STAR WARS, Episode II - ATTACK OF THE CLONES
A Case Study in Digital Cinema
SMPTE Digital Cinema Seminar
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Press Release
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Should be an interesting seminar, well worth attending.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

During the demos, sit at a variety of distances from the screen. Being an older theatre, most of the seats are further back than typical modern theatre designs, which sometimes force people to sit as close as one screen height from the screen (e.g., 20 feet from a 20 x 48 foot image).

Standard SMPTE 196M recommends a viewing distance of 2 to 4 screen heights for review rooms.

I recall that the rearmost seats are about 100 feet from the screen. (Even NTSC or PAL video doesn't look too bad from a distance of five screen heights).

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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Ask them for me what advantage they gained by shooting on video when this was not a low budget production and would be in post for over a year (negating any delays processing and scanning a film negative would add).

Please ask them why they find such soft images acceptable today when not that many years ago if they'd sat down to dailies that looked like that they would be screaming at the lab, the camera rental house, the DP, the focus puller...anyone and everyone.

Please ask them if they've thought about the irony of how in the not too distant future when a superior HD system is introduced for the home the folks who made "Dude Where's My Car" can retransfer the original negative at the new super resolution while ATOC will be forever soft.

How ironic that after all that trouble LucasFILM went through to establish THX and TAP and all the Technical Achievement Awards they have won over the years, to wind up with a situation where the end product coming out of LucasFilm Ltd. looks soft, and dingy and lacking in contrast....and it can NEVER look any better, even if played in any of the best of their certified THX theatres! I'd ask them why did they spend the last 20 years down on that Skywalker ranch trying to eek out every last ounce of image quality and then going to hell and back to make sure theatres could reproduce that quality exactly as the filmmaker intended, only to then release their latest work looking so much less than film can achieve? It would be like Mike Todd spending 10 years perfecting Todd-AO and then releasing AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS in 16mm. You could run SW Ep2 in the most un-THX multiplex grind house and it wouldn't look any worse than if played in one of Mr. Lucas's THX certified houses. What's the point?

Maybe it's a lot simpler that anyone realizes....maybe it is just a factor that no one has even considered. Maybe it is old age! Perhaps it's just that George and his contemporaries are now part of the 60 Plus generation and they just can't see as well as they did when they made the trilogy. Maybe they go into the production screening room and run the "dailies" on their DLP and they all stand there looking at it and saying, "What are they all complaining about....looks great to me." Maybe they just can't see as well as they did in 1977.

What advantage they gained by shooting on video:

1. The ability of the director and director of photography to look at a monitor and see exactly what they were getting down on tape right on the stage in real time, without having to guess from a low-rez video tap and wait for timed dailies.

2. The elimination of having to stop a performer on a roll so that a film magazine could be changed. The average 35mm load is 11 minutes, the HDCam load is 50min and can be changed in seconds. This is the one advantage Lucas most often named for the actual physical production. No after-the-shot gate checking and no worries about light contamination and lab mishandling, either.

3. The elimination of processing time and costs, and the necessity of handling any film at all. When the camera master tapes are taken out and loaded right into the house server, anyone who needs access to the footage has it immediatly, without having to wait for processing and dupes.

4. The huge savings on raw stock, and ending the necessity of having to morgatge and store batch rolls to insure uniformity. And in spite of what anyone tells you, the savings are not eaten up by having to scan out a few internegatives. It's not even close.

5. The elimination of having to scan the negative into digital files, a costly, unnecessary and unwanted step on a production where almost every shot will have a CGI effect. It dosn't matter that it wasn't a low budget film. Why piss millions away when it will result in uneeded steps and a more cumbersome production? Resolution?

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Please ask them why they find such soft images acceptable today
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Because they know that among the fans of the series and the general movie going public not one dollar, not one, will be lost from people turning their nose up at video origination, and that the cost savings and return on investment will be enourmous despite what any of us think about resolution and shadow detail. Honestly, apart from the film community, how many people do you think really cared that the film was a little soft?

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Ask them why the people who once insisted on VistaVision for special effects . . .
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The key word there is 'once'. That was another place, and another time, in an era of physical miniatures, optical printing and motion control. In the current production environment of CGI generated effects, digital origination is the sensible thing to do. Will it result in an image which is somewhat lower in resoultion than 35mm? For now, yes. Is this an acceptable trade off for the huge production economy and advantages you will realize? You betcha, especially when only a comparative handful will complain.

OK, that's my rant. Here's the director of Spy Kids 2 on the subject:
http://www.uemedia.com/CPC/digitalcinemamag/features/feature_1.shtml

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