Sadly, it would seem that something has gone very wrong at certain theatres. Comments included the following:
'Fantastic film, epic atmosphere...loved it. Just one thing...after seeing the clarity of DVD, I've started to notice how images at my local cinema seem grainy and exhibit washed-out colours...even blur at times...now it might be that my local cinema is sucky, anybody else notice how DVD brings up images so much nicer? These comments refer directly to Mummy Returns and Final Fantasy...both of which looked much better on DVD. Of course can't compare LOTR on DVD...yet.'
This garnered the response of:
'I've noticed this too. Projectors are no match to a digital format...which has to (project) the image across a large room onto a dirty screen'.
and this:
'There were battle scenes and in-close fighting scenes in the movie which I found hard to watch in the cinema, but which looked fantastic on the trailer I downloaded. I think the DVD will be a lot better than watching it at the cinema'.
to which this was said:
'I agree - I was up the front of the cinema unfortunately...I think the combo of (major cinema chain) and (their branding of 'stadium seating/digital sound/large screens) didn't do it justice...roll on the DVD!'
or:
'Yeah, those long shots were blurry at times. The specs of dirt or little glitches are a bit annoying when you're used to DVD, not to mention the cigarette burns in the corner, but the clarity is still way ahead of DVD, especially when you consider the size of the screen'.
'35MM projectors are the hardest things to get focussed, they really annoy me. Films look focussed, and then the credits come up all blurry. Bring on digital projection I say!'
'...that's where I saw LOTR. It's certainly a much better cinema than (alternate location), but after watching movies on DVD I could notice the cigarette burns and scratches on the big screen more than ever.'
-----------------
Those are the comments thus far, and that's after the film has been open for two days, and not even two whole days at that.
When I see posts like this, I try to reply and explain that it is not the fault of the film medium itself, and that 'Film Done Right' cannot be beat (as I did with this thread). Regrettably, they may have to take my word for it, as they are not experiencing this for themselves. Also, I've been responding to these sorts of posts for ages now, but I simply cannot keep up! In spite of the fact that some of the comments contain misinformation and technical errors, the fact remains that this is what they perceive, and it will affect their decision to visit a cinema. If they were shown an excellent presentation each time they visited a theatre, all this would fail to be an issue. In fact, they would actually look forward to seeing future releases on the big screen rather than actually preferring a DVD of the film.
The theatre John Wilson and I work at have featured excellent presentations of LOTR, and will quite happily continue to do so for the next six months if required! No-one who sees it there would be less than impressed, and they certainly would not be capable of such remarks. However, these sorts of comments - even though they stem from other theatres - are the result of poor presentations that will hurt the industry as a whole. What can be done?
I've said it before: "home theatres" ARE the real competition, and the only way to survive is to offer a wonderful movie-going experience that can't be matched in the home.------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
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
1--Pay employees well to keep the good ones. People who think staff and projectionists are expendable are morons. That's right, if you think that, then I am calling YOU a moron! It is good business sense to keep the good employees and pay them to stay. Reward the ones who care about their job. Give them a reason to care!
2--Companies like THX should follow up on their certified theaters. It seems anyone can easily get a THX certification so the in house tech can retune the auditoriums. I have heard many awful and many excellent THX rooms, even in the same complex with equally sized auditoriums. It is inconsistent at best. THX doesn't mean anything if it is going to be inconsistent. But sadly they only seem to care if they get their annual pay, or at least that's the way it seems.
3--Send me money for no reason. Lots of it. That'll make every theater a success and also make me very happy, which is the most important thing in anybody's book. DVD will fail and people will only want to see movies in the cinema if you do this.
------------------
Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
quote:
Next time one of these idiots start in with the whole DVD is better/film is too dark argument, remind them that the video they are watching is altered and tweeked in many ways (such as contrast compression). Also, if you were to shrink a 35mm image down to a 35 inch image, suddenly I don't think they would be too pleased with their little DVDs. Offer for them to bring up a DVD and a video projector into your largest auditorium after hours. People are stupid. (And that includes the people Joe speaks of above.)
Think about it this way: a scope movie on DVD can only have a maximum resolution of 720 by 357, due to the letterboxing required even on anamorphically encoded DVDs. On a standard "large" screen of size 40 feet by 17 feet, even if projected with perfect digital clarity, the pixels would be rectangles two thirds of an inch by four sevenths of an inch. Those pixels would probably be discernable even from the auditorium rear.
