Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Only widescreens left now?

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Posted by Boris Sorokoumov (Member # 4629) on 12-31-2008, 10:53 AM:

Hey guys, do you ever get movies with the 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 formats in your theaters?

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-31-2008, 01:38 PM:

Just showed a 1.66 film this morning.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-31-2008, 01:53 PM:

Worked in a large theatre that our tabs for flat was 1.66:1.

Theatre had both drop down and side adjustable tabs to go from flat 1.66:1, 1.85:1,2.00:1, then scope tabs from SuperScope 2.00:1, Cinemascope 2.35:1, to the extreme 2.55:1 .

Had quite the collection of aperture plates to use...

-Monte

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-31-2008, 04:57 PM:

We have side masking adjustable from 1.33 to 2.39. We also have top and bottom masks that are almost never used.

Two sets of plates at 1.37 silent, 1.37 with sound, 1.66, 1.85, and 2.39 and a few uncut spares.

I think it's safe to say that standard flat formats are still used commonly.

Posted by Boris Sorokoumov (Member # 4629) on 12-31-2008, 05:27 PM:

Interesting... why do you think it is that we still have non-widescreen (2.35:1) movies in theaters?

Posted by Jonathan Althaus (Member # 5042) on 12-31-2008, 05:33 PM:

Close-ups seem to look better in flat, IMO. At my theatre, of our 15 prints, 13 are scope though. Seems to fluctuate and sometimes we have mainly flat, sometimes 50-50.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-31-2008, 08:28 PM:

Sometimes, it's the director's choice on what lens to use in his movie. EXAMPLE: "Valkyrie" was shot in 1.85:1 since Brian Singer, the director, wanted to film in this ratio.

Also, with shooting flat, you have a good Field of Focus since the lens is capturing everything in a normal prospective.

Also, some directors also choose to shoot in Super35, which is also using the flat lens but using the entire frame of the film-including the soundtrack area, and the labs extract the Scope imagery from this negative. Good example is James Cameron's "True Lies" - entire film was shot in Super35, and the labs made excellent results in the scope release prints.

-Monte

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-31-2008, 09:29 PM:

Super-35 can be used to produce 1.85:1 release prints (or any other aspect ratio) as well, but that is almost never done. Actually, it would make a lot of sense for a film that would go through a digital intermediate, as it would give extra image area on the negative.

Also, anything shot in 16mm and blown up will usually be composed for 1.33 or 1.37. Films shot in super-16 are usually composed for 1.66 or 1.85. Video-originated material is usually 1.33, 1.37, 1.75, or 1.85. Remember that not all theatrical motion pictures are shot in 35mm.

For low-budget films, there are some practical considerations that make anamorphic cinematography more difficult: the lenses cost more to rent (and are larger, which makes it more difficult to shoot handheld or in tight spaces), more lighting is typically required, sets often need to be larger, and focus is more critical.

I'm not a big fan of the 1.85:1 format, personally; I would prefer that most films be either 1.37 or scope, but there are good reasons why the format is commonly used.

In the US, (almost?) every 35mm venue can show 1.85 and scope. Art houses and other non-multiplex theatres usually have 1.33 (silent), 1.37, and 1.66 as well. Other formats (1.75, 2.55 mag scope, etc.) are less common.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-31-2008, 09:41 PM:

I've never played anything other than Flat or Scope - except for one special local thing we ran on 16mm.

It does seem to run in cycles for Flat and Scope. A few weeks ago (Thanksgiving?) we had flat movies on 4 of 5 screens - we may have even had a week of 5 flat movies. But now we have 5 scope movies.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 01-01-2009, 09:33 AM:

M. Night Shyamalan has used Super-1.85.

Shooting anamorphic presents challenges, for sure. Astigmatism (objects out of focus show their anamorphic origins by being tall and skinny). Additionally, and probably the nastiest thing about shooting anamorphic, is the lens flare. It is really easy to pick it up and it will show itself as horizontal streaking with the source of the light as its origin. Sometimes it is a look one is going for, more often than not, it is an undesirable artifact.

And naturally, I'd prefer they shoot in 65mm for "Scope" and 70mm releases (there are other topics here that can go into that). Then you get the spherical lenses but with a much larger image on film and consequently more resolution.

