Film aspect ratios

[pastoralguy]

Afaik, Quentin Tarantino is one of the very few directors who insists on using 35mm or 70mm film stock. His most recent opus, 'The H8teful Eight' was released in 70mm Panavision which, certainly in the case of The Filmhouse' in Edinburgh, required them to borrow lenses from the USA! Obviously, it was also released in digital for the mainstream cinemas so it was a real privilege to see it on celluloid.

I do miss 'proper' film.

[Dave2002]

ea & pg

Interesting that some film makers really are shooting on film, and also interesting that there's still a supply of film, and processing labs - even in the UK.

Is that as far as it goes though? Once the film is "in the can" is it then transferred to digital, or are reels still sent out to selected cinemas? I thought a major driver for digital for cinema release was to avoid having to distribute physical media and to use mechanical projectors.

If there are still projection facilities for real film in some areas - maybe it's due to geographical considerations. Perhaps not everywhere can afford to have digital cinemas - or maybe the directors feel that the quality of real film is somehow better. However, while many parts of the world might support 35mm projection I doubt that too many really manage 60+mm film projection (65,70) which can be a bit specialised.
I'm guessing that from now on in that digital is going to beat analogue film - but digital has perhaps only recently caught up. Another advantage of digital is that it shouldn't deteriorate over time.

[pastoralguy]

All the 'mainstream' cinemas I know of in Scotland have transferred to digital apart from various 'Arthouse' cinemas dotted around. We have two in Edinburgh, The Filmhouse and the Cameo, that can still run 35mm and 70mm. (All their projectors dating from the 1950's!)

We have one independent, family run cinema called The Dominion that has traditionally run 'family oriented' movies. I know that although they are digital they still own their 35mm machines. So many of these machines were scrapped although I know that various individuals bought them and set up a cinema in their garage! (It's possible to purchase 35mm movies online although I suspect this is rather murky since these should really be returned to the distributors at the end of the run).

Many cinemas not owned by big chains really struggled to make the change from celluloid to digital since these machines are incredibly expensive. But, obviously, big studios saw the advantages of shipping digital cartridges so cinemas were forced to make the change. I suspect it's the studios who have benefited the most from the financial advantages - not cinemas. It's also worth pointing out that, as the digital market and technology develops, these earlier cartridges may not be compatible with modern digital projectors thus denying future audiences the opportunity to see mainstream movies in the cinema in future. So, for instance, the digital cartridge that is showing 'The Post' may not be compatible with the software in 10 years. Whereas a 35mm film from 1917/18 of a Charlie Chaplin film could still be compatible with a film projector today. (Obviously it would be nitrate and the only cinema that shows nitrate is the National Film Theatre!) But you get the idea?

And what about India? The biggest film producers/audience in the world! There is NO WAY one of these tiny cinemas in the middle of nowhere can afford £70/80K for a digital machine! (Some of them still have functioning projectors from the early days of sound! They still function - just!) So, they are starting to rely on their archive of 35mm films. (Actually, the audiences tend not to worry about such details as anomorphic lenses or even the reels being run in the correct order!)

The digital revolution won't benefit all areas of society.

Ok, my anorak is getting very warm here.

[Dave2002]

A very quick reply to msg 18. Surely even digital cartridges are out of date - secure downloads to the cinemas are going to be the way aren't they? Of course that won't work in areas where there's very limited connectivity, wired or otherwise.

[pastoralguy]

Ultimately, the studios want to control everything that's screened from the point of origin so, yes, eventually all 'content' or 'product' will be sent from Hollywood. The studios will be able to control EVERYTHING such as the number of times a movie is shown, subtitles, edits as dictated by censors or made suitable for any given audience. Even commercials can be easily controlled.

Of course, this is not without cause. In the days of 35mm, it was possible for any given cinema to declare to the distributers that they were receiving receipts for three showings when they may have been FOUR performances! With digital and the internet it's possible for studios to police their 'product' with a greater degree of accuracy.

In the end, the bottom line is the $.

[Dave2002]

Ultimately, the studios want to control everything that's screened from the point of origin so, yes, eventually all 'content' or 'product' will be sent from Hollywood. The studios will be able to control EVERYTHING such as the number of times a movie is shown, subtitles, edits as dictated by censors or made suitable for any given audience. Even commercials can be easily controlled.

Of course, this is not without cause. In the days of 35mm, it was possible for any given cinema to declare to the distributers that they were receiving receipts for three showings when they may have been FOUR performances! With digital and the internet it's possible for studios to police their 'product' with a greater degree of accuracy.

In the end, the bottom line is the $.

