NetFlix goes for non-standard: F-210 movie "The Midnight Sky."

[Steve Guttag]

I'm pretty tolerant of some of the classic ratios showing up in modern cinemas. We do have a legacy and 2020 has be a year of "classic titles" in lieu of new titles, let alone block busters.

They are releasing "The Midnight Sky" in the odd ratio of 2.10. Do they realize that only common-width theatres will show it that way out of sheer confusion (they just have Flat and Scope choices anyway). However, common height theatres will not be set up for F-210 and nobody is really going to run out and set up for a 1-off in these economic times. Just pick one of the MANY standard ratios.

Here is the NetFlix framing chart.

Screen Shot 2020-12-09 at 6.50.50 PM.png

[Jim Cassedy]

Oh, geez.... I have had to deal directly with some of the Netflix theatrical 'tech-people" at press screenings and at several film festivals, and my experience has been that of all the crossover "non studio" distributors ( Amazon Studios, Apple Releasing, etc) the Netflix folks ( or at least the ones I've met) have been the most clueless. More than once I received content where their opening logo was in a completely different aspect ratio than the feature that followed, and at one advance preview screening of a title that hadn't gone into general release yet, the aspect ratio of the end titles & credit roll did not match the feature causing the text to be cut off at the sides. I tried to explain the problem to the Netflix rep who later asked me "what I did wrong" at the end of the movie to screw up the credits. I couldn't get him to grasp the concept, and I even tried to escalate my explanation to another Netflix guy who was working with him, but I M O, neither of them really seemed to care as they were convinced it was "my problem". Oh well, I tried.....

[Carsten Kurz]

I remember that for an Amazon release they delivered a 7.1 DCP only. On request, they claimed that cinema sound systems would downmix 7.1 content to 5.1 anyway.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I second Jim's assessment... those newfangled studios have no clue at all about the cinematic release process. No matter if it's Netflix, Amazon Studios or Apple, it's indie-amateur time all over.

I also remember some Amazon releases with missing 5.1 mixes. I remember oddball aspect ratios, I remember DCPs with with utterly wrong black levels, visible ringing artifacts, lots of subtitle dramas and goofy sound mixes that needed a lot of EQing to sound somewhat right.

Those companies have deep pockets, maybe they should hire some of the folks on this very forum to up their clue-level a few points?

[Randy Stankey]

The adoption of digital video has, on one hand, "democratized" the entertainment industry but, on the other hand, has completely diluted the talent pool.

You can say that it is a good thing that commercial studios no longer have a monopoly on the production of entertainment but you can also say that, because any "idiot" can become a filmmaker, there are more people who don't know what they are doing in positions of power and responsibility.

Regardless of whether you think this is a good thing or not, the bottom line is that there will be more "bad product" out there.

When we were running film, we could say that there are good reasons why we do things a certain way.

When Edison (or Le Prince) invented motion pictures, they did a lot of experimentation to find out what worked or what didn't.
(One quote that Edison was famous for is, "I haven't failed [to invent the light bulb]100 times. I have only discovered 100 ways that don't work." )

Out of that came specifications, standards and practices that people needed to obey if they wanted to make movies. Those standards were codified by organizations like SMPTE. In order to get anywhere in the movie production and exhibition business, you had to, at least, be aware of those standards and follow them to the best of your ability.

Even if you didn't know something like "35 mm movie film shall have four sprocket holes per frame" there were other people who manufactured film, projectors and other equipment who did follow those rules. Anybody who had the right aptitude, training and work ethic could show movies, even if they didn't know every standard, chapter and verse, because everything was so seamlessly integrated.

Nowadays, you have a bunch of people who are little more than punks, who don't know the first thing about standards and practices, who don't really give a flying frogleap about them and who, because they think they have a little bit of power, go around telling other people what to do even when they talk literal nonsense.

When I worked at Mercyhurst, I spent weeks writing up the technical specifications for three different venues on campus. I documented everything from lighting, sound, projection and electrical, even down to the size of the stage and the height/width of the doors.

Invariably, I would have people come in to load-in a show ask me, "Why do I have to pay for a forklift driver?"

1) There is no loading dock. It's ground level only.
2) You can't back a 50 foot semi into the the stage entrance because it would block the street.
3) It's a 100 foot push from the load-in to the stage and we can't ask stagehands to physically carry stage boxes if they weigh over 100 lb.
4) All of this information is written out in the Tech Specs for the venue which we sent you and you signed for in your contract.
5) It says, right there, on page "x", "If these load-in requirements can not be met, we (the venue) will have to rent a forklift and hire a certified, union forklift driver at the presenter's expense."

You would not believe the kicking and screaming I have witnessed over issues like this.

