Will 1080p be the next misnomer (wrong labels)? Are 2.35/2.4:1 films REALLY 1080p? (1 Viewer)

[Nils Luehrmann]

Lew, Joseph, and David... all excellent explanations and insights!

Sadly very few feature films have ever been shot on 70/65mm film since 1970 due to the high cost and inconvenience. Branagh's 1996 version of Hamlet was one of those few that was.

Speaking of which, do any of you know where one might find an accurate list of all the feature films shot on 70/65mm film?

That would be a very useful list to have.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Nils, I don’t but a few favorites spring to mind (and I’m sure I’m not mentioning any that are unfamiliar to you):

•2001: A Space Odyssey (of course)—anyone who has not seen this in 70mm should seek it out at any excuse.
•Lawrence of Arabia—the shot from Lawrence’s perspective, where Sherif Ali comes riding a camel out of the shimmering desert is the single most impressive shot I can think of in 70mm. All other alternatives (including pristine 35mm prints in good theaters) suffer by comparison. Even if you don’t like this movie, seek this one out in 70mm.
•Playtime—my favorite Tati, and one of my favorite movies of all—seeing this in 70mm is the ‘Holy Grail’ for many Tati fans. BTW, making this movie (with the added costs for the sets and the 70mm shoot) broke Tati (he used his own money) and he was never to make another film.

Perhaps this needs another thread over in Movies.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I always hate it when I post in some kind of shorthand (probably known only to me) and a fuller, more detailed and accurate explanation follows. Thanks for your (accurate) explanation).

 

[Mark-P]

It's a very short list indeed. Actually 3 lists (One for Todd-AO, one for Super Panavision 70 and one for Ultra-Panavison) Here you go!

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/toddlist.htm


http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/splist.htm

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/uplist.htm

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

A word of caution though. Most of the 70mm prints of this film that are traveling around the 70mm exhibitor circuit are fairly old and have severe artifacts. :frowning:

Fortunately, most of the recent 70mm screenings of Lawrence of Arabia are using the new prints.

Speaking of which, if you are willing to make the trip, or for those near central Texas, Austin's Paramount Theater (see sig) has an annual film festival which always includes many 70mm prints, usually in very good condition if not new.

This summer they will be screening the following 70mm films:

• Patton
• Playtime
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
• The Sound of Music (confirmed to be a brand new print from the latest restoration)
• Vertigo
• Baraka
• Lawrence of Arabia

Here are my favorite films shot in 70mm (in no particular order):

• Ben Hur
• Spartacus
• Cleopatra
• Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
• Hamlet
• The Alamo
• Oklahoma!
• How the West Was Won
• Far and Away
• Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Patton
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Baraka
• Grand Prix
• Vertigo
• The Agony and the Ecstasy
• Exodus
• Lord Jim
• Ryan's Daughter
• West Side Story
• The Sound of Music
• South Pacific
• Around the World in 80 Days
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Doctor Dolittle
• Hello, Dolly!
• My Fair Lady

With a few exceptions, filmmakers stopped shooting in 70mm after 1970. The only films I am aware of that were shot in 70mm after 1980 are Far and Away, Baraka, and Hamlet which may have been the last major feature film ever entirely shot in 70mm. :frowning:

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Mark, thanks for the links! Do you know if these lists include all films shot in 70mm?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

There were a few black-and-white films from the '30s shot in 70mm, under the name of "Grandeur", which must have been among the first widescreen films. I don't recall much else, but I think one was a John Wayne western.

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

www.in70mm.com appears to be a really great resource for information on 70mm films, the history and explanation of all of the different 70mm processes.

They also have lists of films for each different 70mm process/camera (Todd-AO; MGM-Camera 65 & Ultra Panavision 70; Super Technirama 70; Sovscope 70; Super Panavision 70; MCS-70 Superpanorama; Dimension 150; DEFA 70; and ARRI 765).

