2.35 or 2.39?

[XiaoSu Han]

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=24600

 

"If I may nit-pick your nit-pick...Arri 'scope ground glass is marked for 2.35:1. 2.39:1 is the scope projection ratio. "

 

Why would ARRI mark their cameras with a 2.35 ground glass with 2.39 as the scope projection ratio? Is it just a way to "frame safer"?

 

Also, Aaton has 2.35 and 2.39 available as ground glass markings for the new penelope, as 2.39 is the correct projection ratio, what sense would it make to get a 2.35 ground glass?

 

cheers

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I'm not 100% but isn't 2.35 the standard for Super-35 extraction? I'm not 100% on that but I seem to find that super 35mm movies I have show a 2.35:1 aspect ration while others, both properly anamorphic, and some cropped from other formats (2 perf for example) list 2.39:1. Just my thoughts on it. In truth I doubt you'd find too much of a difference.

 

edit to add: also could just be down to operator preference in a lot of situations; such as having a 1.78 and 1.85 marked ground glass, as I do, for my SR3. In truth, I could just do 1.78 for everything of course, (or even 1.66) but I like the 1.85 markings too.

[David Mullen ASC]

The short answer is that it is not an exact science so don't get too concerned.

 

The long answer is that, first of all, there is a difference between the size & shape of the projector mask and the camera gate, with GG markings being somewhere in between often, either showing you gate dimensions or projector dimensions.

 

The other issue is that the shape of the anamorphic projector aperture has changed twice since the early 1970's. And some theaters have the older masks.

 

Scope projection was supposed to be full aperture (2.66 : 1, twice horizontal of 1.33 : 1) with sound run in interlock using a 35mm fullcoat roll. But before the first CinemaScope movie was released, it was decided to put tiny mag stripes on each side of the 35mm print instead, and use smaller perfs (CS perfs) to make room for that. This shaved the width down to 2.55 : 1 once expanded by 2X during projection.

 

Keep in mind that the projection always has a 2X expansion horizontally with scope.

 

Then it was decided in the late 1950's to also have normal 35mm prints with an optical track on the left side, as with Academy/1.85, and normal perfs. This created a 2.35 : 1 image that was shifted to the right, not centered on the print stock.

 

Then it was decided to reduce the height of the projector aperture to hide frameline splices better, changing the projection mask to .838" x .700", from 2.35 to 2.3942856 : 1. This was around 1972.

 

Then it was decided to standardize the width of all sound projection apertures to .825", so the anamorphic aperture was changed to .825" x .690" (2.3913042 : 1).

 

You can spend some time here:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingcs1.htm

 

Panavision anamorphic camera aperture dimensions are: .866"min. x .732"min. (which comes out to 2.3661201 : 1) but all that matters is that it is larger than the projector aperture and that your framelines are close to projection aperture. Truth is that most cameras these days expose Full Aperture all the time, it's just that for sound formats, the lens is offcentered to match the optical center for print projection.

[Brian Rose]

And then you have Storaro insisting he framed his films for 2.00: 1 :)

[David Mullen ASC]

The ARRI site lists the for anamorphic, the camera aperture as 22mm x 19mm (2.3157894 : 1) and the projector aperture as 21mm x 18.2mm (2.3076922). Obviously that's not the official ANSI standard for anamorphic projection (which is 20.96mm x 17.53mm).

[Leo Anthony Vale]

And then you have Storaro insisting he framed his films for 2.00: 1 :)

 

The SuperScope process was an early version of Super35, RKO used it a lot.

Initially it used a 2/1 aspect ratio & was blown up to a square 2x squeezed image.

So there were 0.715" x 0.715" projector aperture masks.

 

There was a later SuperScope235 system. I came across a brief article in a trade mag at the UCLA library which gave the ground glass markings, which were .440" x .940" or .950".

Do the math and the camera aspect ratio is around 2.16/1. in order to fit that into a C'Scope frame for projection, one had to use a squeeze of around 1.8x.

Thus SuperScope235 was not identical to Super35.

 

However in 1957, MGM began shooting some of its B/W CinemaScope movies in a process identical to Super35. There will be a credit line in the main titles which says: "process lenses by Panavision".

[Brian Rose]

Someday I'm gonna create my own aspect ratio, and it'll be called "Brian-o-rama," or "Brianscope." :)

[David Mullen ASC]

There was a movie that came out called "Hollywoodland" about the death of actor George Reeves, with Ben Affleck & Adrien Brody -- at one point, the Polish Brothers were supposed to make it and I was supposed to shoot it, but that didn't happen... Anyway, our plan was to shoot it exactly as if it were a biopic made in the 1950's, in the style of

"A Star Is Born", same lighting, etc. I was thinking at the time of shooting it in Super-35 (for the grain) and putting a "Photographed in SuperScope" under my name as sort of a reference to the fact that George Reeves played Superman.

[XiaoSu Han]

So if I shoot 2-perf framed for 2.39 I'd do a DI and do an anamorphic print is that correct?

 

Would it be possible to do a "regular" print (1.85?) and have letterboxes or a hard matte? The quality of the anamorphic print would be better but does it matter if the origination format is such a small negative compared to real anamorphic? What's the cost difference?

 

Maybe it would make sense to do an anamorphic print if DI'ed at 4K but do a 1.85 print if DI'ed at 2K?

 

And if I'd go DCP at the end it all doesn't matter...

 

thanks for all the info so far

[David Mullen ASC]

Print projection is always 4-perf 35mm in a sound aperture format, so if you shoot 2-perf, 3-perf, or 4-perf Super-35, you have to convert the image to a 4-perf 35mm sound aperture format (Academy/1.85/anamorphic). You can do the conversion in an optical printer using dupes normally though it is more common now to do a D.I.

 

If you shoot 2-perf or 3-perf, you can frame for 1.85 or 2.39, doesn't matter, though you're wasting negative if you shoot 2-perf and crop the sides to get 1.85.

 

As for 2K versus 4K, not sure that you can think of 1.85 as a 2K format and 2.39 as a 4K format... if anything, a 1.85 print actually gets enlarged more to fill a screen vertically so it needs the extra resolution. It just comes down to economics, do what you can afford. Though it still looks better to scan at 4K and downsample to 2K for a 2K finish rather than scan at 2K, so there's that intermediate idea, spend the extra money for a 4K scan but finish at 2K.