Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Oscar Shorts

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-28-2002, 03:05 PM:

We have been afforded a unique honor of presenting the live action shorts and the animated shorts that are nominated for the 2002 Academy Awards. This is the type of program that I am in the exhibition to present.

2002 OSCAR SHORTS PROGRAM
MARCH 1 - 6, 2O02 Traditionally, the public does not get an opportunity to see short films in commercial theatres, let alone Oscar-winning or nominated films during Oscar fever time. Rialto Cinemas and LA based short-films distributor Apollo Cinema, are very excited and thrilled to bring nine of the ten Academy Award nominated short films to the moviegoing public. Nominated for Best Live-Action and Best Animated Short Film, these productions have wide and far reaching appeal to movie lovers of all tastes and ages. For complete list of films please visit http://www.apollocinema.com/oscars/

However this package presents some problems, it has film in almost every 35mm ratio in use today. We are a platter theatre with manual lenses and masking. We have the lenses for every ratio, but not in every house. This is how we are going to build up the print.

2 Scope Trailers
50% Grey (Scope) animation
30 seconds of Black Mylar
Strange Invaders (1.33 SRD) animation
The Accountant, Live Action
Copy Shop (1.66:1) Live Action
Speed for Thespians, Live Action
A Man Thing (1.37:1) Live Action
Gregor's Greatest Invention, Live Action
Give Up Yer Aul Sins animation
Stubble Trouble (1.37:1) animation
For The Birds (1.85:1) animation

We placed For The Birds last because we know it is happy. The last shorts program we did, we ended on a short that was depressing and the was the last impression the audience had.

It's very aggravating. I have 1.66 for 3 of my houses and 1.37 for 2 of my houses but I don't have all four ratios in one single house. How would you handle this program?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-28-2002, 04:24 PM:

How does this package arrive? Does each short come on its own reel? Or does it ship on 20-minute reels like a standard feature print?

If this is a single booking, is it possible that the distributor had everything optically printed in the same format?

Are the 1.66 and 1.85 shorts hard-matted?

If all the flat widescreen titles are hard-matte, it might be easiest just to run everything at 1.33 and group the scope shorts together. The only downside here is that the 1.85 material will look really small.

Another option (which I don't especially like, but which is fairly common for this sort of thing) is to run all the flat shorts at 1.66. The Academy and 1.85 stuff won't look perfect, but nothing should look horribly wrong. This isn't a great example of "film done right," but it would be possible to do much worse. Personally, I'd put the scope stuff last in a house with side-masking or the flat stuff last in a house with top masking. No one wants to see the picture get smaller in the middle of the show.

Let us know what you end up doing. This sounds like a fun show.

Posted by Pete Naples (Member # 761) on 02-28-2002, 04:29 PM:

I used to run a lot of this sort of program during the Edinburgh International Film Festival. If possible, I'd group them together by ratio firstly, thus avoiding too many lens changes. At the Cameo Edinburgh we have all the useful ratios in all three screens, so that wasn't an issue for us. It's good to pre-screen the programme and see if the order you have built it in 'works'. As it's a one of thing, I'd try to beg/borrow/hire lenses to get all the ratios you need in one theatre.

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-28-2002, 05:34 PM:

Yes all of the shorts have arrived individually. Some came in film cans some came in film tins and some came in cardboard boxes. They came from many different sources. They came dribbling in all week. The playing order has been left to us. It would be nice to have this printed up as a single package. They could print it in scope and hard mask the edges.

Our plan is to run the one scope short first and then do a lens change to the 1.66:1 lens. We will run the rest of the program in 1.66:1. I have manual masking so there will be a run down to the front to change masking. We have installed all new screens and masking this week so it should look good.

One short is coming from Germany. It got held up in Customs and will not be delivered to the theatre until Saturday. Oh Well! We will just add it to the program when we get it. We will inform the patrons that they can use their ticket stubs to get back in and see the last short on Saturday.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 03-02-2002, 12:22 PM:

Running festivals like this presents logistical problems in change-over booths; I can't imagine what it is like on platter systems.

As Pete said, the most workable solution is to group everything by format -- this usually isn't the approach the curiator wants -- they want to group by theme or emotional content. Sometimes that just can't happen unless they don't mind allowing time for lenses, plates and masking to be changed. Mostly we compromise. It is easy when I am the curator and the projectionist rolled into one....a little less so when there is someone else doing the programming.

