Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ready Player 1 in 5/70mm

This is topic Ready Player 1 in 5/70mm in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 02-10-2018, 02:54 PM:

Looks like there will be 5/70mm prints of this title.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 02-13-2018, 10:55 PM:

It is now confirmed at the Grand Lake in Oakland CA.

Posted by David J Hilsgen (Member # 2614) on 02-16-2018, 02:28 AM:

It is confirmed for Emagine Willow Creek in Plymouth,MN

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-16-2018, 01:06 PM:

Confirmed here:
Studio Movie Grill Royal [Dallas, TX]
Studio Movie Grill Arlington [Arlington, TX]

Posted by Chris Haller (Member # 9206) on 02-16-2018, 01:44 PM:

Interesting news. I guess this is the new norm for larger Warner Bros. titles - trying to keep those 70mm printers running for the next big release, I guess. A handful of prints every now and then.

I'd be interested to see what Ready Player One looks like printed from 4K DI to 5/70. I've been less than impressed with the digital projection of the trailer here at our local theaters in Rochester. The live action sequences are sharp with a touch of grain, but the VFX heavy Oasis sequences just seem kind of textureless and bland in contrast. It's too bad that I'll never get a chance to see it without an ambitious weekend trip involved!

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 02-16-2018, 07:09 PM:

I hear it was shot in part on 65mm. I know with all the CGI it is going to come from a digital intermediary.

Posted by Allan Barnes (Member # 5178) on 02-17-2018, 12:47 AM:

70MM LIST YET? HOPING FOR MICHIGAN OR NEARBY

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-17-2018, 11:36 AM:

If the movie is funneled through a 2K or 4K digital intermediate then there is little benefit at all with shooting in 65mm. Perhaps if they carefully stored the film negatives and were willing to redo the CGI and DI at a later date in 8K or better then it might make sense. Hardly any movie or TV productions ever go back and remaster those assets. Star Trek: The Next Generation is the only show I can think of off hand where the SDTV effects were redone in HD. CGI and DI software changes so rapidly that a lot of movie effects and other assets would have to be regenerated from scratch. Unfortunately actors age (and die), which makes reshoots very difficult, presuming a studio would even spend money on that.

Posted by Jason Metcalfe (Member # 5739) on 02-19-2018, 09:29 AM:

Heads up, we're hearing that it's going to be 2.39 in a 2.20 frame. We did get confirmation that the cue marks are going to be properly scribed in the picture area however

Posted by Julian Antos (Member # 5497) on 02-19-2018, 02:16 PM:

This will screen at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago for a three week run.

Posted by Allan Barnes (Member # 5178) on 02-19-2018, 05:13 PM:

ROAD TRIP to Chicago

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 02-19-2018, 06:45 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
If the movie is funneled through a 2K or 4K digital intermediate then there is little benefit at all with shooting in 65mm.

I disagree. The improvement in picture quality in going from 35mm or 65mm origination is visible, even with a DI--> film out, or even with digital projection.

Posted by Andrew Thomas (Member # 7000) on 02-19-2018, 08:08 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
If the movie is funneled through a 2K or 4K digital intermediate then there is little benefit at all with shooting in 65mm.

There are reasons to shoot in 65mm over 35mm beyond resolution.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 02-19-2018, 10:17 PM:

The 2K/4K DI step is a quality bottleneck that will not preserve all the image detail and color depth from a 65mm film negative. The DI as a final product may have the appearance of a sharper image due to the 65mm source, but that DI only has the pixels that it has.

Down-rezzing a 5/65mm source image to a 4K DI and then blowing it back up to 5/70mm seems a bit like down-rezzing a 1080p HD image to 480p SD and then up-rezzing that back to 1080p HD. Even with the best image enlargement tricks the up-rezzed image isn't going to compare well to the original 1080p HD image. A 70mm blow-up from a 4K source won't look equivalent to its 65mm original either.

I watched Kenneth Branagh's remake of Murder on the Orient Express a few weeks ago. If I hadn't known already I would not have guessed significant parts of that movie were shot on 5/65mm film (some parts were shot digitally using the Arri Alexa 65). That production's final product in post was a 4K DI. A great deal of digital backlot work was involved in that production. It didn't look like they rendered any of those digital assets any higher than 4K resolution. I kind of expect the same from Ready Player One. It still seems routine for Hollywood to churn out its CGI, digital backlot work and digital intermediates in 2K. That standard is so common that 100% 4K seems like a bonus.

