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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: 'The Maze Runner' will be shown in three-screen panoramic format
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-19-2014 10:19 AM
I think this "Escape" concept might be interesting in a motion simulator type of theater playing immersive thrill rides. But it's a lousy idea for traditional commercial movie theaters.
Cinema already has enough problems as it is with directors and cinematographers not really composing for a specific aspect ratio, using the frame the way a photographer really should be using it. Escape would worsen what I feel is already a serious problem.
Aside from that, previous similar experiments in home theater have failed. Remember those Philips HDTV sets with the LEDs hidden on the ends of the TV set? They would throw colored light on the walls behind and to the sides of the TV set as a means of blurring the left and right ends of the frame. Hardly anyone wanted those things. The effect was too damned distracting from what was on the screen.
D-cinema already has serious issues with contrast and weak black levels. Flanking the main screen with extensions to the left and right will create reflection problems back onto the main screen and kill contrast further. IIRC, one of the reasons for matte black masking around the edges of a screen is to improve the perception of a bright, contrasting image, with no ambient reflections getting back onto the screen.
quote: Steve Guttag
Bringing back a deeply curved screen by use of suitable lenses would have a bigger wow-factor, be more universally acceptable (as it would work for all sources) and even if you wanted to do a mosaic image via blending (that is doable with digital rather well) again a large deep curved screen would be more impressive than three flat screens in a trapezoid fashion.
I wouldn't mind seeing huge, deeply curved screens used in movie theaters again. But something would have to be done about the completely backward way the 'scope format is treated in d-cinema first. In 35mm projection 'scope was the biggest, high resolution format. In d-cinema 'scope is now the smallest, lowest resolution format. That sucks.
The horrible way 'scope is treated in d-cinema is one reason why I'm hoping 5-perf 70mm can make a comeback at least on some kind of limited basis.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 09-19-2014 01:54 PM
It's great (or rather ironic) that they (Fox) are calling this the future of film. Three screens aligned besides each other, something Disney did with 9 screens back in the 1950s and even others did before them.
I agree with Steve, if you really would make an impact, you would come up with a deeply curved screen and the technology to make it look awesome. Like three separate projectors that blend into one amazing, mega high-res picture. Something that Cinerama could never entirely achieve, because of the limitations of that technology. Something that would IMAX give a run for their money with their current digital system.
The most amazing part would not even be that you succeeded into doing so, but you got the studios to allow you to do this with their content.
quote: Bobby Henderson
I think this "Escape" concept might be interesting in a motion simulator type of theater playing immersive thrill rides. But it's a lousy idea for traditional commercial movie theaters.
Yeah, but what amazing new technology do they bring to the table that you couldn't build with off-the-shelf components already? Three high-res digital projectors and a bunch of playback servers and a show-controller from e.g. Alcorn McBride and nobody needs Barco for anything but maybe the projectors.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Aside from that, previous similar experiments in home theater have failed. Remember those Philips HDTV sets with the LEDs hidden on the ends of the TV set? They would throw colored light on the walls behind and to the sides of the TV set as a means of blurring the left and right ends of the frame. Hardly anyone wanted those things. The effect was too damned distracting from what was on the screen.
Those things are called "Philips Ambilight" and although they're a niche, they're still available around here and people seemingly still buy them, as you can sometimes see them in action from afar in houses and apartments around here... They first came up with the model where you would have this "ambient LED strip" on the left and right side of the screen, now they have models with top and bottom "ambilight" too. Those things light up your whole room and are indeed, rather distracting and pointless.
quote: Bobby Henderson
D-cinema already has serious issues with contrast and weak black levels. Flanking the main screen with extensions to the left and right will create reflection problems back onto the main screen and kill contrast further. IIRC, one of the reasons for matte black masking around the edges of a screen is to improve the perception of a bright, contrasting image, with no ambient reflections getting back onto the screen.
The cinema of the future will be a concrete box painted white. No need for a damn screen anymore, you can project your immersiveness everywhere you want. Besides reflecting ambient light, those hard concrete walls will also be good at reflecting sound, which is a pre, because people like it loud...
quote: Steve Guttag
I would have no problem with the image going onto the imager in an anamorphic form and either let the projector scale back to 1:1 if you have constant width screens or use an anamorphic for constant height.
The image being already anamorphic inside the DCP would be part of the solution to get some resolution (and brightness) back into scope. The sad part of the story is, those "old" 1.3K machines did have anamorphic lenses for scope as that was the only way to do scope properly. I don't know if it were the creative types that decided that scope shouldn't be anamorphic no more once we moved to a set of standards around 2K and 4K, but whoever is guilty, they sure managed to codify that the pixels in the DCP itself are always square...
