Tenolian Bell

The reports of the Roswell crash were known worldwide when it happened. The story was quickly debunked by the US Air Force. You are right abductions did not become popular until the 60's. The concept of the Greys had been around long before. H.G. Welles wrote about them in "Of a Book Unwritten" and David H. Keller wrote about them in the Wonder Stories in 1929.

This doesn't come from an unrealistic place. Some of the technology and architectural accomplishments from thousands of years ago are still unexplained today. There are theories that other beings came and taught them to do what they did. Also the time frame of the film is appropriate. That is a time soon after Roswell and when alien abduction stories became popular. Also lots of alien invasion movies.

Yes I've seen Indy. I've seen the get smart trailer numerous times.

You honestly feel judging an entire 2 hour low key action adventure film to the 2 minute trailer of a high key comedy that hasn't yet been released as a valid comparison?

Its much more a point of perspective. There is good and bad digital projection and 35mm prints. Try projecting your home HD projector on to a 60 foot screen and it will look far worse than both.

Standard Def DVD is still far outselling Blu-ray. Its unlikely that Blu-ray will replace DVD and enjoy the same market penetration. There are several other good quality digital formats that Blu-ray has to compete with that DVD did not. The advantage of a disc is it doesn't have moving parts like a tape does. Actually HD-DVD was killed by the studios. More of the bigger studios chose to produce Blu-ray disc, that forced everyone else to go along.

To make a fair comparison you would have to see both prints projected. The memory of many of those old prints are better than the actual print.

I must've watched a different print from many of you. I didn't see it being nearly as bad as the rest of you. I can agree their was some inconsistency in contrast and the use of soft filters. But their were moments that were absolutely stunning. The high key outdoor scenes were a stylistic choice. I don't think its necessarily good or bad. Kaminiski's use of diffusion was also inconsistent in War of The Worlds and Munich. I saw an interview a while ago where Kaminski said they did not want to stray far from the feel of Slocombe's work, but did not necessarily stick to it religiously. That's quite an exaggeration.

April 3, 2008 - John Galt, Head of Advanced Digital Imaging at Panavision, and Larry Thorpe, National Marketing Manager at Canon Broadcast & Communications Division, came together to help untangle some common misunderstandings in Digital Camera Specifications Demystifying Digital Camera Specifications

It generally works in the opposite direction. Shows set in NY, shoot the pilot in NY. If the pilot is picked up the show moves production to LA. Its rare for a show set in NY to move production from LA back to NY.

This depends on your definition of "better". Most of the time in Revenge of the Sith, the only real elements that were actually photographed were the actors. Graphic artists and rotoscopers were able to spend months meticulously creating and perfecting everything else in the frame. While 90% of film originated material is shot on stage with real elements on out in real locations. Where you work within degrees of limitation, or uncontrollable variables, and some degree of controlled chaos. These challenges are reflected in the photography. I'm sure you look at ROTS as appearing better because of its sharpness and lack of grain. Others would consider that look sterile with no texture and no character. Their are many filmmakers who would much prefer the unpredictable, organic, tactile feel of shooting reality.

Congrats Eric. Juno has been nominated for Academy Award Best Picture. Two years ago you shot a film that won Sundance. Now you shoot a film that has Oscar potential, Congrats......

Interesting concept. There were elements of it I like but I could barely watch parts of it because I got nauseous. They took the amateur camera thing way way too far. I'll wait till others see it to say more.

Congrats Eric great movie. This is more based on the working practices of the theaters which are inconsistent. Different theaters have different quality control of projector and prints. Prints do become scratched and dirty eventually. Some theaters regularly replace scratched prints some don't. If a theater does not properly take care of its projectors or prints there is little digital can do to resolve that.

OK thanks I'm late to the party.

