Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: 1.85:1 Hard Matte

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 04-07-2000, 04:45 AM:

Ran a sneak of a new Australian film called "Me, Myself, I" last week. It's flat with strict 1.85:1 hard matted frame lines throughout. That part is great, but why is it that the frame lines move from reel to reel? This is VERY annoying when your screen has a perfect 1.85 screen ratio, you walk out to check the other screens and come back in and Whammo! It's out of register again.

Why does this happen?

PS: Great movie, BTW. As someone else said, it's everything "Sliding Doors" should have been but wasn't.

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"It's not the years honey, it's the mileage".
Indiana Jones.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-07-2000, 07:00 AM:

A slight shift of the vertical centerline from reel to reel usually indicates that bi-directional printers were used by the lab.

Continous contact printers position the original and print film using edge guiding (for horizontal position) and maintaining tension over the printing sprocket (for vertical position). The height of the perforation on the negative film (BH-1866 perforation) is 0.073 inches. The height of the perforation on the print stock is 0.078 inches (KS-1870 perforation). If all the reels are printed heads-to-tails (as is done in the few labs using continuous feed-on printers), the vertical position will be constant, as the leading edge of each perf is used for vertical positioning. But if bi-directional printers are used, the reels that are printed tails-to-heads will have a 0.078 - 0.073 = 0.005 inch offset, since the trailing edges of the perfs are now being used.

Standard SMPTE 195 specifies that the image height be at least 0.505 inches for prints with a hard matte. I suspect that your prints have a hard matte that has an image height too close to the 0.446 inch height of 1.85:1, so the image shift shows the framelines if the framing isn't perfect.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-07-2000, 08:24 AM:

I remember in the late 70s, we had problems with the hard mattes jumping around a lot from scene to scene. And in "Heaven Can Wait", I remember one spot where it actually shifted in the middle of a scene, like someone was moving a framer.

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Better Projection Pays!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-07-2000, 08:43 AM:

Scent of a Woman was a particularly annoying example of that. Not only did the matting keep moving from one reel to the next, but that was back when all Universal prints were printed low in frame.

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 04-07-2000, 02:10 PM:

I really enjoyed Me, Myself & I when I saw it at last year's Telluride Film Festival. I tried to get it for my theatre, but Sony Classics gave it to another theatre sort of randomly. I even offered to market it especially well. They still gave it away!

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-07-2000, 06:36 PM:

I just remembered this today--one of the first films I ran in 35mm was "Mrs. Dalloway," which was hard-matted to about 1.75:1. At the time, the theatre where I was working was set up such that "flat/widescreen" was 1.75 instead of 1.85 (long story...basically, this was done as part of an early CinemaScope conversion, before 1.85 was standardized as the American flat/widescreen format).

Anyway, many scenes in this film were shot simultaneously with both "A" and "B" cameras; as it happened, the mattes were done in-camera and were slightly different from each camera. The very slight but constant change in the top/bottom border from scene to scene and edit to edit drove me nuts, although I doubt that anyone in the audience noticed.

Posted by George Roher (Member # 91) on 04-07-2000, 09:07 PM:

"Celestial Clockwork" was a 1.85 hard matte and the frame jumped around a few times. What was worse was that the space between the frames was clear. At one point the subtitles would drop too low and at another point the white frame line would pop up and be visible. It had to be watched carefully and adjusted a couple times each show. When it first happened, I thought I had made an out of frame splice (but I hadn't).

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-07-2000, 11:21 PM:

Clear framelines usually mean that the negative was printed on an optical printer, which is unusual.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 04-10-2000, 06:23 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Price:
I really enjoyed Me, Myself & I when I saw it at last year's Telluride Film Festival. I tried to get it for my theatre, but Sony Classics gave it to another theatre sort of randomly. I even offered to market it especially well. They still gave it away!

Yes, I was very impressed by it and can't wait for the season to begin. (Mainly so I can see the ending which I missed).

One funny thing about that night, the usher on the door was the guy who played the 'Bible Basher' at the street corner just before she is hit by the car (that she herself is driving!).

He got a few 'That guy looks familiar' looks as they all left.

I suggested he ask each of them 'are you truly happy?' as they left, but he wouldn't be in on it.

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"It's not the years honey, it's the mileage".
Indiana Jones.

Posted by Michael Barry (Member # 237) on 04-10-2000, 09:38 AM:

I just made up our print of this movie tonight...the print was as new as they come, and - yes! - no changeover cues, either! (Tail out/emulsion out, too, and no lab joins!!!)

I haven't seen any of it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.