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Topic: Road to Perdition - screen this in SDDS

Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 07-11-2002 04:43 AM

To anyone who has SDDS players in their theater complex that is going to be playing Road to Perdition, make it a point to screen this film in one of your SDDS auditoriums. I checked two prints today and both of them had a defective SDDS track on reel 2. Upon calling in to Technicolor, I found out that they have already been receiving reel replacement requests for reel 2 from SDDS equipped theaters.

My point to all of this is certainly to not bash the SDDS format or the printing lab, but to warn everyone that it appears there is a bad negative of which hundreds of prints could have been struck from. That being said, the odds are that there are a BUNCH of reel 2s with a bad SDDS track of this film. Don't screen it in SRD or DTS if the film could end up playing at a later date in SDDS. You might regret it.

...and of course it would probably be a good idea to plan on possibly moving the print into another auditorium after you screen it so that it may play in one of the other digital formats if it turns out that you got one of these bad reels with your print.

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Mike Schindler
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1039
From: Oak Park, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 07-11-2002 11:04 AM

I screened this last night, and the SRD track on reel 2 was defective. Do you think this is related, or is it probably just a coincidence?

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Bill Gabel
Film God

Posts: 3873
From: Technicolor / Postworks NY, USA
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 07-11-2002 12:02 PM

I've been screening Road to Perdition since mid-May. I've
been running it in SRD with no problems. In the can there
was a note, not to run this print in DTS. My print was a
wet gate print from CFI, not Technicolor.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 07-11-2002 01:23 PM

Bill, I noted your run time listed in the FI&TA forum said 2 hours 40 minutes. That is not the final run time. Are you still running that print, or was your run time incorrect?

Mike, let's hope it was an odd coincidence. If anyone else can check out this reel in SRD and post their results, they could be helping a lot of other theaters.

EDIT: whoops, I just went back and re-read your post. Apparently you were referring to 2:40 as 2.40 anamorphic. Please use the period and not the colon when you do that, as that looks like a running time.

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Mike Schindler
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1039
From: Oak Park, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 07-11-2002 02:57 PM

Has anyone ever been able to establish which of the three digital formats is truly the best? I mean under ideally equal circumstances, where they all have the same amount of tracks and are working properly.

Also, I thought I read somewhere on this site that movies which are projected digitally have uncompressed sound. Is that true, or am I just making that up? If it is true, is it safe to assume that the quality is better than the other 3 formats? And is there any limit to the number of channels which are available in this format?

EDIT: I just realized that I should've posted this in that other thread. Sorry.

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Karen Hultgren
Master Film Handler

Posts: 492
From: Agoura Hills, CA, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 07-11-2002 07:29 PM

A note that said do not use DTS ... that's interesting! I'll be back tomorrow after I do a little investigation.

Karen at DTS

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Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 07-11-2002 09:46 PM

Karen ain't gonna let that one get by.....Go get 'em Karen!!

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Karen Hultgren
Master Film Handler

Posts: 492
From: Agoura Hills, CA, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 07-15-2002 12:18 PM

After doing some digging, it turns out that the print to Bill was a pre-release print that was made specifically for early screenings. There were no discs made for tbis film until a few weeks before release.

Karen at DTS
khultgren@dtsonline.com

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 07-15-2002 04:47 PM

Our print seems to be rubbery on R-6 but tracks ok in Dolby Digital on all reels. This film is notably sharper than our previous title, also from FOX (EP:2)

Steve

------------------
"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"

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Joseph Pandolfi
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 213
From: Milford, CT.
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 07-28-2002 11:55 AM

Last night I noticed that two out of the three prints of Road To Perdition had a bad SRD track in Reel 2. The first one was trying to track at 7-1/2 in admist a lot of fails. As soon as it went to reel 3 it was tracking 4 to 5 with one fail every 30 seconds or so. The second print was tracking 6 to 6-1/2 with no fails. As that went to reel 3 it was tracking 4-1/2 to 5 with no fails. The third print tracked fine in Reel 2 because we got the print a week after it opened.
We are now running the first print in DTS and there is no problems with Reel 2 there.

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Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 07-28-2002 12:05 PM

>>>Our print seems to be rubbery on R-6 but tracks ok in Dolby Digital on all reels. This film is notably sharper than our previous title, also from FOX (EP:2)<<<

Wait a sec. Wasn't Road to perdition a Dreamworks release domesticaly. Fox internationaly. If so I guess in a sense the answer is correct.

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