Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Interesting ( ;-) )site about Large format film

This is topic Interesting ( ;-) )site about Large format film in forum Large Format Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 04-05-2004, 06:58 AM:

Someone directed me to this site as being an authorative guide to large format aspect ratios [Eek!]

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Makeup/4303/largeformats.html

I particularly like the 6 optical tracks on the 70mm release prints [Roll Eyes]

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 04-05-2004, 07:27 AM:

This site is as bad as that Carr and Hayes book.

Posted by Robert Harris (Member # 1712) on 04-05-2004, 08:41 AM:

This is a superb site, and should be required of anyone truly interested in the technical history of film.

I'd always wondered what all that brown stuff on the edges of 70mm film covered up and now I know.

Scrape it away and...

Its the seven channels of optical stereo variable area...

as mentioned in the C-H tome.

Some people should not be permited to use Photoshop.

RAH

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 04-05-2004, 11:06 AM:

Dick wrote:

quote:
I particularly like the 6 optical tracks on the 70mm release prints

And the 65mm positive 'negative'

Robert, it's an anti-piracy device, by putting all that brown gunk down the edges of the print they stop you from playing the multi channel optical track and running off pirate CDs of it. Of course, the brown gunk down the edges also goes nicely with the brown splodges that they put all over the piicture. [Frown]

[ 04-05-2004, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]

Posted by Ron Lacheur (Member # 1126) on 04-05-2004, 01:57 PM:

Quote from the website:

quote:
Imax theaters have also taken vertical 70mm prints of movies like Titanic and The Perfect Storm and shown them on the Imax screen. When blown up onto a large screen these movies lack the sharpness of movies that were shot on horizontal 70mm like Everest and Special Effects: Anything Can Happen.

The Perfect Storm wasn't a 70mm release.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 04-05-2004, 07:45 PM:

Well, if its printed on the Internet, it MUST be true. Right?

I would think you could do better than that with just a cursory look around the Internet. Between Marty's Widescreen Museum and Thomas' In70mm page, you could pretty much clear up everything in this document.

I love the optical tracks. My favorite sentence is "If an anamorphic lens is used the sky is the limit."

Oh, there are cool pictures of his pool party here:

Brian's Pool Party

Profound comments on 1970's Drive-In Movies are here:

I Don't Like Drive-In Films

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-05-2004, 08:13 PM:

Alright. Which one of y'all is gonna point him to this site and specifically this thread?[av=n]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-05-2004, 10:28 PM:

What a bonanza for Dolby!
Dolby will love this new 70mm system as you will need at least 6 RED LED's per machine. Once the market is saturated with regular 35mm RED LED scanners this system will immediatey bring Dolby's RED LED sales back to what they were a few years ago. Hey nothings better than discrete Dolby SR! I'm looking foreword to seeing the CP-300 as well....

Actually someone should e-mail this fella and let him know that things are amuck!

Mark

Posted by Joshua Lott (Member # 240) on 04-05-2004, 11:33 PM:

I have sent him an email and pointed him to this thread.

[Big Grin]

Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 04-05-2004, 11:59 PM:

The page about large formats was absolutely hilarious. Was this guy a high school student doing a project? I noticed a lot of grammatical and spelling errors in the pages too.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 04-06-2004, 04:28 AM:

About DtS he says:

quote:
The Data is on a CD (or 2 or 3 CDs depending on the film's length)

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 04-06-2004, 04:38 AM:

The projected light beams for the 3 strip Cinerama set up also exhibit interesting optical properties [Confused]

Posted by Gilbert Travin (Member # 2138) on 04-06-2004, 04:47 AM:

..... HI !!!! [Big Grin]

And what about 70 mm with 78 rpm disc synchronized ? [Big Grin]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-06-2004, 05:07 AM:

There were a number of experimental systems in the 1900s and teens which synched 35mm film to high speed coarsegroove discs (e.g. Messter Biophon, Gaumont Chronophone, Hepworth Vivaphone - which was 78rpm), but I don't know any wide film experiments which did that. That's not to say that there weren't any, though.

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 04-06-2004, 12:20 PM:

Come on folks, be a little bit charitable. This fellow is not claiming to be the authoritative source on film formats.

The author merely states:

quote:
I went on-line and tried to find out as much as I could about the various ways to shoot a movie or TV show and tried my best to summarize it.

Sure there are errors, but there's a lot of good information and diagrams too. If I were a high school teacher I'd give it a high grade.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 04-06-2004, 12:58 PM:

You also have to give him credit for getting the number of perfs right for each format displayed. And the fact he didn't try to put a soundtrack on the IMAX example.

And since this is an OLD page (2000), he may very well have learned the facts by now.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 04-06-2004, 06:56 PM:

Still, it would be interesting to see what form the optical reader would take for a frame like that. For that matter, were we to assume that mag for 70mm would necessarily be on a separate machine, with the optical (black on white) tracks as backups?

