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The film was shot Super-35 1.85. We have been doing the double-system screenings here in NYC.

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What does "double system screening" mean?

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Why aren't all 1.85 films shot Super-35?

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It requires at least one stage to be optically printed, or use "Digital Intermediate", so the extra quality comes at increased cost/time.

Many television shows are shot in Super-35, often 3-perf pulldown, for eventual showing in both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios -- transfers of Super-35 and 3-perf are widely available from film-to-video transfer labs.
 

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Posted by Jeff Joseph (Member # 511) on 07-21-2003, 05:13 PM:
 
So my question is still: What's up with this trailer? I'm just never seen anything like it...

Jeff
 

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Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 07-21-2003, 05:43 PM:
 
I thought the only purpose of Super 35 was so that anamorphic films could be made without the need for an anamorphic lens on the camera. I thought that the image was filmed with a 3-perf pulldown and the image was filmed with a spherical lens the width of the 35mm frame, then later optically printed to the height of the 4-perf frame and 2x compressed for standard scope prints. ???

How the heck would this work for 1.85?
 

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Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 07-21-2003, 05:44 PM:
 
I agree with Jeff.
Why does the trailer look squeezed even though we're playing it in scope, which is how the trailer band was marked.
Any links John.
Thanks.
 

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Posted by Brian Guckian (Member # 1678) on 07-21-2003, 09:47 PM:
 
Jeff, the fact you say the trailer is only slightly squeezed leads one to wonder if this isn't some digital transfer problem.

I ran a trailer of a flat film a couple a years ago where the production company had posted the trailer digitally, but by mistake transferred a squeezed version back to film.

Anamorphic video techniques are quite common in post-production, and are used to optimise resolution - even with "flat" film images as we know them. I won't go into the details here - I'm sure someone else could explain it more succinctly!

It's also the case that more and more trailers are being done digitally and scanned back onto film - enabling e.g. Rick McCallum to memorably declare that each copy of the Star Wars Ep II trailers was (almost) an original! (No dupe negs).

(On the other hand, maybe "Secondhand Lions" is just a long overdue breakthrough for tall, thin actors )
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 07-21-2003, 10:01 PM:
 
Adam, most Super 35 feature films are still shot with 4-perf cameras. While Super 35 usually means extracting a 2.39:1 segment and making Scope format prints it is in fact possible to shoot any format in Super 35. It only refers to using the full silent width of the film so a later optical (or digital) transfer will reduce the size of the image and recenter it to clear the soundtrack area. You can do it with 1.85 and 1.66 and naturally you can shoot full frame silent 1.33 and reduce it to Academy 1.37 -- perhaps the original Super 35!
 

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Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-22-2003, 04:24 AM:
 
I haven't seen the scope version of this trailer, but the image quality on the flat version is remarkable! Razor sharp, no visable grain, excelent color.
 

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Posted by Peter Kerchinsky (Member # 1098) on 07-23-2003, 04:46 AM:
 
I took a second look at this trailer tonight and it appears only portions of it appear to be still squeezed. Not sure why.
I still believe this is a quality control issue with whoever makes these trailers. Kind of makes us projectionists/exhibitors look like idiots running it this way if anyone in the audience notices it.
I'm curious as to how the flat trailers look since we are only running a scope one.
 

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Posted by Matt Hale (Member # 1518) on 07-29-2003, 04:53 PM:
 
Does anybody know of film labs that do the super35 to scope extraction digitally? i.e. scan the whole thing from negative, squeeze it in the computer, and print it back out to negative? We happen to be at this stage of a feature right now, and the quotes we have gotten for making an interpositive and shooting it optically are astronomical.

Thanks.

[ 07-30-2003, 11:59 AM: Message edited by: Matt Hale ]
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 07-30-2003, 08:34 AM:
 
Doing the "squeeze" in a digital intermediate should be straight forward for any lab offering the service. But with today's technology, it may not necessarily be cheaper than doing it in an optical printer. Faster and better digital intermediates are on the way:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/v2/sehlin04.shtml
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 07-31-2003, 04:43 PM:
 
I ran Secondhand Lions unmarried with an Ektachrome dupe (I presume it was of the workprint which was contact printed from the neg). Image was full width. Recalling this thread about Super 1.85 I checked and was told to run it in normal 1.85. Before I got the word I auditioned some both ways and was leaning towards it being Super. Seemed ok during the run although I kept looking for examples of tight headroom and images that would have benefited from more on the left and of course I found some but whether that was for real or just the power of suggestion I don't know.
 

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Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 09-09-2003, 12:29 PM:
 
I can now add that if Secondhand Lions was a Super 1.85 show I would expect that the release prints would be hard masked to some degree. The maximum frame height could not exceed roughly Academy height and then only if the camera was shooting full height / full width 1.33 silent format frames and the optical reduction and recentering transferred them in full. Yet this is not the case. The frames on the release prints are full height and negative splices can be seen. This, coupled with my earlier experience with the dupe of the work print, causes me to conclude that this is not a Super 1.85 show. Perhaps it was shot with that intent but they rather lost some a bit of the left side composition in favor of skipping the optical printing step.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-09-2003, 12:52 PM:
 

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Perhaps it was shot with that intent but they rather lost some a bit of the left side composition in favor of skipping the optical printing step.

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