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Author Topic: NPR drive-in piece Jonathan Bodge Film Handler Posts: 83 From: East Dorset, VT Registered: Nov 2006 posted 05-30-2013 09:07 PM                     Tonight there was a piece on NPR about Drive-ins and how the digital system may "drive in" them out of business because of cost. I have to add that the reporter said that the digital image is superior to the film image. That's a matter of opinion.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-30-2013 11:21 PM                        Not really... probably in at least 95% of theaters today (and especially drive-ins), the digital image IS superior to the previous film image. As in: brighter, steadier, better focus, no dirt, no splices. I like to think we had a darn good film image here, but I still think the digital picture is better.  |  IP: Logged Jim Cassedy Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1661 From: San Francisco, CA Registered: Dec 2006 posted 05-31-2013 12:00 AM                     Also on NPR today (it must be "movie day") there was a story about theatres and studios "squabbling" [their words] over shortening movie trailers from 2.5 to 2min each. You can hear and/or read the story HERE I remember several years ago some guy here in CA tried to file some sort of lawsuit against UA Theatres to get them to publish the actual "MOVIE" starting times, instead of a "showtime", which included trailers. I think he tried to make the claim that it was 'false advertising'. It got thrown out of court.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 05-31-2013 06:16 AM                        quote: Mike Blakesley I like to think we had a darn good film image here, but I still think the digital picture is better. Yah... I have to say I've been pulled over to the "dark side" on this one. 5 years ago (or so), I bought into all the grumbling (much of it here), that film was in all ways superior to digital and could never be surpassed by DLP. Today's DLP may not match film, and if you're looking for that then perhaps you'll never be satisfied. However, considering the elements that I think matter to the average viewer, steady picture, sharp, consistent image and evenly-lit screen, digital is proving to be a suitable substitute. Now that digital is commonplace, the product has become what customers use to compare their experience from one place to another... for better or worse. (disclaimer)... Brad, and a few of his calibre, were accustomed to getting performance from film that the common folk never did. This opinion is not aimed at his group. The playing field is no longer level, and likely can never be for film in the future. I do believe that print quality is nothing near what it used to be, but I can't do anything about that. We've been forced to drink the kool-aid, and I, for one, feel myself fortunate that the result at my business is perceptually better than what I had before the change. I was certainly prepared for much less than I got. The drive-in environment is extreme. To even shoot at what the indoors did with film, we needed the brightest lamps and best lenses. Past that, we needed the most stable projectors, because jitter that might show up in millimeters on an indoor screen was inches or feet on our drive-in ones. Every single flaw was magnified, due to the size of picture we had to paint. Even then, we frequently failed at screen brightness, as you could only push so much energy through a 35mm frame, and we had no access to the gain screens that are commonplace elsewhere. To get an extra fraction of a fL, many of us traded off a bit of ghosting and shaved shutter blades beyond anything an indoor would ever consider. Considering that relatively few of us paid that kind of obsessive attention to projection detail, the installaton of today's digital is a dramatic advantage.  |  IP: Logged John Wilson Film God Posts: 5438 From: Sydney, Australia. Registered: Dec 1999 posted 05-31-2013 06:18 AM                     Plus with digital projection you can get a MUCH brighter picture than what you could with 35mm. That alone makes it a no-brainer for a drive-in. (Edit: I wrote that while Jack posted)  |  IP: Logged Victor Liorentas Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: london ontario canada Registered: May 2009 posted 05-31-2013 11:28 AM                     One advantage D Cinema has at a Drive-In (film too) is no perfs to lose light and pixels. I wish more of you had seen the Technalight system at it's best. It had no problem burning up a screen with light...even too much light if you like. It also put film grain up there instead of just 2 million pixels.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-31-2013 01:47 PM                     The film versus digital thing is a moot point when the finished Hollywood product is a digital intermediate, typically of 2K resolution. Add to this the declining level of quality in high speed 35mm release prints (based on complaints I've read here in the FT forums). D-cinema has a hard time standing up to a pure "old-school" film production presented in true film done right standards. But modern theaters aren't delivering that.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 05-31-2013 07:43 PM                        I think you pretty much said what I was trying to... in a lot fewer words!  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-31-2013 08:31 PM                        quote: Jim Cassedy shortening movie trailers from 2.5 to 2min each This is part of a set of new "marketing guidelines" being proposed by NATO. It includes some good suggestions, and one really stupid one: The "requirement" that every piece of promotional material should have the release date on it. This is idiotic for the industry. It just feeds the frenzy of the opening weekend "must see it now," and once the date is passed, it makes a movie seem like "expired goods." I think multiplexes are missing out on some business by only promoting movies that haven't been released yet. Whatever happened to cross-promotion? Sometimes we play two different movies, and I almost always play the trailer for the early show with the late one. I don't mind "Coming this summer," or words to that effect but I think they should leave the date OFF the posters and other stuff, and make a small sticky snipe available to add if desired. For trailers, they already make a gazillion versions anyway with miniscule changes from one to the next, so why not have an "undated" version for use in places that play movies off the break, AND to make the movie not seem "stale" if the trailer is played after the release date has passed. I can see why the studios would put the date on everything, however misguided; but why in the world is NATO wanting to require that? I wrote to David Binet at NATO last week asking about this, and have had no reply.  |  IP: Logged

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