Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Halloween on Halloween

This is topic Halloween on Halloween in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Tom Tomlinson (Member # 703) on 11-01-2006, 02:40 PM:

Hi,
I just wanted to get any feedback on the "Original Halloween" screening over the last 2 nights at certain Regal/AMC theaters nationwide. It was from a HD source(720P?).
I saw it in NYC last night & was pretty disappointed. While it wasn't an ntsc dvd, it was disappointing for no screen masking to cover up 2.35 letterboxing on the HD.I do so enjoy seeing 2 different blacks on display. It also came from the pre-show projector which to me, is not a good way to market Digital Cinema.The theater should use the higher quality projectors when they are charging us normal admission.
I was also hoping they could've removed more grain in the HD transfer.
When it was over, I would've preferred a slightly dirty film print.
Can anyone give me more technical info and/or observations.
Thanks,
Tom

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 11-01-2006, 04:51 PM:

Wow. I remember when they charged full price for the Boondock Saints director's cut, the screening that fell on the same day as the film's DVD release.

Who really eats this stuff up? [Confused]

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 11-02-2006, 10:25 AM:

A friend of mine saw this and was disappointed and said he wouldn't be going to future showings of that kind because he felt he could get a better presentation from a DVD at home. The pre-show advertising projectors do not have sufficient resolution for movie presentation and the blurriness is obvious if you're too close to the screen.

My friend, who saw Halloween, said:

Halloween was basically the DVD projected onto the theater screen. Blurry and letterboxed to boot. The sound was good. It was nice seeing it with some people who evidently hadn't seen it before, given the moans and squeals behind us. But still. If you have a DVD, I think you'd get a better presentation at home.

Personally, I find this current trend in a movie theatre presenation to be appalling and it makes me not want to go to any kind of "special engagement" that isn't a new release because I might as well just watch the DVD on my system at home if theatres are going to pull off this kind of presentation on an advertising projector with a source that has poor resolution and picture quality. Plus, they letterboxed the scope-shaped image on the flat screen when all their theatres have adjustable masking. Their source may be better than DVD but many cheap data-type projectors make the images look terrible. In fact, I've seen some data projectors that can turn DVD into something that looks worse than VHS on a good TV (like last Saturday night at a play I attended where a video from DVD was played before the play started - it looked blurry and awful), so I would be surprised to see projectors that can turn 720p into something that looks worse than a good DVD on a good 16:9 TV.

When people realize that theatres are showing something that doesn't even look as good as DVD on a high-quality 16:9 set, why will they bother going back? They might get the impression that it's par for the course for "digital projection" to be that way and avoid it.

Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 11-02-2006, 12:42 PM:

I guess my audience was luckier than these poor folks. A few years back I had the pleasure of running a newly struck EK print of this title. [thumbsup]

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 11-02-2006, 01:17 PM:

Those projectors use 500 watt lamps, right?

Maybe 1,000?
[Roll Eyes]

Posted by Tom Tomlinson (Member # 703) on 11-02-2006, 01:49 PM:

If its from dvd, I guess this press release wasn't entirely accurate.

“HALLOWEEN” RETURNS TO THEATRES!
ORIGINAL 1978TEENAGE HORRORCLASSICWILL PLAY IN125
SELECT MOVIE THEATRES NATIONWIDE ON OCT. 30 & 31, 2006
DigitallyRemastered “Halloween” will be Shown for First Time in High-Definition, Plus an
In-Theatre Exclusive20-Minute Featurette withOriginal Cast Members andRob Zombie
Presented by Trancas International,VOOM’s Monsters HD and National CineMedia

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 11-02-2006, 02:37 PM:

I don't think it was literally from DVD, but I'll bet many theatres' presentations of this movie on Halloween didn't look as good as a well-setup 16:9 system showing an anamorphically-encoded DVD. High definition source does not mean high-definition on-screen appearance, especially if played on a projector meant for advertising, and not made to take advantage of the screen aspect ratio. High-definition can mean so many things these days. 720p is less than a megapixel. Couple that with a projector that probably doesn't have the proper native resolution for the screen aspect ratio and the source and you end up with a poor presentation.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 11-03-2006, 08:39 AM:

quote: Evans A Criswell
the blurriness is obvious if you're too close to the screen

That is the definition of an understatement. I checked a few days ago... from dead center of our biggest auditorium, I can see pixels on the screen - even with the florescent work lights on - without my glasses. And I'm near sighted. I don't see any pixels from three inches away from my HD television at home.

HD my ass.

And by the way, I have the Monsters HD Voom channel at home. And they run the Halloween series all the time, and in true HD, they look great.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 11-04-2006, 12:23 PM:

Regal locations use the Christie L6 projector which has a native resolution of 1024x768. It will accept sources up to 1280x1024. It has a fixed aspect ration of 4:3. Preshow content is formated aprx 1.85:1 and the projector is zoomed in to fill at least 75% of a flat masked screen. For feature content, such as Halloween, both lamps are utilized for maximum brightness, wheras only one lamp is used for preshow content. The bluriness people see is often caused by a missaligned LCD panel inside the projector. If the projector is aligned properly, you should see the "screen door" pretty clearly from the front half of the auditorium. With fresh bulbs, the image from the rear half of the auditorium is superb, however the reality is that many projectionists neglect to change the bulb until they are unbearably dim.

Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 11-04-2006, 01:08 PM:

quote: Mike Olpin
projectionists

is that the proper term now?

Rick