The Brutalist in Vistavision

[Jim Cassedy]

> The 35mm prints of the new NOSFERATU opening on Dec 25th will be in 1:66 too.
(So you know where I'll be spending my holiday. . . . )

We're running NICKEL BOYS in 36mm too, and that's in 1:33.
and then we've got more BRUTALIST shows in 1:66/70mm

(geez, our masking motor is getting a real work-out lately! )

[Sascha Roll]

Damn, this might be rather awful for us. Both our 1.85 and 1.66 are Spot-on according to PA35, so I guess we might have some windowboxing unless I find a suitable lens. (It's 77,5mm for 1.85 and 82,5mm for 1.66. Maybe a f=80mm might work).
Only movable sidemasking here.

> The 35mm prints of the new NOSFERATU opening on Dec 25th will be in 1:66 too.

NOSFERATU Starts 12/26 for us. 1.66?? Really? All the Trailer stuff was 1.85, didn't expect that.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Damn, this might be rather awful for us. Both our 1.85 and 1.66 are Spot-on according to PA35, so I guess we might have some windowboxing unless I find a suitable lens. (It's 77,5mm for 1.85 and 82,5mm for 1.66. Maybe a f=80mm might work).
Only movable sidemasking here.



NOSFERATU Starts 12/26 for us. 1.66?? Really? All the Trailer stuff was 1.85, didn't expect that.

Yeah it's not fun. If you don't score alternate lensing, I would expect your 1.66 lenses with the side masking kicked in would be the best compromise unless you have some 1.78 specific lensing. You'll expose the matt lines top and bottom and have a touch of letter boxing. Plates might be fine unless you have a lot of keystone cut into the 1.66 plates. To use 1.85 lenses/plates feels like chopping too much image to me. This is all assuming 35mm from that lab though. In theory there were going to be some US lab prints too, but they were not struck yet at the time of my festival screening.

[Steve Guttag]

Really? Underscanning frames? That's BS. It's real simple, in this day and age. Can you run 1.66? Yes, good, you get a print. No? You don't get a print until you get the right lenses and plates. It isn't like when 35mm was the norm. Then, yes, they made accommodations for flat/scope theatres. But, even then, on movies like The Wizard of Oz...if you had 1.37 lenses/plates, you got the IB-Tech prints...You don't have the lenses/plates? No problem, you get the ones that work with 1.85/Flat and use normal color stock.

In this DCinema world, if you want to be in the film presentation business, either get the equipment that works with the format or don't run it on film. It isn't like it is an arcane format like H8 was with UP-70...then, I understand the need for the studio to supply the odd lenses.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Really? Underscanning frames? That's BS. It's real simple, in this day and age. Can you run 1.66? Yes, good, you get a print. No? You don't get a print until you get the right lenses and plates. It isn't like when 35mm was the norm. Then, yes, they made accommodations for flat/scope theatres. But, even then, on movies like The Wizard of Oz...if you had 1.37 lenses/plates, you got the IB-Tech prints...You don't have the lenses/plates? No problem, you get the ones that work with 1.85/Flat and use normal color stock.

In this DCinema world, if you want to be in the film presentation business, either get the equipment that works with the format or don't run it on film. It isn't like it is an arcane format like H8 was with UP-70...then, I understand the need for the studio to supply the odd lenses.

For sure. I was all about adding the proper lensing before I knew it was undersized. The catch-22 is who pays for it when it is needed. I might have had some luck borrowing lenses, but the venue certainly wasn't going to spring for them unless they could charge it back to the festival, which didn't seem in the cards. And to your point, because we technically lacked 1.66 lenses, they shouldn't have even been considering it. But those decisions happen outside the booth unfortunately. Film-Tech was willing to send us some lenses if it had become needed, but does that cost gets passed to the studio etc?

[Sascha Roll]

Really? Underscanning frames? That's BS. It's real simple, in this day and age. Can you run 1.66? Yes, good, you get a print. No? You don't get a print until you get the right lenses and plates. It isn't like when 35mm was the norm. Then, yes, they made accommodations for flat/scope theatres. But, even then, on movies like The Wizard of Oz...if you had 1.37 lenses/plates, you got the IB-Tech prints...You don't have the lenses/plates? No problem, you get the ones that work with 1.85/Flat and use normal color stock.

In this DCinema world, if you want to be in the film presentation business, either get the equipment that works with the format or don't run it on film. It isn't like it is an arcane format like H8 was with UP-70...then, I understand the need for the studio to supply the odd lenses.

Exactly my thoughts.
Seems like the Same B.S. as with those undersized FotoKem 70mm prints "windowboxing" the actual image.

I shouldn't really be surprises thought, the 35mm prints of POOR THINGS were 1.66 pillarboxed inside 1.85... how to get the poorest Image out of film...

[Steve Guttag]

It shouldn't be a studio issue for running a 35mm show. Either you have the format or you don't. If you can beg/borrow equipment to satisfy the format, that's great but not the studio's concern.

[Ryan Gallagher]

There is also the caveat that, for example, Sascha HAS proper 1.66 lenses and plates. But the print is non standard. When they undersize like this it seems they are setting themselves up for some degree of poor presentation if the venues aren't able or willing to go the extra mile to accommodate these one-off situations.

