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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Topic: Warren Grand Infinity Auditorium
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-14-2015 06:22 AM
quote: Mike Blakesley
If people preferred it "your way" our front five rows would be filled every night and nobody would ever sit in the balcony. In real life the opposite is true. The only time most adults sit in the front third of the auditorium is when the back sections are full.
Sorry, your claim is just plain false. People, in general tend towards the back third of any auditorium (except the very young). The balcony is enough of a novelty nowadays that people will sit there because they can. And furthermore...if you did a study of what is "most comfortable" for people to watch, you'll find that having the image straight ahead and/or down, it will feel more comfortable because our vision is designed for the horizon and below, not so much above. Typically, the further back and up you go satisfies that.
If your claim were true when the making opens up to Scope from Flat, people would migrate back to once again have the image to say within their field of vision. Or if a curtain opened up to reveal a smaller flat screen, they would migrate forward. The only time I've ever seen that is if the flat screen is very small appearing that people feel the need to not seem so far away.
If you sit so far away that the scope screen is within your field of vision, you have cut down on your "grand sweeping" picture and definitely not "grander" since you will have effectively made it look smaller. If you sit in the same place for scope that you sit for flat with flat filling your vision...THEN will scope seam grander and bigger. If you move back until it just fills your vision, you just made it a cropped version of the flat picture.
The "three dimensional" aspect they are trying to convey (and it is advertising to try and get the masses to forget about that tiny TV screen coming into everyone's homes) is that the screen is BIG...a LOT bigger than it was before scope and that it is curved (giving the image "depth." But the emphasis on bigger cannot be overstated here. I've seen/worked in MANY converted theatres that were 4:3 when they were built and converted to "Scope." In many situations, the proscenium had to be covered up to get the screen wider so the screen went in front of the original (which put the screen even closer AND wider) while others altered their proscenium to allow for the wider screen. So again, if 4:3 was comfortable in the design of the theatre, 2.55:1 would be more than significantly wider. The goal was not to make over half the seats unsealable except for late commers.
The theatre I worked for over 17 years would require to be in the balcony to get the scope screen to be within your field of vision yet we could sell it out regularly with most any age group. The front rows would be the last to fill, of course because you also would have to look up pretty heavily as well as seeing the "mechanics" of the film process itself on a deep-curve screen (though the slop of the floor was up on the front 1/3 of the main level).
Mike, you can enjoy what you can enjoy. I would no sooner try to convince you what you find to be comfortable than to tell you what flavor ice cream you should eat but make no mistake, the design of cinemascope and other widescreen processes was not to keep everything in your field of vision.
With respect to screen size...
Remember people, they are trying to promote this thing as the greatest thing so they will interpret the size to their advantage so you have to take into account the curvature. It is longer around the arc than it is straight line (chord). To give an example I'm VERY familiar with. The Uptown in DC is 60-feet wide on the chord. It is about 72-feet around the arc. So when you are ordering a screen (or calculating screen strips in a Cinerama type ribbon screen), you need to order based on the length of the arc though from a viewer's perspective, the screen is no wider than a 60-foot wide flat screen.
With respect to some curvature helping a large screen. No, not in this case like it did for film. With film, we had the film swelling towards the heat (curving) plus likely a curved projection gate. Studies also showed that we focused the image when the film had deflected the most. You have a curved field going to a curved field and particularly in the early days of CinemaScope and the like curving the screen would help focus. With digital, the imagers are flat and the lens is doing nothing to alter that...you are going from a flat plane to a flat plane.
When you project a digital grid on screen, look at the lines, if you are projecting from the center line of the screen (orthogonal projection), they should remain pretty linear. Now if you are applying lens shifting to compensate for some keystoning, you will likely see some stretch as well as some bending of the lines as you get closer to the edge of the lens elements. The edges of the lens are the worst parts of the elements and you are going to get the most defects/distortions there which will show up as softer, more aberrations and non-linearities.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-14-2015 10:38 AM
quote: Geoff Jones
The TV report said "about 6 stories tall". That would put it at 60 feet, which means it's around 143 feet wide if it is 2.39:1. Is that right? Is that a record?
Assuming the reporter who stood in front of the screen in the TV report video is an average 5' 6" height it looks like the screen scales to around 40' tall, which is pretty damn big for what does look like a 'scope ratio screen. If the screen is 40' tall the width would come out around 96' across, if not perhaps a bit longer due to the curve.
The flat big screens in Warren's Grand Auditoriums in other locations elsewhere are between 70' and 80' wide.
quote: Steve Guttag
Sorry, your claim is just plain false. People, in general tend towards the back third of any auditorium (except the very young).
