Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: CROPPED SCOPE

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Operations » Film Handlers' Forum » CROPPED SCOPE (Page 1)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Author

Topic: CROPPED SCOPE

Philippe Laude
Film Handler

Posts: 79
From: Longueville, Belgium
Registered: Jul 99

posted 05-22-2002 03:31 AM

I have a scope trailer of "Monsters, inc." that fills the height of my scope screen but not the full width. When you look at a frame, you clearly see the lateral black maskings.
I just don't understand the usefulness of this, unless the movie itself is in 1X1.85 and you want to show this trailer with a series of "real scope" ones without changing the lenses and aperture plate.

Philippe

| IP: Logged

Peter Kerchinsky
Master Film Handler

Posts: 326
From: Seattle, WA, USA
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 05-22-2002 04:43 AM

We get tons of these type trailers in our booth.
I'm assuming, not being very smart in this department, that if the film is 1.85 they make the trailers in this version......with the black borders on the sides. I've never run a trailer for a scope feature this way. Someone in our head office once told us that making scope trailers for flat features was not only an expensive pain, but that studios might eliminate them all together. I guess they assumed we all had turrets that would automatically change at the end of the trailers. We don't have turrets so we are still running the whole show, trailers and all, in one format.
The only thing I don't like about the "cropped 1.85s" running in scope is they can't seem to get the borders straight up and down. It looks like we put the scope lenes in crooked. I've actually had some audience complaints on this.

| IP: Logged

Paul Linfesty
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1383
From: Bakersfield, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 05-22-2002 06:13 AM

Quote:

The only thing I don't like about the "cropped 1.85s" running in scope is they can't seem to get the borders straight up and down. It looks like we put the scope lenes in crooked. I've actually had some audience complaints on this.

Isn't this a result of keystoning from the projector location in relationship to the screen and throw?

| IP: Logged

John Wilson
Film God

Posts: 5438
From: Sydney, Australia.
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 05-22-2002 06:34 AM

Actually, I wish they would release all flat feature films this way. So long as they agreed on a standard width first, unlike some old 70mm widescreen versions I have run in the past...The Right Stuff comes immediately to mind.

Flat 1.85:1 is a hopelessly inefficient ratio. Both in quality and light output.

Scope everything I say.

------------------
"It's not the years honey, it's the mileage". - Indiana Jones.

| IP: Logged

John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-22-2002 07:40 AM

Printing 1.85:1 to a 2X squeeze anamorphic format print would usually offer a slight advantage for screen luminance because the "scope" print format makes more efficient use of the projector light. Typically, a projector that achieves the 16 footlamberts specified in standard SMPTE 196M for the scope format, will have about 13 footlamberts for the less efficient 1.85:1 flat (same image height). Using a 2X scope lens for both formats would achieve the same 16 footlambert screen luminance for both. The downside is that an optical printing step is needed to "squeeze" the image when making the duplicate negative.

Of course, the "elegant" solution would be to use the scope image area with a 1.5X squeeze lens. The much greater efficiency would give 1.5 times more light than the current "flat" format for the cost of a lens. Unfortunately, the "cost of a lens" for every theatre screen has kept this good idea on the shelf for almost 20 years:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/reel/february97/pytlak.shtml

For those who have subscriptions to the SMPTE on-line library, here is a link to my paper "Scope 1.5X -- Squeezing Even Higher Quality from 35mm Prints":
http://www.smpte.org/members_only/library/download.cfm?file=pytlak.pdf

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

| IP: Logged

Philippe Laude
Film Handler

Posts: 79
From: Longueville, Belgium
Registered: Jul 99

posted 05-22-2002 09:00 AM

Thank you John.
Your article is very very interesting (I had already seen it but hadn't paid enough attention to it) , and your idea is marvelous, what a pity it remains but an idea! If such a format existed, I would buy a 1.5X lens for my screening room whithout hesitation. Where do I have to sign?

