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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: 70MM STAR WARS ROGUE ONE
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Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler
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Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted 10-16-2016 08:08 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson I was about to call 2K DCP "TV quality," but 3.8K UHDTV sets have taken over the electronics stores. I still think the Ultra HD Blu-ray format launch has been a joke. It seems like the prevailing majority of all UHD BD titles are fake 4K releases, bullshitted up from 2K sources. I would use the term "uprez," but bullshitted seems much more appropriate.
I think you're being way too hard on the UHD Blu Ray releases. The resolution is in most cases a phantom gain (although a controlled upscale at mastering is probably better than the real-time upscaling in UHD displays); but don't forget we're also getting a superior video compression codec, expanded color space and on many titles HDR.
quote: Bobby Henderson BTW, I'll be shocked if there are any 70mm prints made for this movie release. Chances are there won't be any point to it. The only way there would be a point to it is if the production actually rendered a higher resolution 6K digital intermediate and preserved the 2.76:1 imagery captured by the Arri Alexa and UP70 lenses.
I think you are correct. I no longer have any inside information, but Disney as a studio is pretty much all-in on D-Cinema and I don't see them supporting any film other than a handful of 35mm prints where necessary.
Warner Bros. will continue to support 70mm film, in part because of their relationship with Christopher Nolan. IMAX, WB and Nolan have a mutual agreement to keep 15/70mm IMAX alive, and that pact serves as life support for Kodak and the film lab to keep the ecosystem up and running. The occasional 5/70 release serves to keep the machinery humming on standby so it can be revved up for the release of Dunkirk.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
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Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 10-17-2016 09:56 AM
The agreement between Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. probably explains why there will be a limited run of 5/70mm prints for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and why there was a limited run of 5/70mm prints for Batman vs. Superman. Side note: HBO has been playing I Am Legend lately; I thought it was funny that movie from 9 years ago had a huge Batman vs. Superman billboard rendered into a deserted Times Square of the future. Maybe the movie was in "development hell" for a really long time.
I think 70mm print production equipment could be humming a lot better if movie studios would bother keeping the top end resolution of new d-cinema camera systems intact rather than down-sampling or cropping the imagery to 4K or 2K. Red, Sony and Arri all have camera systems that go well beyond 4K. The studios are still hell-bent on selling 3D, regardless of 3D being all but dead in home theater. 3D releases also have a nasty habit of dumbing a movie down to 2K resolution.
quote: Mike Schulz I just hope we can get a 4K Dolby Vision release this time. Most of the people I work with were NOT happy with every version of E7 being released at 2K. If you're capturing with either 5/65 film or Alexa65 cameras, WTF is the point if you're going to master the thing at 2K?
My guess would be that it's all about saving money. Supposedly the new laser-based projection systems in Dolby Cinema theaters and IMAX with Laser locations can do dual projector 4K 3D. AMC now has 29 locations with a Dolby Cinema screen. IMAX has 15 laser-based locations in North America. That's not very many screens to justify quadrupling the render time, bandwidth and storage space needed for 4K 3D versus 2K 3D. And the movie studios and theaters are still getting the same high ticket price money for those movies even if they're only rendered in 2K.
I think the studios are also counting on people to still be bowled over by that "digital" buzz word even though there's no real selling point for "digital" anymore. Almost all forms of audio-video entertainment are being sold or presented in some kind of digital format, save for exceptions like vinyl LPs. They're counting on the general public to continue ignoring details, such as native resolution levels, audio format, compression levels, etc. The "digital" buzz word is enough as far as they're concerned.
quote: Daniel Schulz I think you're being way too hard on the UHD Blu Ray releases. The resolution is in most cases a phantom gain (although a controlled upscale at mastering is probably better than the real-time upscaling in UHD displays); but don't forget we're also getting a superior video compression codec, expanded color space and on many titles HDR.
Unfortunately UHD and "4K" (3.8K really) is the big selling point for the Ultra HD Blu-ray format. Most of the titles are not delivering on that point. They don't really look noticeably better than their 1080p Blu-ray counterparts. HDR only seems to pay off well with animated movies or movies that bother to include brilliant color in the imagery. So many movies are heavily color graded with a bent on desaturation.
