Heads up - Jurassic World weird ass aspect ratio

[Mike Blakesley]

So we have tiny black bars at the top of bottom plus our usual pillarbox on the sides like we always have for flat films. It looks OK but it would sure look better if it was in scope.

Nobody has said anything yet -- I like to think it's because our audiences are accustomed to our presentations being excellent and they know it's the best it can be. (Maybe I'm delusional!)

I don't quite understand the POINT of it though, is it something to do with Imax needing a taller picture than a scope image?

[Steve Guttag]

Mike, way back on the original Jurassic Park with Steven Spielberg, he declared that he wanted the 1.85:1 ratio to allow the dinosaurs to look taller. This way, when there is a dino on screen, there wouldn't be all of this vastness on either side to make them look smaller. I'm sure part of it also was if you have a larger frame, you have to fill it and CGI back then was cutting edge and every pixel was expensive.

This is where the Flat ratio for Jurassic was born. The 2.00:1 is a more recent thing (the previous episode also used it) to make it a little wider.

What you can do (and what we do in our Scope screen theatres) is to zoom the lens a little so it fills the screen top and bottom, which allows the width to be a little wider. You can certainly do likewise. Screen Shot 2022-06-12 at 9.25.56 PM.png

[Leo Enticknap]

That's what I did for the (common height) screen I was servicing on Thursday. The result is a new lens position file and screen file. I then made copies of the existing 2-D scope and 3-D scope macros, put those new lens and screen files into them, and called the resulting macros F-200 2-D and F-200 3-D. This place was playing the 2-D version for some shows and 3-D for others, so I needed to do both.

[Carsten Kurz]

Actually, 'Jurassic World' (2015) was 2.0:1, while 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' (2018) was 2.39:1. There were rumours that the 2.0:1 choice for the first was a compromise between Spielberg, who opted for flat again for known reasons, and director Trevorrow, who preferred scope for the action part.

I don't care if they choose a third major aspect ratio like 2.0:1. As long as they indicate it properly and not publicly advise cinemas to show it with their flat preset.

- Carsten

[Jim Cassedy]

Hold on to your hats! I did a preview of the upcoming "Marcel The Shell" recently,
and it's "F-155" ! Have fun with that one!

Also, somebody shared an e-mail with me sent out by a major US theater chain last
week advising all their locations that the Jurassic DCP was mislabeled telling all their
theaters that it should played be using their SCOPE macro. Some time over the
weekend they reversed that edict- - so aotta people may or may not have seen it
in the "correct' ratio over the weekend.

[Steve Guttag]

Here's the thing with oddball formats like F-155 or F-210 (Netflix). NOBODY but screening rooms will play them that way. You'll get the flat preset and however it its the screen is what you'll get. This may be sufficient in this masking-less world. But we're not supporting the odd formats during installations nor planning masking systems around them.

[Jim Cassedy]

Harold Wrote: " My wife's parents used to watch TV in "fat mode."
A couple of years ago I was on several hour flight and I happened to notice that the guy sitting
next to me was watching a movie on his i-pad in the wrong aspect ratio. Once I noticed that, I
couldn't "un-see" it, and knowing that it was wrong made me squirm in my seat & hyperventilate
for the rest of the trip. It was horrible. I wanted to grab the guys I-pad & scream HOW CAN YOU
SIT THERE WATCHING THAT? - -and then make it right, but I didn't want to make a scene.

[Marcel Birgelen]

My wife's parents used to watch TV in "fat mode." To fill the screen, everyone looked fat.

Some more modern TVsets had an advanced-fat-mode. That would stretch the left and right edges of the image more than the center. So, if you had a bunch of people standing in a row, those in the center would look pretty normal and those closer to the edges would look "extra wide".

I'm wondering when I get the first call asking to enable the "stretch-to-fit" mode on their projector, so there are no more "black bars" on screen...
Maybe future servers and/or projectors should offer an option to fill up the black bars with a blurred version of the original image, like what they often do on TV when they're showing some clips from some of those horrible cellphone videos that were filmed in a 9:16 AR......

[Steve Guttag]

Well...

