Tyler Purcell

Interesting, looks like they still have the 15/70 projector. Though funny enough, they only ran the film print for 4 days. They no longer advertise it on AMC or the IMAX website. :( I have a feeling my comment was accurate though. I don't think they "normally" run 15/70 at all. I think it was a one-off thing and thats why the screening is not on the list anymore. They did the same thing with Interstellar at the Chinese, bringing in a 15/70 projector for the first week. Wish I had known about it, I just didn't know there were any options.

Well what I mean by "kiddies" are teenagers. The fact it had almost no character development and that it was mainly one big run-on action scene, steps well out of place from the franchise. Star Wars in of it's essence is about dialog and character development.

Back on topic for a second... I just caught wind that when Disney ordered the reshoots, everyone walked. That included Edwards, McQuarrie and Desplat who was in the middle of writing the score. I mean it was a really good team and the movie would have been entirely different with those three at the helm. I'm dismayed Disney wanted to make it more for kiddies.

The biggest problems with the standard 15/70 format comes down to the print cost, constant maintenance and frequent lamp replacements. There are also licensing fee's and many other costs that have put the 15/70 format out of commission. The average 15/70 IMAX screen needs to make MORE MONEY then a standard theater in order to survive. This is why the big surviving 15/70 theaters, generally run science movies at $15/head. They're short and they can run a dozen screenings per day, which makes up for the costs. All IMAX needed to do was subsidize the print cost and theaters older then 20 years, no longer have to pay the licensing fee. That doesn't help with the maintenance and lamp replacements though, both of which are very costly. IMAX never intended for the format to grow like it has and during the big switch from film to digital, they were still churning out new very heavy maintenance based projectors. Now their new business model is supplying 1.5M dollar projectors and charging even more for the licensing fee. Theaters that switch over to digital, are also having troubles paying for it all, even though you don't need a projectionist anymore, OR parts for said projector since the laser heads are so efficient. In a lot of ways IMAX Laser projection is the best system in the world and it's just an intermediary between the next format which will be 8k. In terms of the old projectors. I know the MKI and MKII projectors, are so old they're generally owned by the theaters, so if replaced with digital, a lot of times they never leave the theater. The newer projectors in a lot of cases, are sent back to IMAX for storage. So I bet they've got a gluttony of machines lined up. I do know this much, with Interstellar, there were far more IMAX 15/70 theaters around then there will be in Summer 2017. I have a feeling, IMAX will put 15/70 installations back in certain theaters JUST for the release of 'Dunkirk', like they did with 'Interstellar' at the Chinese Theater here in Hollywood. I do think for them, it's not a huge problem to ship a hand-full of systems out and install them for a month of screenings. Since Dunkirk is mostly a 5/70 film, the best way to see it will be 5/70 theater. With the Hateful Eight projectors still out there, I have a feeling a deal will be struck to use those and we may see a lot of 5/70 prints running around.

Depending on the formatting structure of the drive and the type of reformat performed, you can generally recover data off SD and SSD drives if no new data has been added to the drive. The utility I use is called Data Rescue X, but there are dozens of different tools that work just as good or better. With SD cards and camera capturing (which are single large files in most cases) getting data back from a drive that's had NEW data put on it post format, is generally more difficult.

Villeneuve hasn't let me down recently, his last two movies were very entertaining. I'm so excited he took on this project because I have a feeling he will hit it a home run, especially with Deakins shooting it. Villeneuve cares deeply about the source material and doing justice to the original film. I'm happy Harrison is on board, though I have a feeling he will have a small role. Looking forward to seeing a real trailer sometime during the summer. One side note... I wonder if Warner will strike 70mm prints for this release... that would be seriously cool if they did, even though it's shot with the Alexa 65.

Diversity is only good if they're not stereotyped. There is a lot of stereotyping in modern movies when it comes to non-white actors.

