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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Some thoughts on my first digital screening.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 03-08-2007 03:46 PM
I went to see the film today, there are several things that I want to say about it, but i'll write again tomorrow; I'm too tired now.
Just a couple of questions, firstly, who did the restoration? There's no credit for it on the film.
Secondly, after the show a little old Yorkshire woman came up and spoke to me in the bar; I've seen her several times in the past, and she has asked technical questions when I've been projecting. She says that she saw the film when it was originally relased, and she thought that she remembered the monochrome scenes being in black and white, not sepia. I don't remember it, I wasn't born for almost another couple of decades, but I thought that the original prints were sepia, and it was for a later re-release that they were done in black and white. There would seem to be several possibilities:
1. I am wrong, and the original prints were not sepia.
2. Her memory is letting her down after so many years.
3. She saw a re-release, not the original one.
4. The original American prints were sepia, but the original British ones were black.
Any thoughts?
Assuming that the original prints were sepia, were they silver prints that were toned, or were they printed that colour by dye transfer?
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Bernard Tonks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 619
From: Cranleigh, Surrey, England
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-10-2007 04:45 AM
I remember running The Wizard of Oz during the 1950's revival, the first 20 minute reel prints were in black and white, unlike the 1939 release which were sepiatoned.
The Independent newspaper.
The Wizard of Oz returns - with a yellower brick road
By Geneviève Roberts
Published: 16 December 2006
The tin man wears blue eye shadow, Dorothy's heel-clicking red shoes sparkle with 4,600 sequins and the world's most-viewed brick road has a vibrancy not seen for almost 70 years.
The Wizard of Oz was re-released at cinemas yesterday, restored to the vivid Technicolor glory of the 1939 original. After eight months of restoration work, including 250 hours simply cleaning the dirt from the original negatives, the "magically fervid intensity" of the film - one of Hollywood's most lavish productions - has been restored.
Critics have been convinced that the film warrants watching on the big screen. Time Out described it as "celluloid alchemy of the highest order" and told readers to "see this luminous restoration, and rediscover the power of truly great storytelling to reveal us to ourselves". The Times said it should be seen for its "Hollywood splendour".
Warner Brothers worked on the original negatives of the 98-minute film - which begins in the monochrome of Kansas and bursts into colour when Dorothy's house, uprooted by a tornado, lands in the surreal fairyland of Oz.
Restoring the first 19 minutes of the film, which were shot in black and white, took 91 hours. For the latter part of the film, three coloured strips of film sensitive to red, blue and green light were combined to give unrivalled - and at the time state-of-the-art - colour quality.
A spokesperson for Warner Brothers said: "It's rather like an old painting hanging in a gallery. Everybody loved it, but it was not how it originally looked. This restoration has painstakingly removed all the dirt, dust and scratches so that it's as good as the day it was released."
Margaret Deriaz, head of distribution for the British Film Institute (BFI), hopes that it will be popular this Christmas in cinemas across the country as one of the "greatest fantasy films of all time".
She said: "It is an amazing experience: a film so lavishly and spectacularly mounted really needs to be seen on the big screen. I hope that a new generation will be introduced. The fact that Warner Bros has produced a stunning new digital restoration gives the BFI the opportunity to bring this much-loved classic to the widest possible cinema audience.
The release comes in the same week as the Cowardly Lion's costume was auctioned for £357,000. Judy Garland's gingham dress went for £140,000 last year.
Fans of the original include the film-makers Peter Jackson, George Lucas and John Waters. Salman Rushdie described it as illustrating "how the weakness of grown-ups forces children to take control of their own destinies, and so, ironically, grow up themselves" in his Wizard of Oz handbook.
The movie is firmly planted in the collective consciousness. The film distributor MGM estimates more than a billion people across the world have seen it. A stage version has just opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse; the musical Wicked is playing in the West End and Irvine Welsh's stage play, Babylon Heights, is inspired by the imaginary stories of the people who played the Munchkins. The tunes have been remixed by 50 Cent and Aerosmith.
