Yah, it's pretty much a picnic for most people, but then again, it depends on what you are showing. When we showed WEST SIDE STORY there were quite a few inquiries in the week before the show if were were running it in stereo -- not a huge percentage, mind you -- but still.....
Our audience last night seemed more excited that we added corn on the cob and cold gaspatcho to the menu at the concessions than they were that we were running video instead of film. It was ENTER THE DRAGON, so they pretty much were there for laughs anyway.
We didn't break any records -- something like 3500, and all of us hoping they would heed our preshow admonition to drop the cobs in the trash. It worked out pretty well -- seems like both the menu and the video will be permanent.
Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-20-2008, 06:43 PM:
Yes, Mike,
I can see the showing of Whale Rider" at the beach in Waikiki was letterboxed but I was told that many movies there are not because an effort is always made to get a full screen video version to fill the entire 1;33.1 ratio screen they have. I have seen the screen at the site many times and I would think the letterboxed picture would be too small for the large audience that turn out for the showings.
-Claude
Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-21-2008, 12:52 AM:
What happened to running film, Frank? Did you show it on BluRay (or better)?
--jhawk
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-21-2008, 03:32 AM:
We still run film; the Barcos were purchased because this venue does a lot of esoteric stuff from independent filmmakers (videomakers, to be more precise) and we needed to have the flexibility. We will still run film for everything that we can get on film. They had to do ENTER THE DRAGON with this particular event because it was a commissioned score and live accompaniment. I wasn't directly involved with this event because it was more about the commissioned work.
I am assuming that it had to be on video because they had to make a version that was dialog and effects elements only, sans the original music track. The musicians played their score live with the film and the video only had the dialog and effects only.
All I can say is, it was a terribly botched job. Whoever "authored" the DVD did so without knowing what they were doing. We got a DVD that was both letterboxed and pillared, i.e., there was black on the side of the image as well as top and bottom with a small image sitting in the center of the raster, black all around it. The image had to be enlarged so it would fill the 55ft wide screen top to bottom. Even with loosing all that light from the black areas without image, the Barcos produced a passable amount of light -- probably in the 10-12ftL range -- I've seen DIs with a darker image.
My guess is that with a proper video source such as blue-ray, video might it will look quite good.
This halfbaked DVD image that was handed to us had so much video garbage -- shimmer on all horizontal lines, pixals clearly visible, and add to that, it seemed to be time-compressed -- any horizontal movement created this stuttering effect, making it look like frames were being dropped; if I suffered from epilepsy, I would be on the floor in convulsions -- I can't watch that artifact....it makes me crazy.
One of the technicians asked me how I thought it looked -- I answered, if it were 35mm film, I would be frantically trying to focus the projector....and that's from our 110ft distance from the screen. I feel sorry for the audience who sat closer than our control tower, but at least the first rows don't start for about 30 ft. from the screen; and there is an equal number of people sitting behind our booth, so they are quite a distance. It would look really good if they were sitting in Staten Island.
In short, it was very hard to assess the quality of the Barcos without a decent hi-rez source. I will try to get a blu-ray DVD and player over there next week so after our screening of POWAQQZTSI (35mm), I'll be able to feed a high quality video source to the stacked Barco R6+'s and see what they can really can do.
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-21-2008, 06:11 AM:
DVD?!?! They did a screening for 3500 on DVD?!?! I bet that it was a DVD-R, too. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
That's scary. I hope that they at least had two copies of the disk and two players in case something went wrong with one of them.
Personally, I wouldn't trust Blu-Ray any more than I (don't) trust DVD for public exhibition.
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-21-2008, 10:16 AM:
I am with you Scott -- scared the hell out of me. I've already experienced a public screening (and humilation), albeit with only some 150 kids and parents, not 3500, and a freezing, stuttering DVD; I swore I wouldn't ever be in that position again. At least in the park we did have two players and two copies running simultaniously thru a switcher -- I could call up either one at any time. And I made sure to play both copies from start to finish before prior to the show, just to make sure there was no hint of any defects. But as far as the image quality, each copy was as bad as the other.
When you are running film, any number of things can go wrong, but you can deal with them. With DVD, you are at the mercy of the pits on the DVD and the laser. Anything goes wrong with a DVD playback -- image starts to pixilate, or freezes altogether, and you're just an idiot sitting there with a stupid remote control in your hand, pressing the damn PLAY button until you stop the blood circulation in your fingers. If won't pass the bad spot and if you are unlucky enough not to be running a backup, you are doomed. Oh yah, better get yourself a PRO DVD player and not some consumer crap with unbalanced audio outs, unless of course you and five teckies want to spend 3 hours trying to eliminate ground loop hum.
Actually 3500 is a smallish crowd for us. We are usually up in the 5-6000 range.
Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 08-04-2009, 02:39 PM:
It has been 379 days since the last post.
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