cole t parzenn

I have similar experiences. We have Arclight Cinema's here in So Cal and they're the best theater chain around. Every time I go, the image and sound are perfect, whether it's film or digital projection. It really shows that BOTH technologies work fine, if the theater owners cared.

I saw "Interstellar," among other poorly projected and often interrupted films, at an Arclight. They didn't care about anything, really. (But "Psycho works surprisingly well in 2.39, I learned.)

Anyway, what causes the prob;em with video projectors' blacks?

Two hour talk from both the first and second unit cinematographers.

As for the theaters, I sort of agree with Mark. With film projection, I had to figure which were the best theaters in Los Angeles to see something, and I had to see it within the opening weeks before the print got beat-up, and I only hoped that I would get to see the rare show print off of the negative and not the typical print made from an IP/IN which is turn was made for a film-out of a 2K D.I., more or less the norm since the early 2000's.

I live in one of the ten largest cities in the US and I get to choose from the theater with clean screens but noisy projectors, the theaters with dirty screens but ok projectors, and the theaters with ok screens but terrible projectors (noisy and with green and magenta areas around high contrast boundaries - especially problematic, since they get most of the foreign films), so I'm not convinced that video projection has solved any problems, other than the cost of shipping prints. And that's leaving aside any comparisons to idealized film projection, to be clear. When I saw "Interstellar," the first reel was scratched (less than a week in) and the bottom half of the screen was out of focus.

Interesting. It's been a while since I last saw one of his films but the long lens never jumped out at me, until now. Nice to see "Stardust Memories" included.

So why is this?

Also haven't yet had good experiences with credit titles on normal digital projection, they tend to be unsharp and even at times jumpy.

The most recent film I saw in theaters was "Ex Machina." The title cards aliased.

What about renting professional video cameras and moving around all the data (including the DIT's fee), versus renting professional film cameras and buying and processing film?

I may be wrong about one or two on the list in terms of origination format, but out of 36 titles, 12 were shot on film -- so 33%... But that's ignoring, for no particularly good reason, the larger production market as if all of those indie features and TV series that used to shoot film somehow don't count.

 

But I don't think you can say this is still a "reasonable amount" considering all the labs that closed down and the fact that Fuji got out of the motion picture business and Kodak has killed a number of their stocks (and I think Kodak now just has one sales rep working out of house since Kodak closed their offices in Los Angeles -- the "capital" of the movie industry!) There are now whole regions of the world, let alone the U.S., where it is hard to get movie film processed. There's no way to put a positive spin on this, film is in serious decline.

 

I'm shooting film right now because the director insisted on it and she doesn't have to justify that decision to anyone, she got her own funding. That's really the only way film is being shot on features, by directors who insist on it and have some control over the budgeting process.

"Wolf" and "Monuments were hybrid productions, as I recall.

It seems to me that "serious decline" is, at best, euphemistic.

Re: budgeting, does video really scale up better than film?

I've heard of mixed results with the 2K mode of the F55 -- you may want to read this:

http://www.xdcam-user.com/2013/09/aliasing-when-shooting-2k-with-a-4k-sensor-fs700-pmw-f5-pmw-f55-and-others/

 

You may be better off recording in 4K XAVC if you can't record RAW and then downsampling in post to 2K/HD. Or record 1080P if you don't have any other deliverable requirement but HD.

Interesting. I would think that treating each 2x2 square as one three channel pixel would be computationally easiest and give the "truest" image.

"2001" was a sleeper hit, as was "The Shining" and, I presume, several other Kubrick films. "2001" was also unfinished, after four and a half years of production - I don't think that the comparison is warranted.

Here is a reflex model with a full set of primes, for half the price.

I saw that but wasn't sure what to make of the "Fries" name. I wonder about the lenses...

It's the originally intended anamorphic aspect ratio... And, if you finish at 4K, you gain vertical resolution!

Is there an advantage to shooting 2.39 video anamorphically? I saw "Chef" in theaters and it didn't look bad but the resampling required just seems risky. I've heard that there are plans for 1.8x anamorphic lenses but you're still resampling by a non-integer multiplier on one axis. It seems to me that we should have just been using 21.29*17.78mm sensors, to begin with, since that's 35mm cine lenses are designed to cover.

Truth is that the VistaVision Red Weapon, to me, would have been more exciting with a new 6K FF35 sensor, not 8K, just for the increase in sensitivity that the larger photosites would allow, and that recording 6K compressed raw for a feature is more reasonable than 8K, which I can see being an issue with some producers. Sure, if I were shooting for IMAX release, I'd want to record 8K, but for a typical 2K/4K DCP, I'd love to be able to shoot with a Full-Frame sensor in 6K and use the whole sensor for the image. But that's a minor quibble. Certainly being 8K helps with any marketing in terms of competing with the 6.5K Alexa 65.

I agree but aren't they doing both?

As an aside, 6K "VV" is diffraction limited past f/4 and 8K "VV," f/2.8, ignoring interpolated color.

The Ursa Mini looks interesting, just haven't seen tests yet.

It should look similar to Ursa footage, shouldn't it?

Well, I know of ONE available camera: a seller refurbished Mitchell FC - yours, for just $29,995! According to Wiki, they're BNCs, made bigger.

Fox contracted them, for Grandeur; Technicolor contracted them, for Process IV; the BNC was a longtime standard; Fox contracted them, again, for 65/70; the name "Mitchell" seems to still command respect - why?

Wishful thinking, by Mr. Edeson:

Do you have any examples of Double-X pulled? I can't find any.

has anyone tried converting something other than Vision stock to b/w, for example Fuji Vivid? I suspect the grain would be a little too "sharp" feeling but would definitely be a different look

How much Fuji stock is left?

Could Kodak just be very bad at making MTF charts? According to the Vision 1 500T data sheet, it out-resolved Velvia, in blue and green. And EXR 500T wasn't far behind. This is interesting...

I get that intercuttablility is desirable but, since such disparate speeds are rarely intercut, I expected Kodak to have independently optimized the resolutions of the slow and fast stocks. How do you make a low resolving slow stock, anyway? And can it really be said to be inherently sharp? The MTF never gets significantly above 100, so there's no coarse detail enhancement, to make up for the fine detail loss. Did you mean that there was less apparent noise?

Could you elaborate?

500, 250, 200, and 50.

Other than the use of digital technology, was the cinematography of the Star Wars prequels notable?

APS-C is much smaller than 36x24- it's very similar to Academy- so for a similar FoV you'd expect the equivalent to be shorter than a 40. More like 30.

50mm is slightly long, in 135; (24^2+36^2)^.5=43.3 (rounded).

 

If I thought merely watching any movie was enough as long as there were a lot of them, I wouldn't have bothered to compile a list.

Good point. The reason I asked, was that some of the films have a lot of overlap in style.

 

Here's my list for movies cinematography students should watch, and it's incomplete and it doesn't go past 1999...

Is your list long, because you think that each of these films teaches a unique and necessary lesson or because watching many films is educational, in and of itself?