------------------
Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site
I have used portable 16mm projectors in theatres. For the most part, it works. The older B&H 100- and 300- series machines will take 1000-watt bulbs which give dim but watchable pictures. MARC-300 projectors are much better. The limiting factor seems to be brightness and lens quality, not resolution.
Pass the lead thread into the main office and let them know they are refering to your theatre. People who care will take corrective measures and shortly you will be running "film done right."
I would be interested to hear their reactions.
Sure, a poorly adjusted projector (out of focus, dim bulb, etc.) will do a terrible disservice to the quality of the show. Good 35mm projection on an appropriately sized screen (not something nearing IMAX size) will be better than DVD every time. The image is a lot bigger and sharper.
The only area where home theater can compete against commercial cinema is in sound quality. And that is only if you spend some serious money and put some good thought into the setup.
When one of those "morons" says he sees a cleaner, "better" image in his home theatre on his wide ratio plasma screen, and then you find out that managment in so-called first-run 70mm cinemas have eliminated a trained, licensed projectionist from the booth and limited his workhours to 20 hrs, one day a week, you have to say, well, yah, the moron is right, because the theatre is being run by morons.
I don't want to be redundant about this 70mm presentation of 2001:ASO which I saw last week at the Loews' Astor Plaza in NYC as I have posted it before, but it was a TERRIBLE, disappointing show -- dirty print (Warners told me this theatre was the FRIST one to play this particular print), awful flutter in the sound (almost unlistenable), scratches and NO INTERMISSION. And this, mind you, in a TOP market (NYC), in a high-profile "flagship" theatre. It was here that I found out that the only person in the booth was this kid whose job it was to switch to the "small" film in case the "big" film "jumps out;" they were running a 35mm print along with the 70mm -- both on platters -- and evidently had so much trouble with the 70mm that they kept this high school kid up there to switch to the 35mm backup if the 70 "jumped out." I never got an explanation from him as to what exactly happened when the 70mm print "jumped out," but I shudder to think, but have to assume it was a brainwrap or something just as drastic. And this, in what only a few years ago was one of THE premiere cinemas to go to in NYC if you wanted to see a state-of-the-art, first-class presentation.
To the average Joe, suffering through that kind of $10-a-pop disappointment a bunch of times, why wouldn't he prefer his own home setup? And let's face it -- he's the one who is driving the industry. If the Hollywood bean-counters and market analyzers see theatre revenue continuing on the decline because Joe Moron prefers the environment of his own home cinema to see their product, then Hollywood is simply going to bypass the cinema and sell their product directly to him via DVD, HD pay-per-view, whatever, to get it into his home theatre where he is quite vocal about it being his prefered place for viewing it.
Warner Brothers spends $27,000 on a 70mm print of 2001 only to have it damaged by a theatre where the general public is saying the presentation stinks. How long do we think that can go on before the ball game is over? We are already in the 9th inning and the theatre owners don't seem to appreciate how close to loosing the game they (and we) are.
So saying that even *16mm* looks dramatically better than high-end consumer projection NTSC video pretty much wraps it up as far as video projection is concerned. We have only one course of action -- disconnection. It would be a bit tricky. We would have to disconnect his higher functions..... ooops, sorry. 2001 is still fresh in my mind.
)Film, it ain't; considering the circumstances, it could have been worse...for a film festival last September, the organizers got enough in terms of sponsorship for Christie Roadster DLP projectors and Sony Betacam decks for all three screens the festival used. This would have been an excellent setup for video. However, the rental firm providing the equipment was unable to come up with the appropriate lenses to handle the throws and had to use the digital scaling "feature" to fit the image on the screen, creating an image that looked as if it was out of focus and was consequently painful to watch (we did receve a few complaints from the customers). Needless to say, this was a major disappointment, considering I could get better results from a conference-room-type LCD projector and a lowly VHS VCR.
I agree with Frank...16mm on a good xenon (or carbon-arc, for that matter) projector, such as the Elmo we used or an Eiki EX-4000P I recently acquired and tested at that theatre, looks a heck of a lot better (since film festivals are my specialty, whevever there are mixed formats I insist video be shown first, then 16mm next, then 35mm last, not only for logistical reasons but also for the progression of quality). But whoever said that video looks better than our beloved 35mm, properly projected, didn't have a good set of eyes.
They then slag an "out of country" festival who once showed MFL, first half in 70mm, second in 35mm but didn't have all of that so ran
a "reel" in VHS video. All this in the first 10 minutes if you have this title. So this is what the home theatre buffs are being told, back it up with a lousy presentation and I suppose this is why they are saying these things.
