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Lack of Digital Screens for Attack of the Clones
spt writes: "CNN Entertainment has an article describing Lucas Arts' disappointment at the lack of digital screens available for Attack of the Clones. When the Phantom Menace was released, they were hoping that, by May 2002, there would be 2000 digital screens. That estimate dropped to 'several hundred', but the reality is that now there are only 20 digital screen in the U.S.
Who has been lucky enough to see a digitally produced film in one of these 20? Is there enough of a benefit to think that more screens will be converted to digital projection?"
The Edward's Theatre at the Irvine Rectum^H^H^H^H^H^HSpectrum (rumored to be the largest grossing theatre in the US, even though Edward's is currently attempting to claw their way out of Chapter 11) has at least one digital projector. Saw Atlantis and Final Fantasy there....so I do know they exist.
The good: Clear picture.
The bad: I saw one animated movie and one all-cgi movie. Without seeing them on a traditional projector, how would I know the difference? There was still the dust problem (air or lens), although it did look to be a lot cleaner overall.
A few points worth noting: I saw part of the phantom menace on one of those wide-screen hdtv's. Picture was so clear that it made the film's effects look even less realistic. Anyone who's gone out to see Beauty & The Beast at any of the IMAX theatres may have noticed that thanks to it being increased to "Dear god, look at the size of that nutcracker!" size made it much more apparent that the people coloring the cells didn't get quite as close to the outlines as you might expect. Thus, technology increases typically work best when everything is aiming at the same target.
Additionally, I'm not a believer that FPS needs to be increased much more than it is. Yes, you could make conventional projectors churn out film faster, although you'd need to increase the size of the platters, adjust the timing of the reels, etc. You'd probably not have a lot of reason just to convert an existing projector, you'd want to get a new one...and if you're getting a new projector, you might as well get a digital one if you get the benefits of the [easier, more durable] distribution medium, clearer picture, etc. Besides, there comes a physiological limit to the amount of information the eye can process at once. 30fps is plenty for me, and I can't really distinguish a difference between 30 and 60. Same reason why I think 96khz cd's are ridiculous. I can't hear outside of a certain range, who cares if it can faithfully record it?
I think digital projection will catch on, not because of features the audience would notice, but because of things that will make distribution easier. People seem to go to the movies no matter how badly they're made, how uncomfortable the seats, how high the ticket prices...so getting stuff done for the sake of the audience doesn't really seem like a big motivating factor for the industry.
-transiit
This has nothing to do with the MPAA and everything to do with poorly run theater chains. First off, it's illegal for a film company to own their own theater chain. Second off, the theater chains are in trouble because, like many companies in the dot com boom, they expanded way too fast and profits failed to expand as rapidly. As a result, many of these chains filed for the various bankruptcy protections/liquidations and are struggling. Thus, they can't afford the expensive digital projection equipment. IMax, on the other hand, is expanding slowly, and only when they're fairly certain they can make a profit. Thus, they've got good quality and a good bank account.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
DLP has quality advantages other than just not getting scratched. While the resolution is currently limited it has a better signal to noise ratio than 35mm. Look closely at a uniformly colored area of the screen and you will see the snow, even in brand-new prints. DLP can reach a blacker black and has a better contrast ratio. The brightness linearity is perfect because it uses pulse-width modulation. The colors of DLP are more saturated because it uses a rotating wheel of high-quality optical filters rather than some chemical concoctation on film.
DLP is already better in some areas and over time should probably match the quality of film. Even if it never reaches the resolution of film it can probably reach a resolution that is more than good enough. Improvements like 48 fps can easily be implemented in digital projectors, too.
Studios like digital projection, among other reasons, because the digital print can be encrypted. Projectors can be built as a tamper-resistant fortress that will be much more difficult to crack than a consumer product like DVD. This will save the studios from worrying about stolen prints used to create illegal videos. I can't say I'm against that - it has nothing to do with free speech or fair use issues and I have no sympathy for people who rob film distribution trucks at gunpoint or copy videos for a profit.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Being a film maker of no repute, I shall attempt to address this. I can't answer EVERYTHING, but I can address some of the biggies.
