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Author Topic: The 'other' conversion: Imax
System Notices
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 - posted 02-12-2011 11:50 PM      Profile for System Notices         Edit/Delete Post 
The 'other' conversion: Imax

Sources: Variety.com

quote:
Auds have learned to be wary of movies converted to 3D, as some pics have failed to deliver the premium experience paid for.
But conversions for the other popular premium format in the marketplace, Imax, have so far faced no such resistance. In fact, gross box office for films converted for Imax exhibition using the company's DMR process doubled in 2010 to $546 million, and those conversions go largely unremarked upon.

But converted they are, in ways that can alter a movie fairly drastically -- and not always in ways filmmakers like.

Morphing a movie to Imax involves several steps that can vary from pic to pic. David Keighley, the company's executive veep and overall post-production guru, says Imax spent a lot of time and money developing its proprietary conversion DMR process to remaster a picture.

The company uses complex, expensive software to de-grain or "smooth out" the picture.

"We make the film brighter, we change the color saturation and we also have to deal with any visual noise in the film when we make the picture larger, because we're asking you to sit closer to the screen," Keighley says.

Following the DMR process, filmmakers can also choose to convert the aspect ratio of their film for exhibition in the Imax format.

The Imax aspect ratio is 1.43:1, not far from the traditional "Academy" ratio of Hollywood's Golden Age. But most movies today are released in widescreen formats, either 1.85:1 or 2.39:1.

Some movies are shown letterboxed in Imax, but the filmmaker has the option to change the aspect ratio to fit the squarer screen, which can change the look and feel of a widescreen picture.

The movie's sound also gets an overhaul. It's remastered uncompressed to make it as visceral as possible. It's then pumped out into the theater using DSL-4D sub-bass 15,000-watt speakers. (Some viewers complain that means cranking up the bass to ear-splitting levels.)

The conversion can involve a lot of tampering with the movie, but Keighley says Imax works closely with filmmakers in the process.

"Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, all those guys have been in our hallways for days and weeks during the time we're getting their films ready for an Imax release," says Greg Foster, president of filmed entertainment for Imax. "We work with them to make sure they feel their original intent is honored and that they're satisfied with how the film looks."

Nolan in particular has embraced the format. He specifically shot sequences of "Inception" and "The Dark Knight" in 65mm large-format film that were then projected in "native" Imax in Imax theaters.

"You get incredible things from Imax as a filmmaker," Nolan says. "The screen shape and size makes the experience more immersive and the resolution of the image is simply the gold standard in exhibition."

But some filmmakers have expressed reservations about Imax.

Cameron, in a 2006 interview with Variety, said he didn't care for the giant-screen format for narrative filmmaking.

"Yes, they have more resolution, but they also have too much screen. It's too in-your-face, and it fills too much of your peripheral field," he said.

He objected that the giantscreen format undermines the director's ability to use framing and composition to guide the viewer's eye.

(Nonetheless, a few years later, Cameron's epic "Avatar" was released in Imax twice, including an extended edition released only in Imax.)

In the end, there's one main reason that Imax conversions have been noncontroversial, compared with 3D conversions.

Those 3D conversions are done by producers and studios who may are more interested in a quick buck than quality.

All Imax conversions, by contrast, are done by a company that has every reason to maintain quality and protect the its proprietary format: Imax itself.

Contact the variety newsroom at news@variety.com

The 'other' conversion: Imax

[ 02-13-2011, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: Adam Martin ]

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Frank Angel
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 - posted 02-13-2011 02:20 PM      Profile for Frank Angel   Author's Homepage   Email Frank Angel   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
But this is only relevent in terms of the film-based IMAX. The digital IMAXs theatre screens are no bigger than normal theatre screens. Do they need to get the DMR treatment as well? They project 2K just the same as every other digital-based presentation, albeit with dual projectors. They don't need to do any "conversion" at all, do they?

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

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 - posted 02-13-2011 08:10 PM      Profile for Steve Guttag   Email Steve Guttag   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
And just think...if the DMR process was done to just say 5/70...we'd have the ultimate AND widescreen at a fraction of the cost.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

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 - posted 02-14-2011 10:52 AM      Profile for Bobby Henderson   Email Bobby Henderson   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
James Cameron's criticisms of the process are valid.

