Digital Cinema on 35mm: And you thought Super35 was bad..... (1 Viewer)

[Scott H]

At least that's what David Tattersal and the ILM guys say in the little documentary about filming in digital that was posted on the Star Wars website. Even Tattersal had to admit the huge lenses did make the cameras a bit unwieldy. But at the end of the docu he mentioned that Panavision had a new lense set coming out that was half as long and that they were hoping to use it for Ep3.

I am not familiar with the doc you reference, and certainly do not intend to speak for Mr. Tattersal, but it's very likely that his comments pertain to early production on SWE2 when they only had two or three lenses to work with, the primary one being the 11:1 zoom. It is certainly conspicuous, weighing in just under 30 pounds if I recall correctly. There are now more compact 4.5:1 zooms that can cover the 9.5-105mm that the large 11:1 did: a 6-27mm and a 25-112mm, plus six primes.
On a related note, I'm headed out the door for some HD happenings... When you see the VH-1 Crossroads with Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow, it was shot tonight

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Great thread Jeff, I couldn't agree more! The presentation I saw had grain out the wazzoo in a lot of scenes.
I don't know if this has been brought up yet (it's late and don't have time to read the whole thread right now), but does anyone else feel that it's pretty pointless to produce a film completly on digital tape if only a small handful of people are actually going to see it that way? And the rest of us who do not have access to a digital facility have to watch a mediocre presentaiton?
Way to hold up them THX standards their George! THX to me is supposed to guarentee fine quality, I did not get that here, so apparently his high THX standards are only going to apply to his films when veiewd digitally, to hell with the rest!?
Sorry, but what other message am I supposed to take from this?
In my opnion Lucas should have waited for 'EP III' to do this and given more time for more theaters to upgrade.

 

[Chris Harvey]

While I generally agree with your sentiment, Lucas fully expected far more theatres to be digital-ready by 2002 -- he's stated as much in interviews.

 

[Guy Martin]

Scott-
Here's a link to the short (about 5 minutes) documentary I mentioned (quicktime required):
http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/v...g/making1.html
- Guy

 

[Damin J Toell]

I don't know if this has been brought up yet (it's late and don't have time to read the whole thread right now), but does anyone else feel that it's pretty pointless to produce a film completly on digital tape if only a small handful of people are actually going to see it that way? And the rest of us who do not have access to a digital facility have to watch a mediocre presentaiton?

Well, having seen both, i'd call the film projection the "better" presentation. Of course, I had perfect seats on opening day for the film projection, while my seats for the digital projection the following Saturday were much closer. On close inspection, the vertical scan lines of digital projection made it look pretty bad. And it's not as if somehow the film version is grainier; the video noise people are calling "grain" is also very much present in the digital version, it's just less noticeable due to the choppiness of the projection. I find it ironic every time someone complains about the video noise defects in the film prints as if it's proof that digital projection is superior to film; those defects are due to the way it was filmed, not the way it gets shown. The problem is that the higher resolution of film makes these defects more obvious; the source of that problem lies in the lower resolution of digital video.

If you've been unable to see a digital projection of the film, don't get too angry over it, as you're not missing very much. The lack of film defects (scratches, cigarettes burns, reel changes, etc.) is nice, but not quite enough. Perhaps I need to see it in DLP again while sitting further away, but I shouldn't have to force myself to see less detail in order to enjoy it more. Digital projection may be the savior of filmmaking, but it's not there just yet.

DJ

 

[Michael Nelson]

On Monday I saw AOTC projected digitaly in San Jose,CA. It was disappointing. The image was soft, dim, and the black level too high. Worst of all, I could see blurring due to motion on more than one occasion. The fact that I sould see these things is disturbing as I don't have a terribly discerning eye.

Is it possible that the projector wasn't calibrated correctly? If not, it seems that digital projection has a way to go before it can compare with real film.

As I'll undoubtedly be dragged to the movie at least one more time, I'll have to make sure I see it projected traditionally. Maybe the problems I noticed were due to the source material and not the fault of the projections system.

 

[Ray Chuang]

Speaking of Roger Ebert--
One thing Ebert advocates to ensure the future of film is going from 24 frames per second to 48 frames per second, plus special stabilization on the film projector to ensure you don't get jittering during film playback.
The problem with this new system is 1) projector tolerances will be much tighter, which means projectionists will have to be better-trained to handle this new type of projector and 2) the cost of film is going to be steep since a 35 mm reel that now holds 20 minutes of film can now hold only ten minutes of film.
(Which does remind me: didn't director Douglas Trumbull work on a 60 frames per second movie projector system during the 1980's? The name of the system he worked on escapes me....)

 

[RobertR]

That would be the Showscan system, Ray.

SHOWSCAN SPECIFICATIONS:

Camera aperture – 2.072 in. (52.6mm) x 0.906 in. (23.01mm)

Rate of film travel – 60 frames per sec. or 281.25 ft. per min.

Film size – 65mm, 5 perforations per frame KS .1866 pitch

Projector aperture – 2.052 in. (52.12mm) x 0.886 in. (22.50mm)

Film size – 70mm, 5 perforations per frame KS .1870

Sounds a hell of a lot more impressive than anything Lucas is playing with.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Sounds yummy! All for it!

 

[Jean-Michel]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here (or I haven't been looking hard enough) is that Lucas did a lot of zooming in in post-production to change the composition of certain shots (turning a medium or even a long shot into a close-up, for example). I read somewhere that one shot was zoomed in 250 times (which sounds iffy to me -- I would think that would render the image totally unusable), which is an extreme example, but anything but the most moderate zooming would probably result in significantly larger amounts of "grain."