New York Times: The Afterlife Is Expensive for Digital Movies Having figured out that really big money comes from reselling old films — on broadcast television, then cable, videocassettes, DVDs, and so on — companies like Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures for decades have been tucking their 35-millimeter film masters and associated source material into archives, some of which are housed in a Kansas salt mine, or in limestone mines in Kansas and Pennsylvania. At present, a copy of virtually all studio movies — even those like “Click” or “Miami Vice” that are shot using digital processes — is being stored in film format, protecting the finished product for 100 years or more. To store a digital master record of a movie costs about $12,514 a year, versus the $1,059 it costs to keep a conventional film master. Much worse, to keep the enormous swarm of data produced when a picture is “born digital” — that is, produced using all-electronic processes, rather than relying wholly or partially on film — pushes the cost of preservation to $208,569 a year, vastly higher than the $486 it costs to toss the equivalent camera negatives, audio recordings, on-set photographs and annotated scripts of an all-film production into the cold-storage vault. To begin with, the hardware and storage media — magnetic tapes, disks, whatever — on which a film is encoded are much less enduring than good old film. If not operated occasionally, a hard drive will freeze up in as little as two years. Similarly, DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years, not a reassuring prospect to those who think about centuries. Digital audiotape, it was discovered, tends to hit a “brick wall” when it degrades. While conventional tape becomes scratchy, the digital variety becomes unreadable.

Speed Racer is an all greenscreen movie. The colors had little to do with the F23. In a 2K DI S16 can be scanned at 4:4:4 log 16 bit per channel. Admittedly that would be an expensive scan for a lower budget show, but the F23 cannot record color at that depth.

Imax day for 'Knight' The bat signal will appear next week, eight stories high -- on Imax screens. The first six minutes of Warner Bros.' "The Dark Knight," a prologue that introduces Heath Ledger as the Joker, will appear as a preview in Imax theaters before the studio's "I Am Legend," which opens Dec. 14. The prologue is one of the scenes photographed in the 70mm Imax format. The rest of the film was lensed in 35mm and will be remastered to the Imax format for release in Imax theaters. In those theaters, the 70mm-lensed sequences will fill the screen and the 35mm-lensed scenes will appear letterboxed. (In traditional theaters, the aspect ratio will remain the same, though some expect that audiences might see a shift in image quality.) In the six-minute sequence, a team of robbers -- all wearing clown masks -- enters a bank for a planned heist, but things take an unexpected turn. The imagery demonstrates the depth and clarity offered by the format, but perhaps no image is more chilling than the first look at Ledger's Joker."Seeing this extraordinary face, eight stories high ... you can smell his breath," he said. "He's a very overwhelming personality, and there's incredible texture to his appearance. It's a creepy moment, as it should be." "The lenses are very wide. It pushes you to a style of filmmaking that is a little more formal. You tend to move the camera in a much more specific way. You can move things through the frame because you have such a crystal-clear image and you are dealing with such a wide field of vision.

There are a lot of complaints about On2 compression. That is why Adobe has begun to support H.264 for Flash Video.

Yes I agree their would be trade offs to 65mm. You gain twice the resolution and detail resolving in big shots. The weight of the camera and depth of field would all have to lend themselves to a style of shooting. Namely less freedom of movement. Just imagine the challenge of shooting on IMAX.

After thinking about it I can agree with David, they could have shot this in 5 perf 65mm. It would be nice if this became a trend. Big action sequences shot in 65mm, while the rest of the film is shot in 35mm.

I think the problem really is in the movie theater industry itself. The quality of projection is mediocre at most and abysmal at many movie theaters. People become used to scratched prints, misaligned masks, and dim bulbs. I think people will definitely see better quality if it were shown to them. Recently I went to a movie with friends at the Arclight in LA. The Arclight has excellent projection. After the movie a friend asked me if that was digital projection because the movie was so clear and sharp. I told him it was just really good 35mm projection. Unfortunately many people don't get to see that today. Seeing as anybody (and I literally mean anybody) can buy a camera and call themselves a photographer I wouldn't put much stock in what they have to say. Often their knowledge doesn't run much deeper than the marketing materials from Canon or Nikon.

In Batman Begins the entire film was blown up for IMAX. The action sequences were scanned at 6K to help keep sharp detail in the larger shots. I imagine this is the idea for The Dark Knight.

A video showing portions of The Dark Knight filmed in IMAX .

I would have to disagree with your title Evan. I wouldn't consider Blockbuster the safe haven for Indie filmmaking. Netflix has a much larger selection of indie and foreign film. Netflix has even set up its own independent distribution company called Red Envelope where they share rental fees with the filmmakers. iTunes will also begin to sell indie films. Giving the filmmakers 70% of the download sale.