Slashdot Mirror

Join us here for everything that you ever wanted to know about movie theatres.

Maybe they can make 3D glasses "cool" by making the shutters look like a pair of patches?

It seems like going with excessively expensive tech, probably short-lived at that, discriminates against independent operators having local ownership of theaters in small towns. It smells a bit like combined studio/cable tv ownership choking the programming quality of broadcast tv.

There was a time 60 years or so ago when the film industry and studios went through a big shake up. Many are aware of some of the changes, but somehow forget that it was all about an anti-trust action.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.

Some of the techs in the industry occasionally try to look back beyond their years for more perspective.

http://www.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/f1/t011249/p1.html

Yeah, and don't forget the cigarette burns/reel change markers. Thanks to Fight Club, I notice them all the time.

Wonder if they'll keep the recent addition of those damn red dot patterns to "thwart" pirates...

People often focus too much on the digital aspects of media transfer, and don't give enough attention to the analog aspects. Wet-get is indeed a very good way to make old film look new. It's also great for keeping new films looking new. Brad Miller, the guy who runs film-tech.com, sells a wet-gate system for use in theaters that he calls "Film-Guard". It's pretty amazing stuff -- I wish more theaters would use it. It helps prevent dirt build-up and other problems, so that a carefully handled print using Film-Guard can still look brand new after being run for weeks or months. He often brags that he could run a print at his theater using for a year and have it leave looking better than when it came in.

I saw Episode II in DLP at Odeon, Leicester Square and at first glance it looked good - there was none of the dirt, scratches or jumping associated with a badly looked after and badly presented 35mm print. But I soon realised that it looked somehow dull - it had none of filmic qualities that bring a life to a print which come from 35mm. It was impressive for an emerging standard, but the quality wasn't quite as good as a well presented 35mm print and there's no way that even touches 70mm prints.

Another point is the digital cinema takes away the skill that comes with projecting a film - go read the forums over at Film Tech and see the care and pride those guys take over the film presentations at the cinemas they work. Those guys know how to present a film properly.

For me it'll be sad day when showing a film becomes a case of clicking "go".

The device that pulls the film into the gate in a start/stop motion is called an "intermittent". To see a visual explanation of how one works, click here, then click on the "videos" link at the very bottom of the page, then scroll down to "How an Intermittent Works" (it's an MPEG).

The shutter and the intermittent are timed together so that the shutter is closed during the period of time in which the film is actually moving. That way, each frame appears stationary when the light is actually shining through it onto the screen. The shutter can have multiple openings so that there will be two (or sometimes three) pulses of light while the frame is sitting in the gate. The timing just has to be set up so that the shutter is blocking the light while the film is moving.

Part of the regular maintenance of a film projector is to make sure the shutter timing is adjusted properly. Sometimes, if a theater has let the timing get a little off, you can see a slight amount of jumping or flicker, especially if you look at high-contrast areas of the picture. If there is a bright light somewhere in the picture, or a white title on a black background, that's usually a good place to check for shutter timing error.

Some projectors, like the "E" series from Kinoton have electronic stepper motors instead of mechanical intermittents to do the film pulldown. That, combined with electronic control over the shutter means the timing is basically never going to be off. (I wish more theaters used Kinoton projectors instead of crappy ones from Christie. Next time you see a poor film presentation, take a peek through the window into the booth and see what kind of projector they have. Most likely, it will be a Christie.)

What I said about film projectors with a 72Hz refresh is almost never true, though. Such projectors do exist, but the de-facto standard is to have a two-bladed shutter, so that the refresh rate is 48Hz. Chances are, when you go to the movies, you're seeing two pulses of light for each frame, not three. It would be nice if more theaters used three-bladed shutters, but oh well.

No, that's different, because going to color film did not require theaters to install new projectors. Since each new movie required a new piece of film anyway, they could use a new process for each movie, without requiring theater owners to perform any upgrades. (Besides, Technicolor's three-strip process looked great right from the start. It didn't require much improvement.)

Digital projection, on the other hand, requires a new and very expensive projector to be installed at the theater. A good film projector costs about $30,000, and a crappy one costs a little less. In contrast, digital projectors currently cost about $250,000! And theater owners are notoriously spendthrift. It's hard enough to get them to spend the money to change out the Xenon bulbs when they should, which is part of the reason why film projection looks so dark in a lot of theaters these days (and by the way, that will still be a probelm with digital projection, since such projectors still need Xenon lamps to provide light). Knowing that, do you really think that once a theater buys a digital projector, that they will ever, ever upgrade? No! Whatever gets installed today will be it for generations to come. The resolution will never increase. That's what has me worried.

The fact is: films are constantly being filmed in higher and higher qualities.

