Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Pro-Film Poster

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 05-14-2002, 04:53 PM:

Bobby Henderson sent this one in. Those of you with a high quality printer can make nice signs for the box office with this.
Click here to download

Posted by Adam Wilbert (Member # 1184) on 05-14-2002, 07:18 PM:

Bobby, That looks awesome. Thanks!

For the absolute best results, I'd probably take it to a local print shop or service bureau. For only a couple of bucks, they could print it out better than any home ink-jet, and printing from .pdf files usually doesn't have any associated "pre-flight" charges. Plus, the image looks to be a standard C sheet size (17" x 22") but I may be wrong. Thanks again!

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 05-14-2002, 07:29 PM:

That's nice, but is there a version for theaters that DON'T do film right?

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 05-14-2002, 08:23 PM:

I think this is a great way to fight back the digital dogs of video. Maybe if more theaters began pointing out the advantages of film, to the public, the masses would rally to film's defense. Good idea Bobby

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 05-14-2002, 08:48 PM:

Just to let you guys know, digital cinema (DLP) is NOT video. Technicolor could explain it a lot better than I could, but there is a difference. So if by saying "digital video projection" you are referring to DLP, that is incorrect.

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This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 05-14-2002, 08:51 PM:

But you said the movies for DLP come on DVDs.
What does the V in DVD stand for if DLP is not video?

I do not understand how it cold not be video.
Its not an overhead projector showing a flip book or a super colorized shadow puppet machine is it?

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 05-14-2002, 09:08 PM:

all it is is a bunch of JPG files being shown one after another at 24 per second right....

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-14-2002, 09:10 PM:

The DLP shows come on DVD-ROM disks that carry data. You can't play them in a normal DVD player, just as you can't play DTS disks in a CD player.

I'm not sure I get the comment about DLP not being video projection. If they mean to say that it is not NTSC television, then that makes sense, but that doesn't mean that it isn't video projection. (And if it isn't video and isn't film, then what is it?)

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 05-14-2002, 09:13 PM:

DVD - Digital Versatile Disc

Josh, I don't know if they are exactly JPEGs, but you have the right idea. Video uses scaning technology. The pixels are illuminated one at a time starting from the left of the first line, going across the line, and then on to the next line. DLP images are not scanned. The entire image appears at one time. Technically speaking, that is what makes it different from video. The Techicolor guy mistakenly referred to it as video, then slapped himself, said it's not video, and explained to me why.

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This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-14-2002, 09:14 PM:

DVD = Digital Versatile Disc

Since Ken and I (and now Aaron!) posted at the same time, I'll just add that DLP would be multimedia projection, just like an LCD projector for a computer. I guess if you look at it like "scanning", then anything other than a CRT would not be video?

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 05-14-2002, 09:15 PM:

>>What does the V in DVD stand for if DLP is not video?<<

'Versatile' as in video or ROM.

and yes DLP is video, just in a new 'digital' format.

-Aaron

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-14-2002, 09:26 PM:

Actually, the issue of "painting" the image on the screen (scanning), vs. projecting an entire frame at one time, is an important distinction. The Technicolor guys are saying that "video" implies CRT-based or at least a raster-scanning type technology.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-14-2002, 09:32 PM:

I'm not an English major, but shouldn't the first sentence more correctly read "This movie theater uses only high-resolution film in its presentations."

I'm kicking around the idea of getting this printed out at Kinko's.

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 05-14-2002, 10:20 PM:

"Video" to me means "electronic moving images".

I say Technicolor is blowing smoke by claiming it's not video. DLP presentation systems fit the definition of the term exactly. They just don't want to be associated with that word.

They'd rather people associate them with the word "digital", which in many people's minds is like "abracadabra". They know this, and are trying to exploit it. It's just marketing BS.

