Oppenheimer (21st July 2023) Christoper Nolan / Hoyte Van Hoytema

[charles pappas]

9 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

https://in70mm.com/news/2023/oppenheimer_cinema/index.htm

There are plenty of theaters in Texas playing it on 5 perf. Do not watch it on 15 perf. Total waste of time. 

 

Yes, having read a few comments here beforehand, there was no way I would have driven back to San Antonio again to see it on 15 perf IMax. My intention then was to just see it on standard 70mm in Austin, but when we were told the showing would be free we decided to stay.

I will go to it it again in Austin on standard 70mm

[Tyler Purcell]

11 hours ago, Dan Finlayson said:

Just not the case with the print at the Chinese theater at least.  The only shots that felt extra grainy were the 5-perf double-x shots.  It's just double-x!

It was horrible, absolutely atrocious.

If that was "quality" then what is bad? 

[Tyler Purcell]

11 hours ago, Giray Izcan said:

I wish Nolan cared more about the content rather than the format and style. It comes off as very self indulgent.. I wish he wasn't so obsessed with his no cgi stance, i mean remember Dunkirk beach scenes with 100 soldiers standing around on the beach?... I haven't seen the movie yet but, in consensus, from most reviews, apparently  the explosion segment did not look like atom bomb explosion but just a gas explosion. Imagine how much more powerful it could be if he enhanced the practical effects with some cgi. I will be the judge myself after seeing it for myself but I don't have high hopes unfortunately. 

The explosion was a few seconds on screen. It really doesn't even play much if any role in a 3hr movie. 

They did the close up's perfect, that's what it looked like. The wide "false perspective" shot was the only issue. I think it was on screen for less than 2 seconds. 

If that's what people complained about, they probably missed the first hour of the film LOL ?

[David Mullen ASC]

It's funny but as a DP, where I noticed the lack of post CGI work was little things, like erasing movie lights reflected in eye glasses! The campfire scene with Josh Hartnett is what I'm talking about, you can see a Skypanel on a fire color program reflected in his glasses now and then. Most shows would ask a VFX supervisor to replace the reflection with one of a fire if possible, or shoot without glass in and add reflections. But of course if you're shooting large format, then you're talking about higher resolution scans and you can't do it if your goal is to contact print as often as possible rather than cut in something recorded out to film.

I thought the fireball for Trinity was fine.

[Tyler Purcell]

51 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

I thought the fireball for Trinity was fine.

Yea, right? It seemed fine to me too. 

Good observation on the reflections, I too noticed that, but then again I was very engrossed in the story. 

[Ole Alstrup]

20 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I would guesstimate around 20 minutes of the 3hr movie are IMAX. There are NO and I mean ZERO complete scenes in 15P IMAX. Unlike Dunkirk and Tenet, which have entire 5 minute segments entirely in 15P. Oppenheimer uses 15P for the master wide and then cuts to 5 perf 65mm. It was annoying actually, VERY annoying, because you'd start a scene in a lush, crystal clear, full screen IMAX frame and suddenly the moment someone started to talk, you'd dump into a grainy, matted (with huge bars at the top and bottom) 5 perf shot that looked nothing like the IMAX opening wide. 

Thanks for the details and your candid feedback, much appreciated. I am extremely fortunate to have three cinemas close by, here in Copenhagen, Denmark, showing the 5-perf version, going to watch the film in at least two of them. Nolan even supported one cinema to secure a print, Gentofte Kino, who are doing an annual 70mm festival, the GIFF 70. First time since 1969 with Oliver! that we have three 70mm prints of the same movie running at the same time. ??

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ole Alstrup

[Scott Pickering]

Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC gets up-close &… | Kodak

[Tyler Purcell]

17 hours ago, Ole Alstrup said:

I am extremely fortunate to have three cinemas close by, here in Copenhagen, Denmark, showing the 5-perf version, going to watch the film in at least two of them.

Shit if you're in Copenhagen, you're lucky. Ya got two REALLY good cinema's! I wish we had good ones like that in Los Angeles anymore, but alas with Covid, many shut down. I have a bunch of friends in the area as well, all huge fanatics of 70mm. Enjoy the show! 

[Tyler Purcell]

15 hours ago, Scott Pickering said:

Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC gets up-close &… | Kodak

Thanks Scott and to think people bitched about the cinematography on several reviews of the film. 

Holy shit, I think Hoyte killed it. So impressed with his work. Just wanna find him at an event and shake the mans hand for such a stellar job.

Drama's are not easy, especially shooting at the pace this film was shot at. Many DP's flounder in his shoes, but man he just bangs it out of the park. I thought the tricks he used to keep the speed of production up, like blasting light into the windows, really worked well. Not distracting at all and gave him plenty of light to work with. The night cinematography too, just lovely work with practicals and some light augmentation. 