Movies have to be composed and edited differently in order to work properly on giant-sized 15/70mm based theater screens. The viewer is looking at a much larger "canvas" and needs more time to take in the view. Some of the techniques we see in contemporary movies do not translate well to the giant screen. Shaky cam is bad enough on a standard movie screen (or even HDTV monitors); it's pure shit when applied to a giant screen. In IMAX, if the camera has to move, pan or tilt it needs to do so slowly. That isn't happening with traditional Hollywood movies. Rapid fire, music video style editing techniques don't work either. It might work on a TV screen, but as the screen gets larger and larger the hard cut edits become more jarring. In IMAX the shots really need to be held for significant amounts of time.

Then there's the issue of shot composition. Headroom requirements are much higher. The important image details need to be held closer to the center of the screen (especially in domed theaters). Letter-boxing alleviates many of these problems, but some 'scope compositions with characters placed at far ends of the frame can have bewildering results.

Finally, the blow-up process itself has all sorts of serious issues. It's one thing to take a 4-perf 35mm film element, scan it at high resolution (4K or better) and then apply various filtering to the image to make it work in 15/70. It's another thing to take what is effectively a HDTV resolution (2K) image and blow it up the same way. That doesn't work nearly as well.

Maybe my eyes are a little more picky than others about the 2K to 15/70 thing. I know how native 15/65mm photography looks in IMAX and am spoiled to that. The low resolution of 2K imagery on a screen that big is painfully obvious. I do a lot of work creating large format advertising displays, such as billboard faces. Artwork with native high resolution detail is so much better for such projects. It's a pain in the ass to make low resolution imagery look passable on such displays. In some cases it's impossible (like trade show display graphics where viewers can get within inches of the finished graphic).

I can't stand IMAX Digital for how it violates various principals of truth in advertising, poisoning the film-based IMAX format and perhaps be the thing that will ultimately kill off the whole IMAX brand. Still, customers who visit an IMAX Digital theater to see a Hollywood movie are going to see just as much of the movie as they would if they visited a film-based IMAX theater. That's because the vast majority of Hollywood movies are still being post-produced using the 2K digital intermediate process.

If the finished movie is native 2K you might as well see it projected in 2K.

Finally, since IMAX Digital screens are more modestly sized, the Hollywood movie conventions of rapid editing pace, shaky camera movement, flash-pans and all sorts of other style-over-substance techniques will be easier for audiences to absorb. But really, if the movie is standard 2D why even bother paying the premium to see it in IMAX Digital? The only thing I see going for IMAX Digital is better, brighter digital 3D.

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Frank Angel
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 - posted 02-16-2011 01:25 PM      Profile for Frank Angel   Author's Homepage   Email Frank Angel   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Bobby, I must say that the IMAX digital image does have a bit more "punch" to it that the digitals I have seen in standard theatres don't have; contrast seems to be very good as well. Both I think can probably be attibuted to the dual projection system.

And while I consider IMAX digital screens "average" size, mostly because mentally I compare them to what used to be considered "average" when the norm was the single screen theatres, they only can be called large screens today because of what passes for "average" at many of plexes -- screens that I consider badly undersized -- screening room sized in fact. Some of them even home theatre sized!

So yah, you will get a bigger (and curved) screen in IMAX digital theatres, plus IMAX still seems to maintain their facilities to a few notches higher in terms of overall operation than many plexes. And more importantly, those qualities seem to be more consistant over the brand than what you are apt to find walking into an unknown multiplex cold, so I don't mind paying an extra few bucks to insure that what I will be getting will almost always be decent quality presentation and environment. Let me put it this way; if I am in a new town and looking to go to see a movie and didn't know the quality of presentation in any of the multiplexes, and the title I wanted to see was playing in IMAX-D, I would opt to go to the IMAX-D rather than take my chances anywhere else -- it's less of a Russian roulette situation at the IMAX-D.

Like you however, it does piss me off that one has to pay extra to get what you should be assured of getting at ANY theatre, but one can't do much about which way the cookie crumbles.

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