Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Last Jedi

This is topic The Last Jedi in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=012203

Posted by Michael Cornish (Member # 6529) on 09-21-2017, 12:48 AM:

Has Disney announced any plans yet of doing any 70MM release of The Last Jedi?

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-21-2017, 01:22 AM:

I'm kind of amazed there hasn't been more promo on it. They're being even closer-vested with this than they were with "Force Awakens." I love it, I hope they don't even release any more trailers. Maybe a final onesheet and be done.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 09-21-2017, 01:55 PM:

I believe that it is the next one that has been shot on 65mm.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 09-21-2017, 02:02 PM:

quote: Stephan Shelley
I believe that it is the next one that has been shot on 65mm

According to IMDB, it was shot on a mix of 35mm film, IMAX 70mm horizontal film and Arri Alexa 65 (5K+) digital.

The DI is supposedly a 4k DI but with a 3D release I'm not sure if 4K DCPs will actually be available. Of course, if they spent the money to do a 4K DI, then why not release a 4K DCP?

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 09-21-2017, 05:44 PM:

quote: Lyle Romer
Of course, if they spent the money to do a 4K DI, then why not release a 4K DCP?

I've heard that the main reason lots of big budget features end up with 2K DCP's is because of the extra time and money involved to complete the visual effects in 4K is doubled. Because of this, a lot of 4K DCP's that we do get are using visual effects that have been upscaled to 4K. Some filmmakers don't like the idea of upscaling anything so they just release everything in 2K. If you add 3D into the mix, that's even more time and money involved to render 4K stereo images.

I'm not really sure what can be done to make rendering less expensive and time consuming other than the eventual evolution of supercomputers that can get the job done faster.

My guess is that unless a 4K release is planned for during pre-production, it will probably not happen.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-03-2017, 03:22 PM:

quote: "Mike Schulz"
I've heard that the main reason ... is because of ... money

I've heard that too and that just pisses me off. If you know you're going to make a billion dollars on a movie can you not spend an extra million or two to get the 4K visuals right?

quote: "Stephan Shelley"
I believe that it is the next one that has been shot on 65mm.

Do we have confirmation that this is still happening? They did just change the director, didn't they? And I thought it was him that was pushing for 65mm. Hopefully the new guy will keep that going.

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 10-03-2017, 05:52 PM:

Mark, I see that you intentionally left out the "time" part of my quote in your comment. That is also a very crucial factor concerning production. I get your point that a company like Disney,that will no doubt gross another billion dollars with the new Star Wars movie, should have no issue covering the cost of getting everything done in 4K but time is also a very important factor.

If money was of no concern, you would still have to push the release date of the movie to next summer to allow the time to render everything in 4K. The amount of VFX in a movie like Star Wars is astronomical and extremely time consuming already just rendering everything in 2K.

Their options would be to either postpone the release 3-6 months to get the job done, or to just upscale the VFX to 4K which, understandably, a lot of people don't like to do.

Having said that, we still don't know how they will release this feature. It could still be a 4K release but the reason I would guess that it will be 2K is because The Force Awakens was released that way.

I'm trying to remember the last movie that Disney released in 4K and I think it was "The Jungle Book".

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 10-03-2017, 06:11 PM:

I'm still trying to figure out how you guys got down this road of "Last Jedi will be 2K". The 2D trailer is 4K.

Now, to be fair, there were 4K trailers of Born in China, Monkey Kingdom, The Avengers, and War Horse and those all ended up as 2K releases.

Disney's 4K releases have been Rogue One, Bridge of Spies, Tomorrowland, and Lincoln.

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 10-03-2017, 09:34 PM:

quote: Adam Martin
I'm still trying to figure out how you guys got down this road of "Last Jedi will be 2K". The 2D trailer is 4K.

Trailers are almost always farmed out to production houses that are not involved with the studio's production at all so a 4K trailer would not be a good indicator.

I had forgotten about "Rogue One" being released in 4K. I don't think it had a 3D release which, again, involves more post production time, but that release does let us know that Lucasfilm might be willing to push for 4K on their future releases.

By the way, everything I've mentioned in this thread is pure speculation on my part. While I would love for "The Last Jedi" to be released in 4K (especially Dolby Vision), I just wanted to provide people with some reasons why a big movie like that might not be released in 4K. Another person mentioned that it should be a non-issue to do considering the money it will make, but I wanted to point out that money is not the only factor in making it happen. The VFX probably take the most amount of post production time as it is to get completed in time for the release date and having to do everything in 4K literally doubles the rendering time.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-04-2017, 12:49 AM:

Rogue One was also released in 3D and in Dolby Vision 2D and 3D. It also had a 70mm release in both 5/70 and 15/70. It also had both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. So, it had all the major checkboxes ticked.