I would have less of a problem with this 65mm-to-DI stuff if the movie studios and production companies would at least bother using some better standards than just ordinary 4K. There is a growing number of digital camera systems that support 6K and 8K resolutions, and on camera imaging chips larger than the usual tiny Super35 size.

Computing technology in 2018 is a hell of a lot more powerful than it was 10 years ago when MPI was producing the 8K DI of Baraka. Now that there is interest in showing movies via 70mm prints once again why are we not seeing any 8K DIs of these movies? I guess that might be a rhetorical question since cost, saving money and extending profit margin is likely the answer. Perhaps someone could use cryptocurrency miners as a new excuse for Hollywood's current lack of ground-breaking improvements in movie making. Graphics board prices have spiked due to people chasing imaginary fortunes in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc. But I think that's a fad that's going to pass and companies like Nvidia and ATI will adjust to the demand.

Posted by Tyler Purcell (Member # 9213) on 02-20-2018, 12:59 AM:

There are A LOT of reasons why the studio's still use 2k as their base for VFX work. The main reason is that nobody knows the difference and it saves A LOT of rendering time. They've done A/B comparisons and the difference with a VFX shot is negligible. It's been proven time and time again, resolution of the medium on screen means very little, just look at the Super 16mm movies released in the last few years, they are at maximum a 2.5k medium and the movies still look crisp. The Phantom Thread on 70mm looked outstanding and that wasn't even a digital blow up.

Again, I'm happy Warner is putting in the effort and I'm very happy to have film projected on a regular basis so our theaters keep up to date. Who really cares if its 2k or 4k or 8k, it doesn't matter. What matters is the concept that it's shot on film and projected on film in order to keep filmmakers like myself relevant in the world of movie making on celluloid.

Ohh and Murder On the Orient was nearly 100% 5/65... I think they used the digital camera for a night shot or something very minor.

Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 03-09-2018, 09:45 AM:

Seattle Cinerama is showing it in 70MM.

https://cinerama.com/Movie.aspx?fc=5106000457

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-09-2018, 11:45 AM:

quote: Tyler Purcell
There are A LOT of reasons why the studio's still use 2k as their base for VFX work. The main reason is that nobody knows the difference and it saves A LOT of rendering time.

If that's really the case then why should anyone bother buying a 4K UHDTV set, or UHD Blu-ray discs? Why even bother filming something on 65mm film versus shooting it in 1080p with a video camera? If no one can tell the difference what's the point of bothering with the large format film cameras and projectors? Hell, why even bother with the film projectors at all? Why even bother with these JPEG2000 based DCPs for theatrical use? Give them a Blu-ray or an even lower bit rate Netflix style stream. If no one can tell the difference between 2K and 4K then why bother with any of that other shit?

Of course I can tell the difference between 2K and 4K and I've seen what real 70mm can deliver in terms of image quality. If the movie studios want me paying upwards of $20 per ticket to watch something that's fundamentally not really any better than what I can watch on my ordinary 65" 1080p HDTV set then it's a pretty tough sale to make. They need to be trying harder by doing a better job of it rather than pretending that we're still living in the late 1990's in terms of computational capability.

quote: Tyler Purcell
It's been proven time and time again, resolution of the medium on screen means very little, just look at the Super 16mm movies released in the last few years, they are at maximum a 2.5k medium and the movies still look crisp. The Phantom Thread on 70mm looked outstanding and that wasn't even a digital blow up.

Phantom Thread, as far as I know, what not post produced via digital intermediate. Its 70mm prints were blow-ups from 35mm film elements. And, yes, if the film emulsion is good enough Super 16mm can certainly yield a good quality HD resolution image. Film is not hard-bound to a Bayer pattern pixel grid.

quote: Tyler Purcell
Ohh and Murder On the Orient was nearly 100% 5/65... I think they used the digital camera for a night shot or something very minor.

Even if they shot nearly 100% of the movie on 5/65mm the footage was scanned and post produced in 4K before being output on a few 70mm prints.