Steve

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-01-2009, 09:50 AM:

It seems like since widescreen TVs started gaining in popularity more and more films are shot with 'scope ratio. I think a lot of directors like the 'scope aspect ratio better than flat and with 16:9 TV's the letterbox lines aren't too big and you can even just crop the 'scope to 1:1.78 without too many issues (they seem to do this on the High Def HBO and Showtime type channels).

When the majority of TVs were 1:1.33, scope transfers either had to have huge screen area waste with letterbox (which the customers didn't like) or had to have pan and scan (and sometimes squeeze) to get them to look decent on TV screens. I guess sometimes they shot in Super35 and just let the extra top and bottom get shown for the 1:1.33 release.

I remember back in the late 80's/early 90's it seemd to be probably 2:1 flat vs. scope. 'Scope movies were kind of sepecial and usually only the action/adventure or epic type movies. Recently it's probably majority scope with any genre being in the scope ratio (including some CGI animation).

Since TV shows are now basically flat ratio, perhaps its a distinction to shoot movies in 2.39:1 (whether super35, actual anamorphic or cropped digital).

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 01-01-2009, 06:10 PM:

I believe that the 1.5 squeeze prisms (as used for Technirama) did not suffer any of the same abberations as 2x lenses. If the full 3 perf image area of Super 35 were used with a 1.5 squeeze there would be a lot more real estate than the current Super 35 crop.
65mm would be great but it just won’t happen, unfortunately. Too expensive and too bulky. However, the same could be said about some “stars” so I’d rather makers spent the money on film stock and writers.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-01-2009, 07:06 PM:

Technirama still shows off some of the tell tale signs of anamorphic lens use. The abberations aren't as obvious as the 2X squeeze lenses for 'scope, but they can be spotted. I remember seeing some in Spartacus. If I had the movie on DVD (or if it was available on Blu-ray) I could point out some specific scenes.

I'm not sure if the growth in HDTV sales has had anything to do with the trend of most movies being presented in 2.39:1. I think Super35 has to take most of the credit (or blame) for that. Movie studios are wanting the fill the entire screen in a standard movie theater auditorium and 2.39:1 is usually what accomplishes that. Then the same movie studios want to fill the TV screens at home. Super35 gives the studios that flexibility.

Anamorphic 35mm looks better for 2.39:1 shows, but you're locked into that ratio and forced to severely pan and scan or letterbox the image on home video. The letter boxing of 2.39:1 movies on 16X9 HDTV sets doesn't look bad, but a lot of people getting into Blu-ray still don't like it.

One thing that signaled DVD had finally gone "mainstream" was the point when Hollywood studios started releasing wide screen and "full screen" DVD versions of their major releases. I don't think anything on Blu-ray has had separate wide screen and full screen releases, but it may only be a matter of time before we start seeing a lot of that kind of thing.

Posted by Troy Hilsman Powell (Member # 4326) on 01-01-2009, 08:13 PM:

I remember getting 3 stooges and woody wood pecker as a premier opening for litchfield cinemas back in the mid 80's and thank goodness one screen was silver.Except for the cropping the picture was excellent.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 01-01-2009, 09:46 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
One thing that signaled DVD had finally gone "mainstream" was the point when Hollywood studios started releasing wide screen and "full screen" DVD versions of their major releases. I don't think anything on Blu-ray has had separate wide screen and full screen releases, but it may only be a matter of time before we start seeing a lot of that kind of thing.

I'm surprised Blu-ray doesn't have a menu option for full screen that would just zoom in and crop the sides. The people that don't like letterbox (because the picture isn't taking up my whole TV) don't care about the composition anyway so it's probably not worth doing the post-production to make a true 16:9 version of a 2.39:1 movie.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 01-01-2009, 11:23 PM:

Another advantage of Scope is that the projection is through the largest appeture. Whatever the origination, 70mm is superior to 35 and anamorphic is superior to flat.
Bobby, the artefacts in anamorphic concern me less than the overall reduction in quality of flat, and the image is so much more involving that most people would not notice. Similarly, I never noticed any of the issues in Technirama films, so they must be less apparent.