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About 1.85:1


srsaat

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hello everyone,,

 

1. In AC manual ,8th edition there is one topic about comparision of 1.85:1 and 2.40:1 ratios. Here They gave a Tajmahal frame as a example.. hereFig.1 is for scope formate, then in fig2 they drew two rectangle portions of 1.85:1 formate. I cann't understant what is for bigger rectangle and for smaller rectangel.. Is there Two fromates of 1.85:1? Sorry for these question realy i cann't go threw.

 

2. In projection normal lenses is enough to show the 1.85:1 formate film? menas or we need to use biggermagnification lenses? bcz in indian made 1.85:1 films are shown in theatre very small not like holywood film made.. so i wonder any different lens using over there are normal 35mm spherical lens.

 

3. For eg. catch me if u can is the made by above formate while seeing in indian theatre i can able to see bigger images but the same we made 1.85 formate is not look like that it is looking too small in screen.. so i wonder is that any changes in filming lenses or projection lenses..

 

 

thank u somuch for u valuable time,,

 

srsaat.

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Figure 2 has two ways you can frame 1.85 compared to 2.40: (1) The larger rectangle is when you match the WIDTH of the 2.40 example in Figure 1, therefore also getting more picture vertically than 2.40 would get you; (2) The smaller rectangle is when you match the HEIGHT of the 2.40 frame in Figure 1, thereby getting less of a horizontal view compared to 2.40.

 

You HAVE to use a different projection lens for 1.85 movies compared to scope prints because scope prints use anamorphic projector lenses. The projectionist has to switch to a spherical lens to show 1.85 movies, plus add a 1.85 hard matte (mask) to the projector gate.

 

In most theaters, the spherical projection lens is of the right focal length so that the 1.85 masked image fills the same HEIGHT of screen as a 2.40 scope image but less of the sides (so usually black curtains are brought in slightly to cover the ends of the screen.) In some bad theaters, they have black panels that cover the screen top & bottom (or just one) to create a scope area and then they open up the panels to show a taller 1.85 image.

 

Ideally, scope projection should generally create a WIDER image on the screen than 1.85 projection, not a shorter image filling the same width screen (which unfortunately is how TV handles letterboxed scope images, since no one makes scope-shaped TV sets.) So for a 1.85 film like "Catch Me if You Can", the projectionist would typically use a spherical projection lens and a 1.85 mask in the gate and bring in the black side panels or curtains to slightly close off the full width of the scope-shaped theater screen to make it 1.85 shaped.

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Sometimes in theater design, you're just stuck by the existing architecture. At the grand we were limited to a tiny screen becauses the proscenium was only 50 ft x 30 ft, so we couldn't go more than about 46 - 47 ft. wide. Movable masking top and bottom is actually more expensive than side only masking. And the weight of the whole assembly had to be kept below the structural limits of the flyloft.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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Guest Frank Gossimier

David,

 

When you are shooting a "typical" feature what type of gate are you using?

 

Is there a way to tell what type of gate is in a camera by physically measuring it if you don't know which one it is?

 

On my 35mm camera I have one gate and I only shoot for TV use, so this has never been an issue before.

 

But I'd like to know about this incase I want to project some of my work in a theatre.

 

Thanks

Frank

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The camera aperture dimensions and the centerline (relative to the "reference edge" of the film) are the key parameters. For 35mm camera image area, standard SMPTE 59 specifies all the dimensions. The camera manufacturers also have the specifications and the viewfinder marking specs, which are covered by other standards.

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Many cameras expose Full Aperture even when they are not set-up for Super-35; they just assume the soundtrack area will be covered over by the optical track. So one way to determine with your camera is set-up for a sound format (Academy/1.85/TV) versus silent (Full Aperture / Super-35/TV as well) is to shoot a framing chart and see if the center cross-hairs end up in the exact center between the perfs (Super-35, etc.) or is offset slightly (sound formats.) Cameras set-up for Super-35 generally have the optical center shifted back to the true center between the two rows of perfs.

 

I haven't shot a Super-35 feature so my 35mm camera gates have always been optically off-centered for a sound format (1.85 or anamorphic) even if the camera exposes Full Aperture. For 1.85 films, I sometimes I put a small 1.37 Academy hard matte in Panaflexes just to make sure the telecine operator knows that it's not a Super-35 negative.

