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Author
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Topic: Will 4K be the next 70mm?
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Ramon Lamarca Marques
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 186
From: Edgware, England, UK
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted 09-20-2010 05:18 PM
quote: Greg Anderson
That said, the last big movie to be shot in 65mm was, what? Far and Away?
No, it was Hamlet, and now it would be Samsara. If they release that on 70mm without digital intermediate work it could show how good film is nowadays.
quote: Brad Miller
The "glory days" of 70mm are over
But why? The Dark Knight did very well on IMAX and all the IMAX blow-ups are doing extremelly well in IMAX (real one), at least in London. Inception, which has a huge percentage of footage in VistaVision or 65mm would look much better had they edited it on 65mm instead of 35mm. The Imax blow-up is from the 35mm reduction, which is ludicrous, having so much large negative footage. With all the success of 70mm in IMAX, why don't they release 5/70mm for big screens?
quote: Lyle Romer
If a 4k projection system can produce these measures as well as film can (at least release print quality film) then 4k digital will for all intents and purposes look just as good to the vast majority of the audience as 70mm. Additionally there is the benefit of not having to worry about dirt and scratches (irrelevant for film done right) and there is abosolutely no jump or weave which helps with percieved resolution.
The problem is 4K DLP will give you a look that is too close to video. As I said in another post, Avatar digitally looks like Toy Story in the jungle, whereas on IMAX 15/70 the real action images and the animated ones merge much better and suspension of belief is also easier.
Honestly, with 65 mm photography and high scanning tools, prints on 70 mm would look like nothing home cinema can provide yet there is no interest in promoting that. After the false promises (i.e. 3-D is only for cinemas) I would imagine exhibitors won't trust distributors anymore and too much has been spent on digital which is obsolete (i.e. 2K) to go back to film now, which is a pity.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-20-2010 06:26 PM
4K is not equal in resolution to 5-perf 65mm photographed material.
I agree the "glory days" of 70mm are history not to be repeated. Sadly so. This is unfortunate because 70mm is the only projection format capable of doing the job right on really large movie theater screens.
During the stadium seated theater building craze in the 1990s quite a few theaters were built with at least 1 or more houses featuring really large screens -screens frankly too damned big for 35mm to light properly. Nevertheless most theater chains built and equipped such theaters 35mm only.
Aside from the image resolution advantage of 65mm negatives 70mm trounces 35mm on two big areas: brightness and steadiness of image. Both are extremely important for any theaters with giant-sized screens.
5/70mm projection is throwing light through a hole 250% larger than full frame 4/35mm projection. The difference is even larger when comparing cropped 1.85:1 35mm imagery. A 35mm projector can throw only so much light onto only so large a screen. The image just gets dim when the screen is too huge. Lots of people gripe about how dim digital 3D can be. Where are the complaints about dim 35mm projection on giant sized theater screens?
A 5/70mm projected image will have superior steadiness to 35mm on the same screen. The 35mm image will be magnified to a much greater extreme and any issues with film movement in the gate will be magnified by that greater extreme.
Digital projection has a rock steady image. Unfortunately its native resolution and brightness/contrast levels aren't satisfactory for a giant size screen. 4K projection of native 4K material would be an improvement, but only with adequate brightness levels.
Theaters could give customers much better show quality by using 70mm projection, but it's clear both the theater chains and movie distributors are done with 70mm. I don't know if much else can be done to improve 35mm, so it's on its way out from many theaters as well.
In the end that leaves us waiting for technology to improve. It's obvious the movie industry needs to make 4K the de-facto standard for digital intermediate use rather than the 2K format that stubbornly reigns supreme.
A lot of development activity has been going on in the CMOS imaging chip area. Panavision, Red, Arri and even companies like Canon and Nikon are involved. Hopefully that will help 4K take over as the minimum standard and possibly push image quality levels much higher. But you have issues of bandwidth, data storage, etc.
And then there's another factor that will get in the way of the drive toward really high resolution digital imagery: age conscious actors.
I think that's another reason why 5-perf 65mm photography never made a proper resurgence. With today's technology in lenses, film stocks, etc. 65mm negatives could capture an immense level of image detail. And that also means revealing lots of subtle details of aging in an actor's face. These folks already spend a ton of money on plastic surgery, dental procedures, etc.
I've heard some say production design budgets would be significantly greater in a 70mm based movie, but that's a bunch of baloney -especially if the DP uses the more narrow depth of field of 70mm to selectively focus the important parts of the image. No, I think aging actors is the bigger road block. You have to keep the actor's face in focus. Subtle flaws and all.
quote: Ramon Lamarca Marques
The problem is 4K DLP will give you a look that is too close to video. As I said in another post, Avatar digitally looks like Toy Story in the jungle, whereas on IMAX 15/70 the real action images and the animated ones merge much better and suspension of belief is also easier.
