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Dunkirk: Nolan's first all 70mm movie.


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Aren't they still called time warner:

Warner or "Warner Brothers", is the cinema/theatrical company. Time warner is a media conglomerate which is simply a corporate entity.

 

It's like saying Sony the electronics company, has any say over Sony the cinema/theatrical company. They may have the same name, but they are completely different companies with their own financials.

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I wish IMAX wouldn't try to supress 15/70, according to what I'm reading here. Its still the best format cinematically and no digital camera can touch it yet. I wonder how it is my Langley theater still has use of their 15/70 projector? They never removed it, but installed it all on rails, so it could be moved back into place when needed. That theater has been around since the late 90s, so I don't know how it is they decided to keep the projector instead of removing it. I'm glad they still have it. How did IMAX theaters ever make any money if it costs so much to use the 15/70 projectors?

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Warner or "Warner Brothers", is the cinema/theatrical company. Time warner is a media conglomerate which is simply a corporate entity.

 

It's like saying Sony the electronics company, has any say over Sony the cinema/theatrical company. They may have the same name, but they are completely different companies with their own financials.

 

 

It's a good point although "Warner Brothers" is a division of Time Warner and "Warner" on it's own is something else in the UK... or used to be at least so yeah. They aren't really seperate companies as such either as one is a part of the other but I'm sure you know that and I get your point and think it's worth keeping in mind for sure.

 

Freya

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I wish IMAX wouldn't try to supress 15/70, according to what I'm reading here. Its still the best format cinematically and no digital camera can touch it yet. I wonder how it is my Langley theater still has use of their 15/70 projector? They never removed it, but installed it all on rails, so it could be moved back into place when needed. That theater has been around since the late 90s, so I don't know how it is they decided to keep the projector instead of removing it. I'm glad they still have it. How did IMAX theaters ever make any money if it costs so much to use the 15/70 projectors?

IMAX theaters have always struggled to make money, with the licensing fee's, equipment leases and print costs. Remember, IMAX originally was a format for science museums and such, where they'd charge people standard movie rates, for a 50 minute show and had a pretty much guaranteed audience. When IMAX moved into the theatrical market, they expanded theaters dramatically but the costs just increases with the two lamps and prints for the 3D movies. It got out of control and theaters struggled to make the format profitable. This is why MANY of them have dumped their licensing fee's (no IMAX logo) and/or gone digital.

 

I once had a list of operating costs for IMAX theaters and you would blow your top at the expenditures. Theaters that have kept their 15/70 projectors, most likely had special deals to OWN vs simply lease. Also, most 15/70 3D projectors, were on rails already, so it was easy to move them around in the booth for loading and cleaning.

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IMAX theaters have always struggled to make money, with the licensing fee's, equipment leases and print costs. Remember, IMAX originally was a format for science museums and such, where they'd charge people standard movie rates, for a 50 minute show and had a pretty much guaranteed audience. When IMAX moved into the theatrical market, they expanded theaters dramatically but the costs just increases with the two lamps and prints for the 3D movies. It got out of control and theaters struggled to make the format profitable. This is why MANY of them have dumped their licensing fee's (no IMAX logo) and/or gone digital.

 

I once had a list of operating costs for IMAX theaters and you would blow your top at the expenditures. Theaters that have kept their 15/70 projectors, most likely had special deals to OWN vs simply lease. Also, most 15/70 3D projectors, were on rails already, so it was easy to move them around in the booth for loading and cleaning.

Imax shot themselves in the foot perhaps when they went for 3D, as it's so expensive. I was talking to an ex-projectionist from Bournemouth Imax (now gone) and he described the added pressure he was under to get it right. Stunning as it is, I don't think 3D Imax is particularly suitable for drama, the reason being that cutting can't be that fast as it tends to disorient and draw attention away from the story. It works well for science documentaries where the cutting is much slower. Also good 3D in an ironic way does take one out of the story as you are all the time comparing or simply admiring the effect :)

Looking forward to Nolan's film next week !

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I agree Doug and even though the IMAX 3D drama "Passage in Time" was really awesome, it was still a short film and the pacing was slow.

 

I would love to see a movie like Barry Lyndon shot in 15/70 3D.

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Just watched Dunkirk last night at the IMAX theater in 70mm. Its been so long since I've seen 70mm IMAX. First thing I noticed was the flicker in the image. You don't get that with digital projection. So right away I knew I was watching a film print. I noticed a few scratches blipping by in frames too, so yes it was film. The shots between 5 perf and 15 perf were noticeable. The 5 perf shots seemed more contrasty at times then the 15 perf. Blacks were darker. I assume this is because of the extra generation in the optical dupe. The 5 perf stuff held up well, and really weren't used all that often. They still had dialogue in some IMAX shots, so I assume they used ADR for that. There was more dialogue in the IMAX shots then 5 perf. 5 perf was probably for the closeups with dialogue. IMAX imagery was beautiful stuff. As per the other thread, there were a lot of focus problems in the movie and much shallow depth of field. All due to large format. And how smooth the image was in IMAX with detail thrown in. There wasn't a lot of saturation in the images at times, so I assume this was because of the optical print. Color between 5 perf and 15 seemed to change a bit as well. The 5 perf stuff didn't exactly copy the 15 perf. There was also a lot of handheld IMAX in this film, which was a bit much for me, as I tend to like steady images, especially in large format. It was hard to keep an eye on the image when it was moving so much.