As for me, the video looked good, but only as good as my TV. I suppose the bonus is that it won't degrade like VHS. I'm sure the surround sound is the real attraction, and I did enjoy when these guys actually talked about the ORIGINAL production (which I liked along with subtitles so I could follow both).
What have we learned? Well, in 50 years we've lost real full-service gas stations, restaurants where they serve your car, knowledgable hardware store employees, and in many places, the professional projectionist. All to "streamline" costs. Result: bankruptcies and lot's of minimum wage part-time "associates". No wonder people stay away...
That is the way most corporations in the world think.
As for theaters, I've been in a couple of supposedly THX houses in
Las Vegas that definitely aren't doing film right. Talk about no
cue marks! One THX house here runs 'scope prints with 1.85 plates
and backup lenses so that the image ends up being extremely cropped
both horizontally and vertically. That way they never have to change
plates, backup lenses, or screen masks--just swing the 'scope adapter
out and press "GO". THX house? Yeah right.
Cheers!
Paul
quote:
Has anyone actually tried using a portable video projector (LCD, CRT, or otherwise) in a full-size theatre? How did it look? I assume that it would be pretty bad (probably far worse than a 35mm print transferred from video), but I'm not really sure.
Joe~you spoke about how theater chains and "managers" consider their projectionists to be expendable. I could not agree with you more! I worked for one of the largest and currently strongest chains in the country. Furthermore, the theater where I worked was one of the few in the company that had a small dedicated booth crew. Consequently, we were always in the "limelight" because we consistantly had one of the best presentations~if not the best~in the company (see my old thread about shit-hot presentation). Despite the true dedication of the people in the booth, the "floor staff" considered us "prima-donnas" and did not understand the need for professional projectionists~they were truly jealous! Because of our quality of presentation, we were always inspected by company big-whigs. But they never once came into the booth to inspect or thank the 6 of us that made the quality presentation possible! I have reason to suspect that the G.M. ~ who quit this company to go work for the competition~ took credit for our work; he would go for 3 months without stepping foot inside the booth. Furthermore, this G.M. would constantly tell us "thanks for the great job your doing~but remember that you are expendable"!~YES-he literally told us that on a consistant basis. Speaking for myself, I busted my ass in that booth out of pride and people acknowledging and thanking me for my efforts when they learned that I was a projectionist at this theater. It really does feels great when patrons recognize an excellent presentation! Anyhow, I was paid shit wages for what I did there and they had a very difficult time finding qualified people to work in the booth because of the shit wages and politics! Heaven help the person who mentioned IATSE and quality wages! The sad fact in SO AZ is that a dishwasher or waiter at one of the many posh resorts in this part of the country can~and does earn more than an experienced technician/craftsman such as a tool and die maker!
Bob, about wake up calls! The AZ Historical Society has in its archives much info about the Tucson Fox Theater. Ill reprint an interesting article from the AZ Daily Star printed in 1930 about how television was considered a major threat to cinemas~hence the advent of wide screen (Grandeour ~ probably misspelled) formats, 3-D etc, etc!
About THX: There are several aspects of THX that I do agree with, and others that I do not understand or agree with! I have seen THX theaters w/stadium seating where the auditorium entrance/exit is only on one side of the auditorium. Consequently, the screen, audience and projector are not really aligned with each other. Even though it is minimal and supposedly within THX specs, keystoning is still noticable~and I have seen some THX approved screens where it is almost impossible to get a good bulb focus and even screen lighting because of this offset! To me, this type of arrangement is truly uncomfortable. I do have THX literature, it it leads the consumer to believe that all cinema equipment in a THX theater is THX approved. Projectors/lenses/lamphouses/platters are not THX approved!
Finally, I have heard THX auditoriums that truly sound awful after being adjusted~by experienced people using all the fancy computer equipment~for the annual THX certification. I have seen theaters that sounded great prior to "computerized adjustment" but the "computers" said that they were out of specs. They were readjusted per "computer" programs and noticably sounded like crap after the "computerized adjustment"!
-------------------------------------
Ok, I know this is a bit off topic but who was disappointed with their
most recent cinema experience? Quite a few judging by the
majority of recent posts concerning LOTR. I unfortunately attended the
cinema yesterday to see why it got such rave reviews in here
and after persevering with the first 15mins of an out of focus image
(I thought surely the projectionist will see it or at least one
out of the 220 patrons packed into the cinema would go and complain -
but never did) I went to the projectionist (who was by this
time serving popcorn and frozen cokes from an overworked ice machine)
and asked him to check his focus. Well the guy's comments were
less than favourable to me but he eventually must have plucked up
enough energy to walk back up the flight of 12 steps to the
projection room and adjusted his out of focus movie.
