Large Format/"Premium" Theaters (IMAX 15/70, Digital IMAX, XD, ETX, RPX, etc.)

[Geoff D]

Agreed. It's not 15-perf 65mm but then what is? Perhaps ARRI should work on stitching three of their '5-perf' A65 sensors together and rotating them 90 degrees, then we'd get something approaching what true IMAX can do in the digital realm

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by xbs2034

I think the Alexa digital cameras are probably the best digital cameras around and the Alexa 65mm has gotten some great images already, but yes it still can't match the old IMAX film cameras (really nothing in either film or digital cameras can).
Still, feel its wrong to say it wasn't shot in IMAX when the camera has been officially endorsed by IMAX and repeatedly marketed as such. Even if you don't like it, digital capture is clearly going to be the vast majority of movie shooting going forward (film capture could possibly even go away completely, which would certainly be sad to me) and this is IMAX's digital solution.

My issue's more that there's nothing that distinguishes the Arri IMAX camera vs it's regular Alexa 65 counter part. Sully didn't even get the IMAX endorsement until filming was well underway, meaning they didn't even shoot it with camera bodies that had the IMAX sticker slapped on them. Movies like Rogue One and Doctor Strange were shot on the 65 as well, and they're being released in IMAX as well, but they aren't being branded as "shot in IMAX". It's just kind of silly to recognize what IMAX is trying to pull off as legitimate.

[xbs2034]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

My issue's more that there's nothing that distinguishes the Arri IMAX camera vs it's regular Alexa 65 counter part. Sully didn't even get the IMAX endorsement until filming was well underway, meaning they didn't even shoot it with camera bodies that had the IMAX sticker slapped on them. Movies like Rogue One and Doctor Strange were shot on the 65 as well, and they're being released in IMAX as well, but they aren't being branded as "shot in IMAX". It's just kind of silly to recognize what IMAX is trying to pull off as legitimate.

Well, according to the Red Carpet interviews at the premiere, Eastwood said it was the IMAX team who approached him about using the camera and he ran tests and liked it.
Maybe entering into some kind of agreement with IMAX, as well as composing or at least protecting for the 1.9 ratio is what they will use to determine "shot in IMAX" status

IMAX® on the Red Carpet: Sully Premiere - YouTube

[Movieman66]

Originally Posted by Eric The Duke

"Clint Eastwood filmed 95% of Sully with ALEXA IMAX 65mm cameras. At Smithsonian IMAX Theaters the entire film will expand vertically to fill more of the screen delivering 26% more image than standard theaters. Experience the film the way it was meant to be seen- in IMAX."

Originally Posted by xbs2034

Well, according to the Red Carpet interviews at the premiere, Eastwood said it was the IMAX team who approached him about using the camera and he ran tests and liked it.

5% of the shooting was probably done before Clint decided to start using the IMAX cameras, but that's just my opinion, and as always, others may vary.

But I did catch Sully last night at the first screening in IMAX (which had more people attending than the screening of the Secret Lives of Pets I watched in IMAX during the afternoon which was like "MoviesVille, Population: Me"), and I did like the IMAX countdown, which started like a regular IMAX countdown, but when it said "Filmed With IMAX Cameras", the screen opened up, which was a nice touch.

By the way, there was an IMAX preview of Inferno at the screening of Sully, which the screen was opened up, which now makes me want to see it badly. Very, very badly.

[Spike M.]

Guys, the Alexa 65 has become a normalized camera option on premiere productions. Eastwood didn't need to be "convinced" by it; it's not like Sully was his move to digital- his last two films were both shot on the standard Alexa. It's become common place for a couple years now for productions that intend to present the finished product in 2.40 to shoot spherically in 1.85 so that they A.) have reframing options, and B.) can expand the ratio for premium showings such as IMAX. James Gunn just finished shooting the next Guardians on the Red Epic 8K camera, and he's said multiple times that it will have expanding ratios in IMAX. It won't get a "shot in IMAX" logo though, since they didn't strike a deal with the company Red. It's marketing, nothing more.

I stress this point because "shot in IMAX" has always been a technical specification, not just a marketing ploy. This isn't the case with Sully or anything shot with the Alexa 65 that's branded differently. It's smoke and mirrors.

[MrsMiniver]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

Guys, the Alexa 65 has become a normalized camera option on premiere productions. Eastwood didn't need to be "convinced" by it; it's not like Sully was his move to digital- his last two films were both shot on the standard Alexa. It's become common place for a couple years now for productions that intend to present the finished product in 2.40 to shoot spherically in 1.85 so that they A.) have reframing options, and B.) can expand the ratio for premium showings such as IMAX. James Gunn just finished shooting the next Guardians on the Red Epic 8K camera, and he's said multiple times that it will have expanding ratios in IMAX. It won't get a "shot in IMAX" logo though, since they didn't strike a deal with the company Red. It's marketing, nothing more.