I agree about the last 5 minutes, in my book it was the only decent thing about the movie. Since I made this post, many of my friends have seen the movie and have mixed reviews. Real Star Wars fans seemed to love it because it's "different". My filmmaking friends threw it under the bus for the worthless "action for the sake of action" and the movie looking no different then every other tent pole in the last 10 years. I will share one of my favorites from my buddy Dan. I think he breaks down the issues much better then I did, partially because he's not a filmmaker and not really a big Star Wars fan.

The manual exposure switch is on the zoom control, right in the front in most cases. When switched, it will allow for manual exposure. Under the zoom control is the manual zoom lever, that disables the control if you need it. I always ran my cameras in manual iris mode, I never, ever used automatic mode. It's slow to react and doesn't deal well with backlight or any heavy light situation. The nice thing about the ENG cameras is the addition of a filter wheel and 3 position gain, right on the side of the camera. So if you're going from indoors to outdoors for instance, you can make the adjustments on the fly. I use to shoot regular news material for broadcast, so we'd be running around court houses and getting quick interviews, so being able to deal with these situations fast, was the key. These are part of the reasons ENG cameras are still made and used today, they just flat-out work for these quick situations.

Yea, yea it's true the 16mm specific Arri/Zeiss primes and zoom's are easy to convert. That's because the manufacturer sold them in both spec's, like my Optar's. In fact, I've swapped mounts on them numerous times and they work great. With that said, my Zeiss 12-120 zoom, won't accept the same PL adaptors as the Optars. It physically doesn't fit on the barrel. This is why I stated earlier, I've measured the rear element of lenses to figure out if modern lenses could be adapted and I've found most of them to be too large in diameter. Clearly a different problem from the 12-120 issue I have, but still not THAT easy. You can't just go on ebay, buy a Arri B adaptor, send it all off to Visual Products and expect magic.

The OP wanted to know if he could convert anamorphic PL mount lenses to work with a BL. As you well know, the BL is Arri B mount and I don't believe they could be converted to PL. Same goes for modern PL glass. You can't just take a used zeiss lens, pull a mount off it and expect it to work. As a cinematographer, I work with various lenses on a regular basis and I also have spare mounts sitting around. So I've measured and tested the idea of changing mounts on CP2's for instance, but the numbers don't add up. Not saying it's impossible but it would be cost prohibitive and much easier to convert the camera (if convertible) then each lens. Well yes, but I made the assumption the op couldn't afford a super 16 camera with PL mount, since they have a BL which is the cheapest semi-quiet camera you can buy these days. Good working Super 16 cameras fetch a high price on ebay compared to straight 16 cameras. Good working Super 16 cameras with PL mount, are 2x more money then one's without. I'm on ebay every day, every... single... day... 90% of the cameras on there are ORIGINAL mount. This year, there were TWO Super 16 PL mount SR II's that showed up (both well over $3000 USD). There were around 5 XTR's but they were super 16 and PL mount from the factory. Only one of them sold for less then $2500 bux and I missed it. BOO HOO! :( That's unfortunately where people buy cameras these days and it's too expensive to import from other countries if you live in the US like me and the OP do.

I'm a projector guy, have been for my 15 years. I'm currently running an Optoma HD25LV, which is a great deal (around $899 referb) for a 20,000:1 contrast, 3,500 lumen, super quiet HD projector. My normal home theater is a slightly under 7 foot wide wall. I also have a perfect white screen that's a little under 6 feet wide. I rarely use the screen, only when I need perfect colors for checking work. However, I can turn the room on it's side and get a 12 foot wide image if need be. I've done this move twice and it's tricky, takes about 30 minutes to set up, but if I'm having a crowd over, it's worth while. I'm excited about the UHD laser projectors for home theater coming soon. I will re-invest in 2 - 4 years because I'm producing a lot of UHD content these days and it's nice to see it projected properly, instead of a down-res. I also think the 1080p DLP chips in these current projectors need more mirrors. Even though I wouldn't be projecting 1080p content all the time, I think the extra mirrors will help smoothen the image out.