The day is fast approaching whereby cinemas need to become digital.
Why cinema conglomerates persist with making new modern
complexes that hold over 300 patrons each is a slap in the face for
theatre goers.
It means bigger screens (softer images), most of the time, more
"shoot-off" (that's where the edges of the images - sometimes taking
up to 15% of the image, are projected onto the black maskings) more
people (more interruptions/toilet
breaks/coughing/farting/lollie-chip packets/talking/mobiles etc etc)
and just generally a poor atmosphere that all this creates.
I predict this will one day change to new complexes of more smaller
theatres of say 50 patrons each using the latest in digital
projection equipment. A theatre that is capable of holding 50 patrons
could today successfully (if they were allowed) be using the
current available equipment (admittedly using smaller BUT clearer
screens-this would also improve the sound quality being a smaller
room) without waiting for new expensive HD gear.
Unfortunately, this will not happen due to the "hold" the film
industry must have on cinemas. You only have to look at the cost of
each print of the 3 hour epics like PH, Titanic and now LOTR and
figure how many hundreds of millions of $'s this is worth to the
"film manufacturing industries in the US".
Each print of LOTR would currently cost in excess of $6,000AU. Now
convert that to DVD's and figure the cost would be say $10AU per
disc?
Can you imagine the costs then of running cinemas? The film industry
is in it for themselves and not for the improvement of the
theatre goers or even the theatre owners. You only need to see who the
major shareholders of these film manufacturing companies are,
to see why film is here for a long time yet.
-------------------------------------
What's interesting about this post is that the root of the problem is staring him in the face, yet he feels that digital will solve everything. The vast majority agree, with only one respondent having correctly identified poor personnel as being the problem.
I saw Monsters Inc. at the El Capitan in Los Angeles... and when I saw the crisp picture come on the screen -- and the perfect stable lettering for the previews and credits... my heart sank.
I did not see any evidence of splices - I didn't see any reel change marks or a speck of dirt at all... and while I could not see into the projection booth... my heart knew that I was watching a movie for the first time in Digital Projection.
It certainly isn't as romantic and artful as 35mm Projection -- but I tend to be very critical of even the slightest scratch or jump at a splice... and I was watching this whole movie--- PRAYING there would be some flaw... and there wasn't. So unless the projectionists at the El Capitan obsessively clean their print and have their masking set over cue marks and make the most invisible splices on the face of the earth... it saddens me to admit that Digital Projection was flawless... and I could scarceley tell the difference.
If I can barely tell the difference -- how will Marcy-Sue-Helen and her three crying children tell the difference?
If you see something shot on film projected digitally it is a slightly different story, however.
We have to compare 'Film Done Right' versus digital, right?
Yet when I saw The Emperor's New Groove at the same theatre, I had to admit I was impressed. The 1.85 image filled the normal 1.85 screen. The black was solid, the image rock-steady. The animated previews were great, too...EXCEPT for the one live-actionj shot of Tim Allen for Santa Klause (?) II (whatever happened to this?). That one shot of Allen was pretty jittery. The end credits of ENG were also unsmooth (scrolling) with pixalization visible.
So I think the system works MUCH better for animation (especially rendered from computer files) than live-action. Animation will obviously have less color range than the subtleties of photographic live-action. And backgrounds are pretty solid in animation as well, leaving far less information to compress.
The El Capitan runs ALL Disney animation in DLP these days, in addition to several Disney/Touchtone titles.
This is a bit off topic, but in answer to what happened to The Santa Clause 2, I believe they changed the name and are releaseing it NEXT Christmas, rather than this Christmas (well, it obviously didn't happen this Christmas) as originally planned. It was going to be subtitled The Escape Clause. Now it's The Mrs. Clause. Saw it on a Disney calendar poster that we're issuing to our Snow Dogs patrons tomorrow night. Why this is, I have no idea.
I ask again...why do we still need cues on release prints? Those few times that we get prints without cues, the prints flow flawlessly and you can't even tell there's a splice...especially if using filmguard.
Fellowship has huge black cues and it seems almost always there is important information on the RHS of the image when they appear...SPLAT and ruin the entire effect of the scene.
There are over 400 prints of fellowship running in Australia right now. About 95% (+) are on platters or long play units of some sort. Do we really need to ruin it for 95% of prints just for the 5% who may need to perform a reel change? They should be cuing it themselves.
I don't want to see them,I don't need them, prints can be made up and broken down very easily without them. Please get rid of them.
That is all... 
