Project Hail Mary's 70mm Rollout

[Chris Haller]

Folks,

Amazon MGM is making a big push for large format 70mm and IMAX film prints for Project Hail Mary, and I guess directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord are making a big deal out of their shifting aspect ratios. Anyone hear if they're planning to do shifting aspect ratios for the standard 70mm prints?

The standard DCP is going to be F200 and shift between 2.00:1 and 2.39:1 interchangeably. That's pretty straightforward for anyone who already has F200 presets. If they choose to do the same and print the 2.00:1 shifting ratio version onto your standard 70mm frame, I suspect things could get pretty strange as I'd wager pretty much no one is set up for that, right?

Could be interesting. Or annoying. Either way, Rochester's IMAX SR projector is being brought back online for this as a test for their summer Odyssey run. Very excited to not have to drive all the way to Toronto to see the next Nolan. I'll take what I can get. We still make the film, after all.

[Scotty Wright]

The director says the 5 perf prints will switch between 2.39 (earth) and 2.00 (space). The 1570 prints will switch between 2.39 and 1.43. The digital (non gt) imax presentations will be 2.39 and 1.90.

unclear if the remaining digital formats will have switching or remain a constant aspect ratio. But if standard has switching like you say, then I fully expect the other premium digital formats to have switching too.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Am I the only one who finds this switching of aspect ratios highly annoying? The screen is the window into the movie and as such it needs to be properly masked. I'm in the theater, looking through this window into this world of the movie. The aspect ratio should be chosen to match the cinematography at hand and should NOT change within the same feature. Constantly resizing the window through which I'm looking only makes me aware of that window and breaks the 4th wall. Also, changing aspect ratios prevents the cinema from properly framing and masking the movie, resulting in unused screen in plain sight, it's like looking at the unpainted back of the 4th wall...

[Jim Cassedy]

(edited) Am I the only one who finds this switching of aspect ratios
highly annoying?

NO!, you're not! I'm willing to acquiesce to the fact that many filmmakers these days
often decide to release their movie in some odd-ball aspect ratio. But for gosh-sakes,
once they've picked an aspect ratio, they should stick to it for the whole movie.

[Rich Haddard]

Methinks it's a gimmick to make up for deficiencies in other departments, e.g., storytelling...

[Ed Gordon]

Now that curtains in a movie theater are becoming rare, producers think of the movie screen like a TV screen.

John Rice on September 16, 2014 at 5:56 pm
The curtain definitely added to the movie theater experience in the old days. I loved the way it closed at the end of the shorts program (news, cartoon, trailers, etc.) and then opened again at the beginning of the main feature and closed again at the end, perfectly timed thanks to an added curtain cue at the bottom right side of screen. A nice bit of showmanship that helped in a small way to make going to the movies a special experience.

Proper curtain opening and closing seems to be mostly a lost art in the few theaters that still have curtains. Projectionists in the old days were trained never to let the audience see the white screen. You dimmed the lights, started the projector, opened the dowser and then opened the curtains on the first images to hit them. Some theatre owners and projectionists preferred opening after the studio logo faded out. Same thing when the movie ended, curtain closing timed to end with final fade out, again no white screen visible to your audience!

Nowadays common practice seems to be open curtains all the way and then start the show on the naked screen. Same thing when the movie ends, curtains close after the final fadeout (although now with the amazing amount of credits nobody is usually left in auditorium to even notice!) The only theater in the San Francisco Bay Area where I see it done the old way (and I think the right way) consistently is at David Packard’s great Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto.

Showmanship in theaters has been generally been dead for decades though and there is no reason to believe it will return. That totally annoying 20 minute pre-show commercial marathon masquerading as entertainment was the final nail in the coffin I think.

- cinematreasures.org

Current Use of Curtains in Movie Theaters

Overview

The use of curtains in movie theaters has significantly declined over the years. While many traditional theaters once featured curtains, modern multiplexes have largely moved away from this practice.

Percentage of Theaters with Curtains

Traditional Theaters: Many older theaters still maintain curtains, especially those built before the 1960s. However, specific percentages are not widely documented.
Multiplex Theaters: Most multiplexes do not use curtains. Instead, they often display advertisements or trivia on the screens before the movie starts.
Conclusion

While exact statistics on the percentage of theaters with curtains are not readily available, it is clear that their presence is becoming increasingly rare, particularly in newer cinema designs.

[Eric Richard]

Who is running these 70mm showings for the studio?

[Paul H. Rayton]

Part of the **whole point** of viewing films properly projected in cinemas is to have the image masked to the actual aspect ratio of the image on the screen. Before I retired, I did any number of various tests and check-viewings, and it was consistently noted that the perceived image was improved by having a proper black border around the entire image. It set the image essentially floating in darkness up there, surrounded by a non-distracting black border that just set it off from any visual distractions of the surrounding "venue". Less cross-reflections, less bounce-back, more defined edge of the image thus to allow the viewer's brain to separate the projected image from other "noise" in the background.

For these shows that frequently shift aspect ratios at random through the show, it's really impossible to be manually re-setting the mask all the time -- that would be really distracting. Masking systems are not designed to be switching positions every 10 minutes anyway (not to mention those venues that don't have movable masking at all.) It all seems to somehow satisfy the ego of certain directors who like to feel it mystically enhances (or arties-up) their precious show, but in reality it does seem to result more likely in an overall degradation of the perceived image, thanks to the compromised conditions that are the result. Good job, guys!

[Chris Haller]

I'm just amused at the prospect of a 5% undersized already DI film out of the movie in a 2.00:1 frame that shifts between full 2.00:1 and letterboxed 2.39:1. At least the previous IMAX oriented shifting ratio features always hit 5-perf in a consistent aspect ratio. Seems like a ton of hassle for a movie that will filter in and out of large format venues in a matter of weeks.

To me, this screams of a filmmaker who doesn't understand the reason to make 70mm prints to begin with, which coming from a filmmaker whose experience is largely digital and digital animation, makes sense. If all you know is that movies released in 70mm get the prestige element added to their rollout, you might overlook the real value of a 70mm print - increased light output, better stability, and sharper image when compared to a 35mm print. If I was prepping this rollout, I'd at least go for a constant 2.39:1 image to take up consistently as much space as possible on the visible area while conforming to what was shot.