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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Sound of Music DCP format
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Manny Knowles
"What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???"
Posts: 4247
From: Bloomington, IN, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 07-31-2013 03:43 PM
quote:
If this is what the studios are pulling out their asses and passing it off as representative of those masterpieces in their libraries, then it is still a fact that taken as a complete system, from master scanning to the final DCP release and what audiences will see on the screen, digital STILL is not capable of giving my audience the same experience as those original classics. Without the will of the studios' honchos to make the BEST mastering for DPC rerelease, it never will.
Frank,
I agree with the sentiment. But if we're going to criticize digital because of corporate misapplication of the technology, then we'd have to also criticize film on the same grounds.
Surely, by now, we've all seen many film prints that were disappointments, including brand new film prints made from DI's and printed at high-speed...and used repertory prints that were past their prime.
In both cases -- film or digital -- misapplication of the technology is the problem. Not the technology itself.
I am not anti-film or even pro-digital -- I'm looking at what is, in the most practical sense, better for our audiences, given the real-world choices available to us. (As distinguished from the theoretical choices that might be available in a parallel universe, where studios make different choices based on best practices.)
And I won't even go too deep into the subject of projectionist misapplication of technology, except to say that was part of film's downfall, too.
If I am "anti" anything, it's living in Fantasyland and pretending that film would be the better choice today.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 07-31-2013 07:37 PM
And I agree 100%. As I have said, I don't care what piece of equipment is in the booth, as long as it can give my audience a top draw presentation comparable to what the filmmaker captured on film. And if it were 70mm TODD-AO, then future generations should be able to see a replica of that work.
What makes me crazy has nothing to do with technology (although I sure wish digital projectors were completely incapable of showing anything BUT 4K DCPs and that they simple shut off if a DVD or BR player is hooked up to them. What is frightening to me is the prospect that the older classics, the truly great films of the last century, may never be available to the public and experienced as we were able to experience them as kids. This has much less to do with the technology as it does with the will and committment or lack thereof by the studio big-wigs to provide DCP copies mastered to the highest level that the technology is capable of providing. Copying a DVD master to a DCP certainly doesn't rise to any level of acceptibility. This isn't about the technology, it's about corporate committment to quality and making older titles available.
I consider the art house the same as any museum -- the place where the great artifacts of our film legacy are preserved for the next generations. Digital or film is inconsequential; it's all about the attitude of the copyright owners toward their libraries which are the repositories of that wealth of motion picture history. The studios in many cases (not all and not all the time, but enough to make a general observation) have been
consistantly recalctrant in the way they treat their libraries and making them available to the willing exhibitor. They are just as at fault today when they nonchalantly tell an art-house exihibitor to run a DVD rather than a properly mastered DCP, just as much as they at fault in the past when they sent out garbage prints to that art house exhibitor. The end result is the same -- digital or film -- audiences that should have be inspired and edified by the beauty and power of those great titles were robbed. The Studio Robber Barrons.
Classic titles belong as much to the American people as they do to a comglomerate that has been given monopolistic protection by power of the US Governement and free police enforcement by the FBI for them.
And hence comes the failure of the Library of Congress which when monopoly protection has been given by way of copyright protection, the owner was SUPPOSED to make sure a pristine copy (2 in fact) of the highest quality were deposited with the LOC (i.e., the American People) for safe keeping. It has fallen far from the mark in that regard. Protecting the work for the Public is or should be the other side of the coin of protecting the copyright holder from infringers. Somehow when all that we can show to the public are beat up prints or DVD copies, the public has gotten screwed.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 09-01-2013 11:38 AM
quote: Manny Knowles
If I am "anti" anything, it's living in Fantasyland and pretending that film would be the better choice today.
Exactly. I was so excited to see "The Master" in 70mm and the print was filled with dirt from end to end and even without the dirt, the image simply didn't look that great. I don't know whether this was a lab problem or whether a projectionist inexperienced with film (or 70mm film) dropped the core and spilled the entire film onto the floor, but I thought to myself, "if this is the way film is going to look, I'd rather see digital".
About a year ago, I went to see "Lord Jim" in 70mm at the Walter Reade in NYC. The screen was far too small, the sound was only fair (although since then I've been told that "Lord Jim" was recorded with only 3 channels, not six) and it was not a great experience.
In addition, today's amplifiers and speaker systems sound nothing like the B-chains of the past.
So IMO, even if 70mm screenings were to come back (aside from the few theatres that still occasionally have them), there is essentially no way to replicate what they used to feel like with bright, large screens in which the audience was engulfed by the image, crisp prints if you didn't wait six months to see the film and great analog magnetic sound, if you found the "right" theatre to see it in, all in the technology of the time which had both advantages and disadvantages. It's can't be reproduced any longer and it's just not going to happen.
I think RPX and ETX are an attempt to reproduce that experience in a digital world. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I suppose many would think IMAX is such an attempt. Personally, I've never loved IMAX.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 10-08-2013 01:12 PM
It's all about the details. With "digital" there are many details that can be missed and alter image/sound quality steps down below optimal quality levels. Some details are missed accidentally. Other quality reducing decisions are made deliberately. Movie theaters and their customers are totally at the mercy of either scenario.
