35 and 70 mm licorice pizza

[Jim Cassedy]

A poor, (well, actually, terrible ) choice of words on my part.
I simply meant that the 70mm was non-anamorphic.
I ran it with 2.20 plates & masking. "Mea culpa" <hanging head in shame>

[Bobby Henderson]

No problem. But I was worried we would have another strange experiment such as the shot-on-5/65mm yet cropped flat on 70mm thing that was The Master.

[Shawn M. Martin]

The AFI Silver has a 70mm advance screening on 12/10 that's sold out. The general release is Christmas.

[Leo Enticknap]

Those doubled-up 70mm reels (polyester and no mag stripes makes the stock thin enough to fit two reels onto one reel designed to take 3,000 feet of striped acetate) are brutal - a 40-50lb straight up lift to 6-7 feet to thread each one. I once played such a print of Lawrence of Arabia on something like six or seven of them for a three-night run. That was my cardio workout for the next month!

[David Kornfeld]

My understanding -- always subject to alteration with additional facts -- is that the movie is a pure photo-chemical throughput: no DI for the 70mm blow-ups, and the 35mm prints struck from the OCN.

Remember that a 70mm print would be 3rd generation this way: OCN to IP to IN to print, and, if not carefully done, this could cause "softness," but lets not forget that there are other technical things that can cause that as well, from dirty lenses to unclean or non-optical port glass to unaligned & out of focus bulbs to some jitter in a misadjusted gate to buckling from incorrectly positioned guide rails. Dont always blame the print: when it comes to projecting this format, theres a lot of incompetence out there, believe me. Ive personally seen the devastation. And when it comes to just the projectors, if everything is not exactly where it should be, it will create presentation problems, thats just how it is with 70mm. It's a very unforgiving format, as Ive stated many, many times.

I should also note that Mr Anderson's previous film, The Phantom Thread, was not well photographed -- and I'm being diplomatic. So if this movie has been shot along the same lines -- diplomatic, again -- that might have something to do with how it looks.

The upshot here is that there are a lot of niggling, individual factors that go into & contribute to what finally hits the screen. And if any of them go wrong -- from the lab to the operator to the equipment -- youre going to see it. Clearly. Thats what makes this format what it is.

[Jim Cassedy]

Leo Enticknap said: (edited quote)

Those doubled-up 70mm reels . . . . . are brutal - a 40-50lb straight up lift to 6-7 feet to thread each one.

Tell me about it! lol ~ I did some measuring the other day. One of the almost-full "LicoricePizza " reels weighed
in at 42lbs. The top feed spindle on my projector(s) is almost 7ft up . (Just for the record, I'm appx 5'5 & 138lbs)

"I gotta get it UP THERE!"
JIm_70mmHeight.jpeg

There was a small "apple-box" type platform in the booth, but
it was nowhere near high enough for me. I saw someone on
the staff using this step ladder with safety-bar to hang some
Xmas decorations. I borrowed it and found it was PERFECT
for me. So, I convinced management to let me keep this one
in the booth, & they bought another one for staff use.
BoothLadder.jpeg

Problem solved!- [ & potential back injury averted! ]

[Brad Miller]

Well guys if you want to play with the BIG film, be prepared to put some muscle into it!

[Sam Chavez]

Northpoint SF ran 70mm films reel to reel (no platter) regularly and I always marveled that the chief operator, a tiny guy named Phil Tudor could mange to do this, day in, day out. Something about swinging the reel upward in an arc.

[Brad Miller]

I can completely see that Sam. When I tore my rotator cuff I could still load full reels like that using a 3 step ladder like Jim posted above. The trick was to keep my elbows bent and keep the reel close to my chest. Granted it was a careful process that I did slowly and it wasn't easy, but sometimes have to remember the important things in life.

[Peter Mork]

I watched it tonight at Somerville Theater, very well projected in 35mm anamorphic and as bright on their big screen as you could want it.

You know, I like Daniel Day Lewis but just as well he has retired (until he decides to change his mind) because it's allowed PT Anderson to put the fun back into his movies (okay, Inherent Vice was fun too but that was a detour, and I really thought Phantom Thread was possibly the ruination of a onetime great. Glad to see I was wrong.) Licorice Pizza is the movie Sonny and Cher should have made at the height of their career; of course that would never have happened for a million reasons, but suppose it had? It would have changed everything, not the least the world's expectations for what qualifies as "movie star looks".

(The above is my who-asked-you-anyway reaction, since I didn't just want to talk about technical stuff, but I'll add that 35mm remains the king of projectable media, sorry 70mm fans, your obsession is nice in its way but I go to the movies to watch an engaging and well-told story, and by the way, the Somerville got about 50 people to come out on a Tuesday evening during Covid times, which ain't bad; wonder how the Coolidge is doing with their blowup.)

