70mm : "One Battle After Another"

[Jim Cassedy]

I got word last week that we'll be running the new Paul Thomas Anderson flick:
"One Battle After Another" in 70mm here when it gets released in late September.
It's another production that was shot in 35mm VistaVision ™️. V-V blows up very
nicely to 70mm, as long as they don't play games with the aspect ratio, as they
did with The Brutalist. When done right it looks great. Llike the beautiful 70mm
blow-up of VERTIGO we ran here last year.

[Bobby Henderson]

I wonder if the movie will have an all-film work flow or if it will be funneled through the usual 4K digital intermediate stage.

I'm not totally against the use of digital intermediates on large format film imagery in post production. However, if a movie is filmed in a large format process like VistaVision or 5/65mm that large format DNA is mostly lost when the imagery is pushed through a lower resolution 4K post production step. Blowing the results back up to 5/70mm is mostly pointless. The film-sourced imagery might look a little more "organic" but it's not going to be any better in overall quality than something shot with a modern d-cinema camera. This is like someone taking a high resolution D-SLR image, shrinking it to half its size in Photoshop or Lightroom, and then trying to artificially up-rez the image back to its former size. That crap doesn't work, not even if they have the magic CSI: Miami "enhance that image" super duper image processor.


4K is a good standard for 4/35mm source imagery. Productions shooting in 5/65mm or 8/35mm and then pushing the imagery through digital intermediate work really need to do better than plain 4K. It has been over 20 years since the first movie post-produced with a 4K DI was released (Spiderman 2). So many advancements in computer technology have taken place since the early 2000's that it should now be easier for a movie production to generate a 8K DI than it was to render that first 4K DI. Of course there are no digital projectors that go beyond 4K, but a DI in 8K or higher will make a difference when output to 70mm.

If these movie productions want to keep it up with the 70mm hype and not do it right they're going to be pushing their luck. The general public will get wise to what's happening and start abandoning these kinds of screenings.

[Scotty Wright]

PTA like Nolan usually does a parallel film workflow alongside the DI.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Will these be more fotokem lab prints I wonder? Look forward to the aspect ratio sizing reference!

[Scotty Wright]

It’ll be fotokem. They did the VistaVision trailer print for tcm fest too.

[Jim Cassedy]

A while back I acquired about 250' of VistaVision™️ film of the Paramount and V-V logos.
I don't know which lab did these, and I believe these were either tests of lab rejects, since
the color balance differs slightly on each of them . The film stock is from the mid 1980's

VistaVsn_Clip_1.jpg

VistaVsn_Clip_2.jpg

-Jim C -

[Ryan Gallagher]

A while back I acquired about 250' of VistaVision™️ film of the Paramount and V-V logos.
I don't know which lab did these, and I believe these were either tests of lab rejects, since
the color balance differs slightly on each of them . The film stock is from the mid 1980's
-Jim C -

Those are interesting, I thought classically VV prints did not have an audio track laid down? But maybe my knowledge is gapped there.

[Jim Cassedy]

I thought classically VV prints did not have an audio track laid down?

As far as I know, most of them had optical tracks, often in PerspectaSound. There might
have been a few releases that had multi-channel magnetic tracks running on a mag-follower.
I'm not sure what they at the recent VistaVision screenings in LA recently. I don't know if they
had optical tracks, Dolby Digital, or used DTS. (But I'm sure somebody here probably knows. )
There was a special system built which was used to run a historical documentary multiple
times a day at Colonial Williamsburg, VA. I actually got to see this system in the late 70's.
(It may have been 'upgraded' to digital by now) I recall reading a tech article online,
perhaps in an old SMPTE Journal) which said that the Williamsburg V-V print used 'fox-hole'
sprockets and had a six channel mag-stripe on the print.

[Gordon McLeod]

https://www.widescreenmuseum.com/wid...liamsburg1.htm

[Thomas Piccione]

Those are interesting, I thought classically VV prints did not have an audio track laid down? But maybe my knowledge is gapped there.