I'm sorry, but this just doesn't make any sense to me.
First of all, the image origination format (film or video) does much more to determine whether a movie looks like film or video. Some movies shot on video have pulled off the film look rather well while while others have failed miserably.
Avatar was shot on video in 1080p HDTV resolution. I don't see what film-based IMAX would add to this other than making the roughly 2K image look evenly bright on a giant-sized screen. The 3D imagery doesn't have the native resolution to be worthy of IMAX branding. I saw all I needed to see of Avatar watching it in digital 3D on a modest sized movie theater screen.
After watching the huge blurriness known as Superman Returns I swore I would never again waste money on an IMAX 3D show sourced from 1080p HD footage. Tron Legacy was shot in similar twin-camera 3D 1080p quality levels. There's no need to see that kind of resolution limited imagery blown up on a screen a big as a 5 story tall building. Hell, I might as well take a person's thumbnail avatar image from a forum and blow it up on a 14' X 48' billboard. The artwork is "digital" so therefore it should be "perfect." Ugh.
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-20-2010 07:24 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
And then there's another factor that will get in the way of the drive toward really high resolution digital imagery: age conscious actors.
Not a real issue. Any good DI colorist can isolate, track and smooth out flesh tone area skin imperfections by making an alpha channel key on an adjustment layer. Different boxes have different toolsets for this, but they all at the very least have smoothing/blur/degrain options on a hue specific level, and the amount of subtle aging clean-up that is possible is pretty amazing. In fact, you actually hope for higher-resolution/low compression native material, the more you start with, the easier it is to pull off a good effect an still maintain the sense of sharp focus. Really, a competent camera engineer can even do this on-set, provided he is shooting in the realm of traditional baseband camera output (as opposed to strictly data). The only real struggle is to be judicious; inevitably, the director or the talent person or their agent wants the max out, and people wind up looking like they were shot thru a layer of Vaseline.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-22-2010 04:07 PM
quote: Ramon Lamarca Marques
The reason Avatar is worth the price of admission in (real) IMAX 3-D is because Cameron may be a childish screenwriter but knows how to direct a film from the visual point of view. The slow editing and long shots allow the viewer to enjoy the images in 3-D.
Those are subjective factors that have nothing to do with the choices of shooting a movie on video or film as well as projecting via video or film.
quote: Ramon Lamarca Marques
Also the fact that Avatar is mostly a quite square film fits nicely the IMAX screen. The resolution was not perfect, I never said it was, but to be able to observe so many details on the IMAX screen and immerse so much in the film was a delight. Also with the IMAX screen there are less of the frame issues associated with 3-D in smaller screens.
Again, the IMAX version of Avatar didn't show a whole lot of extra image detail above what people could see in a proper 2K digital presentation. The source image is only HDTV quality in terms of native resolution. The only real benefit IMAX viewers saw was the frame opened up to 1.77:1 ratio (which is still considerably more rectagular than an IMAX film frame).
quote: Ramon Lamarca Marques
My point is that digital when transferred to film does not look like your ordinary Playstation (as it does when viewed on a digital cinema) but it gets some of the film qualities by means of projection, like the softness of the image as compared to DLP projection.
The softness you're seeing is due to a source image of limited resolution being blown up far past acceptable levels onto a gigantic screen. IMAX' DMR process has to use a lot of interpolation and blurring tricks to hide the pixel grid of that video-source image. In the end the finished results are one huge, blurry image.
Do you know the uncomfortable feeling of what it's like to try to read something on a sheet of paper held too close to your face? Your eyes try to focus on it but the object is too close. Watching a video-sourced image in IMAX gives me some of the same sensation. I see a huge image covering much of my periphreal view, but the image is blurry and seemingly out of focus.
As to the criticism of digital cinema, I don't agree with the dismissal that it looks like an "ordinary playstation." Digital projection doesn't dictate at all whether a movie looks like video or film. The origination format used when the movie is photographed does. Movies shot on film and projected digitally still retain the film look.
Digital projection has the advantage of showing a perfectly steady image with less flicker than film projection. Perhaps the lack of those flaws make the image seem a bit artificial. Digital projection is not as good as film in terms of deep black levels. It shouldn't be used on really big screens either because it runs into the same problems I see with IMAX blow-ups of video imagery: not enough native pixels in the source image.