Mike didn't say everyone wants to sit up front. He only said if people really wanted the screen filling their field of vision they would sit in the first few rows. Most people don't do that. In a standard sloped auditorium most people will sit near the center of the seating area, not too close, but not too far back either. In stadium seated theaters people gravitate farther back so they can be up higher. In either respect very few people want to be so close that they're looking up at the screen putting a kink in their necks.
Obviously true 15/70 IMAX on a real 15/70 IMAX screen is a partial exception to that. It almost seems like the screen is in your face invading your personal space when it really isn't that close. Nevertheless, special venue movies tailored specifically for IMAX weight their compositions lower in the frame and toward the center of the frame to keep viewers from having to look upward or too far to the left or right.
Hollywood movies shown in IMAX film theaters with portions shot in IMAX don't follow that formula. They compose almost like they're shooting Super35 geared for old 4:3 ratio TV sets, but with a little more headroom. The 'scope format gets extracted from it. From all my experiences watching IMAX special venue movies and Hollywood movies shown in IMAX film theaters, I've found my eyes being forced to wander a lot more often with the Hollywood blow-ups to IMAX. Superman Returns was by far the worst, most uncomfortable example of this I've seen, compounded further by its limited HDTV camera resolution blown up to a very blurry size on a giant IMAX screen.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-14-2015 02:50 PM
quote:
Sorry, your claim is just plain false. People, in general tend towards the back third of any auditorium (except the very young). The balcony is enough of a novelty nowadays that people will sit there because they can. And furthermore...if you did a study of what is "most comfortable" for people to watch, you'll find that having the image straight ahead and/or down, it will feel more comfortable because our vision is designed for the horizon and below, not so much above. Typically, the further back and up you go satisfies that.
If your claim were true when the making opens up to Scope from Flat, people would migrate back to once again have the image to say within their field of vision. Or if a curtain opened up to reveal a smaller flat screen, they would migrate forward. The only time I've ever seen that is if the flat screen is very small appearing that people feel the need to not seem so far away.
If you sit so far away that the scope screen is within your field of vision, you have cut down on your "grand sweeping" picture and definitely not "grander" since you will have effectively made it look smaller. If you sit in the same place for scope that you sit for flat with flat filling your vision...THEN will scope seam grander and bigger. If you move back until it just fills your vision, you just made it a cropped version of the flat picture.
I guess we are arguing about two different things. I am saying that most people want to sit where they can see the whole picture comfortably (which you seem to agree with), but your argument is that scope was designed to overfill the field of vision, which I'm not sure is true.
Also my point about the "grand sweeping" picture has nothing to do with field of vision or the size of the picture, it's more to do with the shape of the image. Composition, like I said above.
In my own auditorium I tend to like to sit in the same general area regardless if the picture is scope or flat. The only time I "prefer" my entire field of vision to be filled is when watching a 3-D movie -- I'll sit about 6 or 7 rows closer in that case. But I don't sit any closer for flat or scope.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 01-14-2015 03:31 PM
quote: Geoff Jones
1) How big is that screen?
According to this video, Bill Warren himself mentions it's over a 100ft wide and approximately 50ft tall (Interestingly quite close to the numbers Mike mentioned earlier ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ). So if 50ft is about right, it would be about 120ft wide if it's actually in scope format and the image isn't warped in any other way to adjust to the curvature. There obviously will be quite a difference between measuring across the arc and between the edges. Although I doubt it's really a record, it's a BFS (Big Fscking Screen), especially because it's showing normal theatrical releases, not just special "Large Format" productions.
What's also special is that they're using Atmos in combination with a balcony setup, I'm not really sure the system can really handle rooms with balconies all that well.
quote: Mike Blakesley
I guess we are arguing about two different things. I am saying that most people want to sit where they can see the whole picture comfortably (which you seem to agree with), but your argument is that scope was designed to overfill the field of vision, which I'm not sure is true.
While I'm quite sure it was the original intention of the scope formats to fill more of your field of view, I also agree with you that not all movies are created equal, even not those shot in scope.
Personally, I like movies shot to fill a large part of my field of view, that's also why I generally do prefer scope over flat. Also, isn't part of the cinematic experience simply the fact that the screen is so much bigger? So, sitting in the back of a room often totally negates one of the most striking features of movie theaters.
But, my preference certainly is not everyone's preference. While I do prefer to sit about halfway in most auditoriums, I see most people trying to get a seat as far away from the screen as possible. Most people hence tend to "accumulate" in the back third of almost any given cinema auditorium.
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