[Robin Phillips]

On 7/24/2023 at 2:00 AM, Giray Izcan said:

I wish Nolan cared more about the content rather than the format and style. It comes off as very self indulgent.. I wish he wasn't so obsessed with his no cgi stance, i mean remember Dunkirk beach scenes with 100 soldiers standing around on the beach?... I haven't seen the movie yet but, in consensus, from most reviews, apparently  the explosion segment did not look like atom bomb explosion but just a gas explosion. Imagine how much more powerful it could be if he enhanced the practical effects with some cgi. I will be the judge myself after seeing it for myself but I don't have high hopes unfortunately. 

have you seen the footage of the actual trinity test? its basically a flash and then a mushroom cloud similar to a properly executed gas bomb. you can see one of the color shots of it here 

Here is also some black and white footage which held its dynamic range better

Much of what we got use to seeing publicly were either vastly larger bombs, or footage turned on stuff that we wanted to observe during detonation. Those test shots of the trees being hit by the shockwave or the houses' paint burning just before the structure blows are far more terrifying than a straight on look at a gen 1 US nuclear bomb. 

I believe it was the H-bombs that really introduced the moisture cloud shockwaves that are associated with the tests in the pacific. Weirdly I think that also just depends on the conditions in the air around the detonation zone. You can see that sort of burst shockwave in the 2020 Beruit explosion, which was, and I emphasize we're talking relative here since we're talking about nuclear weapons, a somewhat small detonation but the nature of it and the moisture in the air resulted in one of those dense cloud shockwaves. 

So I think that if this had been approached digitally, the look dev would have been the actual trinity test. As you can see above, it kinda looks like a gas bomb with a center that went a little faster than its outer component. So if accuracy was part of the goal, I dont think it would have looked any more impressive. 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

12 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

have you seen the footage of the actual trinity test? its basically a flash and then a mushroom cloud similar to a properly executed gas bomb. you can see one of the color shots of it here 

Sounds like they copied it perfectly! 

[Giray Izcan]

Nice. I was just going off of what some others have been saying along with some other reviews. I haven't seen it myself. I will see it for myself.

[Tyler Purcell]

1 hour ago, Giray Izcan said:

Nice. I was just going off of what some others have been saying along with some other reviews. I haven't seen it myself. I will see it for myself.

Plz do! I think everyone should see it. Such a wonderful movie. 

[Giray Izcan]

Will do, Tyler. I look forward to it myself. 

[Stephen Perera]

Interesting to me in all this is the conversion of Hasselblad Zeiss lenses to use on 70mm cameras in general.....for example my 80mm Planar and 50mm Distagon and maybe even the 110mm.....maybe it's my imagination but I see the flavour of my lenses up there.....

[Mark Dunn]

11 minutes ago, Stephen Perera said:

Interesting to me in all this is the conversion of Hasselblad Zeiss lenses to use on 70mm cameras in general.....for example my 80mm Planar and 50mm Distagon and maybe even the 110mm.....maybe it's my imagination but I see the flavour of my lenses up there.....

Quite impressive that the Hasselblad lenses cover what is effectively 6x7cm, territory they never trespassed on. Beside the Planar the Mamiya RB 90mm. is a bit of a brick- no-one seems to be converting them for 15/70 lol.

My 500C has been in its box for over 20 years now.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Mark Dunn

[Stephen Perera]

6 minutes ago, Mark Dunn said:

Quite impressive that the Hasselblad lenses cover what is effectively 6x7cm, territory they never trespassed on. Beside the Planar the Mamiya RB 90mm. is a bit of a brick- no-one seems to be converting them for 15/70 lol.

My 500C has been in its box for over 20 years now.

I shoot 500CM and 2000FCM regularly for my paid work with Kodak Portra family films! hence why I love standard 16mm format viewfinder! haha

[Dan Finlayson]

14 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

Beside the Planar the Mamiya RB 90mm. is a bit of a brick- no-one seems to be converting them for 15/70 lol.

 

I imagine this has to do with the RB/RZ system relying on the whole front standard moving to focus.  I'm sure Panavision could do it though, the RZ 110mm would look spectacular

[John Shell]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:33 AM, Scott Pickering said:

I certainly don’t see how IMAX can be 18K rez, after view IMAX film again today. I think 8K would give it a run for its money.

That 18K figure has always been dubious especially when Yedlin showed in his ResDemo that IMAX 70mm Vision 3 500T scanned at 11K resolved slightly less detail than Alexa 65 with 6.5K resolution. Vision 3 50D would be a lot more resolute but still nowhere near 18K. Also, I I doubt those old medium format lenses could even get near that.

[David Mullen ASC]

Certainly not 18K in a print projection.