As far as I know, most of them had optical tracks, often in PerspectaSound. There might
have been a few releases that had multi-channel magnetic tracks running on a mag-follower.
I'm not sure what they at the recent VistaVision screenings in LA recently. I don't know if they
had optical tracks, Dolby Digital, or used DTS. (But I'm sure somebody here probably knows. )
There was a special system built which was used to run a historical documentary multiple
times a day at Colonial Williamsburg, VA. I actually got to see this system in the late 70's.
(It may have been 'upgraded' to digital by now) I recall reading a tech article online,
perhaps in an old SMPTE Journal) which said that the Williamsburg V-V print used 'fox-hole'
sprockets and had a six channel mag-stripe on the print.

The very first prints of White Christmas had no soundtrack onboard and ran with mag-followers, but later prints had Perspecta optical, which was the typical format for 8/35 release prints (not that there were many!).

The prints used for the VV screenings at The Chinese had no onboard sound at all, as they weren't originally intended for public presentation. DTS could certainly be made to work on a VV print, as the bitstream can simply be "stretched" when printing for proper playback at double speed. I'm not sure Dolby Digital could without some serious rework on the decoding side given the sprocket holes are flying by at twice the speed - and we certainly don't want to be stretching those. In this case though, audio was synced using shaft encoders driving a digital audio playback rack.

[Martin Brooks]

If these movie productions want to keep it up with the 70mm hype and not do it right they're going to be pushing their luck. The general public will get wise to what's happening and start abandoning these kinds of screenings.

No, I don't think they will because the general public, even the purists, are ignorant. They don't know or don't care that there's a DI. All they know is "it's FILM!" and "it's 70mm!"

IMO, the imagery at Dolby Digital and other dual-laser theaters is pretty spectacular and to me, it looks like the best of 65/70mm production, but to the purists, it's all "I'm not paying to watch television". Meanwhile, back in the day, many of the 70mm theaters in NYC sucked pretty bad. I'd always prioritize on the Ziegfeld, Loew's Orpheum and Loew's Astor Plaza unless a movie wasn't playing in any of those theaters. The "second tier" was the Beekman, Cinema 1, New York, Baronet, Loews State 1 (the original one) and the big screen at the Criterion, maybe the National and a few others. But most of the others were awful.

[James Biggins]

No, I don't think they will because the general public, even the purists, are ignorant. They don't know or don't care that there's a DI. All they know is "it's FILM!" and "it's 70mm!"

IMO, the imagery at Dolby Digital and other dual-laser theaters is pretty spectacular and to me, it looks like the best of 65/70mm production, but to the purists, it's all "I'm not paying to watch television". Meanwhile, back in the day, many of the 70mm theaters in NYC sucked pretty bad. I'd always prioritize on the Ziegfeld, Loew's Orpheum and Loew's Astor Plaza unless a movie wasn't playing in any of those theaters. The "second tier" was the Beekman, Cinema 1, New York, Baronet, Loews State 1 (the original one) and the big screen at the Criterion, maybe the National and a few others. But most of the others were awful.

"Even the purists are ignorant"? Not so Martin. Please forgive me for saying so, but that statement seems to be a tad arrogant.

[Ryan Gallagher]

On the earlier comment about the benefits of vista/70/imax filming formats being lost in a 4K intermediate pipeline. I think it depends a little, if the larger format is only used during special effects like is sometimes common I don’t see a big loss.

if used as the primary format sure, but I seriously doubt anyone doing it anymore is chopping down to 4k in the intermediate, I would hope at least 8K pipelines (if not more)are in use now. But arguably even 8K falls sort of the format potential.

Similar issue could be taken with original 35 to 70mm blow ups? What was the main benefit, were the master negatives just that much higher quality than a 35mm print could be, that there was value add in blowing up to a larger presentation format? Other than more light and 6track mag audio?

[Martin Brooks]

"Even the purists are ignorant"? Not so Martin. Please forgive me for saying so, but that statement seems to be a tad arrogant.

I disagree. I've spoken to many at many screenings. Most have absolutely no idea what a DI is. Or that many are actually shot digitally, not on film. In fact, I would argue that many don't understand that the overwhelming majority of 70mm films during the film era were blow-ups from 35mm, not 65mm origination.

It's similar to audio purists who buy new vinyl because it's "analog", but something like 93% of new vinyl is produced from digital masters. So they're just fooling themselves, as far as I'm concerned.