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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: Film v Digital - Differences in Presentation Standards
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 02-17-2015 12:36 AM
Unmasked screens in standard movie theaters look cheap. They just look like the construction crew got to a certain point in the installation process and then said, "fuck it," pulled off the job and went home. Screens with no masking (much less curtains) just look unfinished.
Equally as bad, unmasked screens make the rest of the auditorium look kind of cheap as well. You're already in a cubic shaped room surrounded by cinder block walls. The combination of a bare screen with no treatment can easily make the room seem more like a big storage space at Sam's Club or Home Depot. They might as well have some shelves in there stocked with giant bags of cat food, quick-crete and lumber.
The only kind of indoor theaters where screens featuring no masking or curtains has been acceptable was true, film-based IMAX theaters. The screens were big enough both in terms of height and width to fill the peripheral vision of most viewers.
Rectangular shaped screens in traditional movie theaters do not fill peripheral vision. Even if you sit close to the screen you're still going to see the top and bottom of it pretty easily.
These stupid wall to wall screens lacking masking and curtains are taking on the function of a big TV screen. Letter-boxed 'scope images? HDTV sets do that. Movie theater screens shouldn't be making 'scope the smallest, lowest resolution format. But that's exactly what's happening in d-cinema now. Changing aspect ratios? That's another TV set behavior. Lately some movie theater chains are installing "floating" movie theater screens, some of which have glowing light behind them. That's another TV set design! Some of it looks straight out of the 1970's. Shit, Regal's "RPX" logo looks lifted from Letraset's "Stop" typeface designed back in the 1970's!
If these movie theater chain operators think they're offering something contemporary with these cheap looking non-treated screens and obnoxious wall graphics they need to think again.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-17-2015 12:01 PM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
In the film days, without masking, you would have ugly looking soft edges, in the digital days, edges are sharp as a knife (at least if you get the focus right). This is the primary reason why masking is being seen as redundant nowadays.
I'm sure you're right on this but it still looks bad to have a lot of white screen showing around a picture.
Our screen is 30x15 (Don't blame me, the size was determined before I was born) and we have fixed masking. Our flat picture has been pillarboxed since Day 1, but in the film days we always ran scope pictures cropped to 2:1. We changed that when digital came in, and went with a letterboxed image for scope. No complaints about it from anyone, but it drove me crazy to see that white space. So recently we changed the macro to where the picture fills the screen again and is cropped to 2:1. I can't even explain the "why" of it, but it looks way better to me. (Maybe it's just me!)
I don't like cutting off the edges of the picture, but we still have the previous letterboxed format to fall back on if there is ever a movie with essential image information out on those edges.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 02-18-2015 12:29 AM
quote:
There's a film playing at arthouses right now that goes by the title Mommy. The aspect ratio for most of the picture is 1:1,
OMG! I ran this movie at a major film festival late last summer.
First of all- - let me say it's a very good movie, and I briefly met its'
(very young) director, who seemed to be a nice guy.
But the aspect ratio drove me up the wall. I understand why he did it,
but I was projecting in an auditorium with a screen appx 35ft wide,
so I had a 10ft square image, with 12.5ft of "nothing" on each side.
Closing the masking was not an option, since: 1) no masking comes in that far;
2) There are one or two (short!) scenes where the picture expands to 1:85
Almost as soon as the movie began I started getting calls over the radio
from the floor staff asking if "that was the way it was supposed to be".
Customers were complaining. I heard one or two actually walked out.
I had one of the festival 'big wigs' come upstairs and tell me:
"EVERYBODY says you're using the wrong lens"
I explained that the director himself had looked at the picture earlier
in the day and approved the way it looked on screen and that if anybody
was 'using the wrong lens' it was the director. NOT ME!
And yes, it was a 'perfect' 1x1 image. I know this because along with the
DCP we were running an HDCAM tape a few seconds behind it as a back-up.
I punched up the tape output on one of those fancy ikegami control
room reference monitors where you could superimpose a grid over the
image, and it was definitely 1:1.
(And by the way, if digital is so freakin' good, would you please
explain to me why at every big film festival I work at, there's always
SOME sort of back-up as well as a couple of Dolby & Barco techs standing
by whenever we run a DCP? When we ran film, I NEVER had a Simplex or
Century tech in the booth, and only one print. Go figure. . . )
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-18-2015 06:30 AM
For the record, SMPTE 431-2 in Section 6.2 still has the masking requirement for 1.85 and 2.39.
SMPTE documents do not and never have had the rule of law...just the standards that engineers have determined to present movies in the best possible manner. It is up to the industry to follow them or not.
However, here is an interesting angle. For the VPF deals, strict adherence to DCI specs (which, by extension, seems to include SMPTE standards and recommended practices). So, in theory, any theatre not using masking could lose their VPF payments. Furthermore, a theatre/chain on the VPF plan that is using their maskings and otherwise adheres to DCI...could probably sue to require the big-boys either comply or lose their VPF payments. Fair is fair...if you have a contract, you have to apply it uniformly. The net result would probably be the expunging of that requirement from the DCI spec though.
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