That stupid bit in FIGHT CLUB proved that 99% of the world had NEVER noticed them before.
>>>>I guess you could argue that they do now!!!<<<<
Steven Gorsky
"What is the functional service that cues perform in a platter setup?"
Another thing they do is help to confirm the proper break-down points. If you're not sure if a particular splice is actually the join between reels, you can look back a foot or so and see if there's a cue mark.
It also provides info about how many frames have been lost to artless build-ups and break-downs.
Of course, if prints were shipped on one reel, this wouldn't matter, but I've found the cue marks to be very helpful when dealing with botched up prints that have been to festivals and such.
If I calculated correctly, a SMPTE standard sized cue mark on a 1.85:1 35mm frame covers almost 1.9% of the projectable image area. I think masking typically covers more projectable image area than that.
The cue marks and their placement have been standardized for over sixty years. Granted there are many platter systems in use today but there are still plenty of changeover houses, review rooms, screening rooms, museums, and so on that use 2000' magazines and changeover every reel.
I certainly prefer a neatly printed cue mark over a scribed cue mark. I've seen plenty of "added" cue marks over the years, small circles in the upper right corner, small "X"'s in the upper right corner, small punched holes in the upper right corner, large "X"'s that cover entire frames, large punched holes in the center of the frame, and so on.
As others have mentioned in other topics in this forum, the printed cue marks are a handy tool to identify the correct reel change splice when one is restoring a print to its original reel configuration after someone has used the "fill the reel and cut" method of ship out.
Counting the frames between the last cue mark and the last frame of picture indicate the number of frames lost to the "choppers" since "peelers" don't lose frames.
Going back to the original topic, in the case of LOTR image quality I'd be more inclined to blame the production itself than the theatre. I've seen the movie or parts of it in several different theatres, including the Seattle Cinerama with its Kinoton 35/70 and actual projectionist, and thought that the imagery, live or CG, was disappointingly soft (including the end title crawl). This was a Super 35 production, was it not? Whether it's the Super 35 origination itself, or the labwork, or whatever, I feel that the quality of the final print really does suffer with this method. I thought "Harry Potter" was a soft print as well, although it seemed the sharpness varied (and that was Super 35 too, I believe).
In any case, compared to the best 35 I've seen, LOTR's sharpness was not very good. In fact the Star Wars trailer that preceded it seemed on par resolution-wise. While it's still more resolution than the DVD, I think some would rather see a TV-sized image that's apparently sharp (ie for its size) than a 70-foot image that's soft.
I also saw "Monsters Inc." in DLP at the El Capitan. It was certainly good but any time your attention is drawn to a small object, for example something in the distance, the pixels and low resolution are immediately apparent. Sure it was rock-steady, but so were the trailers transferred over from film. Unless they did some sort of digital image registration, we can assume that the film they scanned was rock steady also.
"All three films were shot in the Super 35 format, and Lesnie requested that the ground glasses for each camera have only 2.35:1 aspect ratio frame markings and center dots."
"Lesnie employed Kodak stocks EXR 50D 5245 and 200T 5293, Vision 500T 5279 and, for visual-effects work, SO214. He rated the 79 two-thirds overexposed at 320 ASA, and the 93 one-third overexposed at 160 ASA. Lesnie eschewed timed workprints in favor of one-light workprint dailies to avoid any ambiguity about what was going on with the various units' camera negatives, and the printer lights stayed in the low to mid-30s for the entire production. He chose the EXR stocks because he sought a soft image with decreased contrast. "The light in New Zealand can be quite hard and contrasty. There's very little pollution and the light has a strong amount of UV in it. However, we were looking for a more 'European' sensibility."
"The release prints are on standard Fuji print stock, because Lesnie believes that "the combination of Kodak negative and Fuji print stock has a slightly softer quality. To achieve the desired effect, we did tests taking the prints right through the process with The Film Unit and Deluxe in Los Angeles."
Interestingly, for this summer's "Stuart Little 2", cinematographer Steven Poster ASC insisted on scanning at 4K resolution, and recording back to film at 4K resolution.
------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
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
quote:
The release prints are on standard Fuji print stock, because Lesnie believes that "the combination of Kodak negative and Fuji print stock has a slightly softer quality."
I assume by "softer" he means softer contrast? It would be somewhat disturbing if a cinematographer intentionally meant to soften the focus.
Anyway, it's sad that scanning resolution is something filmmakers feel they can sacrifice when creating "epics" on a budget. It's also quite ironic that these newsgroupies are championing "digital" when it's precisely a digital process that caused the loss of resolution in the first place.