 

All in all it was well worth seeing this on film and in IMAX. It was great to see the full screen filled up again and not just 3/4s of the screen like digital IMAX is. I wonder if my theater will take the opportunity to upgrade its digital projector to laser 4K IMAX while the film projector is being used. I doubt it though. I plan on seeing this at the same theater one more time with my pastor. I don't know how long this will be playing on film at the Langley theater.

Edited by Scott Pickering
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Nolan doesn't like ADR, so most of the IMAX shots with dialog, were recorded on set and there was so much background noise, the camera wasn't heard.

 

Per my write up earlier, according to Hoyte, they had issues with the cloud cover. In some scenes exposure was an issue due to the clouds changing, so there were inconsistencies between shots, which was odd. There were some shots on the pleasure boat that seemed way under exposed and the printer lights were brought up to compensate.

 

Also, a lot of the color shifts are location based as well. They did shoot quite a bit of the movie in Dunkirk, but they had 2 other exterior locations that were sunny, that had to mix with the cloudy Dunkirk location. So over-all it was a mess and you can't just fix those things, even with digital post it would have been a nightmare.

 

I applaud Hoyte and his crew for not going overboard trying to fix everything. As a filmmaker, I saw the issues, but I also understand why they existed and MOST people would never see them.

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None of that bothered me, considering the structure of the film, the minor lighting continuity issues were part of the charm of locating shooting imo. Very few out of focus shots I think, a handful, and sitting at the fifth row in a laser IMAX showing, it's unforgiving. 5 perf is clearly grainier, 15 perf much cleaner & clearer, astounding work all the way through, still like 35mm ana better though ^^

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Lovey... so yet another in-between size. :(

Maybe it was an ex IMAX MPX screen rather then a new format.

 

MPX was a 70mm system IMAX produced with a smaller projector designed to be retrofitted to multiplex auditoriums. They were intended to show DMR blowups so never had the full 1.43 AR of proper IMAX. Screens were typically 1.8:1 ish depending on the room

http://www.lfexaminer.com/20100421shrinking-imax-screens.htm

 

 

 

It never really took off because it fell between two stools - e.g the full expense of 70mm IMAX but with smaller multiplex type screen.

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None of that bothered me, considering the structure of the film, the minor lighting continuity issues were part of the charm of locating shooting imo. Very few out of focus shots I think, a handful, and sitting at the fifth row in a laser IMAX showing, it's unforgiving. 5 perf is clearly grainier, 15 perf much cleaner & clearer, astounding work all the way through, still like 35mm ana better though ^^

Saw it Monday at BFI London in 15/70. Fantastic experience, and the cinema manager gave a little talk beforehand and held up 24 frames of 15 perf Imax film telling us how special this was on UK's biggest screen. "You've just seen 2K adverts, now you're going to see 18k !" He was also imploring the audience to keep up the pressure for more 15/70 presentations of films. There was applause and this was repeated at the end of the screening, something you don't get very often these days.

 

I too didn't really notice lighting issues. Nor did focusing bother me, from row F. I thought the interiors down below in the ship were interesting: tracking while holding the focus just on one face was effective. The handheld action stuff too was good I thought, in 15/70. Rather like Saving Private Ryan but without the 45 degree shutter, the imax image clarity did a similar job.

The 5 perf dialogue inserts... Slightly contrastier but nice and the grain was much less obtrusive than the Interstellar 35mm inserts. The ratio was about 1.85:1 so less noticeable screen missing top and bottom, but I guess that they cropped the 65mm frame each side to compensate, and this was maybe why the grain is still a bit noticeable. I would prefer to see the dialogue shots all Imax 15/70 and i can't really see why this couldn't be done. Even if it means encasing the camera in a booth like in the days of early sound movies. Or maybe have the camera a long way from the actors using long lenses.

Occasionally there was some minute dirt projected and you saw it in the large areas of sea and sky. I presume the Imax projector uses some kind of glass panel to hold the film flat ? Trouble is tiny particles tend to remain for 2 or 3 seconds on the screen, unlike dirt in normal film projection. So maybe the cinema needs to clean the print. My daughter noticed too but it didn't bother her she said becuse of the subject.