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 09-20-2014 08:17 PM
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
The Dolby Atmos cinemas near me throw the Dolby Atmos trailer in front of every picture that plays in the Atmos house. Apparently they like lying to the public. It just reinforces the idea that the general public doesn't give a shit about the format.
Well, the local Atmos cinema puts an Atmos "informercial" in every theater in before every show. They're not claiming the movie you're about to see is in this format, only that you can experience it here, in this theater. They do play the correct Dolby trailers/snipes at the beginning of the show, even in their Atmos theater, they play a Dolby 7.1 or "generic Dolby" trailer before shows without Atmos soundtrack.
When it first opened, the system sounded rather unconvincing, especially because I've heard Atmos before and knew what it could do. But they were running on a bunch of underpowered amps (seemingly, QSC couldn't get the proper amps there in time for opening, but that's just unconfirmed rumors). With the proper amps in place, this system performs great and people DO notice the difference. I'm pretty sure a lot of them did already come back for the experience.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Another big problem is that many theaters have chosen to pair Atmos with shitty 2K single projection.
Besides Digital IMAX, there's only Christie that offers a dual-projection cinema system for 2D presentations. And for 3D presentations, 4K doesn't matter anyway, as there are currently ZERO 4K 3D movies. But IMAX's 2K isn't shitty I guess?
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Looks like this Barco Escape thing is half-assed and cobbled together.
I thought you would withhold your judgement until you've seen it yourself?
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 09-22-2014 09:14 AM
quote:
Going back to anamorphics would be a big pill to swallow. Also, all of the constant height theatres would then have to budget in another $12,000 or so for the anamorphic lens/mover. Why do you think anamorphics haven't taken off in DCinema...they are perfectly compliant...they are available, they improve light by 23%.
Why on earth would a lens changing mechanism cost THAT much $$ if manufactured on a global scale? Automatic turrets on film projectors were run of the mill and not even an add-on; they certainly didn't add that kind of additional cost to the projector. Oh, wait, I forgot -- these are DIGITAL projector...they can charge anything they want. That kind of money is ludicrous -- and it just shows they were never interested in the anamorphic route in the first place -- it's not as sexy as doing it all digitally -- an optical solution is sooooo analog old-school.
Hell, I can get a machine shop to put together a motorized lens changing unit for a third of that, and that would be a prototype, one-off unit. Order me 2000 of them and you could probably get them down to a grand or so. Have them incorporated as part of the projector physical design, and the cost would be negligible.
There is no reason why anamorphic projection, with all its indisputable advantages, can't be standard for digital projection just as it was for film optics. For the DCI to not require it was a blunder and quite frankly a disgrace for an organization making decisions on quality of what people will see for generations...again proving that presentation quality was never the highest motivation for that committee. A pox on all their houses.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 09-23-2014 12:25 PM
Competent, professional quality and professional standards of practice should never be balanced on whether the general public would know the difference or not. This goes for many industries and professions, not just this movie stuff we talk about here.
If I couldn't be bothered to follow some professional standards of practice in my own job, since 99% of the public doesn't really know any better, I'd deserve to be finding another line of work.
If the average person knew everything why would he need someone like a car mechanic to fix his transmission or even a licensed barber to cut his hair? If the general public knew all the aspects of d-cinema they could run the damned movies themselves, but no, they need to actually have somebody do that for them.
The unavoidable fact is 'scope has been shit upon in how it has been implemented into d-cinema. Basically it's no different that watching something at home, letterboxed on the HDTV set. Same exact treatment.
The only way any anamorphic treatment can be worth doing at all in d-cinema is if the imagery in the DCP is anamorphic and covering the maximum horizontal and vertical resolution of the 2K or 4K formats. The projector should only be un-squeezing the image horizontally. If the projector is doing some 2 stage thing, squeezing/un-squeezing on both vertical and horizontal axis then it's a freaking waste of time.
I still contend so many movies are cropped down to what is really now fake 'scope anymore as a cost cutting measure. Fewer pixels to record in the camera. Fewer pixels to render, encode and store in post production. Fewer pixels to distribute via DCP, Blu-ray, cable, broadcast and Internet streaming.
With film, there were differences in how 'scope was treated -with formats like anamorphic 4-perf 35mm full frame Panavision at the higher end and spherical Techniscope at the lower end. Scope in d-cinema is nothing but lower end. It's about being cheap and making the movie going experience more like the TV watching experience.
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