Umm, have you seen the sergio leone films? Star Wars is basically a rip-off of the classic western movies. Even Lucas himself admits Star Wars is a typical western told in space. Those great characters have existed for 50+ years. It's just, people forget very quickly.

He's a mega Star Wars fan and claims that the original film is what made him want to make movies. I don't think you're seeing "gifted" directing, I think you're seeing passionate filmmaking. Me too, mainly because the characters and their situations are fully developed. It feels like a real general audience movie set in space, rather then just a "science fiction" movie. It's truly what separates movies like 'Alien', 'Close Encounters' and 'Jaws' from their genre tropes. Sure, but that's not really an excuse. If you look at the over-arching story of Episode IV, it's really not much different... destroy the death star. The difference is that Episode IV's characters are interwoven with one another and have depth to them. When stuff happens to them, you care because you've just spent an hour discovering who they are. It's the same with Episode I and even Episode VII, mostly character development, with a very simple plot. I would have started the film with Cassian Andor in the middle of a personal mission trying to bring home the message Jyn Erso's father sent them. He caught wind of someone in the inside trying to send messages and took it upon himself to figure it out. Why? Because his home world is near the construction site and he's afraid the new weapon will be used on his home to test it. Cut to Jyn Erso's story. She's alone, living in a pot, but she has friends, you get to see her life a bit. However, she's after food and she's cunning. She tries to nab some, but the imperial forces show up and in the middle of a firefight, she's captured. Then you cut right into the story where the robot catches her and brings her to rebel headquarters. All of that takes place in 25 minutes or so, it's the 1st part of the 1st act. Now.. critically, I wouldn't tell ANYONE the person who built the space station is her dad! The alliance gives Jyn one option, either she fights with them or she winds up in the stockade. Of course, she tells them to go screw, steals a ship and winds up in there anyway. Whilst there, she meets Cassian, who was put there for disobeying orders. They talk about the death star and how frustrated Cassian is they haven't made any advances on it. Now that it's complete, how are they going to stop it? All he wants to do is get that message and figure out what it says. This is where the two of them have their first conversations about the past. Of course, they escape and Cassian goes for the message he recovered. They nab it, steal the robot, a captured imperial ship that Cassian came in on and disappear. Second act starts with figuring out what to do next. Here is where you do a few cute scenes with the two of them and the robot, trying to get the message to playback. Eventually they take it to Saw Gerrera, the only person Jyn knows who could help. You play out the scenes from them landing to the destruction of the planet exactly the way it is in the script. That's where she learns it's her father, but the audience doesn't know. I think from there on, you could play the film out the way it's scripted, only she doesn't tell anyone it's her father until the very end. It's gotta be a secret until the end of the 2nd act when everything seems lost.

It depends on what your after... 'The Force Awakens' wasn't very good, but mainly because the over-arching plot was contrived and as you pointed out, things happened too easy. I was also disappointed in the planet falling apart and how they were still fighting till the very end, total stupidity. I agree that Gareth Edwards at least expanded the 'Star Wars' universe, but where he failed was in the characters, as pointed out above. I didn't much care for JJ's interpretation of the 'Star Wars' universe either. He is clearly nowhere near the fan of the series Gareth is, nailing a few things that only fans would care about. See, Star Wars in it's essence is a western in space. People forget it's all about dialog and characters. Even the prequels were wall to wall character development, wrapped with action scenes. Exploring worlds is cool, but if the characters are uninteresting and flat, if the ride is boring because it's senseless violence, if the plot is so thin they have to resort to violence in order to make it interesting, you've got a problem. I'm sure ANY serious Star Wars fan, could have written a better story then Gareth did.