EDIT: By the way, if you look around TI's official DLP website, you'll see the term "video" used quite a bit.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-15-2002, 12:36 AM:

It's video. I think they just don't want you confusing it with interlaced television. But it absolutely positively is video. What else could it be? A hologram? It doesn't matter if it is sequenced JPEGs or TIFFs or whatever. It doesn't matter if it's shown one line at a time or the entire frame at once. It's video. Don't believe everything the digital guys tell you, although they probably believe it themselves.

Remember, Digital = The best anything can possibly ever be.

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 05-15-2002, 12:41 AM:

A couple things about this poster art:

Does anyone else see the film frames with all the 'SFX' vertical lines throuout the image and immediately say 'this strip of film is horribly scratched'?

Also (though I think the effects are causing it to appear that way) are there 'KS' perfs on the left side of the film and 'BH-ish' perfs on the right?

Just some things to ponder.

Vive Le FILM!

-Aaron

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 05-15-2002, 11:46 AM:

Aaron asked: "Does anyone else see the film frames with all the 'SFX' vertical lines throuout the image and immediately say 'this strip of film is horribly scratched'?

Also (though I think the effects are causing it to appear that way) are there 'KS' perfs on the left side of the film and 'BH-ish' perfs on the right?"

Interesting artifacts, ironically in a DIGITAL medium (.pdf file).

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-15-2002, 01:30 PM:

FYI, according to the DVD industry, DVD does not stand for anything. It started out being Digital Video Disc. Then it was changed to Digital Versatile Disk to point out its versatility (duh). Then, they figured that would be too confusing (?) so they decided it's just DVD, with the letters not standing for anything.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-15-2002, 07:00 PM:

The vertical lines in the background were just put there to add a little more graphic interest to the image. It kind of looked plain with a solid background. I played around with putting images into the frames and such, but it distracted from the type. Having the bright light and lens flare shine through the strip seemed to be a simple enough thing to do. I still have the original multi-layered Photoshop file intact (18MB LZW compressed) to alter if everyone wants those lines the background deleted.

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 06-02-2002, 11:21 AM:

In addition to any pro-film posters, signs, slides, trailers, etc. it is also important to tell customers that your theater uses Film. Instead of having your box office personnel, ushers, or concessionists say "Enjoy the Show" or "Enjoy the Movie" have them get into the habit of saying "Enjoy the Film!" Make it an in-house policy. I'm sure most management wouldn't care either way, as long as the customer was thanked and is happy. It seems small and insignificant, but it will help to etch Film into people's minds.

=TMP=

P.S. Personally, I believe the word Film should be capitalized. It's only fair since DLP has 3 capital letters...

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 06-05-2002, 06:49 PM:

Hello, Bobby,

The poster is wonderful. Remember that the Camel is a racehorse designed by a committee. Anyone can find fault but only the artistic "create". So your idea is great and everyone else can make one of their own on their computer. Let's post them on a separate place and then we can all throw darts at them.

It is ironic that the Court Theatre is finishing "Monsters Inc." and opens Friday with "Ice Age". I will post your sign in the box office and see if anyone comments about the oxymoron!

Great job.

KEN

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 06-06-2002, 04:46 AM:

"The pixels are illuminated one at a time starting from the left of the first line, going across the line, and then on to the next line. DLP images are not scanned. The entire image appears at one time."

Yes, it does, but what happens if you take a projector with the TI chip, not the DLP cinema ones, but the lower cost, lower resolution ones, and play a VHS tape through it, as I have done at a festival? Due to it using the TI DMD system, the entire image appears at one time, as you put it. Does this mean that the picture from the VHS tape is no longer video, but has become something else?

The answer to that depends on how you define 'video', and you will find almost as many definitions as there are people debating the subject.

Take a standard, PAL or NTSC video signal, feed it to a standard monitor, a flat screen LCD, a crt projector, an LCD projector, a plasma screen, one of the large outdoor displays made up of thousands of coloured lamps of some sort, an Eidophor, or any other display device you can think of. Each will look different, not surprising, given that totally different technologies are used to produce the images. Does this mean that some of the pictures, produced from the same signal, are video, while others are not?

