70 mm Dune part two

[Scotty Wright]

A friend of mine pointed out to me that LICORICE PIZZA was an MGM release

An acquaintance found this from Licorice Pizza. They did use an optical blowup process from the photochemically-timed 35mm.

[Jim Cassedy]

What I remember here is that I had to use a very slightly undersized pair of plates from my
70mm aperture plate collection because some negative splices were showing up as bright
flashes at the top or bottom of the screen if I use the theater's regular 70mm plates. I
think they had one splicer lat had a slightly larger overlap than the others they used. It
didn't happen on EVERY splice - - butintermittently throughout the print.

[Aron Toplitsky]

I had the opportunity to see Dune Part Two in 15/70 IMAX at the Regal Irvine Spectrum. I have not been to this theater since Interstellar and I will say, Regal did a great job at fixing up this entire theater. Love how the IMAX theater seats were quite comfortable and there was plenty of legroom. The seats even recline a bit.. Anyhow, just my two cents, I thought the full IMAX scenes looked really good, but they just can't compare to when a movie is shot on 15/70. I'm just curious if anyone else shares my opinion? What I did like, (and someone please correct me if I was seeing things) the aspect ratio shift wasn't as obvious. It seemed to shift from 1.90 to 1.44 instead of 2.39 to 1.44.

[Chris Haller]

Made the trip out to AMC Lincoln Square 13 to see Dune Part Two in IMAX 15/70.

Not a disappointment, but definitely the worst imax print made since the full on DMR days. They made clearly made them after the movie had been printed to 35mm film for texture, as Greig Frasier is keen to do, and then that print was scanned in 4K and that that 4K master was the source for IMAX 15/70 prints. It was soft and distractingly grainy for an imax 70mm presentation. But the 1.90 and 1.44:1 footage generally looked quite good, limitations considered. It looks like a fully 35mm sourced DMR presentation. Watchable, but nothing close to a fully 65mm sourced print. Very loud audio track as well, in an immense way.

[Scotty Wright]

They made clearly made them after the movie had been printed to 35mm film for texture

Forbes interviewed IMAX’s Head of Post Production and reported that the film prints skipped the analog DI process:

“It’s not surprising that Villeneuve appreciates the film look, as for Dune: Part One a “scan back” process was used, whereby the final digital edit was printed on 35mm and then scanned back to digital to pick up the appearance of film grain. For the film prints the process was simpler – simply output the final edit directly to film.”

[Chris Haller]

Forbes interviewed IMAX’s Head of Post Production and reported that the film prints skipped the analog DI process:

“It’s not surprising that Villeneuve appreciates the film look, as for Dune: Part One a “scan back” process was used, whereby the final digital edit was printed on 35mm and then scanned back to digital to pick up the appearance of film grain. For the film prints the process was simpler – simply output the final edit directly to film.”

Interesting! It looked like an incredibly grainy 35mm presentation in 15/70 up there. Coulda fooled me!

[Michael Coate]

Here is an exchange I had recently with a guy from Montreal….

Guy #1: …At least you guys get true IMAX screenings on film. There isn't one single analog IMAX projector in the entire province of Quebec, and we invented the damn technology.

Guy #2: Villeneuve's DUNEs were both shot digitally so "analog film" version is just going to to be a conversion of that anyway.

Guy #1: This is true. But I was just taking the opportunity to lament the fact that I live in the place that invented the technology, and yet we have no access to it, despite the fact that we have dozens of movie theaters in this damn city. Lol

Guy #2: I'm sorry. It does suck.

Guy #1: I'm used to it now. The same with real 70mm. We used to have a few analog 70mm projectors. I even got to operate one back when I was working as a projectionist when they released Tarantino's THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Now that projector is gone (and I don't work there anymore, anyway).

Me: DUNE: PART TWO is playing in “regular” 70mm in Montreal at Banque Scotia 13. <Insert link to list of 70mm locales of DUNE: PART TWO>

https://www.in70mm.com/presents/1963_blow_up/titel/d/dune_2/index.htm

Guy #1: It’s digital 70mm. They don’t have real 70mm on film.

Me: It is a film print they are screening. (They are showing it digitally on other screens in the complex.) Read the article I provided a link to as it lists all the theaters worldwide showing DUNE: PART TWO on film and delineates which are 5-perf 70mm and which are 15-perf IMAX.

Guy #1: Look, I don’t really care what this article says. The article could be mistaken. I worked at that very theater. They haven’t had a film projected on 70mm since Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT. After that they got rid of the projector they had, sent it up to Toronto. No matter what you might have read, Montreal does not have a 70mm film projector. Even current employees have recently had to answer this question on multiple forums because apparently there was some confusion and people thought they had DUNE: PART TWO on real 70mm (now I assume that confusion stems from this very article). They don’t. Their projector is digital.

Me: I am the writer of the article. Way to crap all over it by not even reading it and then blaming me for other people’s confusion. People are confused because, unlike OPPENHEIMER for instance, DUNE: PART TWO was shot digitally. The fact is Banque Scotia in Montreal has shown eight movies in 70mm since THE HATEFUL EIGHT. They are KONG: SKULL ISLAND, DUNKIRK and JUSTICE LEAGUE in 2017; READY PLAYER ONE in 2018; JOKER in 2019; TENET in 2020 (and again last month); OPPENHEIMER last year; and right now DUNE: PART TWO. So clearly there is a 70mm projection system in place at Banque Scotia.