With digital content there are many technical issues not everyone is going to catch. Studio executives and other management types are often not technical oriented people (like the vast majority of the population). We assume every decision maker in the chain is going to understand the quality differences between a lossless or uncompressed video master, versus a lower bit rate encodes tailored specifically for Blu-ray or HD Broadcast or HD streaming or mere DVD. But not nearly all of them do. For most people a digital file is no different than the other. They may not even notice the tremendous differences in file size between the two. There's a new HD master of The Sound of Music? Can you e-mail it to me?
I deal with that issue all the time with graphics files. To the average person a graphics file is a graphics file. They don't know the differences between raster-based and vector-based art. They don't know the difference between RGB & CMYK or the difference between spot & process colors. They don't know color depth (8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit HDR). They don't understand the differences beween pixel image formats like JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP & PSD or vector formats like AI, EPS, PDF, CDR & SVG as well as some of those file types being able to contain both raster & vector content. A bunch of these technical factors with graphics often creep into the movie-making process.
For "digital" to be done right the movie industry on the whole better standards of practice must be used, from the on-set origination level where the actors are in front of the camera all the way to the exhibition level where the projector light is hitting the screen and sound is coming out of the speakers. All the various people involved can't be just doing whatever is convenient and assuming it's all good because "digital" is digital.
The end results of what customers are experiencing in the theater will be a lot better if the technology is used to its best potential rather than being shoe-horned into the lowest common denominator out of some lazy/cheap guy's convenience.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 10-08-2013 02:36 PM
quote: Martin Brooks
So IMO, even if 70mm screenings were to come back (aside from the few theatres that still occasionally have them), there is essentially no way to replicate what they used to feel like with bright, large screens in which the audience was engulfed by the image, crisp prints if you didn't wait six months to see the film and great analog magnetic sound, if you found the "right" theatre to see it in, all in the technology of the time which had both advantages and disadvantages. It's can't be reproduced any longer and it's just not going to happen.
I think there is a viable market for 70mm in today's exhibition industry, the enormous demand for 15/70 for such films as The Dark Knight, Star Trek Into Darkness or Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol back this up. Furthermore, The Master was a spectacular hit for the 70mm theaters that played it, not so for the non 70mm theaters where it did just average.
The next film to give film a go will be the next Christopher Nolan feature, I can see a few hundred 35mm theaters along with whatever IMAX venues are still able to operate 15/70. From what I hear, most former IMAX venues still have the 15/70 projectors on a sliding system.
While I certainly do not want to come across as saying that 35mm could make a comeback, I believe that there is a very small opportunity for it in the future and that goes for 70mm as well.
quote: Martin Brooks
I think RPX and ETX are an attempt to reproduce that experience in a digital world. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I suppose many would think IMAX is such an attempt. Personally, I've never loved IMAX.
I am assuming you mean replicate the 70mm experience from the 70's and 80's, if that is what you mean then I could agree. Although they are not technically the same, the concept of charging more for a so called upgraded experience is similar.
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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008
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posted 10-08-2013 06:53 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
We assume every decision maker in the chain is going to understand the quality differences between a lossless or uncompressed video master, versus a lower bit rate encodes tailored specifically for Blu-ray or HD Broadcast or HD streaming or mere DVD.
The biggest problem I have with this statement (and a lot of other assumptions made in this thread and others of its ilk) is that it assumes the decision makers are the ones doing the quality assurance. It also assumes quality is put ahead of all other considerations, which anyone who's been alive since Gordon Gekko uttered that immortal line written by Oliver Stone, knows is never the case in the modern age.
I once worked for an independent production and distribution company in New York ten years ago, who had several truly classic B-movies in their library. As VHS became DVD, they remastered their biggest library titles for the new technology, but quite often the lesser titles released on DVD were just the original VHS master transferred to DVD. One title, an Australian title starring Dennis Hopper, was mastered 2.39:1 letterboxed inside a 1.33:1 frame, and that's how it went out on DVD, even though it was sold as a "widescreen" edition. Why? Because the cost of doing it right (remastering for DVD for the higher resolution or even to have true 16:9 widescreen) was have been difference between releasing a title and not releasing a title.
Why should a company like Universal spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up and properly rescan and remix a title like Fast Times at Ridgemont High for 2K or 4K DCP projection when 95% of its playdates will be limited to a single evening ordered by a company like Rave (to use a specific example of a show we did last year)? Multiply that by the thousands of titles they have in their library, and we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars for an extremely niche market. It's probably why Sony Repertory only has one or two new DCP versions of their back catalogue created each month. How many people are ever really going to want to see The Tingler, with Percepto! or without? It's just too small a market.
You want more classic titles transferred correctly to DCP? A lot of people are going to have to roll the dice, put their money on the table and create a new market for repertory cinema. Something my wife and I are prepared to do in four years, after she graduates law school.
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