Given the fact most movies are still put through a 2K resolution digital intermediate in post production, I think the acts of making IMAX-based film prints from those images and paying the premium to see an IMAX DMR blow up of such images is a waste of money.
quote: Carsten Kurz
Well, IMAX really should know about the economics of 70mm - they are doing it for 40 years now. And they give up on it. What does that tell us?
I think IMAX saw some growth potential in using the "digital" buzz word to get the IMAX brand plastered on hundreds of more theater screens.
70mm showings, both in terms of IMAX and traditional 5-perf 70mm, have attracted bigger audiences and made the large format prints profitable.
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Ramon Lamarca Marques
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 186
From: Edgware, England, UK
Registered: Feb 2006
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posted 09-22-2010 05:33 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Those are subjective factors that have nothing to do with the choices of shooting a movie on video or film as well as projecting via video or film.
I am sorry but I am not sure I understand it correctly but what I meant is that Avatar, because of the way it is filmed is a pleasure to see on a big screen and that on a small screen I would have not bothered. Fast editing is unwatchable on the IMAX screen but films like Avatar are wonderful on it.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Again, the IMAX version of Avatar didn't show a whole lot of extra image detail above what people could see in a proper 2K digital presentation. The source image is only HDTV quality in terms of native resolution. The only real benefit IMAX viewers saw was the frame opened up to 1.77:1 ratio (which is still considerably more rectagular than an IMAX film frame).
Yes, but even with the lack of resolution, the amazing landscapes can be enjoyed better on a big screen than a small one. I know I am being subjective but I liked it and many more people liked it. Had it had more resolution I would have enjoyed it better but if I have to choose between the Imax screen and a multiplex screen I prefer the Imax screen and also it has the extra brightness needed for 3-D, which lacks in single 3-D systems.
quote: Bobby Henderson
The softness you're seeing is due to a source image of limited resolution being blown up far past acceptable levels onto a gigantic screen. IMAX' DMR process has to use a lot of interpolation and blurring tricks to hide the pixel grid of that video-source image. In the end the finished results are one huge, blurry image.
Do you know the uncomfortable feeling of what it's like to try to read something on a sheet of paper held too close to your face? Your eyes try to focus on it but the object is too close. Watching a video-sourced image in IMAX gives me some of the same sensation. I see a huge image covering much of my periphreal view, but the image is blurry and seemingly out of focus.
I do not know how Superman Returns looked on Imax but Avatar looked good on Imax. I do not know what they did with the images but it did look good, not blurred and I did not experience any tiredness. It would be good to hear more opinions of people who saw the Imax version. Let me insist that I would have preferred more resolution but some scenes were breathtaking. As to the softness, I like how film can achieve resolution (i.e. 65/70) and yet keep a soft (as opposed to harsh) look, which I have not seen in digital projection. Maybe I am not using the correct word but I dislike very much the way edges look on digital or the way lights and shadows look on digital (i.e. strong light or different degrees of dark) and I am sure there is a technical reason for it and maybe laser projection will bring a different look.
quote: Bobby Henderson
As to the criticism of digital cinema, I don't agree with the dismissal that it looks like an "ordinary playstation." Digital projection doesn't dictate at all whether a movie looks like video or film. The origination format used when the movie is photographed does. Movies shot on film and projected digitally still retain the film look.
Digital projection has the advantage of showing a perfectly steady image with less flicker than film projection. Perhaps the lack of those flaws make the image seem a bit artificial. Digital projection is not as good as film in terms of deep black levels. It shouldn't be used on really big screens either because it runs into the same problems I see with IMAX blow-ups of video imagery: not enough native pixels in the source image.
I agree, I was exagerating, but I personally do not like DLP projection but I have only seen 2K projection, it looks quite artificial to me (although close-ups look great) and when static objects are shown it looks like the projector is on still mode, which to me does not replicate reality at all.
Many things are subjective in life, although there are certain parameters that can be used to measure quality. Wilder and Hitchcock did not like Technicolor at all and other directors liked it. Technicolor was perfect for the MGM musicals but probably not as good for someone looking for a more natural look. Fritz Lang thought widescreen was only good to film snakes and Max Ophuls did not like it either yet Nicholas Ray did marvels with it.
I like seeing nitrate black and white films on the rare occasions they are shown in London and to me they are visual treats, although to many people they would have no interest nowadays, very subjective indeed.
quote: Carsten Kurz
Well, IMAX really should know about the economics of 70mm - they are doing it for 40 years now. And they give up on it. What does that tell us?
- Carsten
They seem to know as much of the economics of film exhibition as Cinerama did. Get a good product, make audiences associate the name with the product, cheapen the product but keep the name, result: bankruptcy!
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