I doubt Disney will be targeting such a major release at 2K, not just for the theatrical release, but also the "aftermarket", where 4K has become the norm and where HDR will be expected. A 4K HDR Blu-Ray will also fetch roughly double of the 2K SDR equivalent in the store.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 10-04-2017, 01:20 AM:

quote: Marcel Birgelen
Rogue One was also released in 3D and in Dolby Vision 2D and 3D. It also had a 70mm release in both 5/70 and 15/70. It also had both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. So, it had all the major checkboxes ticked.

Are you sure about the 5/70 release of Rogue One? I don't think any DTS/Datasat discs were made for that title, and to the bet of my knowledge there are no facilities left that can do mag striping.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-04-2017, 02:05 AM:

You're right, there was no 5/70 release, but there was an IMAX 15/70 "DMR" release.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-04-2017, 08:29 AM:

quote: Mike Schulz
Mark, I see that you intentionally left out the "time" part of my quote in your comment. That is also a very crucial factor concerning production. I get your point that a company like Disney,that will no doubt gross another billion dollars with the new Star Wars movie, should have no issue covering the cost of getting everything done in 4K but time is also a very important factor.

Not intentional. Dedicate more processors at a higher cost and the time should be close to a wash.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-04-2017, 01:05 PM:

quote: Mike Schulz
If money was of no concern, you would still have to push the release date of the movie to next summer to allow the time to render everything in 4K. The amount of VFX in a movie like Star Wars is astronomical and extremely time consuming already just rendering everything in 2K.

If that's Hollywood's excuse I am certainly not buying it. Not at all.

The only way that excuse could possibly work is if computing technology was stuck in early 2000's standards -back when the first feature-length 4K digital intermediates were first being rendered. Actually, Snow White was the first movie to be scanned and digitally processed in 4K back in freaking 1993. In that movie's case the 4K data wasn't saved; the final result was down-rezzed to something more manageable for early 90's technology.

Current computing technology is now many times more powerful than what it was only 10 years ago. Yet 2K digital intermediates, CGI and digital backlot techniques have all been in common use longer than that. So if a 4K render would push a release date for a new Star Wars movie back until summer of next year then all those 2K (and 4K) renders from over a decade ago would have been impossible. Today many TV shows with much lower budgets than Hollywood studio features are using CGI and digital backlot techniques like crazy. Some of these shows, such as House of Cards, are being produced in 4K.

The real problem is that the Hollywood studio production infrastructure grew way too accustomed to 2K. 4K is very feasible for modern movie productions. Even 8K is very do-able with modern workstation technology. What the movie studios did was take all the performance gains and sink it into doing 2K ever faster and cheaper rather than raising the quality bar.

There's a lot of projects that were shot on film or shot digitally in 4K, even post-produced in 4K yet down-rezzed to 2K to save space for archival purposes. They're still doing that shit out of habit. It's one of the reasons that explains why so few movies released on the Ultra-HD Blu-ray format contain any native 4K content.

Only now, with 4K UHDTV sets becoming very common and affordable and 4K infiltrating many other aspects of consumer electronics, Hollywood studios are finally starting to wake up and realize they need to start leaving behind the old 1080p HDTV quality 2K shit.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 10-12-2017, 04:24 PM:

What pisses me off is that making 35mm prints is a piece of cake and not that costly. There are ZERO reasons why movies shot on 35mm, aren't doing a hand-full of laser-out prints, even if they come from 2k masters, so us "film buffs" can see the movie on the format it was shot on. It's just pathetic and shows how studio's are still stuck to the whole 3D thing, which I think is stupid and worthless.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-13-2017, 02:13 PM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
What pisses me off is that making 35mm prints is a piece of cake and not that costly. There are ZERO reasons why movies shot on 35mm, aren't doing a hand-full of laser-out prints, even if they come from 2k masters, so us "film buffs" can see the movie on the format it was shot on.

If the movie's final product is a 2K digital intermediate I have no desire to see a film-out of it. Might as well just watch it in ordinary 2K d-cinema or even at home on Blu-ray.

If the DI is 4K (or higher) then 35mm prints derived from it might be decent. Arri's 6.5K large sensor camera might be good for larger format prints, provided if the post production people bother to maintain that 6.5K resolution throughout the post production process (few if any do that now; it gets down-rezzed to 4K or 2K). Red just announced a new "Monstro" 8K camera that uses a full frame (VistaVision sized) 35mm sensor. All those extra pixels aren't of much use unless all that extra resolution is maintained throughout the production process and then output on some film prints (like 70mm). Otherwise the imagery will either be down-rezzed or cropped/re-composed.