They were scared of too much dialog and not enough action. So they added little action bits, none of which have any context. They're just random acts of violence, for the sake of adding "action". Also remember, shooting a storm trooper with a laser, is much different then shooting a human with what looks like a normal gun. When you don't see the persons face, psychologically the violence means much less. The MPAA rating for the film is PG-13 only because the violence is so prevalent. Honestly, with a plot so thin, it's hard to know how much the mouse interfered. Clearly the robot dialog and jokes, seemed completely out of place. "Reprogramed" imperial robot is now a stand up comedian? Someone didn't understand what made C3P0's dialog work in the other movies. So the chief designer of the space station somehow defects and never tells a single soul about it's construction, yet he's smart enough to build in a fail safe that nobody knows about? It would have taken decades to build the death star, but the rebel intelligence wasn't around to figure it out? Nobody just happened to fly by imperial space to have a look-see? All of the data came from defecting pilots? Yet the rebels somehow win? Give me a break... it's absolutely stupid. Just to remind you, Episode IV, focuses on a single character who through character development, luck and happenstance, goes to fight with the rebels in the 3rd act. The other 2 acts are character development, and for the next 2 movies in that series, we already know who Luke is, we know who Lea is, we know who Hahn is, etc... We know NOTHING about the 'Rogue One' characters. Cassian Andor? What is his story? Why can't he shoot someone? Is he just a lame rebel or what? Jyn Erso? Sure we see a brief moment of her story, but no details what so ever. What was it like living with Saw Gerrera, was she treated well, did she learn how to shoot a gun? Her motivation is to "escape" but why, what is she after? Ohh and the ending, what an absolute pile of junk. The empire stores it's databanks on a sunny tropical island, in a tower with an antenna on the roof for transmission? Really? Ohh and of course inside the tower there is a 21st century tape library 20 stories high with a robotic arm to grab the tapes. Ohh and somehow the only escape is through a door that opens and closes on it's own, for no reason but to add suspense. Then for some reason the imperial forces couldn't simply cut the power to the facility so nobody could transmit? The bad guy meets the good guy but like some family guy episode joking about how bad movies are, they just sit there and talk for a while? "How's your day?.. Mine is pretty shitty, some butt broke in and is... wait, YOU'RE the butt!" LOL What a joke. Now... 'The Force Awakens' has similar issues, but at least the characters were developed and you felt for their personal missions. I know all about Finn and his defiance. I know all about Rey and her boring life. We know all about Kylo Ren and where his anger comes from. We spend time with each of these characters DURING THE MOVIE, discovering more about them on an individual basis. This is how you build characters that are interesting, that you care about. I didn't care about anyone or anything in 'Rogue One', which is sad because I felt the casting was good and the acting wasn't that bad either. Light saber fights, dynamic characters with real purpose, interesting interweaving stories not just a singular purpose for existing. Anamorphic, wider angle dolly/jib shots, more color and more contrast. John Williams sounding score Decent effin' sound mix that has dynamics to it!

I'm sure the IMAX print looked great, that's because it automatically adds contrast. Also, the IMAX soundtrack is 100% remixed compared to the standard theatrical release. It's unfortunate here in Los Angeles, we no longer have a 70mm IMAX screen for major releases like this. They also didn't strike 35mm prints like they did with 'The Force Awakens'. On a side note, did they show a trailer for Dunkirk? There were rumors about that. Also, what was the aspect ratio? Was it 2.40:1?

Yea, it's the complete S16 specific, 1.3x anamorphic lens kit. https://www.vantagefilm.com/en/products/hawk-anamorphic/hawk-1-3x/v-lite-16 Standard 35mm (full frame) PL mount 2x anamorphic glass is inexpensive to rent. To use the full width of the 16mm frame (s16 format) and get the 2.40:1 aspect ratio, uses 1.3x anamorphic squeeze lenses, not 2x... which would give you a much wider image that would need to be cropped. Yes Hawk does make 2x glass which is specific for the standard 16mm format, but you're wasting a lot of image size shooting that format. Also, unlike a 35mm frame size, Super 16 requires speciality lenses for the wider angles. Lenses that frankly are hard to get in the 2x breed. Most 2x anamorphic lens kits start around 25mm, which is considered a "medium" lens with the smaller frame size of 16mm. This is why you need to spend the money on something like the Hawks. Plus, the Hawk's are super fast, which is a vast improvement over less-expensive options. Having done the research on formats, renting and over-all final output picture quality, 2 perf 35mm is the best deal over-all. Now, if you don't need wide angle lenses, if you have a PL mount straight 16 camera and can find old 2x lomo's, you can probably get a decent image out of it. Though nowhere near the quality of 2 perf, OR with the lens selection needed for really shooting serious work.

