MGM Camera 65 & Ultra-Panavision (1 Viewer)

[Jon Lidolt]

Now that Warners has announced that all of their upcoming classic releases will soon be available day and date on standard DVD as well as on Blu-ray, maybe they could reconsider how their Ultra-Panavision & MGM Camera 65 titles are handled.

I realize that certain members of the Home Theater Forum want these films to be transferred at their full 2.76:1 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, this results in a very narrow image on a standard TV set, and it doesn't look that much better on a 50 or 60" widescreen set. Not to mention that many of us simply can't afford a bigger screen.

Please keep in mind that these films were all shot with cropping in mind. Even during their first runs in high-end 70mm theatres, many cinemas couldn't handle this extreme ratio and had to crop the image to fit their screens.

When these films went into general 35mm release in 2.35:1 scope, many theatres cropped the picture even more. A 2:1 picture was, and still is, displayed in some theatres. To top it all, the current 70mm edition of Ben-Hur has been printed in the standard 2.2:1 ratio. Is anyone complaining?

Why not provide 2 versions of these films on one DVD? One in 2.76:1 and an alternative version in 2.35:1 or at the very least in 2.55:1? It's a good bet that more copies would sell, since many people find the extremely narrow picture a real turnoff.

 

[mike kaminski]

Because theres no market for a cropped version thats still significantly letterboxed.

 

[Mark Anthony]

There is a thread about Vittorio Storaro and "the last emperor" a few thread's down in which there are a significant number of people annoyed that this, and all of his other works, "including apocalypse now", are cropped from around 2.35:1 to 2:1 on home video. Cropping UP 70/MGM 65 even from 2.76:1 to 2.35:1 is loosing exactly the same amount of info, ie quite a bit.

In the case of Mr Storaro it's his film, he painted it with light and if he wants to chop of a portion of it, fine. But in the case of ben hur, fall of the roman empire and many other's the cinematographer's and directors are long gone. So asking an arbitrary telecine operator and archivist to crop .35 from ben-hur is a bit like asking david hockney which bit of the last supper shall we chop off. Ie it's his opinion and cannot be considered artisticly valid regardless of his skill in the field, as he had nothing to do with composing it in the first place.

It also means a full width telecine need's to be done and then the image cropped from that, requiring another telecine session - given that most UP film's are 3-4 hours long that could be 3 days to a week at a lot of money per hour! Is this really a good use of WB's etc money?

I look at UP/MGM 65 the other way, it only affects a few title's and makes the image stand out even more as it is a diferent shape, thus artistically giving it a different feel.

So to sum up, it's generally a bad idea!

 

[Simon Howson]

I think 2.76:1 should be the prefered ratio for Ultra Panavision films because it encourages transfers from 70mm elements.

Sure a 35mm based transfer could be butched down to 2.76:1 (by cropping the top). But generally if a studio knows that we want 2.76:1 transfers for U.P. films, then that will encourage them to master from the 70mm element. Which in turn will ensure the best quality for future presentations.

 

[RolandL]

There were ten titles filmed in this process. So far, these four titles have been released on DVD in 2.76:1.

Ben-Hur
Mutiny of the Bounty
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Battle if the Bulge

Four were released cropped:

How The West Was Won - only selected scenes in Ultra Panavison
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
The Hallelujah Trail
Khartoum

Three will be released or re-released in 2008/2009 but we don't know yet if they will be cropped:

Raintree County
How The West Was Won
The Fall of the Roman Empire

I'm assuming How The West Was Won will be in Smilebox showing the full 3-strips and would be 2.6:1 if not in Smilebox.

Raintree County was only released in 35mm 2.35:1 but we might get 2.76:1 on dvd.

Fall of The Roman Empire was released in 35mm 2.35:1 and 70mm 2.2:1 so it might be cropped on dvd.

 

[Jon Lidolt]

Does no one on this forum understand about cropping of images? Spherically photographed 35mm films have guidelines for 1.85 cropping in the camera's viewfinder. I thought most of us who read these forums are annoyed if these films are shown full frame instead of cropped. Ultra-Panavision has similar guidelines in the viewfinder so that these films can be printed as standard 35 or 70mm prints.

This ultra wide format was originally developed by MGM so that they could produce sharper reduction prints in standard 35mm scope format as well as standard or ultra-wide 70mm versions. The extra width of the image the system provided was to allow 3 projector Cinerama prints to be generated from this special negative. The correct composition is the one defined by the guidelines in the viewfinder.

 

[Mark Anthony]

Yes I understand perfectly that the DP could have, and probably did, bear in mind during photography that at some point the image may be reduced in size - especially on a 35mm print.

But the format they shot in is 2.76:1, the image photographed is that wide and they are not around to ask whether they have a problem with the full ratio or not. Ben hur looks superb in it's full 2.76:1 and cropping it wouldn't make the experience any better.

As Roland says, it affects 10 films, so I don't really see it being an issue regardless of your screen size, unless you watch dvd's on a 14" TV and these are the only 10 films you ever watch on it!