The "Letterbox" mode on the ICP, which is normally checked, allows the sides of the container to define the image...unticking that will allow the top/bottom to define it and effectively zoom the image out. One, if they know what they are doing, can also change the input dimensions and allow for scaling. Combine that with the anamorphic factor and all sorts of fun can be had. Not so much with Barco S4 as they have not figured out the anamorphic factor but with the input and offset you can manipulate the image some.

[Marco Giustini]

I still remember ages ago servicing a 35mm machine where scope was massively cropped on the sides. When I enquired I was told that the architect didn’t want to see black bars so screen were all flat and filled with image in all formats

[Leo Enticknap]

Hold on to your hats! I did a preview of the upcoming "Marcel The Shell" recently,
and it's "F-155" ! Have fun with that one!

Which is as near as makes no difference VistaVision, or an old school 35mm (still images) slide show.

Here's the thing with oddball formats like F-155 or F-210 (Netflix). NOBODY but screening rooms will play them that way.

During my Egyptian days I worked a show of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was followed by a Q & A with Wes Anderson. One of the questioners asked why he shot it in a mixture of 1.37 and something else (can't remember which), to which he replied that digital cinema makes that artistic choice possible when previously it wouldn't have been (actually it has been done pre-digital, e.g. The Horse Whisperer). What he didn't understand was that just because it's easier and cheaper to create a new macro/preset than it is to buy a new lens (or lenses, for a changeover setup) and cut a new plate(s), it's not free, and you're average cookie cutter 'plex still isn't going to do it. I'm guessing that the only theaters he regularly visits are high end screening rooms, permanently staffed by projectionists who have the time and the skills to set up new presets/macros without any problem. At the theater I encountered Jurassic Park last week, I was only able to create a F-200 macro for one of the three houses in which it was playing, because I was out of time before shows started in the others and my schedule does not allow me to get back there this week. So the others are playing it letterboxed. That is what happens in the real world.

Now we have Netflix trying to impose 2.0:1 as a new standard, presumably as the result of similar thinking.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So, did he, Wes Anderson, actually expect cinemas to adjust their masking and possibly zoom-level on-the-fly while his movie flipped through one of the many ARs it was shot in?
Changing masking as fast as he flips between A.R.s... the only system I've ever seen doing that was a Disney attraction about the history of film, but even there, the movie itself nobody dared to touch the lens during the presentation itself.

The "Letterbox" mode on the ICP, which is normally checked, allows the sides of the container to define the image...unticking that will allow the top/bottom to define it and effectively zoom the image out. One, if they know what they are doing, can also change the input dimensions and allow for scaling. Combine that with the anamorphic factor and all sorts of fun can be had. Not so much with Barco S4 as they have not figured out the anamorphic factor but with the input and offset you can manipulate the image some.

Yeah, practically all "classic" ICP-driven models should be able to "stretch-to-fit", simply by playing with the anamorphic factor... but let's not go further down that way, we may set an unexpected precedent...

[Jim Cassedy]

DCP-O-MATIC™ is going to have to add a few additional aspect ratios to its' library.
(said with with some amount of sarcasm- - but would have come in handy for two recent events)

[Carsten Kurz]

DCP-o-matic aspect ratio handling has changed completely with the current 2.15/2.16 release.

[Randy Stankey]

I still remember ages ago servicing a 35mm machine where scope was massively cropped on the sides. When I enquired I was told that the architect didn’t want to see black bars so screen were all flat and filled with image in all formats

I had a similar thing happen at a theater in North Carolina.
The difference was that the masking was manual, hung on a traveler track that had to be adjusted by going into the auditorium and pulling ropes. People were too freakin' lazy to go down and change the masking... What? Once or twice a week? They even had the right lenses in the projectors!

Their excuse was that they didn't know how to make the curtains line up with the edges of the picture. Instead, they cut new aperture plates to crop the picture to match the flat masking.

Yeah, that was one of the first things I fixed after I was put in charge of that theater.
I cut new plates for the projectors then put black and red spike marks on the draw ropes. If you wanted flat masking, you would pull the ropes until the two black strips of electrical tape lined up. If you wanted scope, you would line up the two red ones.

Even after all that, I would still go to that theater and occasionally find the masking pulled to one red and one black spike mark or even somewhere, half way between.

C'Mon! Spiking your pull ropes is one of the oldest tricks in the book! I learned it working on stage crew in the eighth grade!

There is no other excuse except that people are lazy and would rather stand there and lie about it.