Think of it this way, to me, 35mm film negative practically speaking seems close to 3K (which theoretically means it should be scanned at 6K). I could be generous and say 3.5K / 7K scan. 5-perf 65mm is roughly twice the width so let's say 6K to 7K. 15-perf is 3X the width of 35mm (I'm ignoring vertical) so that would be 9K to 10.5K (so in theory an 18K scan).

I want to say that an Imagica scanner scans IMAX at 11K or 12K and then the files are reduced to 8K or 6K maybe, it depends on what resolution they want to do digital VFX.

If print projection is almost half the resolution of the negative, then it's roughly lets say 2K for 35mm projection, 4K for 70mm, and 6K for IMAX.

On the flip side, if you really believe that 15-perf 65mm IMAX negative is only 6K, then you'd have to believe that 35mm negative is only 2K, it's just real estate. I don't think the optics are much of a factor here because a large format doesn't need to use a lens with a high MTF, if there are more millimeters to begin with, the lens can resolve fewer lines per millimeter -- but certainly high-speed film and an older lens is not the sharpest way to photograph something.

 

[Michael J. Flynn]

In regards to resolution, I think the 30-ish screens that show Oppy on 15/70 are the very, very limited scenario in which a film print can be better in *some* areas, and in my opinion it’s not even “K” related. The full aspect ratio Dune trailer, for example, had significantly more digital noise and compression to my eye than the 15/70mm shots in Oppenheimer. Both were perfectly sharp and not resolution limited, but Oppy’s film print had less image degradation than the rendered file Dune was shown on.  We’re really being picky here, because the truth is, any Arri digital camera or 35mm film and up is more than enough resolution for all but the biggest screens in the world.

 

On the other hand of this coin, is the generation loss of the 5-perf stuff in Oppy - some of which looks great, and some of which is way grainier and muddier than it should be with all the contact printing really losing a good amount of resolution.  The black and white scenes especially suffer.  I’ll be seeing a standard 70mm showing of Oppenheimer next week, and I’m curious if the 5-perf 65 will look significantly better and match more with the 15-perf shots.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Michael J. Flynn

[Tyler Purcell]

56 minutes ago, Michael J. Flynn said:

On the other hand of this coin, is the generation loss of the 5-perf stuff in Oppy - some of which looks great, and some of which is way grainier and muddier than it should be with all the contact printing really losing a good amount of resolution.  The black and white scenes especially suffer.  I’ll be seeing a standard 70mm showing of Oppenheimer next week, and I’m curious if the 5-perf 65 will look significantly better and match more with the 15-perf shots.

The 5 perf shots were cut, then a 5 perf IP was made, 15 perf blow up was made and those shots were cut into the 15p OCN string. So they were already 3rd generation when they hit the 15P negative. That's a lot of resolution loss. 

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, John Shell said:

That 18K figure has always been dubious especially when Yedlin showed in his ResDemo that IMAX 70mm Vision 3 500T scanned at 11K resolved slightly less detail than Alexa 65 with 6.5K resolution. Vision 3 50D would be a lot more resolute but still nowhere near 18K. Also, I I doubt those old medium format lenses could even get near that.

The lenses can't get near 11k. But if you do the math, 35mm still film which is 8 perf 35mm retains 6k easily. I've physically done that test when compared to an 8k digital stills camera with a similar sized imager. A 15 perf frame is several magnitudes larger than 8 perf 35mm. The resolution does scale. The problem is the lenses and the way motion picture film is shot compared to still film. The only way to really test this stuff is to do it with optical printer lenses, not vintage full frame lenses and to do it one frame at a time. Digital has the benefit of having no blur between frames, images stay on screen longer as well. So it "appears" to be sharper simply because there is so much more stability. When analyzed as a "still" image, you can tell right away how much different things are. 

IMAX 15P when projected, is closer to 8k resolution than 18k, which is what it "could" deliver, that's mainly due to the issues with optics and film projection in general. 

There will never be an 8k digital projection system using current technology. Even the best multi-projector 6k systems used in a few domes today, are still sub-par due to source limitations. 

Also, record-out systems are limited as well. So how many 15P movies are made, where the prints were struck from the original camera negative AND they had no record out's? 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Tyler Purcell

[David Mullen ASC]

Full-frame 35 / VistaVision is 36mm wide and 15-perf 65mm is 70mm wide — that’s a 2X difference in width, not several times bigger.

[Kemalettin Sert]

There s no chance 65mm 15perf resolves 18K details.Technically impossible i would say.

50MP Venice 2 is almost 2 times sharper than 65mm Vision negative which was shot on medium format camera and used same pentax lenses on both cameras.

It would be fair comparing 4x5 film against todays digital cameras.I shoot 4x5 a lot 100 ISO mostly and they are not even sharper than my GFX 100s.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Kemalettin Sert