Ah - I see - another form of Big Brother. In the USA TV watching - usually by cable or online - is monitored down to street level, so that the commercials in different streets may be different. In an affluent street the adverts may be for worldwide holidays, fast cars, super yachts, while in the next street - more downmarket, the adverts can be for dog food, big macs etc.

Perhaps we already have the same in the UK, with our habits and TV watching correlated with Post Codes, and adverts served out "appropriately".

Is there no getting away from this obsession with control?

[pastoralguy]

Scary stuff!

[pastoralguy]

A projectionist friend tells me that the size and ratio of the picture is built into the software of the given title. The cinema 'operative', (I hate that term since it recognises the decline of those trained technicians whose skills have been so cruelly discarded), has little or no input into the size and shape of what appears on the screen.

[Dave2002]

This is turning out to be a much more interesting and complex discussion than I thought, at least for me.

Re digital cinematography see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinematography

and for digital cinema see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cinema

Most of the developments in digital film production and projection in cinemas seem to have taken place this century - since 2000.

From the article on digital cinema we find

By the end of 2012, according to Screen Digest, 91.4% of UK screens had been converted to digital and the rest expected to be so by the middle of 2013.

Does this mean that almost all cinemas now use only digital projection, or do some use both digital and film projection?

From the first article it seems that many films are now produced either wholly digitally, or by a complex combination of digital and more conventional flim techniques.

A somewhat surprising comment in the article on digital cinema is that archiving digital film is proving to be costly. I would not have expected this, and indeed I'm not sure if this is now a valid statement. Admittedly if a digital film were stored on a smallish number of hard drives, or SSDs or other storage media, then this could be vulnerable if those drives or media failed, but this could be mitigated against by using widely dispersed storage centres. As a proportion of total film budgets for serious revenue earning films I would still not expect this to be significant, but perhaps it is. Compared with film though shouldn't it be potentially more reliable? Film stock does degrade over time, and colour changes. Trying to rescue films which have degraded in this way can be hard - though the difficulties might perhaps be exaggerated to create revenue - this is speculation on my part ... For example I have a DVD of Hitchcock's Rear Window which claims to be a reworking from film in order to regain some of the impact of the original. It may, however, genuinely be the case that most of the original film stock has degraded so that the digitally reconstructed DVD is the best which can be done now.

[Stunsworth]

Another thing that digital allows is easy ‘film’ grading to achieve the colour palette required by the director. I’m sure that’s the reason behind the current vogue for a turquoise/green look that I personally dislike.

[Dave2002]

There's a good tutorial on colour correction by Larry Jordan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX45Yi1spY4

I know that colour grading isn't quite the same thing - there are many tutorials about that too -
such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m-9R1oqvh0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BObBFnv-bc

Quite often this is done using some tone contrast effects, and film makers often (apparently)
tweak by using complementary colours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7InWoXY80g

There are some "easy" ways using LUTs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icoBTsa7_Bo

Another reason why colour grading might be important for film is to match up different clips - different scenes -
as otherwise each different scene could look really odd.

As I recall this tutorial for Photoshop is quite good - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrD53AJmfEM and gives some concepts
re the complementary colour approach.

Also quite a number of people seem to like DaVinci Resolve to do colour grading.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Compared with film though shouldn't it be potentially more reliable? Film stock does degrade over time, and colour changes. Trying to rescue films which have degraded in this way can be hard - though the difficulties might perhaps be exaggerated to create revenue - this is speculation on my part ... For example I have a DVD of Hitchcock's Rear Window which claims to be a reworking from film in order to regain some of the impact of the original. It may, however, genuinely be the case that most of the original film stock has degraded so that the digitally reconstructed DVD is the best which can be done now.

Some early film stock, especially Technicolor, is extremely stable, but it's a serious issue nevertheless.

[Dave2002]

Some early film stock, especially Technicolor, is extremely stable, but it's a serious issue nevertheless.

I think some very significant problems arose in the first couple of decades of colour TV. I'm not sure quite why - maybe the archiving was done to film - or maybe the programme producers didn't think it really mattered. I recall trying to watch some TV series around 2008-9 - The Far Pavillions - but the quality was really pretty dreadful - worse than I remember the TV itself being, and substantially worse than many much earlier cinema films. I haven't really revisited too many films from earlier times, but I do remember some films as being very good in the cinema - e.g Dr Zhivago, Far from the Madding Crowd (Julie Christie), The Charge of the Light Brigade etc. OK - we tend to think that we are seeing good video quality now, but I think that some films from 40-50 years ago were very good then, and hopefully it should be possible to generate new digital copy versions which are not too much worse.