From a purist perspective, the only way something shot on film can be properly experienced via a film print is if the analog, photo-chemical process is maintained from camera to movie theater screen. Once you scan those film negatives and turn the imagery into a digital file the film part of it is pretty much gone. It gets even more bastardized via all the color grading and other stuff in post. 2K resolution certainly isn't good enough to capture something shot on 4-perf 35mm film. One can make a good argument crews aren't doing enough on color bit depth with these scans.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 10-16-2017, 02:38 PM:

Ehh... 2k or not, I'd still rather see a well made print. It keeps the projectionists busy, keeps the projectors working and over-all is a better looking image than digital. So in my eyes, it's just a better experience, especially with anamorphic where at least they're using the full height of the imager for 2.40:1.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-16-2017, 02:41 PM:

I think everybody agrees that film looks better (if properly maintained and projected) but it's not making a comeback in mainstream theaters. As Archie Bunker once said, "That bus has sailed."

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 10-16-2017, 03:22 PM:

Ohh fo-sho... but at least The Force Awakens had a print and I saw it. [Smile]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-16-2017, 03:37 PM:

I wonder how many 35mm's of "Last Jedi" will be around, compared to TFA.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-17-2017, 12:35 AM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
Ehh... 2k or not, I'd still rather see a well made print. It keeps the projectionists busy, keeps the projectors working and over-all is a better looking image than digital.

Specifically, how is a film-out of a 2K digital source going to look better than that original 2K digital source? The film print isn't adding any extra resolution. In fact, you're going to get some level of generational loss -especially when you consider the laser recorded film-outs are not the release prints. You'll have one or more dupes between what actually gets shown in the theater. The film print isn't adding any extra color depth either. The only possible thing the print could provide is deeper blacks, but that's only going to happen if the digital source and laser recording is geared that way and those blacks are maintained through the dupe stage.

In the graphics industry we call it "garbage in = garbage out." If you start with a HDTV resolution image that's what I consider garbage for a film print.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-17-2017, 06:24 PM:

My current irritation regarding Last Jedi is, they debuted a new trailer during a football game on free TV, but they still haven't included it on a trailer drive.

They should have run a commercial for it during the game and said, "See the full new trailer at your local theater this weekend!"

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 10-18-2017, 02:54 AM:

Ohh I agree Bobby, but honestly the post workflow for film out allows for far greater dynamic range then DCP which is regulated at DCI-P3 color space. Remember, from around 2002 till the end of film, almost all film out's were 2k, with the exception of a hand full of 4k titles very late in the game.

What you get with a filmout is better color space, MUCH greater dynamic range (less flat nastiness), the "flicker" of not only the projector, but also the silver in the film itself. A projected piece of film, with a decent source, will always look prettier than a standard ol' 3 chip DLP projector.

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 10-18-2017, 08:49 AM:

Keep in mind that talking about a D.I. process on 35mm film we're talking about 2048x15xx pixel resolution for Scope, which vertically is almost double the resolution of crappy "letterboxed" digital Scope (2048x858).

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 10-18-2017, 02:00 PM:

I agree with what Tyler says.
35mm film-out even from a 2K DI looks better than a 2K DCP.
Providing that you have an excellent 35mm projector, good lenses and proper light output etc.

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 10-18-2017, 02:44 PM:

I also agree that a 35mm print from a 2k DI and especially a 4k DI can look better if the 35mm projector and lenses are good.
In my case,very well aligned lamp and Isco Blue Star lenses for scope,Ultra Star HD Plus for flat! Can't beat it!

Oh and it feels better. [Smile]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2017, 12:59 PM:

quote: Sascha F. Roll
Keep in mind that talking about a D.I. process on 35mm film we're talking about 2048x15xx pixel resolution for Scope, which vertically is almost double the resolution of crappy "letterboxed" digital Scope (2048x858).

2K digital intermediates are rendered at 2048x858. They're not made in any taller size. For that 2048x1536 4:3 ratio 2K image to work properly the digital 'scope ratio photography and post production work would need to render no less than a 3686x1536 resolution image before anamorphically squeezing it onto a 35mm 'scope print. At that resolution setting the production might as well do all its work in 4K.

I think for 2K work the post production folks should at least be rendering 2560x1080. That is a standard resolution setting; there's even a growing number of computer monitors available in that resolution. A 2560x1080 2.5K DCP would allow any theater that invested in a 1.25x anamorphic lens setup can get a full container 2048x1080 scope image in the DCP that can be un-squeezed via the projector lens. Image quality would be significantly better than 2048x858 low res scope.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 11-15-2017, 04:34 AM:

Any news about 35mm prints?