David Mullen ASC

3-perf is the most common format for Super-35 now. So it’s a 1.78 negative cropped to 2.40.

The optical printer crop & squeeze to 4-perf 35mm anamorphic dupe element went away with digital intermediates by the mid-2000's. For a long time in the decade of the 2000s, since most D.I.s were done at 2K, and there was no generational loss difference between formats, Super-35 and anamorphic looked rather similar in quality since you needed a 4K D.I. to really see the difference in resolution, though Super-35 was in theory still slightly grainier even in 2K, but that depends a lot on how the movie was photographed. Super-35 movies that avoided 500 ASA stocks looked quite good technicall

It also depends on what is behind the diffusion, an array of LEDs or a single tungsten halogen bulb, etc.

On blu-ray, a 1.85 movie would be letterboxed inside 1.78 like below. On an HDTV broadcast, it would likely be full-frame 1.78, probably not cropped from 1.85 on the sides but opened up top & bottom, just depends on how the D.I. was done -- usually you would make multiple masters, a 1.85 DCI version, a letterboxed 1.85 inside 1.78 HDTV version, a full-frame HDTV version, etc. But to say that if the camera framelines were 1.78 instead of 1.85, a different artistic framing would have been chosen is pretty unlikely, they are so similar.

Except that in the case of 1.85 vs. 1.78, being only a few pixels different in size, the compositional design would be nearly identical.

I kinda like 2:1. I don’t find the shape to be too “symmetrical”. You can create art within any aspect ratio.

What about 1.66?

1.78 vs. 1.85...So one shot works but the other shot doesn’t work???

The outer box is 1.78 and the black borders show 1.85 inside that. The difference is so minimal that to suggest one works most of the time and the other rarely works is a bizarre claim. If I put up a series of 1.85 images and 1.78 images on Instagram, well over 90% of viewers would not catch that there was a difference.

A permanent pola inside would create all sorts of problems even when you panned across a blue sky or across reflections.

The light during twilight gets bluer by the minute and if you record ProRes, the color temperature is baked into the recording so it helps to get it close to what you want. Since it can take time to create different color temp settings in the Alexa beyond what is already there, I have the ACs pre-build a couple of settings. Early twilight, I might start at 3800K or 4000K for a blue look... but soon I’ll jump to 4300K, 4800K, 5500K before it’s gone completely. The exact values aren’t important, the idea is just to keep the image from getting super blue.

Besides 1.85 vs. 1.78, what's annoying today is the 2048 / 4096 pixel 24P / P3 standards for DCI versus the 1920 / 3840 pixel 23.976P / Rec.709 standards for HD/UHD...

1.85 dates back to the mid-1950's. Of course, it would now be fairly easy to change the cinema standard from 1.85 to 1.78 as opposed to changing TV sets and HDTV broadcasting. Some wish HDTV monitors had opted for an even wider 2:1 shape to better accommodate showing both 1.85 and 2.39 movies, though then 1.33/1.37 movies would have used even less of the screen.

No, haven’t used anything heavier than #1

Does the print stock need any sort of coating added after processing the soundtrack to make the dye stick to it? I had always heard the term "dye mordant" being used. Or did only the matrix need that? So the three color passes are not pin registered in any way?