Another Asinine Aspect Ahead!

[Jim Cassedy]

Another week, another advance preview, (with another celebrity guest) and yet another
asinine aspect ratio will be heading to your screens soon. Wes Anderson's new flick
"The Phoenician Scheme" opens the first week of June here in the US, but I've got
an advance preview/premiere this week.
And this weeks wacky aspect ratio is. . . . wait for it . . . . . . 1:47 !

Heres the phucking phoenician phocus and phraming chart:
PhoenicianFraming.jpg
The ingest notes say: "The black bars on the left and right of the screen are normal"

NO THEY'RE NOT!!!!!!!

[Leo Enticknap]

Anderson is notorious for pulling this BS. The Grand Budapest Hotel cuts between 1.37, 1.85, and 'scope continuously, throughout the movie.

1.47 is, IIRC, pretty close to the native AR of 8/35 (VistaVision or a 135 still frame).

Most of the reviews of The Phoenician Scheme I've seen have pronounced it to be pretentious crap. There again, that was the general reaction to Asteroid City, which I quite liked.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Wes and some of his cinematographers have a fondness for the narrower presentations it seems. Including several 1.37 contemporary films etc. IMDB cites Arricam LT Super 35mm and 1.5:1 as the aspect.

Unless i'm not uncovering a kindred broadcast or other format. 1.46 is closest to 1.5 (3x2) of the 35mm still photography frame, and perhaps the intent.

Agree with you that pillar boxing is NOT normal, at least they could acknowledge movable side masking if it exists. Assuming a rectangular image with minimal keystone, all common height screens and some others should be able to mask to the image I would hope?

But based on the trailer, there is a lot of interesting use of the edge of the frame (top down shots framed by scenic elements etc), among other croppings. Maybe there was a desire to avoid letting theatres (like mine) utilize any keystone correction via cropping near the edges of the frame. I would certainly obliterate some of those bathroom tiles! Image-safe areas be damned!

If I had to show this one I'd probably remove my keystone crop and "pin" the masking to match the keystone angle (but at the 1.46 image line).

[Ryan Gallagher]

Anderson is notorious for pulling this BS. The Grand Budapest Hotel cuts between 1.37, 1.85, and 'scope continuously, throughout the movie.

1.47 is, IIRC, pretty close to the native AR of 8/35 (VistaVision or a 135 still frame).

Most of the reviews of The Phoenician Scheme I've seen have pronounced it to be pretentious crap. There again, that was the general reaction to Asteroid City, which I quite liked.

Yeah I liked Asteroid CIty too, but I'm a theatre kid at heart... I have a feeling I'll like this one too.

[Jim Cassedy]

About two dozen of these boxes arrived for the Wes Anderson event later this week.
Somebody said they were T-shirts. (so, I'm wondering if they'll all be in odd sizes too. . )


PhonBoxes.jpg. )

[Frank Cox]

Now lets not get all shirty about it!

[Armand Daiguillon]

They can make it whatever aspect ration they want. 98% of exhibitors will play it in either whatever their Flat setting is or their Scope setting. Period. In this case it'll be in Flat. If it looks wonky ....that's on them.

[Steve Guttag]

And, if you have a steep projection angle (more than lens shift can accommodate)...well then, keystone it is. And while you can say "that's on them," that will mean nothing to the customer who thinks you don't know what you are doing because it doesn't "fill the screen."

[Leo Enticknap]

Which is exactly why I have a problem with filmmakers who expect their movies to play in mainstream theaters using very unusual ARs. If the theater is able to present it properly at all (i.e. create lens position files, screen files, masking presets, and the cues needed to trigger them) that adds significant extra labor costs; and if the theater is not, then, as you point out, customers will assume that the theater staff are incompetent.

Movies that are only likely to play in arthouses and cinematheques (of which The Phoenician Scheme is on the cusp), and especially movies made in an AR that was a widespread, mainstream standard once, but is not any more (1.37 being the obvious example), are a slightly different proposition. It is reasonable to expect the fully tricked out theater on a lavishly endowed university campus to be equipped to present unusual ARs properly, and to have projectionists on the staff who know how to do that. But to apply that expectation to your average Regal or Cinemark, or a mom-and-pop theater in a rural town that is struggling to survive on razor thin margins, is a lot less realistic.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Agree with Leo and Steve, at the very least, if they want it presented a certain way for certain reasons the projection letter should be more specific.

This “note” and framing chart reads like it is only for those chain cinemas with no ability to accommodate 1.47 masking, leaving the ones who can wondering if pillarboxing was artistic intent, or just a byproduct of the mainstream expectation.

I’m in the extreme angle camp, if I show any films pillar boxed with no crop (regardless of aspect) it looks like we don’t know what we are doing up here. ;-)

When they very the ratio I just have to live with moments of significant keystone. If it was the same amount on both sides that would be one thing, but we are off axis too due to the install electing not to modify the 35mm positions.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I like most of the stuff Wes Anderson has made, even though some is really more "art over function"... I guess there needs to be a place in cinema for this, but for mainstream releases, not conforming to some common aspect ratio is just a stupid move. I guess it can be somewhat excused, because his stuff is considered a "work of art", but still, as a director, at least part of your job should be to assure that most moviegoers can view your thing the way you expected it to be shown. Unfortunately, I there seem to be less and less movie directors that actually care about stuff like proper framing and masking. I still remember one of those Transformer movies, where the aspect ratio changed multiple times in a single scene...

[Jim Cassedy]

Just when I thought the aspect ratio silliness couldn't get any worse, I just got an e-mail
from the distributor for an upcoming advance screening of "Life Of Chuck" warning me
that it contains "multiple aspect ratios" - and DCP's will be sent in both FLAT and SCOPE
versions. (So the SCOPE versions will occasionally have bars on the left & right sides of
the screen, and the FLAT versions will sometimes have blackness at the top and bottom)

Two can play at this game! . . . Right now I'm thinking maybe I should program alternate
aspect ratios for every-other-show.


LOC_Aspects.jpg

[Chris Haller]

That Life of Chuck DCP looks nuts. Very much a "streaming first" kind of presentation. We'll likely shuffle it between our small flat screen and our smaller scope screen when it opens here - similar to Joker 2 most recently, its just a pair of playlists. No big deal.

I'll have to use the framing chart ahead of Phoenician Scheme though, even for our flat screen that I'll push for. Right now it doesn't look like we'll get it for next week anyways. Our booker says Universal hit their limit on first wide weekend bookings, and our theater didn't make the cut for our chain. Oh well. Shame I can't get that framing chart early to check. Almost none of our screens are actually proper 2.39 or 1.85, so it would have been nice to have time to check.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I actually prefer this madness Life Of Chuck provided, at least they are trying in a round about way to get better presentations on flat without movable masking, and scope without movable masking, it is a bit weird to spawn a whole version for each, but if they are gonna very the ration, this seems like a more compatible way to do it,

those with masking just pick the version that uses the highest % of your screen area, unless the director has a favored version?

[Ryan Gallagher]

I'll have to use the framing chart ahead of Phoenician Scheme though, even for our flat screen that I'll push for. Right now it doesn't look like we'll get it for next week anyways. Our booker says Universal hit their limit on first wide weekend bookings, and our theater didn't make the cut for our chain. Oh well. Shame I can't get that framing chart early to check. Almost none of our screens are actually proper 2.39 or 1.85, so it would have been nice to have time to check.

Maybe Jim or another can upload that chart for ya, it is certainly not encrypted.