As mediocre as the film looked in 35mm, how are they possibly going to massage that source material to look good in Imax?? If they do this, I will have to see it...

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Since this was a movie recorded entirely in the DIGITAL domain, Lucas could always 'digitally re-render' it for the IMAX aspect ratio a la 'A Bug's Life' Maybe this is what the 'DMR' system does? Perhaps they should use a tried-and-true proccess such as FlikFX!

All kidding aside, it might end up being a letterbox image in an IMAX frame...

-Aaron

And how are the bookings of these "IMAX" films being handled? In addition to whatever IMAX films are out there, there's APOLLO 13, Disney's TREASURE PLANET at the end of November and Disney's LION KING in December. Is Disney repeating the full schedule demands they dictated for FANTASIA 2000 and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST? If so, TREASURE PLANET will have a VERY short life in IMAX, with APOLLO 13 not getting much more playing time.

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Not everybody playing LK is playing TP and not everybody playing AOTC is playing A13.

Apollo 13 (clocking in at 116 minutes and "adjusted" to about 1.66) will likely not be required to play all day and neither will AOTC.

I watched A13 this weekend and it looks good. You can tell it wasn't filmed in 15/70, but we're talking about people who think "digital" is great. Time will tell regarding AOTC's image quality.

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I recall that Cameron's shots of the actual Titanic hulk in "Titanic" were shot with 2-perf TechniScope, and the grain/unsharpness of TechniScope's smaller image area were not obvious through the underwater murkiness and floating debris. So the Sony HDCAM's deficiencies may likewise not be obvious in "Ghosts of the Abyss", especially with separate 3D images for each eye.

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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
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HDCAM's severe compression makes it deficient even compared to full blown HD, let alone film.

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You gotta love this quote from a Fox executive:

quote:

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You couldn't find a movie better suited to the Imax format.

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I have mixed feelings about this new endeavor IMAX is embarking on. On the one hand, it feels a bit like a return to the days of 5-perf 70mm blow-ups, which is good. On the other hand, it involves changing aspect ratios, editing the movies for length, and showing them in a viewing environment that doesn't necessarily fit with their intentions, which is bothersome. In any case, it will no doubt do marvelous business for the IMAX corporation, which I'm sure is the reason they're doing this.

Not that there's anything wrong with trying to make money. It's just the whole square-peg-in-a-round-hole nature of it that gives me pause. I don't like seeing movies altered from their original form. The great thing about the days of 70mm six-track was that, after some horrible first attempts with things like "Gone with the Wind" being cropped to 2.20:1, studios finally settled on the practice of preserving the original aspect ratios of films when blowing them up. Now we're taking a step back.

Still, I'll be very interested in seeing the results. Anything will be better than the current practice of showing standard 35mm prints on the IMAX screen.

EDIT: Since Ep. II was shot in a 16:9 format and cropped to 2.39:1 scope, they could just open up the image to its full 1.78:1 height and letterbox it within the IMAX frame, similar to what is being done with Apollo 13. But what are they going to do if/when audiences start clamoring for the rest of the Star Wars series? The rest were all in 35mm scope, and have no extra image area to work with.