And now, with a yellower brick road and brighter rainbow, the original is back.
Behind the scenes
* Judy Garland's contract said her physical appearance could not change so she was given amphetamines to control her weight and barbiturates to sleep. In 1969, she died of a psychiatric drug overdose.
* Victor Fleming is credited as director, but Richard Thorpe, George Cukor and King Vidor also directed scenes.
* Buddy Ebsen was to play Scarecrow but Ray Bolger wanted it so badly he replaced him. Ebsen was then cast as Tin Man but became ill from breathing aluminium dust and Jack Daley replaced him.
* Studio executives initially wanted 'Over the Rainbow' cut out, thinking it unseemly for Garland to be singing in a farmyard.
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Brian Guckian
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 594
From: Dublin, Ireland
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 03-10-2007 05:15 PM
quote: Stephen Furley
The only way they were able to install the digital machine was to make a new port, partly overlapping the position of the old right-hand one, and to move the sound rack, making it very difficult to get to the desk, due the the railings around the hole in the floor which houses the fire escape ladder
I'm sure this was ruled out Stephen, but what about high level between the 35mm machines? I've seen this done at a few Preview Theatres, even with large DLP machines. I'm assuming the ceiling was too low, but I've seen one install where they were able to go partially up into the ceiling void and still get out through the porthole wall, via a new high-level port. Worked very well, and the machine was on-axis horizontally and also well within tolerance on the vertical axis.
Also, I think in an arts venue where there is a high turnover of prints (and not much space), you simply cannot beat a twin-machine changeover stup. Indeed, two machines, (even one 16/35 as well?) with a DLP in the middle at higher level would be nirvana ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 03-10-2007 06:16 PM
Brian.
Yes, that was considered, but there wasn't room for it. I was there when the site survey was done, and you name it, we considered it. Hanging it upside down frm the roof, putting it in the storeroom below, and periscope up through the floor, horizontal periscope for the digital, digital in place of No. 2 35mm machine, and then put that on a horizontal periscope, build out into the auditorium, mount two of the projectors on rails so either film or digital could be slid into position behind the port.
If the digital machine had neen smaller we could have put it in the centre, where the old slide/video/16mm position is, but it's too wide to go there; you wouldn't be able to get to No. 1 machine, nor open the back of No. 2, without removing the digital.
With permission from the projectionist I tried putting a couple of clips of Hi-def video through it today. One was a Batman trailer at 720p, and the other was a seies of shots from around the World, at 1080p. I ran them from my laptop, picture via DVI, and sound via a Toslink optical cable. On the laptop's own screen the Batman one autaully looks the better of the two, and I think this was also the case on the cinema screen; I'm doubtful about the elements that some of the 1080p material was sourced from; I'll have to try to find something better. The Batman trailer at 720p actually looked surprisingly good; not as good as proper digital cinema material, but vastly better than standard video.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-15-2007 10:26 AM
Well, not only did I get to run the first digital show, but on Saturday I was the one to take the projector past 100 hours, so it's probably time for an update. I think about half of that 100 hours has been public shows, the rest has been installation, testing, training etc.
We have now run three films:
In March 'Wizard of Oz'
In April 'Becoming Jane' and 'Inland Empire'
In May 'Becoming Jane' has returned, and 'Curse of the Golden Flower' opens next week. 'Inland Empire' also returns later in the month.
In June 'This is Englnd' and 'My Best Friend' are listed as being in digital. Surprisingly, 'Meet the Robinsons' isn't.
I've now run five digital shows, three of 'becoming Jane', and one of each 'Wizard of Oz' and 'Inland Empire'
Just received an e-mail, 'The Painted Veil', opening on Friday will also be in digital, so next week only the Saturday morning children's film will be on 35mm.