I only wish that were true. The real fact is, except for a brief period during the 1950s and 1960s, photography for movies has always gone towards cheaper and more convenient, not higher quality. 40 years ago, there were several releases a year that were made using 65mm negatives and 70mm prints. Then filmmakers and studios switched back to 35mm negatives, and a mixture of 70mm and 35mm prints. Then when theatrical digital sound came along in the early 1990s, 70mm prints died off, and everything is now 35mm-only. It looked like advancements in the grain structure of film stocks were going to make up the difference, but then filmmakers decided to start using the Super-35 process, yet again reducing the negative area and thus reducing quality. To see what I am talking about, compare the DVD of 1961's West Side Story to just about any movie from last year or this year. Even with DVD's limited 720x480 resolution, you can see a difference. Just imagine what it looked like in 70mm! A movie made nearly 40 years ago looks better than anything being made today.

Also, back in the days of big-screen epics, theaters took great pride in providing good presentation. A projectionist used to have to go through a full six months of training before being allowed to even enter the booth of an actual theater! Nowadays, some kid who did a good job selling popcorn gets shoved in the booth with no training and 20-odd screens to run all by him/herself. No wonder presentation quality sucks these days! And the sad thing is, the worst-case scenario of today is pretty much the only standard that proponents of digital ever talk about. They just point to the problems I mentioned and say, "Well, at least we'll be better than that." No mention of how they might try to equal the quality of yesteryear, back when moviegoers actually had it better than we have it today.

Talking about theater quality, I don't really have it as good where I live as I would like, but I still prefer what I get to see at the Century 25 (a 45 minute drive for me) over most places. They have Kinoton projectors, so the images are pretty much rock steady, and they keep their screens well-lit. Only rarely do I see scratches or dirt (which proponents of digital would have you believe magically appear on every frame of film ever made, no matter how careful you are with it). The sound is good, too, thanks to their auditoriums all being THX-certified.

However, if you want to see a real movie theater, the one that made me fall in love with 70mm film when I was a kid, then go to this site and click on the "pictures" link in the bottom frame. Then click on the link labeled "GCC Northpark West 1&2" (sorry, the site does not allow direct linking). That is what a truly great movie theater is like. It breaks my heart to know that it is gone now.

And just to let you know, I am not a sentimental old fart who is misguidedly clinging to the past. I am only 27 years old. I work in the computer industry. I am not a Luddite or a technophobe. It's just that I've seen with my own eyes what film is capable of delivering, and TI's digital system just doesn't measure up. I want them to get it right before they permanently stick us with an inferior solution.

I'm happy to see that there is at least one person left in the world with two working eyeball in his head who can see the difference between film and video.

By the way, if you plan on running your brand-new print of Rocky Horror as long as your previous one (over a decade, whew!) you might want to consider using FilmGuard. It's a non-evaporative cleaner that is applied using rollerpads. You can learn more about it by going to Film-Tech.com and clicking on the "cleaning" link in the bottom browser frame. Film-Tech also has some nice weblog-like forums where projectionists from all over the world share tips and advice.

Secondly, while switching to digital might prevent the problems with film that you describe, it will introduce new problems of its own. For one thing, these new micro-mirror devices from TI have the potential problem of developing "dead" pixels -- that is, pixels that just sit there and don't respond any more. After a few years, a typical projector might expect to have a few of these dead pixels here and there, and they'll be present on every frame of every movie shown using that projector from then on. The only way to fix it will be to replace the entire micro-mirror array, which costs an arm and a leg to begin with. I doubt theaters will go to the trouble. If a digital projector develops a few dead pixels, they'll just say "oh, well" and leave it.

Also, with digital projectors, the resolution is fixed. Once you install it, that's it. If you want more resolution, you'll have to get a whole new machine. With film, every time there is an improvement in film stocks, you automatically get an upgrade in quality, without having to change the projector at all.

Furthermore, many people are (incorrectly) assuming that digital projectors will be maintainence-free, so they will simply not hire projectionists any more, which means that if the projector develops problems, they will not fix it. And don't tell me they won't have problems, I've seen enough screwed up video projectors in meeting rooms and sports bars to know that's bull. Whether it's electronic or mechanical, a projector will still need regular attention from someone who knows what they're doing.

Lastly, the problems you describe with film are solvable. For one thing, if theatersr would start using FilmGuard (you have to click on the "cleaning" link at the bottom of the page I linked to), they would have a lot fewer problems with dirt and scratches than they do now. And if you want to see an example of good film handling, just go to your local IMAX theater. They usually keep their films running great for months and sometimes years without any excessive dirt or scratches. Take "Fantasia 2000". I went to see that just a couple of weeks ago, and the film looked brand-new! And last weekend, I went to a theater that was still showing "Gladiator" after all this time, and it still looked pretty good (hardly and dirt or scratches at all). So, it is possible to keep film looking great throughout its use, it just takes a little care and some proper equipment. I think theaters would do better to invest in those things rather than replace all the projectors with $250,000 video projectors with 1280x1024 resolution, but hey, that's just my opinion.