35mm print from super 16 D.I.

[Bob Hayes]

I?m considering shooting a feature film in super 16mm, finishing in HD and then doing a digital to 35mm blow up. My question is this. The resulting 35mm film will be a letterboxed version. There will be black above and below the image on the 35mm print. I?m fine with that but some of my distributors require a full frame 35mm print. Will countries like Germany reject a letterboxed 35mm print?

[David Mullen ASC]

No one would reject a 1.78 : 1 (16:9) letterboxed print since the black borders fall outside of the 35mm 1.85 projection mask area. Full-frame is only a requirement for some video masters for broadcast. Some production companies will require a 35mm full-frame I.P. for home video transfer but they can be talked out of if once you explain that the original film negative and the HD transfer are widescreen, so cropping it on the sides to get a full-frame 35mm version doesn't make sense -- they just don't want you to crop the image when possible. But in this case, you aren't cropping the image because the original image is not 4:3.

 

A lot of 35mm release prints are hard matted. And all 16:9 video that gets transferred to 35mm spherical are hard matted to 1.78 on the 35mm internegative master.

[John Pytlak RIP]

It's best if the "hard matte" is consistent throughout the picture. If the early scenes or titles of the movie are full frame and the projectionist frames for 1.85:1 incorrectly, then the framelines may later pop into view and not be corrected by the busy projectionist. Standard SMPTE 195 specifies projectable image areas.

[Christian Appelt]

No problems with wide screen, TV stations and DVD manufacturers in Germany will usually transmit/encode your film (video) as 16:9 anamorphic, no one cares about full frame.

In theatres, they will project your 1.78 print in 1.85 format, except very few arthouse theatres that will show video originated film prints (depending on image quality) in 1.66 format because they feel that narrow top/bottom masking is the lesser evil than unsharp pictures.

[Jarin Blaschke]

The terms "16:9 anamorphic" or "1.85 anamorphic" on DVDs always confounded me. What's anamorphic about them? Are the manufacturers just that ignorant?

[John Pytlak RIP]

All you ever wanted to know:

 

http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/anamorphic/Anamorphic.html

 

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_6_4/...ovember-99.html

 

http://www.widescreen.org/dvd_anamorphic.shtml

 

http://www.thecinemalaser.com/anamorphic-e...upport-page.htm

 

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/page2.html

[David Mullen ASC]

The pixel ratio of standard definition are set -- for example, an NTSC image is 720 x 480 pixels. You'll note that this comes out to a 1.5 : 1 aspect ratio when it should be 1.33 : 1. This is because each pixel is not exactly square.

 

When they decided to try and create a widescreen format for standard definition, without changing the pixel dimensions, they did it by making the pixels less square, essentially squeezing electronically a 16:9 image onto 720 x 480 pixels (again, this is NTSC). When seen on a normal 4:3 monitor, the image looks full-frame but skinny, squeezed. But when seen on a 16:9 monitor, the image looks normal.

 

DVD players can take a 16:9 recording on a DVD (sometimes called "anamorphic") and unsqueeze and shrink the image into a 4:3 signal with a 1.78 : 1 letterbox for display on a 4:3 monitor. If the original 16:9 recording already has some letterboxing, this gets added on to that -- so a 16:9 (1.78 : 1) recording may have slight letterboxing to create 1.85 : 1 and even more to create 2.35 : 1. You'd be seeing letterboxing on either a 16:9 or 4:3 monitor, only the letterboxing would be heavier on the 4:3 display.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I think the salient point is that it's all anamorphic, it's just that some things are more anamorphic than others.

 

I'm not sure why the word "anamorphic" came into use for this kind of thing. The proper definition for it is as a word describing a physical microstructure which is either not crystalline or is monocrystalline.

 

Phil

[Bob Hayes]

Great answers. My next question is what are the distribution hurdles facing a project shot on super 16, finished in HD, and then blown up to 35mm for limited theatrical obligations. Any idea on the costs?

 

Bob

[David Mullen ASC]

The hurdles have less to do with the format and more to do with the marketability of the movie. If someone wants to distribute it, it will be because they think there is an audience for it. The technical issues can be solved after that (by spending money, of course.)

 

A laser recorder transfer from a feature length HD master to a 35mm internegative can cost anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000, although a few places are doing it for more like $45,000 to $50,000. A CRT recorder transfer to camera negative stock will be cheaper -- "City of God" was transferred from an HDCAM master to 35mm camera negative using a CRT recorder.

[Felipe Perez-Burchard]

slightly off topic but touching on the issue of the hard matte on the camera...

 

some months ago (actually a year ago) I interned on a feature and the 1.85 hard matte used in front of the lens covered only the top portion of the frame, I thought this was odd, and the mattes in my schools 35mm cover equal amounts in the top and bottom (putting the image on the center as opposed to the bottom).

1) first off all, am I wrong and there are no such mattes as the ones I beleive they used in the feature?

2) how does this affect image quality, I would assume that the image that is captured by the center portion of the lens would be optically better, is this a correct assumption?

3)what would you gain by having the image at the bottom?

 

The depts. on the film weren't to crazy about my questions, so I left that one unanswerd and I was just reminded about it when I read this post.

 

Thanks in advance for any info.

 

Regards,

 

-felipe

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, there's a difference between a hard matte used in the camera gate to mask the image on the negative versus a hard matte for the mattebox to reduce stray light from hitting the lens. In the case of the second, in 35mm, generally you would not use a mattebox hard matte that was so small as to intrude into the 1.37 : 1 Academy or 4x3 TV area, and definitely not right up to any 1.85 frame line.

 

35mm 1.85 : 1 masked projection always crops equally top & bottom, unless misframed by the projectionist.

 

In terms of camera gate masks, most people would use a 1.66 : 1 hard matte if they were composing for 1.85 : 1 and wanted a hard matte -- this gives some slight leeway in terms of projection and making the pan & scan TV version. A 1.85 hard matte is too tight and would be visible even in 1.85 projection since all it would take is the slightest misalignment by the projectionist before the black matte would appear on screen.

[Mitch Gross]

I think David has it here. You were looking on the videotap at the mattebox matte or eyebrow which is used to keep lights from flaring the lens. This has nothing to do with the matting of the actual film frame, which would need to be right at the gate itself in order to make a clean, hard edge.

[Mitch Gross]

Great answers. My next question is what are the distribution hurdles facing a project shot on super 16, finished in HD, and then blown up to 35mm for limited theatrical obligations. Any idea on the costs?

The costs are anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on the quality and amount of work done. I have a feature shot in S-16 that's posting through a DI and going back to 35mm for release this fall. I'm currently fighting to get it in 2k with a laser burn out, but I may have to settle for HD with a CRT burn out.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Standard SMPTE 195 recommends putting in the "hard matte" during printing, rather than in the camera, to allow flexibility in post production. In no case should the hard matte used for 1.85:1 have an image area less than 0.505 inches (12.83mm) high.