[David Ferguson]

Audio on 70mm is another problem. Various DTS processors have only so much life left in them. Many are only a key component failure away from turning into a door stop. Who ever own the DTS Theatrical patents really needs to work on an updated system to sync 35mm and 70mm prints with DTS time code up to something like an audio-only DCP. That way a new release with audio formats like Dolby Atmos can utilize 70mm or 35mm film prints if the occasion calls for it. Really the time code on 70mm prints should be able to be paired with any audio format, not just the classic DTS theatrical format. There is still a decent number of existing 35mm and 70mm prints with DTS audio. There needs to be at least some versatility with being able to play back that audio in order to keep those film prints useful for many years into the future.

DTS timecode is actually very simple, and there are a few descriptions online - including my own - of how it works. It's not hard to convert it to another timecode like SMTPE or MIDI and play back audio to that - in fact before I got my DTS XD10, I was using a MIDI timecode audio player instead, which worked acceptably. I have wondered if it's possible to drive a DCP from timecode, as then you could marry 70mm and Dolby Atmos and have the best of both worlds. But I don't know too much about digital cinema, and don't have access to a digital projector to play with.

Also I would think the DTS patents would have expired by now, although I've not looked it up and checked. Dolby's for AC3 have.

[Bobby Henderson]

DTS timecode is actually very simple, and there are a few descriptions online - including my own - of how it works. It's not hard to convert it to another timecode like SMTPE or MIDI and play back audio to that - in fact before I got my DTS XD10, I was using a MIDI timecode audio player instead, which worked acceptably.

I don't want the DTS time code itself changed. What I want is a way for any digital cinema processor to be able to understand the time code from a new or existing 35mm or 70mm print and be able to pair it to audio-only files, perhaps ones altered to embed matching time code data. Don't most of these systems have USB inputs? It should be relatively simple to create new time code readers that only use USB rather than legacy RS-232 serial connections. Serial-to-USB converters for PCs have been around for a long time, but I don't know how those could work for industry-specific devices like D-cinema booth components. Old DTS time code readers have only so much life in them.

If movie studios are going to continue releasing some new movies with 35mm and/or 70mm film prints they'll eventually need new hardware to play the audio. That especially goes for the 70mm prints. The old DTS gear is going to last only so long. Hell, even the projectors themselves have a limited lifespan. Is anyone even making replacement parts for those things (much less entirely new projectors)?

Also I would think the DTS patents would have expired by now, although I've not looked it up and checked. Dolby's for AC3 have.

Uh, I think Dolby still maintains its patents on Dolby Digital. Perhaps they might have let the patents expire for the 35mm film-based system. But for other purposes such as AC3 encoding they're still in place. The dispute between Dolby and Adobe over DD encoding in Premiere and Audition was a fairly recent episode.

[David Ferguson]

I don't want the DTS time code itself changed. What I want is a way for any digital cinema processor to be able to understand the time code from a new or existing 35mm or 70mm print and be able to pair it to audio-only files

It's likely the easiest way of doing this is to convert the proprietary DTS timecode to a standard timecode like MIDI or SMPTE, which is supported by lots of existing software. I have a little microcontroller that sits between my DTS reader and my computer that does this. The computer can then read the timecode and play back the audio.

Dolby Atmos Renderer actually supports following SMPTE timecode - but that looks to be a studio/production software, not intended for just playback. Do any digital projectors/servers support following a timecode?

As a sidenote - the DTS reader connection is not RS-232. It uses a DB-9 connector, but the pinout and protocol is entirely different - the timecode is just on a single pin, with the other pins being used for the LED in the reader voltage, and the "timecode" LED on the reader. So don't connect it to a RS-232 adapter, that will probably break something!

[Bobby Henderson]

It's likely the easiest way of doing this is to convert the proprietary DTS timecode to a standard timecode like MIDI or SMPTE, which is supported by lots of existing software. I have a little microcontroller that sits between my DTS reader and my computer that does this. The computer can then read the timecode and play back the audio.

Using SMPTE or MIDI time code would only work for NEW film prints. What about all the existing 35mm and 70mm prints with DTS time code? You can't convert time code that has already been written onto film prints. It should be just as easy to update the firmware in a d-cinema processor to be able to understand DTS time code data when it is read off a film print. On release prints DTS time code is the most common kind of time code data out there. There is no good reason to replace it with another standard such as SMPTE or MIDI. The DTS stuff can pretty much be open-sourced at this point.

Regarding the DTS time code reader connection interface, I thought it was RS-232 because it looked like a standard Serial connector. Either way, it should be possible for engineers to create updated 35mm and 70mm time code readers that use a more current USB connection. Hell, they could make it run wirelessly if they wanted to get "fancy" about it.

[David Ferguson]

Using SMPTE or MIDI time code would only work for NEW film prints.

Bobby, I've created a new thread for this discussion to not clog up this thread so much.