I stress this point because "shot in IMAX" has always been a technical specification, not just a marketing ploy. This isn't the case with Sully or anything shot with the Alexa 65 that's branded differently. It's smoke and mirrors.

I saw Sulky tonight. They used the film 65mm lens and attached it to an digital camera. The sensor is 65mm. You need to do a little research. IMAX carrys over the lens from their film bodies which have been adapted to work on the digital body.

As for the movie, it was good. Picture looked great too.

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by MrsMiniver

I saw Sulky tonight. They used the film 65mm lens and attached it to an digital camera. The sensor is 65mm. You need to do a little research. IMAX carrys over the lens from their film bodies which have been adapted to work on the digital body.

There's no such thing as an "IMAX lens". Nolan uses an assortment of customized glass, most of which is Hasselblad based. The Alexa IMAX system uses standard Arri 65 lenses, none of which are exclusive to IMAX.

[xbs2034]

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/sul...65-1201724515/

This article has more info about the Alexa IMAX camera and it's use on Sully. The only difference between the Alexa IMAX and regular Alexa 65 is software adjustments designed for IMAX's color space and workflow, and the only things not shot with the camera were shots in flight simulators where the space was too small to accommodate the cameras.

[Poya]

It sucks the film had the usual desaturated Eastwood look to it, which lessens the impact the camera might have had.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

There's no such thing as an "IMAX lens". Nolan uses an assortment of customized glass, most of which is Hasselblad based. The Alexa IMAX system uses standard Arri 65 lenses, none of which are exclusive to IMAX.

On a side note: there's an 80mm Hasselblad owned by Nolan which Larry Fong nicknamed the "Nolan 80" on BvS, so you could call that a Nolan IMAX lens at least.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Poya

It sucks the film had the usual desaturated Eastwood look to it, which lessens the impact the camera might have had.

Looked fine to me.


NYC in the middle of winter isn't exactly colorful. It's cold & grey. Interiors looked like they should.

[MazeRunner]

Anyone here ever check out the IMAX at Paragon Odyssey 15?

[Riddhi2011]

Originally Posted by Poya

It sucks the film had the usual desaturated Eastwood look to it, which lessens the impact the camera might have had.

I don't know why, but greys on a photochemical timed celluloid feature look richer, beautiful and more three dimensional than digitally graded gray/desaturated look. Digital colour timed movies, especially those shot digitally, almost always feels flat and unidimensional to me.

I was looking at the IMAX portions of 'Captain America: Civil War' and those not only came nowhere near the depth and clarity and grit of a 15 perf IMAX shot film, they also looked quite dull and flat, when watching in 2D.

It's not just the shallow depth of field, there's something, Idk, inherently flat about digital images and digital grading almost always feel fake to me. Maybe most are fine with it and don't care. But it bugs me.

Digital grading on 35mm film doesn't always look good either. 'Spectre' was one of the worst examples of that. The colours were dull and robbed the richness of film. The opening 'Day of the Dead' sequence is horrible. A bland yellow overlay, with no shades, virtually no colour separation. This was the case throughout the film. However, 'Casino Royale' was also digitally graded and it looks stunning. I guess, back then the tools were limited and they still had the old school photochemical mindset.

Now, most of the time, things feel too polished and tacked on. Jurassic World's grading went the other road. Shot on Super 35 and Super 70, its digital grading feels very fake, cartoonish at times. They tried to match the richness of the photochemically timed earlier films but the colours don't feel like they belong to the objects/characters organically.
It's wonderful that in these age and times there are still those who use photochemical timing, like Mr. Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson.

[Spike M.]

It's widely noted that there was an "era" in the mid-2000s, where the digital intermediate was just being adopted, that a number of blockbuster films went way overboard with color grading. A lot of Spielberg's work (War of the Worlds and Minority Report perhaps most egregiously), a number of the post-Columbus Harry Potter's, anything Michael Bay (although he's always been color grade centric, just now with a sharper tool), Snyder's first two outings, the third Mission: Impossible, and the beginning of Eastwood's more desaturated palette. This has evened out, though. We don't often see crazy filters overlaying entire films like they were selected from Instagram like we used to.

Casino Royale is an odd example, too. It's color grade is much the same as Jurassic World's. Boosted saturation and blacks leaning on the crushed side. There's certainly nothing "purely" filmic about the color approach to Royale.

Last note: the digital versions of all movies are color graded digitally. Nolan's films aren't graded photochemically and then scanned 1:1, they need to be regraded using the film image on one side of the screen and the digital on the other to match the intended look as much as possible. Outside of seeing his movies on film, they're still put through a DI.