M

 

[mike kaminski]

Jon, just because the camera groundglass has protection for other ratios it does not mean it was used or intended. Groundglasses (ie the camera eyepiece) sometimes have extra guides and safelines but they are seldom used, especially back then since they today are mostly used for TV protection, and we must assume that 35mm protection was not used unless it can be demonstrated that it was.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Roland, isn't HTWWW 3 strip Cinerama with some plates shot in Camera 65? Other than that, I take no issue with your list.

EDIT: Never mind, I went back and reread your post, but those selected scenes were originally presented in 3 strip, correct?

 

[Jon Lidolt]

The groundglass marking were always used when shooting films in 65mm anamorphic widescreen. Without it, important action would have been missing in almost every theatre (35 or 70mm) on the face of the earth. Look it up in an old American Cinematographer manual - if you can find one. Or better still, check out Martin Hart's superb website: widescreenmuseum.com for more information.

 

[Jon Lidolt]

But most 1.85 35mm films that are photographed with spherical lenses end up with an image that fills the entire 1.37 frame. They use guidelines in the viewfinder to help them compose their images for cropped projection onto a wide screen. In many instances the original filmmakers are no longer around to ask if 1.85 was really the ratio the movie should be shown in. Does this mean that we should then project the entire frame just because the image fills the whole frame? The same thing applies to Camera 65 and Ultra-Panavision.

 

[Mark Anthony]

You are comparing two different things.

All 1.85:1 films made since the academy ratio was abandoned around 1953 were shot for 1.85:1 theatrical exhibition. Some theater's may put the exhibition masking plates in the wrong place, some telecines may also put these in the wrong place - eg the back to future recall of a few years ago, but generally speaking they line up the marks and off they go.

UP films on the other hand have a 2.76:1 negative, that can be masked, but it can also be shown full width. Unlike 1.85:1 there aren't boom mics, actors feet or sfx equipment that the masking hides, it is all extra picture area that can be seen without any detriment to the viewing experience.

UP offers very few advantages over standard 65mm Super Panavision in terms of the image quality it can offer to 35mm reduction prints, so they must have used this ultra-wide format for a reason other than that, as to use these huge bulky camera's on location and in the kind of action set pieces these film's provide it would not have been easy.

So as seeing it in 2.76:1 doesn't hurt the picture in any way, unlike viewing a 1.85:1 film in academy, then I fail to see the point of cropping it.

M

 

[mike kaminski]

What I'm saying is that its not necessarily shot with protection for 35mm in mind.

 

[mike kaminski]

No, films were composed for the theater. And back then--there was no such thing as home video; the theater WAS the movie. The open-matte process is just a shooting technicality, its not meant for compositional purposes. It should be assumed that an open-matte film is intended as whatever ratio it was matted to, unless its explicitly expressed by the DP or director.

 

[Jon Lidolt]

I understand what you're saying too. It's just that I find the 2.35 trailer for Ben-Hur on the bonus disc far more pleasant to watch than the narrower 2.76 feature. I'd love to have a Ben-Hur set that would give me both options.

I'm very happy with my 2.35 Ultra-Panavision DVD's such as Khartoum, and that's how most people viewed them in the theatres. What's wrong with having the same experience via DVD? Even the single screen Cinerama version didn't utilize all of the picture information available on the Ultra-Pan camera negative.

 

[mike kaminski]

That essentially like saying "most people saw this on TV or on VHS and that was fine for them so why not release it in 4x3?"

I understand where you are coming from though--even with a 16x9 screen the image is quite narrow. But more purists would prefer it in the OAR, and people who want it to fill more television screen space probably would not want it letterboxed at 2.35 anyway because its still narrow and letterboxed. Its a compromise that I think too few would appreciate. A 2:1 compromise like Storaro does might be okay in terms of preserving the basic integrity of the shot while still yielding high screen detail, but again you still loose a large amount of info and some shots would still be ruined. Its kind of a lose-lose thing.

 

[Robert Harris]

The projected aspect ratio of a film is something that was generally available via projection information or continuities.

 

[Vern Dias]

Jon, do you realize that UP /MGM C65 can be recreated in the home theater? I have a 2.65:1 screen and by using a 1.5X anamorphic lens (available from Isco) rather than a 1.33X anamorphic lens, the standard 16x9 projector can recreate a 2.66:1 image. The reason my screen is 2.65:1 rather than 2.75:1 has to do with need an extra few inches to handle the stacking area for my curtains.

It's true that UP / C-65 was cropped in the theater for presentation, but usually only down to 2.55-2.65:1. The original 35mm reduction prints of Ben Hur were even printed with wider frame lines (letterboxed) to preserve most of the original width on the OCN.

Vern

 

[RolandL]

Yes, they were cropped to 2.6:1.

 

[Jon Lidolt]

You're right about the wider frame lines on the original 35mm dye tranasfer prints of Ben-Hur. I showed that at the rep house that I ran in from the mid 70's to early80's. Later reissue prints on Eastmancolor stock were just standard 2.35.