By the way, thanks to the surcharge fad from IMAX, any show in 70mm usually carries a serious up-charge. That makes the act of outputting a 4K DI to 70mm just to market that "70MM" thing seem a bit like a rip-off.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 03-11-2018, 01:55 PM:

10 theaters in the US have 70mm showtimes listed:

California
Hollywood: ArcLight Hollywood
San Diego: ArcLight La Jolla
San Francisco: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - New Mission
Sherman Oaks: ArcLight Sherman Oaks

Massachusetts
Somerville: Somerville Theatre

Minnesota
Plymouth: Emagine Willow Creek

New York
Brooklyn: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Downtown Brooklyn
New York: City Cinemas Cinemas 1 2 and 3
New York: City Cinemas Village East Cinema

Texas
Austin: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - The Ritz

https://www.bigscreen.com/advsearch/70mm.php?movie=215356

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 03-14-2018, 03:22 PM:

Your missing Grand Lake in Oakland CA. I think Brad Miller said the Look and Studio Grill in Texas are showing it as well.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 03-14-2018, 03:51 PM:

At least it's not ALL a crappy dijital blow up.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 03-14-2018, 07:53 PM:

quote: Stephan Shelley
Your missing Grand Lake in Oakland CA. I think Brad Miller said the Look and Studio Grill in Texas are showing it as well.

I should have added the usual disclaimer that the theaters actually have to provide their showtime information (w/ 70mm indicators) in order to show up in our search.

None of the theaters you (and Brad) mentioned have submitted their showtimes for 3/29 yet, so that's why they don't appear. Once they do, they'll be in the list!

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 03-14-2018, 09:19 PM:

Gateway Film Center in Columbus, OH shows a 70mm engagement of READY PLAYER 1 on their website.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-15-2018, 11:40 AM:

I can confirm the Somerville booking.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 03-15-2018, 08:14 PM:

Glad to see this growing interest in 5/70mm presentations.

On the previous engagements, how was the crowd reaction to those releases against a digital presentation of the same feature?

But, a genuine 5/70mm presentation would be using changeover with carbon arc lamphouses, like the Ashcraft SuperCorelite, Peerless Hycadecent, and the Futura II of Strong.

..and DP70's, or AA-2 for us stateside uers. We could throw in the Century JJ and the Bauer U2.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 03-15-2018, 09:10 PM:

Norelco AAs at the Grand Lake.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-16-2018, 12:26 PM:

Somerville, too:

As for the audience reaction, I think that it would be difficult to measure. Naturally, the people who care will go out of their way to find and attend the 70mm shows. Most people probably won't notice. Since we are talking about permanent 70mm installations here, they are presumably run by people who care about presentation and showmanship (otherwise, they wouldn't have installed 70mm), so the 70mm venues probably all have pretty decent sound systems and large screens, too.

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 03-16-2018, 03:32 PM:

Monte: Why the fascination with carbon arcs? My hands were filthy after handling those rotating positives.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 03-16-2018, 05:21 PM:

Scott, just curious: why the clockwise rotation orientation of the 70mm supply reel?

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 03-16-2018, 07:27 PM:

Anyone know what model 70mm projectors the Alamo New Mission are running? Just idly curious and some 5 minutes googling didn't immediately turn up anything.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 03-16-2018, 08:24 PM:

The New Mission has a pair of Century JJs. Including the mag penthouse.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-16-2018, 09:49 PM:

quote: Bill Brandenstein
Scott, just curious: why the clockwise rotation orientation of the 70mm supply reel?

It is the head operator's preference. That theatre runs everything emulsion-in.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-17-2018, 02:36 AM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
But, a genuine 5/70mm presentation would be using changeover with carbon arc lamphouses, like the Ashcraft SuperCorelite, Peerless Hycadecent, and the Futura II of Strong.

..and DP70's, or AA-2 for us stateside uers. We could throw in the Century JJ and the Bauer U2.

Monte, these 70mm prints are timed for xenon light. Running on a carbon arc lamphouse would be the INCORRECT way to present it.

Also the notion that a presentation isn't proper if it isn't done via changeovers is absurd. A PROPER presentation would be to show every frame of the movie. A PROPER presentation would be to not have any sort of color temperature shift at the reel changes. I could sit here and debate this with you, but its been done countless times before. There is nothing about a changeover presentation that a platter presentation cannot do better.

Time to wake up from that brain coma. Please stop spreading such nonsense.

Posted by Mike Blasko (Member # 3968) on 04-02-2018, 08:14 PM:

So, I need to ask the awkward question. Was anyone else really disappointed in this 70mm?

Saw at the Gateway in Columbus OH. Presentation was great, but I would have preferred digital. Very low resolution print IMHO.

Posted by Julian Antos (Member # 5497) on 04-03-2018, 01:20 PM:

I don't have any issues with the resolution, though I suppose it's hard to say since it's mostly a cartoon. The color and contrast is great, and the live action stuff looks sharp to my eye.