Guy #1: I never denied there’s a 70mm projector. What I said was their projector is digital and not true 70mm, in the same way that their IMAX projector is also digital and not true IMAX. If that’s what you’re arguing about, then you’re arguing about nothing because I was clear about that from the beginning.

Me: You stated the 70mm film projector was removed after THE HATEFUL EIGHT, implying they can no longer run 70mm.

Guy #1: I stated that the 70mm FILM projector was removed after THE HATEFUL EIGHT. I made it clear that they now run DIGITAL 70mm, in the same way that they’ve been running digital IMAX for a while now (INTERSTELLAR was the last film they projected on IMAX film instead of digital).

Me: You are misinformed. The film projector is still there.

Guy #1: Dude, you live in California. I actually live here and I've worked at that theater and continued to attend it about 100 times a year for another 3 or 4 years after I left. It's about time you give up and admit that you're full of shit. Now this is my last response because it's a waste of my time.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Unless some companies start making new 35/70mm film projectors and all the other supporting stuff that goes with them I figure it's only a matter of time before these kinds of film screenings become impossible. I think there definitely is a market out there for film-based showings. But such a thing isn't feasible without a much greater amount of industry support. No one is going to bring a film projector manufacturing line back into operation if only a tiny few theater around the country can run shows.

The same danger exists for digital projection. It sure looks like a lot more existing cinemas are closing than new ones being built. The install base of digital projectors only needs to drop so much before the entire food chain of equipment and parts totally tanks. Things like computer imager chips can't be made in quantities of just a few dozen. An install base of film projectors could probably be as few as hundreds in number for hardware suppliers to still be able to make it financially. Digital-based cinema screens need to number in the thousands, if not tens of thousands for that product line to be feasible.

There are still 70mm projectors out there just sitting, the main problem is that Al LaVezzi retired about 5 years ago and he sold LaVezzi Precision to new owners that had zero interest in making film parts. The remainder of the parts they had in stock went to the Chicago Film Society, and am pretty sure that most of that is gone. Someone, or some company with precision machining capabilities could have a nice side operation going if they started making the high wear projector parts again. Years back, I was referred to, by a guy at ILM, to a shop in Redding, CA to make the intermittent sprockets for my VV projector. But one has to be able to supply a drawing(s) to these shops in order to have parts made. A friend who was a CAD designer at GM made my drawings. Anyway, I only had to order 8 sprockets from them, those sprockets, which were aluminum, and hard coat anodized, worked just fine on the three or four jobs they were on, but after all that was said and done, it turned out that LaVezzi had made a large batch of 32 tooth Posi-Trol sprockets for a company in Portland, OR that manufactured microfilm readers. I ended up using one of theirs on the projector, and in fact it is still on the projector.

[David Kornfeld]

Guy #1: Dude, you live in California. I actually live here and I've worked at that theater and continued to attend it about 100 times a year for another 3 or 4 years after I left. It's about time you give up and admit that you're full of shit.

Holy jumping cabooses, what a flaming moron! What are the odds that he needs help tying his Velcro shoes?

Heres what ya do, Mr Coate: challenge this idiot to go to the theatre he "worked at" & which he continues "to attend...about a hundred times a year," go into the booth (shouldnt be a problem, right?), & TAKE A PICTURE of the amazing "digital 70mm projector" -- which, professionally speaking, I would be rather interested in seeing -- so that you can "correct" your article (which I'm sure is insanely accurate) & when all he can produce is a shot of the JJ or the V8 or the Simplex or whatever the hell is in there you will have the unalloyed pleasure of explaining to him that youre not the one who is "full of shit."

There are a lot of these imbeciles out there, & theres not enough blood pressure medication in the world to counter-balance them all.

[Martin Brooks]

Made the trip out to AMC Lincoln Square 13 to see Dune Part Two in IMAX 15/70.

Not a disappointment, but definitely the worst imax print made since the full on DMR days. They made clearly made them after the movie had been printed to 35mm film for texture, as Greig Frasier is keen to do, and then that print was scanned in 4K and that that 4K master was the source for IMAX 15/70 prints. It was soft and distractingly grainy for an imax 70mm presentation. But the 1.90 and 1.44:1 footage generally looked quite good, limitations considered. It looks like a fully 35mm sourced DMR presentation. Watchable, but nothing close to a fully 65mm sourced print. Very loud audio track as well, in an immense way.

I couldn't find a show with a decent seat for the IMAX auditorium. Every show seemed to be sold out except for a few seats in the front row. So I saw it in the Dolby auditorium. It was fine.

[Michael Coate]

Holy jumping cabooses, what a flaming moron!

Incredibly, he got some support!

“why is everybody making a joke about the guy who used ‘digital 70 mm’ in his arument when there are actually plenty cinemas presenting their new laser Barco machines as exactly that to their audience who do not know that there is no digital 70 . Yes, we know that there is no digital 70 and Digital Imax is hardly ever marketed to the audience otherwise it is only mentioned Imax. He worked at the cinema and has most likely a better check about what they have in the projection booth then the guy from California.“