Is an image shot on film, transferred to some electronic form, and then transferred back to film still film? If not, what is it? Same question for an image originated by a digital, or analogue, electronic camera, and fransferred to film for exhibition, or a computer generated image.

I Don't think it is now as simple as 'film' Vs 'video'.

What does it mean if a theatre displays a poster stating that they project film? It means that they are doing exactly what almost all theatres are doing today, the good ones, and the bad ones, there is nothing special about that.

Can they say that the film has a higher resolution? What if the film image has been rendered at low resolution from a digital source? You could transfer it to 15/70 if you wanted to, but the resolution wouldn't be any higher. What if the film had never existed in digital form, but had just been badly printed?

What happens when someone reads the poster on their way into a theatre, and then sees a very poor print, badly printed, or damaged by a previous venue? Do they then associate film in their mind with poor quality?

I am not even sure that most people would know the difference between film and video. A few years ago a screening of a film at a local art house had to be cancelled, due to the non-arrival of the print. This was a film which had been on release for some months, and was already available on video. One person pointed out that it was available at a video store a few minutes walk away, and they could go and rent a copy there. They didn't seem to realise that the theatre didn't project VHS. (Nor, it would seem, that the few pounds charged by video stores is for home viewing only, not for public exhibition.)

There is a serious lack of knowledge among large sections of the public about these matters, but I am not sure that this poster, at least on its own, would help; it might just be misleading, and cause more confusion.

I do think the the public need to be better educated as to the difference between good and bad presentation, at the moment they just don't seem to care.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-06-2002, 06:20 PM:

The public seems to wrongly swallow the notion that "digital equals perfect" when more often than not a digitally presented audio or video source has been lossy compressed and quality reduced to the point of just being barely good enough to get by and satisfy someone's bottom line. Few things in digital form are pioneering any new higher standards in quality.

The difference between film and video is easy. With film, you have a filmstrip that went through a camera when the movie was made.

Video is deservedly tagged onto anything not originally filmed. I would call "Star Wars: AOTC" a video, or in the case of its 35mm release prints "a video blow-up". Same kind of terms as "70mm blow up" for describing all those 35mm-filmed movies that used 70mm primarily for the mag audio.

CGI is one area that blurs things. But laser film recorders have capabilities of rendering 16,000 lines of data or even more onto film frames. That's why some CGI stuff in IMAX actually looks good and sharp. The just-good-enough-to-get-by 2,000 line renderings on most CGI laden movies is something that should be remedied.

Posted by Josh Jones (Member # 447) on 06-07-2002, 01:17 AM:

I was watching some trailers last night and saw the one for ID4. You can clearly see the pixels in the mothership above the whitehouse! Never noticed that before.

Josh

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"Film is made of silver, video is made of rust"
'nuf said

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 06-07-2002, 07:30 AM:

The digital effects in "Titanic" were pretty "seamless" in the 35mm prints. But when I watched the film in 70mm, the sharpness and fine grain of the film images made digital artifacts obvious. I especially remember the "digipeople" on the deck during the "flyover" scenes. Still, I always prefer a good 70mm presentation when offered. (I saw 70mm prints of "Titanic" at the North Park in Dallas, and the Chinese in Hollywood).

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-07-2002, 03:50 PM:

I wonder what CGI res was used on "Titanic". The 70mm DTS print I saw at Northpark #1 in Dallas looked good, but the main problem I noticed with the "digi-people" on the ship deck was stiff motion display. I wasn't looking for pixels at the time. I remember it being a production issue for "In the Line of Fire" when its 70mm prints were being made. There was concern whether its CGI would hold up on 70mm. I never did get to see a 70mm print of that to tell.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 06-08-2002, 02:49 AM:

John-

Which had the overall best presentation... Northpark or the Chinese? I hear that Northpark is the only theater that didn't scratch their print of 70mm Titanic.