Smilebox?!?!?! (1 Viewer)

[Ken Garrison]

You probably seen what a Cinerama screen looks like. Well, it's curved. And when they show a Cinerama movie in an ordinary letterbox format, some distortion can occur. Some guy came up with this technique called smilebox to try to get the cinerama experience in the living room. I know it's STILL not like cinerama, but it's as close as you can get in the home. I never actually seen a movie done in the smilebox process before. But it'd be kinda interesting if they did that.

 

[David Lambert]

I recall this being discussed by Robert Harris, film restoration genius, in the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Restoration thread!

 

[Jeff Koch]

Ken:

I've seen Dave Strohmaier's superb documentary on Cinerama (still a work in progress) and he shows a clip of Cinerama in the Smilebox format. It is absolutely spectacular. IT WORKS! It's the next best thing to actually seeing Cinerama on the big three panel Cinerama screen. Hopefully "How The West Was Won" as well as all the other Cinerama productions will be remastered using this process.

The Cinerama Dome here in Los Angeles is currently being retrofitted for Cinerama three panel projection and hopefully it will be ready by late summer/early fall.

Jeff

 

[Ken Garrison]

Too bad there isn't a "Cinerama Mode" on TVs that will automatically make the letterbox Cinerama movies into smile box. I live in Skamokawa, Washington and would love to go to that restored Cinerama Theater in Seattle (160 miles north) and see one of them 3 panel movies.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Too bad there isn't a "Cinerama Mode" on TVs that will automatically make the letterbox Cinerama movies into smile box. I live in Skamokawa, Washington and would love to go to that restored Cinerama Theater in Seattle (160 miles north) and see one of them 3 panel movies.

It wouldn't help anyways.

Both the existing transfers of How The West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm are at a grossly cropped 2.21:1 aspect ratio (from the full 2.59:1 uncurved aspect ratio of Cinerama!) and are flat as a pancake.

While curving the existing transfers would help somewhat, about two-sevenths of the vertical image is missing, plus about a fourth of the horizontal image is lost.

WB recently struck a brand new 3 x 35mm print (3 pieces of film) of How The West Was Won in the Technicolor process, so we can expect an SE to come.

(I misread the newsgroup statement about Technicolor...thanks for confirming the color process, Mr. Harris! At least we won't have to put up with that cropped 70mm version.)

 

[Ken Garrison]

I saw The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm on TCM and it was WIDE!! It was over 2.35:1. Probably 2.66:1 or something.

 

[RolandL]

To see a comparison of the video of How The West Was Won and the actual Cinerama three strips, go to - Link Removed
To compare the laser disc and TCM broadcast of The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm to the actual Cinerama three strips, got to - Link Removed

 

[Ken Garrison]

I was wondering why the pictures on both sides of the middle picture looked smaller on How the West Was Won. Why do they crop it like that? I guess I'll watch that movie in the Cinerama Theater in Seattle when I get a chance to get up there.

 

[RolandL]

Both of these videos were transfered from 35mm prints which came from 70mm which came from 3-strip.

 

[Ken Garrison]

Maybe eventually, they'll release them on Anamorphic Smilebox with the whole picture.

 

[Robert Harris]

Just an annotation re: one of the posts above...

Although HTWWW is being printed, I doubt very much that anything is being done in Technicolor.

This is an Eastmancolor negative.

RAH