Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Imax 15/70 Maximum Run-Time

This is topic Imax 15/70 Maximum Run-Time in forum Large Format Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 08-28-2009, 07:48 PM:

Is the current maximum running time for a 15/70 Imax film 160 minutes? (Due to maximum platter size)

There are rumors that James Cameron is concerned about this as AVATAR might run longer so a special cut-down edition may be necessary for Imax film locations.

Posted by Charles Phillips (Member # 2594) on 08-28-2009, 09:00 PM:

Using a 70.2" platter the most is 158 minutes.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-28-2009, 11:35 PM:

Why is Avatar even getting an IMAX release? The freaking movie is shot with dual HD video cameras, not 15/70 format film. I haven't seen the specs on the cameras Cameron has used to make his new movie, but it wouldn't surprise me if the native resolution isn't any better than the usual 1080p/2K stuff. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to blow up that kind of material to IMAX. An all "digital" movie just needs to be confined to those fake, oh I mean "digital" IMAX movie theaters.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 08-29-2009, 11:39 AM:

Ghosts of the Abyss was shot in 3d HD and I thought the 15/70 blowup looked pretty good. I'd rather see a blowup on a giant imax screen than a digital projected version on a small imax screen.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 08-29-2009, 12:51 PM:

Ghosts of the Abyss was underwater, which helped hide a lot of the video artifacts and resolution issues. 3D would also help hide these.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 09-01-2009, 05:11 PM:

Is that run time for Avatar including the credits? With Watchmen the DMR version has a truncated credits sequence to get under 160 minutes.

Posted by Julio Roberto (Member # 4976) on 09-01-2009, 05:34 PM:

Cameron said the editing for Avatar was complete, so someone knows the answer to this.

BTW the 3D in Ghost of the Abyss was ... abysmal, with just about every error in the book of stereoscopy made, from diverging parallax greater than 2.5" to excessive parallax ... including VERTICAL.

Cameron did the same thing that Coppola did in Captain EO: pretend he knew what he was doing while actually having very little idea. The two HD cameras that he used, in a shooting-forward configuration like he had, could never get close enough to remotely simulate natural interocular. Everything was hyperstereo.

What happens is that there is a number of people "3D happy" that can fuse just about any stereo pair you throw at them. These people think just about any 3D is great: the more, the better.

Cameron is probably one of those.

What happens to these people is that they don't realise 90% of the population don't see what they are seeing. They are seeing a double image when the parallax is too great, specially if other defects occur, such as ghosting or vertical parallax.

Anyway. I'm sure some stereographer supervising Avatar will make sure Cameron doesn't go beyong spec with this as he did with Ghost's.

I hope, or we'll be seeing a lot of customers complaining.

With Ghost of the Abyss, a lot of people I saw at the Imax preferred to take their glasses off and just watch the double image ...

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 01-22-2010, 02:14 PM:

The "Avatar" credits were the full-length credits on the 15/70 IMAX prints. I saw it at the UA King of Prussia in PA. The left eye print had two brief slugs where damage had occurred. Otherwise the presentation was perfect. My uncle - who had previously seen it in digital IMAX - said the film presentation was much better.