People would walk in with random video/multimedia content on all sorts of media like flash drives or DVD-R and even e-mail then expect me to play them to an audience at a moment's notice when our stated policy was that all multimedia, even if it was just a PowerPoint file, had to be delivered to the Technical Director's hands no less than 24 hours before showtime. (Or else we charge you $50.00!)

It's all because you have some piss ant, punk who thinks he's a big shot but doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, trying to tell other people what to do.

This is all because of the democratization of entertainment production which has lowered standards and has diluted the pool of skilled technicians available to do quality work.

[Aaron Garman]

2.10:1...what is even the point of that? No TV or screen has that native shape. At least go 2.20:1 because at least that is a standard. I've noticed more 2:1 material lately too and that too makes no sense when no display device or projection technology does that natively at all. These would be artists are anything but. What a shameful exhibition the art of cinema is devolving into.

[Allan Young]

2.10:1...what is even the point of that? No TV or screen has that native shape. At least go 2.20:1 because at least that is a standard. I've noticed more 2:1 material lately too and that too makes no sense when no display device or projection technology does that natively at all.

A lot of modern mobile phones have 2:1 screens (or 18:9 as they call it). I think I read somewhere that this was at least partly responsible for the current 2:1 trend, particularly for TV shows.

[Stefan Scholz]

At least 2:1 was a recommended cinema standard, known as SuperScope, and lived for a few years, during the studio format wars in the mid 50s.
And yes, smartphones do come in a variety of screens, from 16 to 9, up to 21 to 9 on a few, that one approaching optical scope at the old 2.34 to 1 ratio.
What you can see in these formats, film creators actually aim on the mobile end user, not the cinema screen in their productions.

[Martin McCaffery]

I'm beginning to think the filmmakers know the public is so used to watching letterboxed movies at home that they would feel something is missing without letterboxing at the theatre.

[Randy Stankey]

It's perpetuated stupidity.

Back in the days of home video, displayed on 4:3 CRT televisions, movies had to be letterboxed in order to be displayed correctly. There were many people who hated seeing "black bars" on their screens and there were others who liked them because they thought they looked cool. In neither case did those people truly understand the actual reason for letterboxed images but, in the end, "black bars" became associated with movies. Letterboxing became a visual symbol that indicated "Movie."

Now we have a generation of "unwashed masses" who have grown up watching letterboxed movies and TV shows, thinking that they have to be that way in order to be "good." Maybe a few people understand the reason for it. Many people might understand on a superficial level but aren't willing to expend any mental energy to think about it. The rest just don't care.

The bottom line is that most of the entertainment consuming public don't know, don't care. As long as they have some flashing, beeping imagery to anesthetize their visual neurons, they will be happy. They might as well be staring at the Hypnotoad.

Hypnotoad.jpg

As far as the production of such tripe goes, it's something I call "Artistic Incest."

We have a generation of content producers who never learned the right way to do things and who don't understand the reasons why things should be done a certain way as long as they get their narcissistic supply from the public for being a movie maker. They don't know and don't care as long as there is somebody stroking their egos.

These people live and breathe in a make-believe world of other content producers who also need to have their egos stroked. They all go around patting each other on the backs, telling each other how great they are, never criticizing each other's mistakes until their work morphs into something unrecognizable.

It's like a bunch of proverbial hillbillies who run around fucking each other's cousins, popping out cross-eyed babies.

That is the state of the movie, television and on-line multimedia industry, today... A cross-eyed, buck-toothed, bastard child born of generations of unbridled incest.

[Martin McCaffery]

I anxiously await the first feature in SquishVision or Strech-O-Ram for the generation who grew up adjusting their flatscreen TV's to make the picture fill the screen.

[Sascha Roll]

Still waiting for the "vertical cinema" trend to catch on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IIsf1sf1CE

(At least they used 35mm Scope here!)

[Martin McCaffery]

I dunno, isn't that just Smart Phone Vision?

[Steve Guttag]

So I must be late to the party or something because I just put it all together. This movie was directed (and stars) George Clooney. He shot it on an Arri Alexa 65 and, as per Arri's advertisements, it uses a "slightly larger" imager than a traditional 65mm film camera. The imager measures 54.12 mm x 25.58 mm. Which, if you do the math is 2.11:1. I guarantee you this is how this stupid release format came to be. I don't know who to be more disappointed with. The camera manufacturer that has such an imager (though I'm sure it is so one can see beyond the frame and was intended to be cropped to standard ratios) or Clooney and company for thinking "I want to show every pixel". I'm going to stick with the the latter.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Those extra pixels give the director, cinematographer and the post-production team more stuff to work with. You can slightly re-frame the image, digitally stabilize an otherwise shaky image, etc. It's not like anyone is expected to use the raw aspect ratio of the image sensor as the aspect ratio of the final production. You're shooting a major film production and not a YouTube video. Heck, you're shooting in 6K+ and releasing in 4K anyways, so some image data will always get lost in the process.