Philippe

| IP: Logged

John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-22-2002 10:16 AM

The "idea" was first proposed by Glenn Berggren and IscoOptic in 1982 in public demonstrations. Others likely considered it before then, since it is simple common sense to anyone familiar with anamorphic projection. My article and SMPTE paper were just trying to remind the industry how good the idea is, and propose ways of implementing it today.

| IP: Logged

Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-22-2002 12:27 PM

Even with turrets or a second machine, running flat trailers before a scope feature would look terrible in a theatre with top masking for scope. No one wants to see the picture get smaller for the feature. Admittedly, this is more of an argument against top masking than in favor of scope trailers, but it is a real issue. Not to mention that there are theatres which don't have motorized masking.

I think that the reason why most scope trailers of flat films are printed with black borders is that it is cheaper to "windowbox" the 1.85 picture within the scope frame than to do a sort of "vertical pan and scan" operation to fill the entire scope width. For trailers, I actually think that the latter would look better because, as others have pointed out, the borders exaggerate the effects of keystoning on the screen.

In a theatre with side masking, I like the idea of running only flat trailers and then switching to scope for the feature, but I would only do this in a two-machine booth. I wouldn't trust automated lens turret changes to work properly, and it would probably put excessive wear on motorized turrets anyway.

As to the 1.85 format--I agree that it was a lousy idea from day one and that the 1.5x anamorphic idea makes quite a bit of sense. Unfortunately I don't see it happening; theatre owners are too cheap and the popcorn kids who can't tell the difference between flat and scope probably lack the mental capacity to handle another format.

The current DLP setups are using something similar to the 1.5x anamorphic idea for "flat" (1.85) films, however.

| IP: Logged

John Moriarty
Film Handler

Posts: 50
From: Cambridge, UK
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 05-22-2002 01:01 PM

All our adverts and trailers come in 1.85:1, and if the feature is showing in scope we switch lenses (just before the Dolby snipe); from my experience watching films around the country this is normal practice for the UK. As a single screen this is really helpful as we don't need to keep dual inventory of trailors/ads.

If we had a turret I'm not sure whether we would trust it, but as we don't don't (and we only have one projector) we swap the lense and aperture manually (fun for trainees). We just have a peice of black film in the appropriate place to give us time to do it. We don't have masking (college won't let us) and the curtains can only be moved from the front of the auditorium so we set them for scope, and show the ads/trailers in the middle (which makes keystoning a bit obvious, esp. given the floor of the booth is about level with the top of the screen).

John

| IP: Logged

Michael Brown
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1522
From: Bradford, England
Registered: May 2001

posted 05-22-2002 02:07 PM

Do you close the curtins and play some intermission music during the lense change (like we do)? Or do you just have a very stort stretch of black film and change the lense and plate quickly?

| IP: Logged

Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-22-2002 02:37 PM

The other PITA is the scope-in-flat trailers. There are a lot of "film experts" watching the films who come out and inform the ushers that the film is being projected wrongly. Oh well, at least somebody is watching. It isn't unusual for someone to come out and say "it's been out of frame/hopelessly defocused/without sound for 15 minutes"... so it was OK to watch it like that for 14 minutes? And no, we can't rewind it and show that part again...

| IP: Logged

John Moriarty
Film Handler

Posts: 50
From: Cambridge, UK
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 05-22-2002 03:07 PM

quote:
Do you close the curtins and play some intermission music during the lense change (like we do)? Or do you just have a very stort stretch of black film and change the lense and plate quickly?

The black is about 12 seconds, so we don't do anything other than close the douser on the lamp whilst we do it (and count to fifteen to allow for nerves).

John

| IP: Logged

Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 05-24-2002 12:55 AM

John P said:

>Of course, the "elegant" solution would be to use the scope image area with a 1.5X squeeze lens. <

John, this industry move far away from "elegant" a long, long time ago!

Frank

| IP: Logged

Philippe Laude
Film Handler

Posts: 79
From: Longueville, Belgium
Registered: Jul 99

posted 05-24-2002 01:13 AM

<John, this industry move far away from "elegant" a long, long time ago!>

Frank, what do you mean?

Philippe

| IP: Logged

David Favel
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 764
From: Ashburton, New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 05-24-2002 03:16 AM

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you close the curtins and play some intermission music during the lense change (like we do)? Or do you just have a very stort stretch of black film and change the lense and plate quickly?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just close the douser & do a super quick change.
3 seconds is my best, but I have been known to fumble.
Usually I ensure a rating cert is just before the feature so customers don't miss anything important.

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.