First off the cameras Lucas is using shoot with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames progressive. The format they use is Sony's own HDCAM. This is a compressed digital format. It is not however DV, which refers to a particular codec used most often for standard definition production at 25Mbps. Panasonic has a format called DVCPRO HD which uses the same codec at a 100Mbps profile. HDCAM is about 145Mbps.
Confusingly, many people for some reason think DV also means "Digital Video." This is probably because it does. Mostly video people say digital video and save DV for the codec. I tend to say DV25 or whatever when I am talking codecs, or say MiniDV when talking format...damnable words.
SO, back to HD...There is a huge lossy compression that happens before we can even examine the image. If the image is captured directly to a D-5HD recorder (not to be confused with D-5 which is an SD video format.) from the camera without going to tape, you get a much better product. Lucas has done this for at least some scenes.
What about the notion that 35mm offers more resolution ? It depends. Are you talking about acquisition or projection ? You'll be surprised that while 35mm has a resoltuion advantage, it is not the primary thing that you'll notice when looking at the projected images. Mostly I feel that color generated by these cameras as recorde on tape isn't smooth enough.
For projection HD video projectors using DLP at 1920x1080 are available, and they produce a STUNNING image. I saw one Jan 2001 at NIST's Digital Cinema conference. I couldn't bear watching 35mm projection with my friends later on after the conference. Why ?
Well, first off there is not gate weave or jitter. Images are very solid and clear when they are supposed to be. Better than even the best theatres with union projectionists. (not a lot of those left..Mann's in LA, Uptown in DC, I dunno any more.) What I am talking about is the way film moves. Being a mechanical system there are limits to its operational precision. You get inaccuracies in vertical and horizontal positioning, as well as movement towards or away from the lens, and the lamp. Then there are the subtle deformations of the film itself. This is all well controlled actually, especially when you consider that a 35mm picture is being made into a 70 foot or more picture on projection.
Well, none of that exists for the digital projector.
The color gamut available surpasses that of 35mm film. Most of what I saw was film acquired, which was stunning enough. The digitally generated stuff, Toy Story 2, well...it NEVER looked that good before. Colors literally leap off the screen. It is a cinematographers dream. ( I know cause I dream about having my images projected on that thing...drool drool)
Make no mistake, digital projection is THE future of theatrical exhibition. Even Vittorio Storaro has come out in favor of it. (Storaro is a very highly regarded cinematographer, perhaps the best ever. Check out an interview with him about digital cinema.)
Now, on acquisition 35mm is certainly superior. Not because of format limits...Uncompressed HD is very nice and can compete with 35mm, but rather because of the limitations of current camera design, mostly the CCD's. Still they provide a very good image.
Frankly I am amazed that the film look as good as it does after seeing the previews. A quick look at the previews shows that while the image has flaws, it is quite frankly very very good.
Now when evaluating the technology you have to consider HOW the image reaches the final consumer. For a movie like Star Wars, or FoTR the 35mm camera image is scanned into the systems at ILM or wherever using a laser film scanner, then digital effects, manipulation and elements are all added. Then it is ouput to film, pre composited, via a laser film "printer."
What this means is that the limiting image resolution is set at digitization. This hardly affects most films, but for a Star Wars film, where virtually every scene, if not every frame, contains digital composites, the entire film is produced digitally even if you shoot with film!
For more discussion, argument and general confusion check out the archives of discussions on alt.movies.cinematography, search for "HD film" and you should be overwhelmed.
I hope that has been entertaining if not useful.
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Filmakers' have traditionally lamented that the film that they finish cutting is NEVER the film that the audience gets to see. The reason? Multiple layers of copies that need to be struck before you get to the release prints.
The quality of one wet-gate interpositve to internegative is quite good, but you do that a couple of times at high speed, and there is significant quality loss (no lenses used when copying folks.) By the time you get to the release print, which is struck from the final internegative, you're lucky to get 2k of the original 4-8k worth of information. Think of it as photocopying a photocopy - several times.
Add that grainy, blurry, off-color print, to the crap that it will go through during the first couple of days of release (burn, splice, scratch, dust), and by the time that you and I go to watch it, it's nowhere near what the editor handed off to the director. Of course, if you go to a crappy theatre, with a crappy projector, with a dirty projector window and a crappy screen... jeez, you might as well wait for the DVD.