[Geoff D]

^ I agree about Casino Royale, it's not got that kind of flat, desaturated look that's so popular at the moment but is very vibrant and contrasty when it wants to be. Said 'flat' look is indeed most likely a response to the wildly overzealous grading that the DI was first used for, Charlie's Angels 2 is another that springs to mind for how cartoony it looks.

I liked what Spielbergo originally did with Minority Report though, the theatrical experience was like bleach bypass turned up to 11, whereas the new 6K transfer they did for Blu-ray (it wasn't originally finished on a DI) made it look a bit more normal, funnily enough. (Same with SPR)

[Riddhi2011]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

Last note: the digital versions of all movies are color graded digitally. Nolan's films aren't graded photochemically and then scanned 1:1, they need to be regraded using the film image on one side of the screen and the digital on the other to match the intended look as much as possible. Outside of seeing his movies on film, they're still put through a DI.

This is from Film Tech Forum (original poster - Sean Weitzel):
"The digital presentation of INTERSTELLAR has been created from 4 and 8k scans of the photochemically- color graded film elements, fine-tuned in the digital realm to maximize the color and contrast attributes of digital projectors, and dust-busted to achieve the cleanest and most stable image presentation possible. The film was mastered in 4k for the highest digital resolution currently available."
(http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f14/t000264.html)

And this is from The ASC:
"6K Imax digital blowups from a 35mm anamorphic IP" and this- "FotoKem also created the 2.40:1 flat 4K DCPs from 6K/4K over-scans of the color-timed 35mm IP."

What I take from these words is that the digital versions WERE scans of the photochemical Interpositives, only fine tuned digitally for digital projectors. That's it. They did not regrade the negative digitally, like they did with Jurassic Park 3D, Raiders of the Lost Ark IMAX version or Titanic 3D.

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

This is from Film Tech Forum (original poster - Sean Weitzel):
"The digital presentation of INTERSTELLAR has been created from 4 and 8k scans of the photochemically- color graded film elements, fine-tuned in the digital realm to maximize the color and contrast attributes of digital projectors, and dust-busted to achieve the cleanest and most stable image presentation possible. The film was mastered in 4k for the highest digital resolution currently available."
(http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f14/t000264.html)

And this is from The ASC:
"6K Imax digital blowups from a 35mm anamorphic IP" and this- "FotoKem also created the 2.40:1 flat 4K DCPs from 6K/4K over-scans of the color-timed 35mm IP."

What I take from these words is that the digital versions WERE scans of the photochemical Interpositives, only fine tuned digitally for digital projectors. That's it. They did not regrade the negative digitally, like they did with Jurassic Park 3D, Raiders of the Lost Ark IMAX version or Titanic 3D.

A digital scan of a film cell doesn't look the same as that same cell being projected onto a screen, and the former is the image the filmmaker's are using to make color and contrast decisions. They scan the graded IP and then use digital tools to make it match the original look. This is still, literally, digital color grading. They aren't going back to the original IP (they should, it would give them better image quality), but they're still using digital tools to varying extremes based on how far off each scan of each shot is from the look of the projected image. I can't find it for the life of me, but Nolan might've even spent more time on the digital version than the film one; he was extremely picky about it matching.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

A digital scan of a film cell doesn't look the same as that same cell being projected onto a screen, and the former is the image the filmmaker's are using to make color and contrast decisions. They scan the graded IP and then use digital tools to make it match the original look. This is still, literally, digital color grading. They aren't going back to the original IP (they should, it would give them better image quality), but they're still using digital tools to varying extremes based on how far off each scan of each shot is from the look of the projected image. I can't find it for the life of me, but Nolan might've even spent more time on the digital version than the film one; he was extremely picky about it matching.

It's digital colour grading in the most literal sense, absolutely, but Nolan isn't using anything outside of global controls to make them match up, there's no power windows or anything like that. Same goes for Tarantino on the digital grade of Hateful 8 which also came from timed IP elements IIRC.

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Looked fine to me.


NYC in the middle of winter isn't exactly colorful. It's cold & grey. Interiors looked like they should.

I saw 'Sully' (finally) yesterday at it's last showing at the Lockheed Martin theater - and one thing that struck me is the close ups looked so sharp and crisp. However the best and startling surprise was how much overhead sound effects there were - finally a 12-channel mix that wasn't too front heavy sounding.

[xbs2034]

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/27...alflow_twitter

It's not getting shot with IMAX camera status (unless something changes) but Doctor Strange will have more than an hour of specially formatted IMAX sequences according to its director (probably similar to Guardians of the Galaxy). There also will be a free 15 minute preview of the film in IMAX 3D on October 10th.