All in all though, it was a pleasure to be in a packed cinema seeing something that everyone was clearly enjoying. The film wasn't bad either ! Great acting from Mark Rylance and co. And well edited.

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Kenneth Branagh has just finished shooting "Murder on the Orient Express" on 65mm Super Panavision 70 here in the UK processed by Cinelab London.

 

Well, he's the true pioneer in many ways, he shot Hamlet in 5/70 20 years ago when nobody would touch 70mm, so he's no stranger to the format.

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1.70 screen seemed weird to me, anyway, image was imo as good as it gets, 65mm 5 perf had a tiny letterbox bar on the bottom of the screen, very smooth AR change. About not using 65mm 15perf IMAX cam for all dialogue, if it could be done, I think Nolan would do it, this is after all his fourth experience with IMAX, since he hates looping, it's just the way it is, and Nolan doesn't work with long lenses as far as I know, sooooooooo

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I just saw the movie in 15/70 at the AMC here in Universal Citywalk, which is a REAL 1.44:1 IMAX screen.

 

I must say the 15/65 stuff looked amazing, it was clean/noise-free and didn't have any flicker/registration issues. I was dismayed the screen wasn't evenly as bright, probably because the projection lamp needs to be re-calibrated. It did bother me at first, but I forgot about it once the movie went going.

 

The 5/65 stuff didn't look good at all in my view. Sure, it was "better" then Interstellar, but had a lot of dirt and grain that was unnoticeable at the Cinerama Dome 5/70 screening. I was shocked how dirty the material was, white and black dots covering the bright sections of a few 5/65 shots. There was also a visible contrast change between the two formats, which I felt was jarring. Only in scenes which were really dark, looked ok... anything outside in daylight, shifted too much in my eyes.

 

Having seen the movie both ways, I vastly prefer the standard 5/70 version, which I also feel the same way about with Interstellar. I think the way Nolan shot the movie is more for a standard screen size, rather the the over-sized IMAX screen. The action happens so close to the lens sometimes, it's really overwhelming and when you add the hand held aspects, it really doesn't work for me in IMAX. Where it was nice seeing the crispness of 15/70, I would trade that in for the less nauseating smaller screen version, which still looked amazing.

 

I felt Nolan had no reason to shoot 5/65 on this movie at all. The limited scenes shot in that format, could have been ADR'd no problem. Plus you can clearly hear the noise reduction and background noise from some of those scenes, thus furthering the case for looping all of those scenes. Had the whole movie been 15/70, it would have been much better in my view, there would have been fewer technical issues in post and it would have more continuity.

 

Frankly, I would have taken the cut 5/65 negative, scanned and lasered it out 8k 15/70 IN for striking prints. It would have looked 10X better and not lost ANY quality compared to the 15 perf stuff. The material they used for the 5/65 scenes was NOT the camera negative, it was clearly something far down the line. Either use the original camera negative, or do a digital mastering process to make sure it looks good.

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Maybe it didn't cut it in your opinion in 15/70, from sitting in the fifth row (so, super duper close), in laser IMAX, the 65mm 5 perf footage looked fantastic, grainier for sure, clearly (for trained eyes, I doubt the GA notices) less sharp, clear & clean, but yeah. I've never seen an IMAX 70mm presentation, never will since there's no theaters here, but at least with laser IMAX, you get a consistent, super clean presentation, maybe it's preferable in some cases.

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I'm sure the digital version was struck from the original camera negative, the film version was not. I have a feeling the 5/65 material was a dupe for some reason. I'm going to investigate this more.

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Ohh good find!

 

Though.. :cough: this is kinda wrong information.

 

“One of the challenges was that the movie was shot 15-perf 65mm and 5-perf 65mm, but needed to be released in both formats,” Oran says. “That involved reducing optically the 15-perf content to 5-perf, and doing a widescreen extraction from the appropriate place within the 15-perf frame. They had framed and planned for that in camera, so usually we went to the same place on every frame and just reduced it. We made an optical-reduction interpositive right from the original camera negative for all 15-perf shots, resulting in a 5-perf duplicate negative, which could then be cut together with the 5-perf original negative to make a complete printed 5-perf negative. The reverse was true for the 15-perf 65mm version, where we took our 65mm multi-format optical printer and essentially reversed the setup on it, producing 15-perf internegative blowups from a 15-perf 65mm contact IP for all shots that originated in 5-perf.”

 

If you made an IP, you can't cut that into OCN because it's "negative" and an IP is well... positive. So they would have needed to make an IP and then an IN. Which is I think what they did, which is why it looks like SHYT!

 

They made the IMAX prints off the original cut negative? Man does that take balls!

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To be fair he does say "resulting in" a dupe neg. The IP-IN stage is implied.

 

IIRC in the days of the epics 70mm. prints were always struck from the OCN because not many were needed. It's why some are so beat-up and need restoring.

Presumably there aren't that many 15/70 prints needed.

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