PL mount on 16mm cameras is actually a more recent thing. Most sync sound 16mm cameras use their own mount. Arri has the "arri B" mount. Aaton has the "Aaton Mount" etc... Older cameras like the BL, SRI and SRII are B mount and the SR's can be converted to PL, but it's expensive. Unfortunately you can't simply buy an adaptor to make PL mount lenses to work with Arri B mount cameras. This is simply due spacing, the PL mount is too big for an adaptor to fit AND maintain proper focus distance. Now maybe 20 years ago, you could find B mounts for PL glass, but today that market has dried up. If you're goal is to shoot with anamorphic lenses, two things to think about... 1) Hawk anamorphic lenses are $5000/A DAY. So if you have that kind of money, you can for sure find a better PL mount camera. 2) You would need Super 16 frame size for the Hawk 1.3x anamorphic's to work properly, the standard 4x3 frame size won't give you 2.40:1 3) You need to unsqueeze the image to view it properly in the viewfinder. These anamorphic ground glass adaptors are rare for modern 16mm cameras (sometimes rental houses have complete kits) and nearly impossible to get for older cameras. If your goal is to shoot 2.40:1 wide screen, it's actually around the same price to shoot 2 perf 35mm with short ends. You can get 35mm short ends for around HALF the price of NEW 16mm stock. Only thing you need to do is find an inexpensive camera to rent and you'd be all set. If you need help with your project, shoot me a PM and we can chat. I have complete rental packages for students of film.

