. Yes, it would be great to show SW:Ep2 in 2.39:1. At 80-feet wide, it would easily be twice the size you can get at your best local giga-plex.)
- "You" cut out parts of the movie. (Same species of idiot, who thinks that the movie theater makes the movie.)
- It's too loud. (Different species, who was expecting Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones to be a nice, quiet documentary.)
We are giving the cattle, I mean customers, what they think they want:
If some people are willing to pay $15 to see Yoda, who in reality is three feet tall, 40 feet tall on the Imax screen (and who were willing to do so with a crappy 35mm print [blown up and grainy and cropped and dim, at that]), why shouldn't I take their money?
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Let's face it, this industry is all about giving the cattle, I mean customers, what they think they want. Stadium seating with poor projection angles, wall-to-wall screens with top-bottom masking that makes wide-screen processes smaller, eight-thousand-print opening weekends to let them ALL see it on opening weekend at the exact moment in time that they feel like it.
And you know what? We are still selling out our 400-seat theater with a movie that's widely available on home video. At $12-15 per head.
And our print is not scratched. And I just replaced our third HF diaphgram in three months. I've decided to start a collection, writing the culprit movie on each one ... Space Station, Apollo 13, Star Wars II ... if it's too loud, you're too old. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 12-01-2002 05:08 PM
I saw the SMPTE demo of APOLLO 13 at the Sony IMAX in NYC. Now, I don't know what IMAX theatres you guys have been to where you found the general presentation to be lousy and where the sound in particular was crappy. Every IMAX I've ever been to -- Gordon's Cinesphere, the IMAX at the Smithsonian in DC, the IMAX in Vancouver and the one in a theme park somewhere north of Chicago, each had the top end of the scale for the highest presentation values including sound. All that I have been in have been miles above even the few theatres left that run 70mm here in NYC.
I don't see how releasing Hollywood films to this format will be the abomination that you guys seem to think.
Would it be better if the old 70mm format were resurrected and the high-end 70mm theatres with curved 70 and 80 ft screens were also resurrected to be able to show them? Sure, but that's not reality. The reality is there are existing IMAX installations able to show 70/15 and as far as my experience, they are by far, well run and attentive to presentation detail, more so than many top chain theatres even here in Manhattan.
Plus, using IMAX to convert a film composed in S35mm is not the big aspect ratio mortal sin you are accusing it of. When a filmmaker uses S35mm, he's doing it for only one reason -- so that his film can be shown in every aspect ratio from 1.33 TV to mild letterboxed 1.85 for DVD and 2.39 for theatrical. What makes you think it is the theatrical ratio that is "THE ratio" he's composed for? On the contrary, it may very well be that he sees the theatre as only a stepping stone to the LARGER income markets of cable, broadcast and home video and it is THOSE he really composes for while the theatrical scope ratio may very well be the most compromised aspect ratio of the lot. For example: there is no doubt in my mind that the full frame version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was the way the shots were really composed; the 1.85 cropping in the theatrical release print was just that -- the compromised aspect ratio -- force that way out of expediency due to the fact that 99% of the theatrical venues can't correctly project 1.37. The theatrical 1.85 crop resulted in heads being chopped off, characters moving out of frame where, in the full frame they stayed in frame, properly composed. Put the two side by side and it is immediately apparant which of the two is the compromised aspect ratio. The theatres got the badly cropped version, the home video got the much better looking version.
My point is, there is no reason why the filmmaker, who plays with safe areas and cropping all the time in today's world of varied markets, can't compose knowing he will be releasing to a 1.66 IMAX aspect ratio if he's shooting in S35. For films shot anamorphically in scope, there is no reason why IMAX 70/15 cannot be used to present 2.39 scope in just that format, centered for optimum viewing in the middle of the IMAX screen. It is still 70mm with a bigger frame geography and still resulting in a MUCH larger images than most multiplexes. Plus, IMAX theatres have uniform quality, repeatable, higher presentation values (like we used to expect when going to 70mm releases in Todd-AO 70mm theatres years ago) than most multiplexes.
And Dallas's 80 wide 35mm screen not withstanding, come to any multiplex theatre here in Brooklyn, a large market of more than 3 million people -- no small back water town, and, believe me, you are not going to find many screens larger than even 50 ft. let alone 80, the average being a LOT smaller -- 30ft screens are not uncommon -- and these 30 footers are perched 12 feet above the floor so that, short of coming to the theatre wearing a neck brace, the audience leaves with neck and back pain worse than whiplash. Fact is, there simply are no longer those great 70mm installations where you knew when you made the decision to go to see a film "In 70mm" it meant you were getting the very best presentation. IMAX theatres come the closest to that kind of quality. So why not utilize them as our closest single screen 70mm theatres of old?
And this thing of people are supposed to be "people size" on the theatre screen. In huge Todd-AO screens, people weren't people size. That was the same argument that was made during the silent era for not using close-ups -- people's faces were never meant to be 20 ft tall. Admittedly, that was the one negative I saw in the IMAX APOLLO 13: close-ups were so big that the face actually decomposed -- you didn't see the whole face, but could only see facial hairs, pimples, a nostril or eye but not the whole face at once. But this could be easily compensated for in composition when the filmmaker knows he is shooting for an IMAX release, just as filmmakers routinely compose scope shots to be sure they keep important elements in the TV safe area and not on opposite sides of the scope frame. And this will only be a problem with S35 cinematography. Features shot anamorphically will not have that problem because presumably these will be shown in the slightly cropped 2:1 ar in the middle of the IMAX screen. Their relative size will be the same as if it were a standard 70/5 on a large 70mm screen, only with less grain.
Bottom line, APOLLO 13 looked spectacular on the IMAX screen -- bright, color saturated, almost no grain -- and with great sound. And I wouldn't mind paying a premium price to see other features in this format, just as I used to pay extra to see 70mm versions of major Hollywood releases years ago in flagship 70mm single screen theatres. IMAX is our next best bet.
The big plus? This may actually encourage shooting again in 65mm neg so that the IMAX digital DMR monkey-business doesn't have to work as hard cleaning up grain. And once you have a 65mm neg, it isn;t that big of a jump to a 70/5 release print, if you could find theatres that would play it without distroying it within the first week of play.
Frank Angel
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I should probably also qualify that (before Joe yells at me again!) by "typical" I mean built in the last 15 years and "the big house" seats just 250 or so. The Galaxy has always been the exception, with it's "Largest 35mm Screen in Texas".
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