posted 04-06-2011 06:59 AM                   

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70mm

It’s a gorgeous film, how was shooting 70mm back then?

SL: It’s good and bad. When you have a negative that big, you have a negative that’s twice as big, but the amount of light you need is four times as much. So at one point we blew the circuits on the city of Burbank. There’s very little depth of field. If you have low light situations – like I did with Cindy Morgan in the arcade – the DP asked me “which eye do you want me to keep in focus?” And she would start to move and go out of focus, so we put a C-Stand up the back of her blouse, and taped her to it. She had a metal rod attached so she wouldn’t move. That’s some of the joys you get with 70mm.

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quote:

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Dolby 70mm
For the theatres that were able to get 70mm prints, Dolby also had solutions. 70mm, introduced in the 1950s, had six tracks of five screen channels and one surround channel. Reducing the noise with Dolby A-type NR essentially meant that each of the six magnetic tracks could carry more level with less distortion, resulting in soundtracks that could go comfortably louder when necessary. This led to the awe-inspiring soundtracks on many 70mm releases such as Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

1978’s Superman was the 50th film with soundtracks encoded with Dolby A-type and it was used in Dolby’s first experiments with 70mm stereo surround, though this was never publically announced. Previously, the additional two screen channels (left-center and right-center) on Dolby 70mm were only used for low-frequency information and needed was more surround capability. With Superman, Dolby reallocated the two mid-center screen channels to the rear, resulting in better distribution of audio effects in the auditorium. The configuration of three behind-the-screen channels, two surround channels and a subwoofer channel used on Superman became internally known as a 5.1 configuration.

The following year, Apocalypse Now became the first announced film released in 70mm with the 5.1 stereo surrounds. Apocalypse Now won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Sound. The 5.1 channel configuration (though it wasn't publically called 5.1 until many years later) went on to become the loudspeaker configuration of choice and is ubiquitous today in movies, broadcast, DVDs, and virtually all other digital media.

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posted 04-06-2011 08:58 AM                    

quote: Jonathan Goeldner

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I'm going into 70mm ad pics [withdrawal] here.... anyone here going to post some new pics??

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Okay, okay, okay. Here are a few new ones.

One of the least popular 70mm productions (though the LA Times' Kevin Thomas seemed to love it)...


San Francisco Chronicle, June 25, 1969

One of numerous older "Academy" format films converted to 70mm...


The Seattle Times, November 3, 1978

One of the numerous MGM 70mm festivals...


Minneapolis Tribune, May 5, 1971

World Premiere* ad for one of the last 70mm/roadshow releases...


Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1970

*A more accurate promotion would've been "Co-World Premiere" as the gala event was actually held simultaneously in four cities (Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, and Honolulu).

posted 04-09-2011 05:28 PM                    

quote: Michael Coate

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Daviau should have won an Oscar...

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Daviau should have shot it in scope. Flat films don't deserve the award.