Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Caring about composition

This is topic Caring about composition in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002272

Posted by Tom Evans (Member # 857) on 05-14-2001, 01:52 PM:

Hi John...

I have just read your article 'Caring about Composition' in the March 2001 issue of Kodak Cinema Notes. I totally agree with your comments, scope should ALWAYS be wider and bigger than flat. Unfortunaletly this is in the hands of the exhibitor at the moment and the humble projectionist can only work with the tools he has been give.
I was just wondering whether you have ever had any feedback from exhibitors.
There has been a recent trend here in the UK to build wall-to-wall flat screens and then drop the masking for scope films. I can see the exhibitors point of view for not wanting to waste any space at the side of the screen, but surely this space should be reserved for CinemaScope. Or maybe we should rename it Cinema-Shrink-to-Fit.

Cheers, Tom.

------------------

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-14-2001, 02:15 PM:

Unfortunately, the high front wall usually found in modern stadium seating designs, coupled with the desire to present the biggest image possible, leads many theatre architects to specify a "wall-to-wall" screen having a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and then "letterboxing" scope with adjustable top and/or bottom masking. For the reasons outlined in my article, this often results in substandard presentation of the "flat" image, and diminished "impact" of the scope format.

I've talked to the VPs of projection for several major circuits regarding this unfortunate trend. One indicated that "Yeah, I know it's the wrong thing to do, but that's what they want, so I do the best with what I am told to do".

When shown with a common image HEIGHT, the less efficient 1.85:1 "flat" format is usually slightly less bright than 2.39:1 "scope". When projected with a common WIDTH, the "flat" image will typically only be about half as bright as the "scope" image, with excessive magnification of any graininess or unsteadiness.

------------------
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 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-14-2001, 04:29 PM:

But John, I'd still prefer a constant width system with adjustable top and/or bottom masking than a 1.85:1-only system with no adjustable masking where scope is cropped to 1.85:1.

C'mon Regal -- Get your act together and upgrade those screens at Hollywood 18 (screens 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) and Madison Square 12 (screens 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12) here in Huntsville, AL so both the scope and flat formats can be shown without cropping! You're giving your customers a defective product and if you can't afford to fix this, then sell the theatres to a more capable company! The problem is not going to go away on its own.

"Stop The Chop" :

... and Adam Martin's gem:

My other composition pet peeve is misframing. Few theatres can consistently get their flat films framed properly, since they can be misframed significantly without creating black areas on the screen or making the frameline be visible. I wish prints had the words "If you can read this, then the movie is misframed. Complain to your projectionist." printed across the image just above and below the 1.85:1 standard image area. Framing problems like this would quickly go away if this were the case.
------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-14-2001, 08:13 PM:

quote:
Framing problems like this would quickly go away if this were the case.

Unfortunately, the response the customer would most likely get is, "That's the way the movie was made." Considering the "operator" never looked at the screen in the first place (and doesn't particularly care about it). We can throw in showing films with the wrong lens and showing scope films _on_ flat masking and sound systems so far outta whack the dialog comes out of the surround speakers. I really shouldn't get started.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-15-2001, 01:54 AM:

You know what ought to be done?

All flat movies should be printed in hard matte but the black part of the film between the frames should alternate between two funky colors like red and green.

If there is a misframe you would be barraged with 9,000,000 complaints from customers who have epilleptic seizures!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-15-2001, 02:22 AM:

Randy, I've always said there should be a small margin of black to cover up any aperture shadow, but by the time the 1.66 ratio lines hit, the rest of the frameline should be clear. Not only would it be incredibly offensive to any presentation where the projectionist was not paying attention (to get customers to complain so it is corrected), but would function as an interesting tool to rotate the framing out of center to view any continuous scratching.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-15-2001, 09:14 AM:

I like the ideas that were posted about the misframed 1.85:1 problem. I'm really surprised nothing has ever been done to make misframings obvious, since at least half the flat films I see are misframed by a foot or more in height on the screen. I often deduct for such misframings if they are noticable during the movie itself. The new style of printing trailers for scope movies by hard matting a scope image within the 1.85:1 area makes the slightest misframing very obvious. It makes it easier for me to determine if the image is misframed.