They also have a really impressive list of the countless number of 70mm "blow-ups", broken up by year of release:

"70mm Blow Up List"

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Seeing Hello Dolly in 70mm (filmed in 65mm) was mind-blowing.

It was literally clearer, more detailed, and more brilliant than any IMAX I've ever seen. The sense of 3-dimensionality was astonishing. WOW.

It made me realize how HORRIBLE that FOX dvd really is. I know I know, RAH praised it and we all talked it up. But next to the *real* thing, the DVD is trash. Literally TRASH. And not just in terms of detail... the dvd has washed out/faded color.

In any case... long live 70 mm!!!

 

[Edwin-S]

How can standard 70mm be clearer than IMAX? IMAX films are shot on 70mm and the film frame is considerably larger than standard 70mm. Wouldn't 70mm IMAX film stock have considerably higher resolution than regular 70 mm film?

 

[Lew Crippen]

Hello Dolly was shot in Todd-A-O (65mm), not IMAX. It is not possible to get more detail simply by enlarging the negative.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Edwin:

I always cringe when I see the term "resolution", which has a specific meaning when applied to electronic displays made up of rows and columns of discrete dots, applied to film. It just muddies the waters.

But you're right. A film shot with an IMAX camera, running 70mm film sideways, produces a much larger frame containing much more picture information. So no conventional 70mm print should look as good as a comparable IMAX shot movie. OTOH if we're comparing a conventional widescreen movie that has simply been "ported" to IMAX by having each frame blown up and printed on horizontal IMAX film for use in IMAX theaters, then Lew is right, the IMAX frame can't contain any detail that wasn't present in the original 35mm or 65mm vertically projected frame.

At least I think that was Lew's point, since he seems to have reverted to writing in his personal code again. That's the only way his pointing out that Hello Dolly! wasn't shot in IMAX makes any sense to me given that you didn't suggest that Hello Dolly! had been shot in IMAX.

Regards,

Joe

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I'm just telling you how it *looked*. (Hello Dolly).

One reason why it looked sharper/more detailed to my eye that IMAX is probably because I viewed Hello Dolly from about 1.25 screen-widths at the local cinema...whereas typical IMAX is viewed from less than 1-screen width distance.

 

[RobertR]

Or any HDTV presentation, no matter how much HDTV enthsusiasts (and a certain filmmaker in love with technology for its own sake) say otherwise.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Agreed.

I've never seen any digital projection with the resolution, smoothness, naturalness, and color-range as that Hello Dolly 70mm print! It makes it clear just how much INFORMATION there is in an analog film print (70mm here) and how hard it would be to quantize that all into measurements in real-time given our technology constraints with 1080P HD media!

 

[Vincent_P]

The larger the negative you film on, the greater the detail. That's why films shot in 65mm look so much better than films shot in 35mm, films shot in 35mm look so much better than films shot in 16mm, etc.

Oh, and IMAX uses 65mm negative, albeit with three times the negative area of "standard" 65mm filming.

Vincent

 

[Vincent_P]

Super-35 doesn't use anamorphic lenses in production. The 'Scope image is exracted from the full-frame, spherical negative during post-production and optically converted to anamorphic for the 35mm internegatives which are used to produce the actual film prints*.

Vincent

* Nowadays, lots of movies use a "Digital Intermediate" stage where the Super-35 negative is scanned at greater-than-HD resolution and color correction/conversion to anamorphic is done in the digital domain before the final result is recorded back out to film for the creation of the theatrical prints.

 

[Vincent_P]

Two other fairly recent films that were partially (but not entirely) shot in 65mm are Bernardo Bertilucci's LITTLE BUDDHA and Terrence Mallick's THE NEW WORLD.

Vincent

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I was pretty sure that was the case, but I'm certainly no expert on these things and I didn't have time to go digging through references. (This one seems worthwhile. I had bookmarked another that I had used for years, but the page is no longer there. :frowning

Regards,

Joe

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Vincent,

thanks for the correction!