As a rule I prefer 70mm prints to 35mm, just cause there's less degradation, I prefer better theatres to crappy multiplexes, because they usually get the better prints.
Now, you ask, what's so hot about digital? I mean, even with a bad print you get better resolution than the current tech, right? Not quite. Even though the max resolution of the current projectors can't match the theoretical resolution of 35mm film, the digital stuff is either cine-scanned or telecined from an early inter-positive, and cleaned up (dust removal, etc.) As a result, even if the final resolution is less, you get pretty much what you'd see what the director sees, and that's what Lucas and a whole lot of other filmmakers are so hot about.
And yes, the projections they use are LCD or DLP, so the projections are digital.
However, I must warn you. It's weird going to a theatre looking at a bright picture that seems like it's playing straight off a HD DVD. No scratches or blotches. No jitter. Very little grain (for daylight shots). It's like sitting in your living room watching a super-big TV. Eerie.
I saw Akira twice while it was in theatres (great movie BTW), the first time with digital projection, the second a week later (when I thought it would still be digital) on film. The DLP screen was much sharper with more consistent and saturated color. The opening motorcycle chase (with the incredibly detailed backgrounds) was simply amazing on the DLP but looked muddy and washed out in comparison on film. The colors were way more saturated and the DLP (I swear to God) had more dynamic range than any film I've seen in a theatre. Nothing I've seen on film has come close. I could say the same thing about Monster's Inc on DLP vs. film.
I'm sure that film can theoretically match the clarity and sharpness that I've seen but it never has. The print you watch in the movie theatre is at least a 3rd gen print and too often a 4th or 5th (or god forbid higher) generation print. And it's been run through the projector 4 times a day gathering dust and scratches. The film batches are different, the chemistry is slightly different and the printing process can't be repeated exactly everytime. And even if it could control all of that, you're making 3rd, 4th and 5th+ generation prints! Yes, a 70mm print can do better than 1080p24, but can a 5th generation print do the same? Can it match the original's color? Can it match the original's 1080 lines of resolution? From what I've seen, the answer is a big, huge NO!
I'd pay an extra 2-3 bucks per showing if I could get all digital, that's how much better I think it is.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
I am a projectionist.
;-), then the films have to be rewound. Given the extreme turnaround times (often 10 minutes between films) and the average rewinding time (8-12 minutes) you can see that there is a lot of pressure to get the show started. Often we're showing you the advert reel while the feature is still rewinding; then doing a quick threading between adverts and film. Multiply this by the number of theaters and you quickly have organised mayhem. It's easy to make a threading error, which can lead to scratches on the print, burn marks, the print can jump out of the film path, or become skew in the gate (nice row of dots down the print).
:-)
A 35mm print will offer much greater resolution than 1080 lines, although it is still projected at 24fps. I believe the figure is something of the order of approximately 4000x3000 grains per frame; although that depends on the print stock.
You have to look after prints very carefully if they are to remain pristine. Guidelines from Eastman/Kodak and Agfa call for positive pressure in the projection gallery to minimize dust, as well as gloves etc. Prints have been arriving on a new film stock which, although sturdier than original stock, develops a high static charge (I get zapped 3-ish times a night) and attracts dust like you _would_not_believe_. The new stock cannot be spliced with film glue because it does not 'take' - you must use tape or splicing film. This means the reel changes (every 20-odd minutes as a rule) are less smooth; you'll see a jump as the splice goes through the gate, and the dolby digital reader might switch out of digital and you'll get a second or so of analogue fall-back. The DTS reader is much better, and will free-wheel for a few seconds before falling back to analogue (it's only reading timecode from the print, not the whole digital frame, like SRD).
If the cinema is using a platter system, the reels of film lie flat, and can be projected a second time without rewinding. Rewinding places a high stress on the film. Starting a rewind must be done delicately because the 'pull' from the take-up reel can stretch the film and produce green burn marks.
If, like us, you have a horizontal reel system, apart from the strain on the projectionist (having to lift huge reels of 2.5 miles of film to eye level
It's not uncommon to have three or for un-rewound films around the gallery when the system descends into chaos
If you have a new 35mm print, good sound and good masking, the quality can be absolutely superb. Of course, digital projection will remove a lot of the variables involved in projection, so you should at least get a concistent experience.