 

Some older cameras have 1.37 Academy gates, so if you shoot a white background and look at the print or negative, you will see that the soundtrack area was not exposed and the framelines are a little thicker, basically a smaller 1.37 rectanglar picture inside the 1.33 Full Aperture, offset.

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Guest Frank Gossimier

Great thanks.

 

The gate in my camera looks "square".

 

If I had a 1.85 gate would it look more like a rectangle?

 

Does that mean if I transfer footage shot with a 1.85 gate to video that there would automatically be space at the top and bottom of the TV frame?

 

Right now doing transfers there is no need for me to pan and scan the image, I'm getting it all in the TV frame.

 

Are you using slightly less film shooting with a 1.85 gate if the frame is more long than it is tall?

 

Sorry trying to get my head around this one :-)

 

Frank

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Rarely is a 1.85 hard matte used for shooting 1.85 movies; usually you would expose at least 1.37 Academy (but like I said, most cameras actually expose Full Aperture, they are just optically centered for Academy / 1.85 / anamorphic.) You'd compose for cropping to 1.85 (usually equally top & bottom of 1.37 Academy) by using framelines marked on your groundglass.

 

It's the projector that will use a 1.85 mask.

 

Now you can use a 1.85 hard matte in camera or a less-cropped 1.66 matte (Allen Daviau generally uses a 1.66 hard matte in-camera for his 1.85 movies except for "Van Helsing") or you can print a hard matte onto the release print. The reasons for not using a hard matte in-camera is generally for making the 4x3 TV version.

 

If you shot with a hard matte in-camera but didn't want a letterboxed image on 4x3 TV, you'd have to zoom into the picture in the telecine to lose the matted area, also therefore losing some of the sides.

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Guest Frank Gossimier

Ah ha! It's starting to be clear now! Thanks David.

 

Yes I have used other arri cameras that showed markings for "TV" and "Widescreen," I think one said. The rental guy said use the TV lines with the gate installed.

 

So would they have used a hard matte in camera for the Lord Of The Rings movies?

 

I have the DVD and you can choose either widescreen with the top and bottom in black, or "regular" TV. If they shot Rings in 1.85 then I assume they provide the widescreen so you can see the entire picture with no pan and scan.

 

But why shoot with a hard matte in camera for 1.85 under any circumstances then?

 

Why not expose the entire neg area and frame for 1.85 via the ground glass, and keep more of the top and bottom of the picture?

 

What happens when you transfer 35mm not shot with a 1.85 matte in camera to HD. Do you have to push in and use the center portion of the neg only to get the 16X9?

 

Frank

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When a film goes through the Digital Intermediate process, it is quite common to only scan the actual part of the negative that will be screened. So for a 1.85:1 widescreen film, that's what is scanned. Of course this removes the possibility of reframing for 4x3 TV afterwards - but there aren't any hard and fast rules yet.

 

The reason for doing this is simply to do with scanning speeds and data storage. With a full frame of 35mm taking up to 12 Mbytes (that's just at 2K, at 4K it's nearly 50Mbytes), a full feature runs into a couple of Terabytes. You can slice several hundred Gbytes off your storage requirement if you only scan the widesreen area. Of course that will give you the same effect as having a hard mask in the camera - black on the final print above and below the projected area.

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They shot "Lord of the Rings" in 4-perf Super-35 (Full Aperture). In theory, this means the negative is 1.33 : 1, just like 4x3 TV. But this doesn't mean that the non-letterboxed version is just showing you the whole negative area. A couple of reasons why:

 

(1) If you composed the movie to be cropped to 2.40 anamorphic, as they did, opening up vertically to 4x3 (1.33) would make all your close-ups into medium shots and all your medium shots into wide shots, so if there is not important information on both ends of the frame, they will often zoom in a little to make shots tighter for 4x3 TV;

 

(2) The main effort on set is in getting a good 2.40 composition, so there may occasionally be unwanted junk near the top & bottom of the frame -- the mic boom dipping down, dolly racks, sunshade too low, lens vignettes, etc., again requiring that you zoom in during the telecine transfer to crop out the junk in the 4x3 full-frame TV version;

 

(3) while the photography may expose a 4x3 area, the effects work may only be done to a widescreen shape to save time and money, so they may only create a 16x9 (1.78) or wider image when creating the effects in post, so these shots are letterboxed on the final output negative compared to the non-efx shots -- so again, you zoom in more for the matted efx shots making them more panned and scanned than the non-efx shots on 4x3 full-frame TV.

