Frank Love

Double Post

To the first point, that's part of why I hate what this movie stands for. The story these people were going to tell hasn't changed since before Avatar came out, 3D capabilities have been around since the 30's when Edwin Land and Co. at Polaroid invented them. If they wanted to shoot 3D so badly, they could of had that in the works long before now. As to this movie, I was full open to it before I saw the trailer, then I was thinking eh, I reserved final judgement until I saw it. The more I learn and hear about this movie the more I dislike it and what affect it's having. This movie is merely a gimmicky vehicle for Cameron and cohorts to get rich off of. Who is that? well considering about 3 weeks after the release we have IMAX, Discovery, and ESPN announcing 3D channels coming this year, and that Samsung and others already have TV's ready for it? Like that isn't a coincidence. They made a movie and gave it the perfect hype so that everyone would want to at least see it, so it makes lots of money, and regardless of what people are saying coming out of the theater, or how much better of an actual film it could have been, the BO speaks for itself, and to everyone who makes decisions based on trends. Whatever happened to the days when the studios used to pay technicians to come up with new filming systems in attempts to out do the others? That's how we got into the 65mm and 70mm world. Today it feels like the push for digital is sending us backwards....like doesn't even match to 16mm sometimes. It boggles my mind. Had Cameron gone with the IMAX 3D Solido camera...you know, actual IMAX 3D of duel 15-perf 65mm....then I'd be impressed. It's not like he can say he didn't have enough money. Instead he brags how they did 'new' things, when really they just took the next step from where we were already at, took a story and elements from a bunch of different films etc. That's why people were initially calling it a mix of 5 things, not because it was unclassifiable, but because it was SO derivative. And sure, lots of stories get recycled all the time, even the best and most original can't help but have elements shared by others, but the best do it in a way that you never notice it until you've watched it a ton of times, or make you forget it. This felt more like they were smacking me in the face with it the whole way through. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the 'warrior' who doesn't like Jake, because aside from being tall, blue, and feline-esque, he looks identical to the warrior who didn't like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves....then there's Pocahontas. Oh...and as for that 'piracy-proof' theory everyone on the business end was loving about the idea of 3D films? I think that's out the window too. The NY Times has already reported on how it's the fastest pirated film ever....er...video....maybe non-interactive video game? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/movies/0...COMMAN_BRF.html

Sadly this outrage isn't new, I say sadly because it only shows how well IMAX is getting away with this that people like us could not even be aware or hear about something like this going on for this long. The press is nowhere on it. I think it was first made at all public by comedian Aziz Ansari on his blog last year after trying to see Star Trek in IMAX, which it wasn't. <a href="http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/106587114/reblog-the-**(obscenity removed)**-out-of-this-warning-amc-theaters-are" target="_blank">http://azizisbored.tumblr.com/post/1065871...mc-theaters-are</a> I too was curious how films I was pretty sure weren't shot in IMAX at all were having IMAX releases, but I didn't realize exactly what was going on until I tried to see "Transformers 2" at a fake IMAX theater, and "Harry Potter: HBP" in a real one. I was wanting to be 'wowed' by some IMAX as I was when I saw "The Dark Knight" in IMAX, so I went to see Trans 2 at AMC Empire here in NYC because I knew they had shot parts of it on 65mm. I was unable to see any difference between the 35mm and 65mm source material except in places where I was guessing because of the appearance of bokeh etc. I also noticed to duel 2K projectors. So the very next night I try to see Harry Potter, advertised as IMAX 3D, at Lincoln which is a proper IMAX theater. This was equally disappointing because only the first 15 or so minutes were in 3D, after that it was standard non-stereoscopic imagery, and the ENTIRE film retained its 2.40 aspect ratio, ie none of it was "IMAX" even in aspect ration let alone format. So here I had just paid 9 extra dollars to see two IMAX films and the only extra I got was 15 minutes of 3D, which honestly I would give up long before the image quality difference. IMAX later last year did a study which they mentioned on their facebook profile since so many of us outraged customers were criticizing them on about every post they made. The results of this study only showed the new screens as slightly below their 'traditional' screens, but the results of this study are crap because they weren't asking the right questions. It was also screened with "Transformers 2" and I forget the other picture. They merely asked people how they liked the picture, sound, screen size, etc. At no point were there opportunities to comment about a comparison of seeing say "The Dark Knight" on a real IMAX screen and a new 'IMAX' screen in which ANYONE could see a difference. Ironically it's TDK which has created this new market. It's success at IMAX screenings opened up this new market for people wanting bigger better theater experiences, so IMAX is jumping on the chance to make all this money. It's like IMAX wants us to throw out our ASC manuals about what the IMAX format means by putting so much stuff out there with varying format sizes and aspect ratios etc, that people will accept anything simply shown on 'IMAX' branded screens as IMAX. I started a discussion board on the ASC's facebook page forum, but I am still the only topic, and have had no responses. When you do the math, and say normal 35mm film gets us say 6K of resolution easy, you then do the math and see that the IMAX 15 perf neg gives us 10-11 times the negative size of 35mm's, now we're talking about 60-70K of resolution if you wanna talk in digital terms....and they are giving us 2K? This is a 30x discrepancy at least, the difference between standard television 480i and HD 1080p isn't even 7x. This is like IMAX labeling TV's HD when all they can do is NTSC but keeping their prices as high as ever.....no wait, it's worse. In my opinion this should qualify as fraud and be reported to the BBB frankly. All they have to do is call the smaller screens 'something' by IMAX, the emphasis being by, and then people can understand there's a difference, and will demand the true IMAX. I think if we keep fighting it we might be able to get something done.

I'd say you do your best. If you notice it'll be a hard slate to do, whether for how close you're slating or how far you have to go to clear, just make sure your 1st and Op know so they can either do a pan, or if that's somehow harder, they can get a tail slate or wait for you to be clear before calling set as they've said. Sometimes none of those are really an option, and the actor is insistent enough that you're not putting it in their face...I'd say depends on the actor and if the scene is a fairly intense one or not...but sometimes you just don't get a slate on it. I'll make a point about it but some situations just make it impossible to please the people involved...course this is usually on the lower budget things, that or they have enough money they don't care if syncing in post takes a little longer. I also have a small insert clap slate that can let me be further from an actor while still getting a clap on it. It may not have time code, but a clap is better than nothing.

I concur, I have a 600 camera sitting on my desk with a layer of dust on it. I love that Fuji is still making pull n peel packs for my old land camera and my 4x5 holder for my big camera. I think that if they want to reconstitute the 600 packs, and maybe even offer some different emulsions and speeds to give us more options than one stock of ISO 100 Color, one B&W, and then one ISO 3000 B&W...why argue? It's not like there's only 2 options for Kodak motion picture film, or with Fuji's, Kodak even offers an alternate 500T, the expression. Ilford has HP5 and Delta 400, Kodak has the NC and VC color negative films, I say we embrace it. If it's good people will pay 2.50 and exposure. I pay $3 for my 4x5 from fuji. -f

I've occasionally thought about how one could shoot your standard 2.40:1 Anamorphic....except make it 1:2.40...or configure a way that it would be closer to 1:1.85 or something. Living in NYC I've often pondered shooting in a vertical format to really breath in the city, plus like in 35mm still photography, it'd be like a portrait mode cinema.