If it seems like I'm being harshly critical of the Ultra-HD Blu-ray format I'm only doing so for its sake. If the movie studios want this format to survive they're going to have to do a hell of a lot better with its supply of titles. With the studios releasing so many fake 4K titles on this format it's as if they want to deliberately sabotage the format in favor of selling virtual copies of movies via downloads or streaming. I don't think the sell-through market for downloads and streaming is all that great, not with so many people happy to just wait until a movie to shows up in their Netflix queue.
I think there's a pretty big difference between native UHD material and 1080p material, when the imagery is photographed well. The Revenant is one of the few stand-out titles on the Ultra HD Blu-ray format that really looks ultra high def. The movie had a lot of deep depth of field shots, some taken with the Arri Alexa 65 and 6K Red Epic Dragon. For movies with shallow depth of field the resolution increase won't be so obvious, especially if the focus is softened slightly to hide flaws in actors' faces.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 10-18-2016 01:16 PM
Hey Bobby, the reason why films are "finished" in 2 or 4k is all about time and money. "Finishing" is generally a rushed process and the time it takes to render everything at 4k vs 2k, is actually not worth it for most studio's. Even on big movies with plenty of money, they still render everything out at 2k in most cases. I remember Sony bragging a few years ago about rendering everything in 4k for some stupid superhero movie. Yet Nolan has been rendering his effects/cleanup shots in 8k for three movies now.
The other unfortunate side note is that MOST movies are shot with sub 4k cameras. Arri's Alexa has only 3.2k worth of active pixels. This means, almost all Alexa shows are finished at 2k, which is just a generic thing to do with that camera. Yes it's true the Arri 65 is 6k, but very few people have been able to afford the rental fee. With the Bayer pattern color issues, most finishing experts would rather down-res to help fill in the missing red and blue channels.
Of course, 4 perf 35mm camera negative can deliver upwards of 5k. It can also be scanned with pure R G B raw signal, no bayer pattern associated. So what comes out of a film scanner, already has the appropriate FULL RGB color space and greater resolution then any digital projection system on the market today. 5 perf 65mm camera negative has around 8k of resolution, so you can imagine how easy it is to make that look even better.
So these are the reasons why we still see movies finished in 2k and 4k. It's the technology gap we have today and honestly, I don't see it changing anytime soon. It's a real shame to be printing all these 70mm movies from 4k digital masters, HALF the resolution of the display format.
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Tyler Purcell
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 180
From: Van Nuys, CA
Registered: Dec 2015
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posted 10-19-2016 01:03 AM
Couldn't agree with you more. Cinema's today, offer LESS then they have in the recent past. With 4k screens at home and UHD distribution for home devices, theaters no longer have the resolution hype they've had in the past. Projection companies have scrambled and thrown together HDR and "laser" projection solutions, but they all have the same issues as normal DLP projection; limited on resolution and a fixed pixel grid which is clearly visible when watching. Other gimmicks like the worthless digital IMAX system, Dolby Vision - which doesn't look good - and as you pointed out ATMOS, which you can clearly tell the speakers on the ceiling sound totally different then the one's on the side, which sound totally different then the one's behind the screen. What a friggen' joke!
Every year prior to 2010, I use to watch upwards of 4 movies at the theater a month. After 2010, things started going down hill. It went to 3, then 2 and now I struggle to watch 5 movies a year! It's not just the horrible presentation systems which are no different then my DLP projector system at home. It's also the content, which has become less and less interesting. Movies today are overly safe, making them pretty boring for a filmmaker like myself, who is interested in seeing something good, not just a way to waste time on a friday night. The high price tag also doesn't help things, but I have money, so it doesn't "hinder" me from going. I'd gladly pay $20 for a decent movie, shot and projected properly. The general public feel the same way, hence the studio's profits continuing to increase since the recession. The one number the studio's don't tell anyone is attendance, which has been down every year since the recession. In fact, outside of the two or three tent pole blockbusters each year, where people may see the movie multiple times, "unique" theater visits are at their lowest in several decades, according to a recent report I read earlier this year on 2015.
We all know the high ticket prices only exist thanks to the gimmicks theaters offer. Theaters have to buy that equipment, so I understand their desire to charge more. Yet, most of the money they gather, goes right back to the studio's, whom again, have HUGE profits. So in their mind, what they're doing is OK, but it's the death of cinema as we know it. All it will take is another financial melt down, which is coming very fast and the Wanda group will probably be looking for a buyer and once that happens, say good bye to the local multiplex. It really kills me to think multiple Chinese companies own the vast majority of theaters in this country.
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