 

[Kevin Coleman]

You are right Jean-Michel,
I don't think that could be true because the resolution of the camera is way too low for that type of thing.
Kevin C.

 

[Ray Chuang]

RobertR,

I saw a Showscan projection in Japan during Expo '85--it was on a very large screen.

Wow--it was very sharp and the color quality was just absolutely amazing. However, I thought the idea wouldn't go very far due to the very high projector and film costs.

 

[Scott H]

I believe that comparing the SWE2 DLP presentation to the film presentation is flawed. You would have to compare the DLP presentation to film origination on DLP. Or compare the same film origination project as both DLP and film projection. The film prints of SWE2 are limited by the HD acquisition for live action, and the rendering resolution (and effects quality) for the rest, thus lower resolution than what you are used to seeing projected. In other words, the good film prints are likely more revealing of the flaws of SWE2 than the DLP is, thus it probably looks best on DLP.

There are three issues here: origination (film or HD), film projection, DLP. HD on film is generally limited by HD acquisition. Film on DLP is generally limited by DLP. Etc.

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Just to chime in here...
I saw AOTC on Thursday night at The Paramount in Toronto, in the Festival Hall, the big THX theatre, on film. I sat about 3/4 of the way back. During the film I noticed some shots seemed slightly soft, and ocassionally I felt the contrast was too low or the black wasn't deep or rich enough.
I saw the film again on Monday afternoon at the Winston Churchill AMC in Mississauga, in theatre 13, DLP, which has a new TI projector, installed for AOTC. I ended up in the front row.

Also, it seemed that whenever there was a bright background or backlit scene, I could very easily see that the border between foreground and background objects was not a smooth curve.

This was my primary complaint. It was most noticeable to me on the subtitles and in the final shot of the film, with the sun rimlighting Anakin and Padme.
What I was really surprised about, though, was the contrast range. I expected the black to be weak, to block up near maximum, and for the whites to block up and blow out. They absolutely did not! I was quite pleasantly surprised to see a rich yet detailed black and a bright, clean white that had detail.
I didn't notice video noise at either showing, but I also was not looking for it.
Streetcred ( ): by day I run a photographic lab where our primary business is large format digital printing, mostly from transparencies. I do a whole lotta scanning and manipulating.

 

[Derek Miner]

The film prints of SWE2 are limited by the HD acquisition for live action, and the rendering resolution (and effects quality) for the rest, thus lower resolution than what you are used to seeing projected. In other words, the good film prints are likely more revealing of the flaws of SWE2 than the DLP is, thus it probably looks best on DLP.

I'll venture to disagree with that, mainly due to the resolution issue I mentioned above with DLP. The resolution of the acquisition image is going to fall between the resolutions of film and DLP projection. I mean, if I had a digital audio recording at CD resolution, would it be better represented by pressing it to vinyl or by compressing it into an MP3?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

One thing Ebert advocates to ensure the future of film is going from 24 frames per second to 48 frames per second, plus special stabilization on the film projector to ensure you don't get jittering during film playback.

Ah yes, but does DLP already have the potential for 60 fps? So couldn't digital easily match it? Only problem would be bigger harddrives to store the movie.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Mark said this on page 1

It had been a week and a half since I saw this as projected film, but I saw AOTC in DLP Saturday. While it didn't have the problem of dirt or scratches, I can't say that I was blown away. At some times edges were too sharp, if you follow, especially when text came on screen. DLP seemed brighter, but I don't know that I noticed more detail in the picture.

I agree after seeing the DLP at McClurg's. I could see jaggies on the text crawl at the beginning and what I thought was softness on the film in the opening Fox and Lucas logos was the same on DLP.

I saw nothing to make me seek out DLP again at this point. I would not avoid it either though.

I couldn't tell if the brightness was just up, or perhaps the saturation. I did think there was less "grain/video noise" in the scene were R2D2 is watching over Padme sleeping. The blacks seemed a bit gray too.

Digital is a cheaper option, and digital projection is also a "cheaper" option (in terms of delivering the film to theaters, etc). But it's no replacement for film as far as I can tell.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I mean, if I had a digital audio recording at CD resolution, would it be better represented by pressing it to vinyl or by compressing it into an MP3?

Actually wouldn't the better comparison be to ask would it be better represented by sampling at twice the original rate or 2/3 the original rate.

With the 2/3 rate the source flaws become overshadowed by the lower sampling flaws, while higher sampling would seem to allow the limits to show through.

Example - thinks of a electronic sound wave. Now what if it peaks out at 10V and has a bunch of nasty noise at the top of the curve.

If my output only allows up to 8V then the curve clips before I get to the noise so that the clipping overshadows and hides the real noise. But if I have a better output that can handle up to 15V then suddenly the real noise shows up.

If the clipping is something more "pleasant" like a smoothing filter effect then you hide the noise without drawing attention to the alteration (as much). So there might be a tendancy to think of the the 15V system as making it sound worse while it's really just showing all of the original source that the 8V system is hiding.

 

[Derek Miner]

That's a better way of putting it, Seth. However I did use vinyl as part of the analogy because, like film, it is an analog format.

But I still think the loss of resolution with the DLP is more distracting than anything I saw in the 35mm presentation.

 

[Ron-P]

Just saw it today in DLP and it was outstanding. No jaggies, colors were excellent, very clean picture. My only grip was the black level was too high and the dark scenes had very little detail. Other than that, I was very impressed with the DLP presentation.
In a week or so, I shall return and check out a showing in film so I might compare the two.
Peace Out~