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Author
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Topic: Lawrence of Arabia 4K at Arclight
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Aron Toplitsky
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 113
From: Gardena, CA, USA
Registered: May 2012
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posted 10-05-2019 06:04 PM
In 1989 when I was 16 years old, my film fanatic uncle took me to see the 70MM Restored Director's Cut of Lawrence of Arabia at the Ziegfeld Theater in NYC. Up until that point, I had NEVER seen a film look so beautiful! And I had seen a lot of movies prior to Lawrence, including plenty of 70MM blow-ups, but this 70MM was a whole new ballgame!
Fast forward to around 2008 or 2009, the film played in Los Angeles at the Aero theater also in 70MM and the film didn't quite match the vibrant colors I had seen in 1989. Naturally film prints degrade and age so that was understandable I guess.
Moving even more forward in time to a few nights ago, I saw the film again at the Arclight Cinerama Dome Hollywood, presented in 4K and I'm sure many of you know, this version was scanned at 8K according to what Sony has claimed. Unfortunately and to my disappointment, Lawrence of Arabia STILL does not match the glorious color and resolution I saw in 1989. I feel like i will never experience it that way again unless a brand new 70MM print is one day struck. And to add to it all, I realized I am no longer a fan of the curved screen at The Dome. I do not like how the image distorts. This was the first time watching this film where people's faces at the right and left edges of the frame looked similar to an anamorphic distortion.
I was just wondering if anyone has thoughts on all of this? Would love to hear about other experiences with Lawrence of Arabia.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-06-2019 07:45 AM
The DCP version of LOA that ended up at the AFI/Silver was, in my opinion, the absolute worst 70mm -> DCP I have personally ever seen. It looked horrible. Not just the colors but the entire image was abysmal.
I know others have seen LOA in DCP and thought it looked great so I don't know what to say...are there different versions of it floating around? Note, the AFI/Silver only has 4K projectors (Christie CP42xx series) and Dolby DSS200/CAT745 systems and they are all set to 4K. To verify that it wasn't the projector/server causing the crappy image, I loaded up Samsaura that was also on the server at the time and it looked stunning on the same equipment (also sourced from 65mm) so it wasn't on the projection side of things.
As for 70mm prints. It isn't the fading of the print you are seeing. There have been several reprints of LOA on 70mm. Remember, the LOA restoration was done before there was a DTS (DTS came out in '93 for Jurassic Park) so unless you saw a magnetic presentation, you definitely didn't have one of the original prints.
I've noted as prints are struck off of older Internegatives, people don't seem to have the same quality as was done when a film is released. In particular, films like 2001 I'll note edge fogging, which is easy to see since space should be black and not have any halos around the edges. I just don't think the same time/attention is done for reprints. I don't know their process but it feels like the IN is pulled, and they are on autopilot to strike the prints).
The quality of the labs were NEVER the same (and how they were for 35 versus 70mm wasn't uniform either). The same movie, if struck from Technicolor-USA, Technicolor-London, Metrocolor, Deluxe-USA...etc would be different. By far, the best prints, in general seemed to come from Metrocolor, until they shut down. My second favorite was Tehnicolor-London. Deluxe-USA would pre-damage the print for you.
Of the "modern" 70mm prints, I don't think I've seen a stellar example. H8 was shaky and soft, even on the fixed "Overture" cards and they all came from Fotokem. There are some that speak highly of their work but I haven't, personally, seen it. There are a lot of moving targets though (how the film was shot, color grading...etc) but I haven't gotten that warm and fuzzy feeling of the 70mm stuff I've seen coming out of Fotokem and I'm predisposed to want to see 70mm look its best. 70mm is my absolute favorite movie format. I've seen it look REALLY good.
Lawrence of Arabia should look REALLY good. The work Robert Harris and company did in '80s was exceptional and I did get to project one of those prints for some time on a big deep curve screen and one show to Sir David Lean (and F.A. Young) himself.
As for deep curve screens. I like them but agree I don't like the distortion that normally bring. At the Uptown in DC, we had special deep-curve lenses that compensated for the curve and, unlike the Cinerama Dome, the Uptown's projectors were essentially on centerline (both vertically and horizontally so we didn't have much of a keystone adding into it. Since our lenses were not anamorphic and the screen, though not exactly cylindrical (it too was a Cinerama type curve, so there isn't a fixed radius as the screen starts to flatten out as you move towards the sides), you will get a pincushion distortion as you move towards the corners and yes, if a head or other known object shape happened to be in the corner of the image, then yes, it would be stretched. But anything further in, would look essentially normal.
One thing lacking for DCP presentation are deep-curve compensated lenses. To develop them would cost a small fortune (it would be easily into 6-figures for the first lens and likely in the low-mid 6-figures). One would have to do this for but a handful of theatres that still have such a screen (and any Warren apparently puts in). So, in order to see something like that materialize, someone would have to pony up a LOT of money and likely they would make it an OEM product so others don't get access to it for a much lower cost (the expensive part is that first lens...it would still be expensive in low production but the first one is the most expensive).
What I don't get about Warren theatres is that if they are going to do the deep-curve screen. Then commission the lens from a company like Schneider/ISCO who likely have the drawings still on their past deep-curve products and maybe even notes on how they evolved. Have one or two deep-curve adapters commissioned that fit the auditoriums you are making and when you make new ones, keep the proportions the exact same so the lens(es) work perfectly.
An advantage of the new emissive (LED screen) technology is that they could do a deep-curve with zero distortion or focus problems. They just need to get it to be audio transmissive so they have good sound.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-07-2019 09:24 AM
Didn't all the Dimension 150 installs have a curve compensation lens? I know the UA D150 theatre in Syosset LI NY had a compensation lens that long after the two D150 titles were long gone, they still used the de-curve attachment when they were projecting wither 70mm or 35mm anamorphic. It presuposed the projector was sitting screen center and it presupposed a D150 curve, not a Cinerama curve which was considerably deeper. This would allow any film in 70mm and 35mm scope to be projected on their curved screen fairly distortion-free. Their 35mm cropped 1.85 spherical (and 1.78 which the projectionist told me they used whenever they could get away with it) was projected without the attachment.
Myself and as car load of stage hands and staff and whoever I could drag with me, would travel the hour and a half out to Long Island just to see films in that theatre, be they 70mm titles or not, so I saw films there of all different formats and none suffered that bowtie distortion that I would see at, say, the Warner Cinerama in Manhattan.
They did change screen size for 35mm both flat and scope with top/bottom and side masking -- maybe not very much, maybe 10%; not sure if that was just to preserve a bit of extra brightness or as one projectionist friend of mine suggested, to me, it was a fulfillment of contractual issue with D150 corp., although by the time-frame I am talking about, I can't imagine that there was any entity that was still associated with the original D150 company. My guess is that the operators at the UA just keep their lenses and screen stops all the same. I would guess that using the right prime lenses with 35mm scope, they could fill the screen top to bottom the same as 70mm.
Wasn't the whole big supposed improvement behind D150 the use of that unique "de-curving" adaptor that corrected for the curve distortion, something that TODD-OA theatres with curved screens suffered from?
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