 

So while the 4x3 full-frame TV version of a 4-perf Super-35 movie generally shows you more vertical picture information than the version letterboxed to the correct theatrical ratio, it doesn't mean you are simply seeing the full 1.33 Super-35 negative area.

 

The reasons why you don't hard matte the negative generally: (1) studios won't let you because they think it will make the 4x3 TV version harder to make since it will be more panned & scanned; (2) efx people don't like it in case they want to vertically reframe the image in post; (3) any hairs caught in the camera gate are less likely to get into the widescreen theatrical area if the negative is not matted.

 

The reasons why you may want to hard matte the negative: (1) you only want one composed widescreen image on the negative for all posterity, not a bigger picture than the one you composed for, confusing future generations as to how you intended to crop the image; (2) for 1.66/1.85 movies, you want a hard matte in all prints made off of the negative so that projectionist cannot misframe the image vertically; (3) you don't think panning & scanning is such a big deal, especially from something only mildly matted like to 1.66, and besides anyone who really cares how the film looks will watch the properly letterboxed DVD version; (4) you just don't like the idea of all this junk, like mic booms, getting exposed onto the negative on the extreme top & bottom edges.

 

Shooting 3-perf Super-35 is like hard-matting the negative in that since the 3-perf negative is less tall, it is naturally widescreen (about 1.78 : 1 in Full Aperture.) 2-perf 35mm even more so. Also, if you blow-up Super-16 to 35mm, the new 35mm dupe negative made will have a hard matte in it, since the Super-16 frame is about 1.68 : 1. Of course, this hard matte is covered over by the projector's even smaller 1.85 hard matte. Same with transferring 16x9 video images to 35mm -- they are hard-matted to 1.78 on the 35mm negative (unless you composed the 16x9 image for cropping to 2.40, in which case the 2.40 area off of the 16x9 video frame is extracted and then stretched to 2X anamorphic for 35mm scope projection.)

 

Transferring 35mm to 16x9 HD, you can either just fill the HD frame with a 1.78 : 1 area off of the 35mm negative (and 1.78 is very close to 1.85, so if you had composed for 1.85, it would work out fine) or you can transfer a 1.33 35mm image to 16x9 HD with black mattes on each side to keep the 1.33 proportions (this is done so you can make downconversions to 4x3 full-frame NTSC or PAL.) And you can letterbox the 16x9 HD transfer to whatever wider aspect ratio you want, like 2.40.

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Hi,

 

Further to this discussion and the other one concerning super-1.85, I've worked with original scans of material from "Cold Mountain" (a super35 production) which are full gate. I don't know what camera system and lenses were used, but lens vignetting is clearly visible in the full aperture - although it doesn't appear to encroach on what would be the 1.85:1 frame, if that's what you wanted to do.

 

By the way, I thought Cold Mountain was shot on 5279...

 

Phil

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Hi,

 

> The vignetting you saw was that on wide angle or telephoto shots?

 

I'm particularly thinking of the shot wherein Kidman arrives in front of someone's house on a horse-drawn wagon, turns, and pulls some hessian sacking off what looks like a piece of furniture. Not terribly wide-angle. The degree of vignetting increases very clearly during a focus pull towards the end of the shot.

 

> It was shot in 5279 and 5284 (Expression 500T -- for the earlier "happier" scenes.)

 

Figures; it's definitely an upbeat scene, and the keykode prefix was EG (5284)

 

Phil

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Guest Frank Gossimier

Thank you David for that detailed explanation. It must have taken a while for you to type all of that :-) Your work is appreciated.

 

Frank

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hello david and othermembers,

 

Thank you somuch for these detailed explanation. ofcourse david made a big vibration on me. :rolleyes:

 

guys anybody knows which is the best site regarding these information other than that widescreenmuseum.pls forward me.

and except acmanual what are all the books is useful?

 

thanks n advance,

srsaat

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