Brad's idea of making the non-projected area clear (I'd recommend doing it outside the 1.66:1 area), or Randy's idea of an irritating alternating color combination that would get anyone's attention. If one of these practices were adopted, framing problems would diminish.

The "projectionists" in my area frame flat films using two different methods. At Carmike theatres, the "The management of this theatre, in cooperation with the state fire marshall's office..." trailer, being first, is used by centering the "EXIT" sign on the screen, with varying degrees of accuracy, or by using some other part of that image at the edge of the screen. At Regal, it's more problematic since the first thing shown sometimes is a commercial that is full-frame and by the time the commercial is finished, the operator has walked away. A green band works pretty well if the text is centered.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 05-15-2001, 09:01 PM:

On the "scope is smaller than flat" issue, I agree that having adjustable top masking that comes down for scope is not ideal. But, I feel there are plenty of other problems (projecting everything at 2:1 for example) that deserve more attention.

If I have a 32ft wide auditourium, I should make flat be 24 ft wide? That just doesn't seem to make sense. Of course, for the sake of this discussion, I'm assuming everything else is within reasonable standards (no cropping, framed correctly, etc.)

One might say, "Well, than don't make a auditourium only 32ft wide." But if you don't have the number of auditouriums the bank tells you to make, they might not lend you the money to build.

I worked at a theater that had an original Cinemascope installation set up like that. It really just looked kinda stupid. If top masking was the only "cheap" thing done, I'd still be happy.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-15-2001, 10:01 PM:

I'm with John on this: there are some times when top masking is justified.

I worked at an original CinemaScope installation that did this (the actual screen size was 17x30'; scope and 1.85 both used nearly the full width) and it worked about as well as could be expected for a conversion done in 1954.

Currently, this theatre is being renovated and they want to switch to side masking only. This "might" work OK for 1.85, but 1.66 and Academy will be way too small. The blueprints call for an 11.5x15' Academy picture, which will be smaller than the 20' wide Academy picture that this theatre was able to present when it was built in the 1930s. I've made this point to the architect who is working on the renovation, and I expect it to be promptly ignored. (This is also the same place that does not plan to install a surround channel as part of the renovation...despite the fact that they had 4-track mag with surround installed in 1954!).

Posted by Harry Robinson (Member # 265) on 05-15-2001, 11:04 PM:

Scott, once again I am transported back to the Community Playhouse in Wellesley MA., where I believe the aspect ratio was calculated for "common area." The flat picture was slightly taller and slightly narrower than the scope image. The overall effect was quite pleasing. They also showed a lot of academy aspect ratio films when I was a kid, and these were also framed a little taller than the scope image.

This is the best tack to take when fooling around with front-projection home video as well.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-16-2001, 02:55 PM:

If it weren't more expensive to do so due to having to have both top and side masking, it seems that the ideal screen size for flat and scope exhibition would be the geometric mean of 1.85 and 2.39, which is 2.10. Build a screen that is 42 by 20, and mask it to 42 by 17.6 for scope (739 square feet) using the entire width and mask it to 37 by 20 for flat (740 square feet) using the entire height. That's common area, with only one square foot difference, due to round-off error when I took the square root for the geometric mean and only kept 2 decimal places! It does cost more to mask on more than 2 edges, though, so few modern theatres companies would go for that idea. It does give equal area to both formats while keeping the shape correct for both, though.

On second thought, I'd recommend this technique more in smaller auditoriums where screen sizes are likely to be less than 30 feet in width. It would prevent "flat" movies from having such small screen sizes. Hmmm.... 27 x 13 screen masked to 27 by 11.3 for scope and to 24 by 13 for flat. Flat would be 24 by 13 instead of 21 by 11.3 if a 27 by 11.3 screen were used with just side masking. I rounded the original screen size a bit to the nearest foot, so the areas are off by about 6 square feet, but it's close enough for government work. Isn't it odd to hear a mathematician say that?

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-17-2001, 06:43 AM:

If a theatre uses the "common area" approach, the "scope" format will normally be much brighter than the less efficient "flat" format. One option is to use an aperture stop in the scope lens to trade the extra light for better depth of focus. Or turn down the lamp current (within the operating range of the lamp) to maintain the screen luminance at 16 footlamberts. Do NOT use the "common area" approach if you cannot achieve the proper screen luminance (SMPTE 196M specifies an aim of 16 footlamberts) for a larger "flat" image.