If the 1.85 prints are not hard-matted (the majority usually are not) then you could opt to grouping the 1.66 and the 1.85 together and play both at 1.66; this can be done without any major compromise to the integrity of the 1.85 titles. This isn't always true -- some filmmaker may be adament about the need to show it at 1.85 (I say, if it is that friggin important to project your film at 1.85, they how come you didn't hard-matte it at that ratio, dumbass?)

If a hard-matted 1.85 shows up, place it before the 1.66s (and the non-hard matted 1.85s). This way the audience will see slight black bands which will then disappear for the rest of the titles in that group, effectively making it seem like the picture got bigger rather than smaller. Also, now that letterboxing in video and even on TV has become common-place, the audience will not necessarily percieve the slight letterboxing of the 1.85 titles as being an error. Letterboxing is now accepted as an artsy format because award-winning shows like WEST WING and STAR TREK ENTERPRISE now do the entire show letterboxed. Yours will just come off as artsy also.

If you have to make a lens/plate/mask change for the 1.37, then just put in your black leader with enough time to do it. The pause between changes, as long as you group the titles so as to minimize them, is very common in such festivals. If at all possible, bring the curtain warmer or the house lights up to a slight glow so that the pause doesn't seem like something has gone wrong. At one festival, the curator actually wanted pause with slightly raised house lights between EACH title so the audienWe could read the program notes.

We sometimes have the addition of having to run video titles along with 16mm titles. It can and often time does get pretty hairy, but grouping to format is the best way to deal with it. I was once contronted with a curator who insisted that two shorts be placed back-to-back because of the jusxtaposition of the two themes. He was right, it was a great combination and running them together was a great idea. My solution to the booth gymnastics that I would have had to go through was solved very simply -- if you want those two titles to play back to back without a substantial pause, then I want a second projectionist in the booth. He was happy to comply. Sometimes having another set of hands in the booth is the best way to make it all work smoothly.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 03-02-2002, 12:41 PM:

The Laemmle in Santa Monica is actually making audiences pay TWICE for this program. It's broken up into two seperate 70 minute programs. They have no listing as to which shorts go into what parts.

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 03-02-2002, 03:29 PM:

Wow, we never thought of charging for two separate packages. The problem is there are about 2 hours of live action shorts and 1/2 an hour of animated shorts. We start the package with two animated shorts and finish it up with three animated shorts.

Gregor's Greatest Invention finally showed up after being lost in Customs. Now the program is complete. Here are my impressions upon seeing the program yesterday.

3 Scope Trailers
50% Grey (Scope) animation (Very Funny but dark, My Pick for the Oscar)
30 seconds of Black Mylar for the lens, aperture and masking change.
Strange Invaders (1.33 SRD) animation (Funny but crudely done)
The Accountant, Live Action (Dreadfully Boring!)
Copy Shop (1.66:1) Live Action (Brilliant, My Pick for the Oscar, a Work of Film Art!)
Speed for Thespians, Live Action (Dreadfully Boring!)
A Man Thing (1.37:1) Live Action (Good, Polish, Thought provoking.)
Gregor's Greatest Invention, Live Action (Very Sweet, good, the little old ladies loved it!)
Give Up Yer Aul Sins (1.37:1) animation (Amateurish)
Stubble Trouble (1.37:1) animation (Very Funny, Very Good Animation Art, Ky's pick for Oscar.)
For The Birds (1.85:1) animation (Very Good, Very Funny, Will Probably Win Oscar.)

The Package works very well in 1.66:1. There is only one hard-matted 1.85:1 short and it is For The Birds. It looks fine in 1.66:1; it looks a bit like letterboxing on television. In fact we are running the feature film Innocence in 1.66:1 in that same auditorium so we don't have to switch lenses out of the turret.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that I much prefer the 1.66:1 lens and ratio to the 1.85:1 ratio?

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 03-03-2002, 06:03 AM:

Good man, Ian....and you have a good eye. 1.66 is a better engineering compromise between width/magnification and finer grain(resolution)/light output. 1.85 is just to severe a crop, a waste of film geography (translate: waste of resolution and light transmission) and you and I are among many in the industry who years ago said that from every practical perspective, cropping this severely was just bad practice. The American pention for glitz over quality won out while the Europeans, to this day, held on to 1.66, opting for a bit more quality over width.