My review of ROGUE ONE: The Uninspired generic "Family Friendly" action movie... :cough: Let me begin by stating the obvious... Disney is the wrong studio to be involved with the Star Wars franchise. They are a bunch of pencil pushers who are only interested in churning out one "safe" movie after the other. What they fail to realize is the 'Star Wars' franchise is bigger then anything else they've had and it's FAN driven, so millions will go no matter how dark or dialog driven the movie is. With that out of the way, 'Rogue One' is a poorly conceived, single plot action film that if it weren't for some good acting, decent sets/costumes and the 'Star Wars' name attached, would have bombed at the box office. Why? Because frankly, it's uninteresting. All of the great and interesting dialog scenes that would have helped generate sub stories to keep the audience interested, simply didn't exist. It's as if this movie was a sequel and the previous movie had all the information we needed, yet this isn't a sequel. 'Rogue One' is a unique movie that fits between Episode III and Episode IV, featuring only TWO of the characters from the entire 'Star Wars' Franchise. Yes, there are brief cameo's with other characters, but that doesn't count. It's as if the filmmakers never watched a single 'Star Wars' movie and/or never understood what made them decent, even the not-so-hot prequels had their moments. Even 'The Force Awakens' was "entertaining" with far more complexity and overlapping plot lines. Still, 'Rogue One' feels more like a dumbed down 'The Force Awakens' then anything else in the franchise. Heck the filmmakers couldn't even be bothered to put the standard 'Star Wars' introductory story brief before the start of the movie. They threw that out the door, even though it COULD have told the audience what they SHOWED over the course of the first 20 minutes, which were a train wreck of back story and filler story to bring the audience up to speed. Three paragraphs could have answered all of those questions, but then they wouldn't have been able to show off the special effects wizardry. Unlike 'The Force Awakens' which is saved by it's "classic" cast and more similarities to the world of 'Star Wars', 'Rogue One' makes some very well thought out attempts, but doesn't cash in on them. Yes, the cast is good and strong, but they're all worthless underdeveloped characters, thrown in because they're "cool". Yes, the sets are spot-on, but they spoil them by using heavy CG which makes set extensions, ships and space battles, look like every other stupid Hollywood movie. Even technical things like the score, were boring and uninteresting. I was shocked because John Williams had already written so much music for the franchise, all they needed to do was tweak it slightly and they would have had a pretty decent score. The surround mix was very flat, with only a few dynamic hits, but no crispness at all. It's like spent all their time trying to make it even, without even contemplating dynamic range. This is probably thanks to Disney not wanting general audiences complaining about how "loud" it seemed. Even the mix had to be super "safe", which is a load of ballix. The cinematography was also very uninspiring and flat, with no life or vibrance what so ever. The use of "shaky-cam" hand held photography was an unwelcome sight in a "Star Wars" movie, where cameras mainly cover in medium to wide shots on a moving dolly, crane arm or steadicam. The mere thought of putting a camera on someone's shoulder is blasphemy in the world of "Star Wars". I saw the movie on a beautiful laser powered 4k digital cinema projector at Arclight Cinemas Hollywood. This is a theater with deep rich blacks and high dynamic range color, neither one of which were present in this movie. Some scenes were so flat, it almost seemed like they weren't colored at all. Other scenes were so heavy with CG, the lighting people in the CG world, couldn't match the practical photography what so ever. I felt the practical on-set lighting was fine, no real complaints. Yet the way they captured and colored the scenes, was just not very interesting. The film used Ultra Panavision 70 anamorphic lenses, which don't have much squeeze to them, but the filmmakers thought they'd add some distortion, which they didn't. In fact, the film looked spherical to me and it was the same ol' 2.40:1 aspect ratio, even though it was shot with the Alexa 65 which is a 2.20:1 aspect ratio camera. So they didn't get the benefit of a special "wide" format like 'Hateful Eight'. They didn't get the benefit of a "taller" shot. They didn't get the benefit of the anamorphic look either. Nothing about the cinematography was anything but generic every day ho-hum. Fifteen minutes into 'Rogue One' I was already done with the movie. I was done because the plot was so tripe, it was so been there, done that, I knew exactly how it was going to end. There was no reason for me to waste two hours, but I continued to watch. Then we were introduced to the stupid robot character who was there only for comedy relief. Then everything that came out of his mouth was written for 8 year olds. That was about the moment I was going to walk out. I grabbed my things and was over it, but they threw some eye candy at the screen and I stuck around. I felt bad for the set's and actors honestly because they were playing around in this cool world, that we the audience weren't allowed to explore. In the end, 'Rogue One' is one rotten tomato, thanks to Disney exec's to scared to release the ACTUAL movie, prior to re-shoots. I could see rough outlines of the original movie as I watched and was dismayed to have not seen the original cut. It's hard as a filmmaker to have your movie taken away, but it's even harder as the masses to watch something that COULD have been great. This movie COULD have been awesome, they sure had so many great elements, but it failed miserably and if audiences see the same movie I did, we won't see the same box office numbers as 'The Force Awakens'. Maybe then Disney will recognize their failure, but I have a feeling they'll make plenty of money and push it under the rug. 6/10 2 and 1/2 stars.

Sounds very cool Robert! You guys are the premiere lab in the north east and probably the whole east coast! :)

My comment was referring directly to the aesthetic of the motion picture format, rather then the image retained within each frame. Once you digitize, you loose the aesthetic of the format in my opinion. You don't however, loose the image within the frame.

Yea, that's pretty good... but do any of them work on Film? That's the big question.

Robert, is the pricing for the laser all-inclusive? Does it include stock and processing?

Nice! It's funny you mention that because I'm doing the same thing on a shoot very soon. I've been wanting to do this test for a while and I'm looking forward to seeing how yours comes out.