But since 2.39:1 "scope" is usually INTENDED to have greater "impact" than 1.85:1 "flat", I still prefer common height images with adjustable side masking.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-17-2001, 09:27 AM:

John, I prefer the common-height approach for flat and scope, but there are so darn many 28-foot auditoriums out there these days. Between Hollywood 18 and Madison Square 12, two thirds of the auditoriums are 28 to 32 feet wide (most are 28 feet). Top masking would be the only way to go if they wanted to add adjustable masking. In Decatur, all but one of the River Oaks Cinemas auditoriums are 28 feet in width, and top masking is used in those 7. Since the tendency is to build long narrow auditoriums with very high ceilings in most smaller houses, in these cases, the images need to be as large as possible while maintaining proper aspect ratio so the people in the back of the auditoriums will be able to see reasonable detail in the images. In auditoriums that are wider and somewhat less deep, the common-height approach works well.

Carmike used the common-height approach with side masking in all of their local theatres. Some of their auditoriums are only 30 to 32 feet wide, which makes flat images very small (only 16 feet in width in some of the houses), but I don't complain, since at least I get to see all of the image regardless of the format.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-17-2001, 11:42 AM:

A 28 to 32 foot wide 1.85:1 "flat" image presents no problem --- a 4000 watt lamp should easily be able to get 16 footlamberts, even on a gain=1 matte screen 32 x 17 feet. With a properly curved moderate gain screen, 3000 watts would even be adequate.

But anyone trying to fill a screen wider than 50 feet with a 1.85:1 image will be challenged to do it properly. For a 50 x 27 foot 1.85:1 "flat" image, you would likely need 7000 watts and a high gain curved screen to get 16 footlamberts --- really "pushing" the 35mm system to its limits. Much better in this case to fill a 50 x 21 foot screen with the wide "scope" image, and use adjustable side masking to show a 39 x 21 foot "flat" image.

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 05-18-2001, 10:53 PM:

Well, I just attended a showing of Shrek in which the image center was projected 2 feet too low on the screen due to misframing. This caused image composition problems all through the movie and was painfully obvious during the previews. It appears that the operator hit the start button and never checked the framing. A trailer for a scope movie was "letterboxed" onto the flat image area with black above and below, which normally produces a vertically-centered 2.39:1 image within the 1.85:1 screen, but no black was visible at all on the bottom with a huge black area at the top. These types of trailers really call attention to these types of framing errors.

This carelessness will continue as long as flat movies are printed using significantly more image area than is projected. There needs to be some sort of framing indicator on the print that is visible if misframed more than a certain percentage.

I still think something like the following would work well:

(without the yellow rectangle illustrating the aperture for 1.85:1 flat, which was already on the picture before I added the text)

Such indicators would only need to be on theatrical release prints and should not be used on prints used to make video transfers since many flat films are transferred open matte.

------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-19-2001, 03:27 AM:

Evans, I think the text "Congratulations, if you can read this you have just won a free pass for two at this theater! Please see the theater manager immediately." would be far more suitable.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-19-2001, 06:39 AM:

Now, Brad, you know the distributors would never go for that. The offer should be for free popcorn and soda. Hit the theater where it hurts!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-19-2001, 07:27 AM:

Standard SMPTE 195 does allow the printing of a "hard matte" to force proper framing for the 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 aspect ratios. But this requires use of a step printer. Likewise, the printing of the suggested framing guide would involve additional printing steps.

Posted by Mitchell Cope (Member # 32) on 05-19-2001, 09:42 AM:

Is there any particular advantage or reason for a hard matte to have rounded corners? I've seen this and it seemed sort of dumb.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-19-2001, 03:55 PM:

Round corners are sometimes used to help reduce the chance of catching a piece of dirt there in the printer aperture. Because the printer "hard matte" is higher (typically 0.505 inches) than the 0.825 x 0.446 inch projectable image area for 1.85:1, the round corners will usually not end up on the screen.