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Author Topic: Halloween (1978) looked terrible in Digital Imax Travis Bumgarner Film Handler Posts: 1 From: Frederick, MD, US Registered: Sep 2015 posted 10-30-2015 01:40 AM                    I was embarressed for everyone there and angry. I've never seen a more washed out/terrible image at the movie theater until this Digital 2D Imax experience. This is also my first Digital Imax viewing, so I don't know if this is the typical experience. The night scenes were very bright gray (as if you cranked the brightness very high on your TV) with almost no shadow detail. The actors faces during outside night scenes were gray and void of color. During the day the skintones were still sucked of color but weren't as gray. The bark of the trees in the scene when we first see Laurie were completely gray instead of a deep brown that's found in the bluray version (same exact transfer that this Halloween DCP is using). The entire film was very close to being monochrome by just a few shades. Gray permiated the entire image giving everything a dull sickly look. I'm sure this terrible experience was because of the 2 Christie 2K projectors setup producing far too much light for the screen size, combined with the painted screen that's optimized to brighten dim Imax 3D showings. The screen wasn't even that much bigger than the typical 40 foot wide multiplex screens. Using 2 digital projectors on a 2D showing is absolutely insane.  |  IP: Logged Mark Strube Master Film Handler Posts: 322 From: Milwaukee, WI, United States Registered: Feb 2007 posted 10-30-2015 02:44 AM                        Oh good... so this is why Halloween wasn't available to book for us this season.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 10-30-2015 12:29 PM                     We had a theatre recently book one of the Halloweens...it was mastered back in 2007 and would not play on a DCI compliant system. Anything mastered before 2010 (and more so earlier it was mastered) seems to be a bit of the wild-west as they were figuring out the standards. The newer systems/designs seem to be more susceptible since they never were designed to contend with "vintage" pre-dci content.  |  IP: Logged Barry Floyd Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1079 From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 10-30-2015 01:48 PM                        We played it last year at Halloween with a double feature of Rocky Horror. Licensing came through "Specticast Entertainment" or something like that for Halloween. We didn't have any issues regarding playback, and the colors looked right on our screen. What shocked me the most about the booking was that there was "NO KEY REQUIRED" to play the feature. Pretty much, once you had it on your server it "could" be played forever. If I had a mass storage device that I could have moved the file to I probably would have, but since my GDC servers like a little breathing room on the hard drives, I ended up deleting it this past spring when we reopened.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 10-30-2015 04:26 PM                     The recent 35th anniversary Blu-ray had a Dean Cundey approved transfer and it looks, to my eyes, wonderful. The color timing is very similar to the old Criterion LaserDisc, which was terrific for its time. Before this Blu-ray, there was another that was poorly timed and had lots of DNR. Hopefully the DCPs floating around aren't sourced from that master. For those that went, what was the audio like? The Blu-ray had a 5.1 remix that sucks, and an original mono track that was nothing more than a fold down of the remix. I've taken the liberty of syncing the Blu-ray with the PCM track from the LaserDisc with excellent results. AJG  |  IP: Logged Jeffry L. Johnson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 809 From: Cleveland, Ohio, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 10-31-2015 10:02 AM                        Why are you blaming Imax? Wasn't this a Fathom event? There are numerous complaints about the poor quality of the Fathom presentation. Halloween Fathom event web page  |  IP: Logged Dave Macaulay Film God Posts: 2321 From: Toronto, Canada Registered: Apr 2001 posted 10-31-2015 10:26 AM                     Seems like a bad decision to play a non-IMAX show on an IMAX screen. Would you complain that Christie systems suck because a terrible transfer looked like sh!t on a Christie? I see a lot of whining here that the IMAX 3D digital systems are not anywhere near equal to IMAX 15/70 projection. This can hardly be a surprise to anyone! For several reasons seeing a movie in an IMAX digital house is usually better than the non-IMAX room beside it. Mostly it's quality control, the IMAX system calibrates itself every day and calls home for service if problems are discovered. Many cinemas do rare or no QC checks and rely on 6 month maintenance alone to find and handle issues. Customer complaints usually come in when the situation is already unacceptable. IMAX maintenance standards are very high and their tech will usually only be doing one system at a time... work naturally can get sloppy when someone is servicing all the systems in a multiplex over a few nights.  |  IP: Logged Mark Lensenmayer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1605 From: Upper Arlington, OH Registered: Sep 1999 posted 10-31-2015 05:57 PM                     I thought that IMAX only allowed the use of both projectors on IMAX specific product. Trailers and other content not for IMAX is shown on only one projector in all of the installations I have seen. HALLOWEEN was not IMAX specific.  |  IP: Logged Eric Dachman Film Handler Posts: 1 From: Los Angeles, CA Registered: Nov 2015 posted 11-02-2015 12:08 PM                     Hi, Travis. We would like to look into this further. Can you send us an email to with details of the date, location, and time you went to the IMAX theatre? Thanks.  |  IP: Logged

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