This week we have, in error, been seent a 35mm print of 'Becoming Jane'. This will probably be the only time we will have a film in both 35mm and digital forms at the same time. I was hoping to be able to run both together between shows on Saturday, to do a direct comparison, but there just wasn't time. Looking at the program booklet, there should be about 15 minutes free tomorrow between one show coming out, and the doors opening for the next; I'm going to 'phone the projectionist in the morning and ask if he'll let me go in and run a few minutes of it during this time.
<Five hours later>
I went to see 'Becoming Jane' this evening; the first 'normal' film that I've seen the whole of from the auditorium. I don't think that it looked either vastly better, or vastly worse, than 35mm, as some people have said.
I'm too tired to write more at the moment, but I'll edit this post tomorrow to add my thoughts.
Ok, here are my thoughts, having seen a complete 'normal' film from the auditorium. I was sitting in row D, which is roughly one screen width from the screen; I haven't actually measured it.
Lets start with the easy bit; the sound was better than an SR track on film. We still have some issues with our sound system, and are having to run with the level of the sub reduced at the moment, I still heard distortion on a couple of loud transients during the film, but that's our fault, and should be resolved soon.
The digital has a sharper look than film; noticable on graphics like the certificate and the credits. I would say that the resolution was adequate, but no more; I didn't find the resolution of the previous generation (1.3k?) projectors to be even adequate. Even if we are only projecting at 2k at present, I really do feel that we should be doing digital intermediate work at a higher resolution. I haven't seen 4k projected yet, but I have seen film projected via a 4k D.I., and it does look better.
There's no dirt or scratching on the reel ends, obviously, which there is at least some evedence of on most of the films that we show.
The blacks are better than on previous projectors, but if you open the douser and project black onto the scren you can still see that it isn't really black. Most of the time you don't really notice it, due to the contrast with the highlights of the scene, but on some dark scenes it does show up. There seemed to be less shadow detail held on the digital than I saw on the trailer for the film, which I saw on 35mm. I'm still hoping to be able to get access to the cinema for a few minutes this afternoon to do a direct comparison while we still have the, unused, film print in the box.
While sharply defined objects looked good, objects not in sharp focus, and things which were just 'fuzzy' in nature sometimes looked a bit odd. I noticed this several times on skin tones of faces; a bit like over-sharpened video, but not quite the same.
Overall I think I still prefer the look of the film version.
The digital does improve the working environment in the projection room; it doesn't get as hot; almost all of the heat comes out of the vent at the back, and is removed by the extraction system; the casing of the projector remains quite cool. In contrast, quite a lot of heat is radiated from the film lamphouses, and is therefore not removed by the extraction system. There's also a smaller amount of heat produced by the rectifiers, which is also not extracted. The much reduced noise level in the projection room is welcome; you can clearly hear the dialogue on the track, which is difficult with film, unless you turn the monitor level up to the point where M+E are too loud, and it's much easier to use the telephone and/or radio.
[ 05-16-2007, 03:16 AM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 05-16-2007 12:16 AM
We went to see the 'Pirates 3' screening today. It was held at the Seattle AMC "Pacific Place" theatre, screen 9... about 400+ seats. Don't know the screen size exactly, but it was probably on the order of 40-50 feet or so. I have no opinion about AMC, the company, the employer, or their presentation standards. We just went there to see the screening.
This was the first time in years, that I've seen an indoor presentation that was so near perfection (I don't live anywhere near Texas... sorry, Brad).
The picture was bright, and the lamp was evenly adjusted across the entire screen. Sound levels were very comfortable, and I could detect no imbalance between the speakers. Equalization was also good... no perceptible peaks anywhere. The picture was rock-solid, and the focus was about as good as I've seen in a long time. I wondered if they'd recently bought lenses. Funny... these are acolades that lately have been reserved for non-film presentations.
My attitudes about digital aside... if the digital folk are looking for film-done-wrong examples to make them look good, this isn't the place for them. I doubt they'd make much of an improvement.
If anyone here works at that theatre, they're doing a helluva good job.
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