Yah... it's a good try for a high-schooler that was working in a chain house... but it does have some entertainment value [Cool]

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 04-06-2004, 07:58 PM:

I believe the Fox Grandeur process was optical track 70mm

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-06-2004, 08:28 PM:

70mm Fox Grandeur:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/70mm-feb1930.htm

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/grandeur-sep1930.htm

http://www.in70mm.com/newsletter/2001/64/grandeur/grandeur.htm

http://www.in70mm.com/lists/formats/grandeur.htm

http://www.media-visions.com/itv-fox.html

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/TANK/GaugesHorak.htm

Posted by Robert Harris (Member # 1712) on 04-07-2004, 09:16 AM:

I once saw one of these six track optical readers...

believe it was in the old Landmark in KC.

The reader itself was contained in a small room a floor below the projection area. Audio was held in a buffer and retarded about forty seconds to get proper sync.

There was this two-headed dog-like creature at the door, which seemed to mean that management didn't want many visitors to the facility.

Fortunately, the projectionist had a porterhouse at the ready.

RAH

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 04-07-2004, 09:37 AM:

No no, 4 channel Vitagraph! 33⅓ RPM, LP microgroove...twin parallel grooves, 11 minutes per side.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-07-2004, 12:39 PM:

Or wasn't it discreet quad stereo off of the analog platter via CD4 subcarrier decoding? With derived quad stereo backup via Colombia SQ or Sansui QS decoding...

Time for my medication. That, and

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 04-07-2004, 10:15 PM:

And let's not forget the ill-fated UltraVistaRama format. There seemed to be no reason for theater owners to reject this high-quality format, yet no exhibitors even came to the company's booth during the SMPTE convention of 1955. With three projectors running horizontal 8-perf 70mm film each utilizing anamorphic lenses with a 1.25 compression, the resulting 3.11 aspect ratio dwarfed 'toy' formats like Cinerama. Projectors (named "Moe" "Larry" and "Curly") provided the image. In initial runs, "Joe" provided the sound, but was deemed unsatisfactory. Seperate trackes were then placed with the image, providing 12 magnetic, 6 bilateral push-pull, and 6 varible-desity optical tracks to create a 'single inventory' print, er, prints to save money. The fact that exhibitors rejected this better technology that would benefit both the studios and the studios alike has not changed to this day.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-08-2004, 08:29 AM:

Of course, all of us "professionals" overlooked the obvious:

The soundtrack's on the wrong side!

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 04-08-2004, 01:25 PM:

Looked like the picture was backwards to me. Nothing wrong with the soundtrack other than it was negatized. [Cool]

Posted by Patrick J. McCart (Member # 1043) on 04-08-2004, 08:06 PM:

That site makes my blood boil.

On another message board, I had to explain to someone that full aperture 35mm is NOT 1.66:1... of course, I'm directed to THIS site.

Why can't more people look at www.widescreenmuseum.com instead of these jokes?

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 04-09-2004, 02:46 AM:

Uh, Daryl... these are what's known as jokes.

Posted by Brian Fitzgerald (Member # 2358) on 04-11-2004, 10:37 PM:

It seems that I'm the man of the hour here lately. I made that site when I was like 19 and I do know that several of those things are wrong. I even had some updated artwork of the 70mm film frame about a year ago, that was lost (along with a fanpage for the Scream films when my hard drive got ruined) I have been meaning to fix the stuff on that page for some time, but I haven't had the time between school and work.

Posted by Joshua Lott (Member # 240) on 04-11-2004, 11:05 PM:

Brian welcome to the site. Hope you enjoy!

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-13-2004, 12:29 AM:

Yes Brian! WELCOME to Film-Tech!

Please do not let all those low-life jerks that are such naysayers get to you. Please do not feel you have to explain ANYTHING to ANYONE here. For the most part, we are all friends here and share a common interest in Film Done Right.

This whole site is based on the free expression of intellectual knowledge and common sense from users... some of which have been in the biz for many years and as such, this site has a great knowledge base.

There are exceptions to this of course. Joe Redifer immediately comes to mind as an exception. He just likes to ban people for no reason. I have to pay him $600 a month so I can post here.

Ummm... other “wannabe” pros are Adam Martin, that Canuck… ummmm Daryl, and of course our Grand-Poo-BAH – Brad Miller.

So I guess you’re best bet is to listen to everything I say. Just ask around. Most all members will tell you that I’m one very knowledgeable, straight-up, honest guy that tells it like it is.

(Seriously… WELCOME!) [beer]

>>> Phil

Posted by Joshua Lott (Member # 240) on 04-13-2004, 12:35 AM:

Phil said he was "straight."

He he... [Big Grin]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-13-2004, 12:39 AM:

Josh! Owww! I said "straight-UP"!

(BTW: Call me again tonight...) [Wink]

>>> Phil

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 04-13-2004, 01:02 AM:

Phil could only be photographed with large format equipment....to help make it appear straight up he has to mount the IMAX - IWERKS - FRIES camera upside down and do a hand stand...special effects = straight up, with hands in the air [Wink]

....long day, time for bed [sleep]

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 04-13-2004, 01:08 AM:

Yes Richard.... I wore black socks and black gloves and the pic was titled: "The Five of Spades"... [Wink]

>>> Phil