If you are booked for a multi-week run, you should be willing/able I would hope, even if it is a headache. Those of us just showing an oddball once have to have the intended presentation/production-value vs cost battles with our respective financial entities, especially so for houses like mine that are only film 20% of the time, and only analog film 5% of that.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Exactly my thoughts.
Seems like the Same B.S. as with those undersized FotoKem 70mm prints "windowboxing" the actual image.

I shouldn't really be surprises thought, the 35mm prints of POOR THINGS were 1.66 pillarboxed inside 1.85... how to get the poorest Image out of film...

I think Steve's "BS" comment was about us considering under scanning the presentation on screen. ;-) Not a frustration aimed at the lab making the underscanned prints. haha.

I 100% agree with Steve had it been a proper 1.66 print. But when improper print sizing is in play, I think all bets are off and they get what they get knowing only the better hosues will be willing to acquire any lacking lenses and/or file new plates. We were willing to do both (short of buying), but only had to file plates in the end after checking our flat lenses were going to cause the intended image to use our max screen height.

[Brad Miller]

The 35mm prints coming out of Fotokem will be off of the same negative, so that's not going to magically fix the undersize issue. They will be the same undersized image.

Image sizing standards on 35mm (and 70mm) have been around for a long, long time and they exist for exactly this reason to prevent bad presentations. If the person at the lab making a digital-out negative/print has never worked as a projectionist, they likely have no idea what sort of madness they are creating when they treat film aspect ratios as a "container" and ignore the standards of which every theater follows.

[Phillip Grace]

Looking at the picture Ryan posted of the 35mm alignment chart. What are the producers thinking? Both our theatres are set up to screen 35mm in 1.66, 1.75 and 1.85 ratios according to standard and correctly masked - no problem. It beggars belief to think that the film makers or their lab would deliberately create something like this, which flaunts long established industry standards, and expect it to be taken seriously. Are they reinventing the wheel, or designing the emperor's new clothes?
As exhibitors we have already gone to considerable effort and expense to keep faith with the industry. I hardly think it is reasonable to expect additional expenditure to screen this one production on 35mm for the limited lifetime it will have before it, along with its print inventory and its non-standard image area, slip into history.
On the other hand, 70mm exhibition from a large format negative is worth a little extra effort, from both technical and business points of view. If the image fills the full height of the 5-perf 70mm aperture I would be more than happy to file the aperture plates and adjust the masking stops.

[Scotty Wright]

he did
mention that there were IMAX® prints going into circulation

thats very exciting news. Would be quite the win for such a relatively small indie production too.

IMAX is having a busy December; the Interstellar rerelease right now, and 4 new releases. The brutalist would be the 5th unless it’s sometime in January.

come to think of it, how would this even work in IMAX? Those platters are limited to 3hrs with Oppenheimer. Unless it’s a special event where they build in time for re-lacing but then that throws off the intermission.

[Scotty Wright]

The 35mm prints coming out of Fotokem will be off of the same negative, so that's not going to magically fix the undersize issue. They will be the same undersized image.

Image sizing standards on 35mm (and 70mm) have been around for a long, long time and they exist for exactly this reason to prevent bad presentations. If the person at the lab making a digital-out negative/print has never worked as a projectionist, they likely have no idea what sort of madness they are creating when they treat film aspect ratios as a "container" and ignore the standards of which every theater follows.

Do you know why the undersizing happens? It seems to be specific to films digitally mastered that then receive film outs, but even then it seems to be Fotokem’s standard for handling those types of prints.

[Jim Cassedy]

We should probably start another thread for the NOSFERATU aspect ratio mess!

I just got off the phone from someone who had been preparing the prints, and
according to what I was told, the NOSFERATU DCP's are FLAT_166. OK?
BUT for some friggin' reason, the 35mm prints are printed 1:66 in 1:78. (??!!!)
They tried a test run in 1:85 at the Chinese Theater in LA, and one of the problems
is that, specifically in Reel 1, there are some superimposed subtitles at both the
bottom AND the top of the screen, which may be difficult to frame at many venues.
And if you run with the proper 1:66 lenses and plates, your image will be undersized.

And to make things more fun, it seems that the distributor wants to hold off shipping
the prints until the very last minute- -which may make having time to do a proper set
up almost impossible at some venues. I just spent over an hour very early Saturday
morning aligning my JJ's and masking perfectly for 35mm/1:66 after converting them
back from the 70mm (also 1:66) BRUTALIST show last week. I've never run a 35mm
@1:66 since I started working here, and I was rather pleased with the end result
when I was done after tweaking the masking pre-set and re-filing a corner of one
aperture plate. But now- - it really doesn't matter, since the picture will be undersized
anyway, unless I can come up with lenses a few mm shorter focal length by Xmas,
which isn't very likely . I have no idea why they decided to 'print down' to this size,
other than the fact that Ive always been of the opinion that most distributors "don't
know their aspects from their elbows". Geez!!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Full frame in a VistaVision camera is 1:66, So I suspect they were out to utilize all the acreage VV offers...