"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

That would be Rin Tin Tin. I actually hold the rights, for whatever they're worth, to his first all-barking serial, The Lone Defender.

RAH

Correcto-mundo ………and that possession is impressive, if only for sentimental purposes.

Plus, folks, Rin Tin Tin wasn’t any pampered Hollywood dog from the get-go.
He paid his dues early in life before even coming to the United States………..from Wikipedia –

"The first of the line (c. September 10, 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a shell-shocked pup found by American serviceman Lee Duncan in a bombed-out dog kennel in Lorraine, France, less than two months before the end of World War I. He was named for a puppet called Rintintin that French children gave to the American soldiers for good luck. The dog returned at war's end with Duncan to his home in Los Angeles, California."

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Esox50

Not sure how close you are to retirement....

lol, well I’m thinking complete retirement is getting further and further away day by day, as time goes on.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by saprano

Do the studio big wigs still read this thread?

Some wear bigger wigs than others, those types have people to read this thread.

[Penton-Man]

I notice that Ben is hangin with kjack in Japan these days ………………….
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1837

[Penton-Man]

For cripes sakes, we’ve got over 1500 people reading “Blu-ray movies and Releases”
https://forum.blu-ray.com/

Is that typical for this time of day ?
Anything singularly happening that I’m unaware of ?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

It appears that ONE of his "out of the box" aspects of filmmaking is catching on more and more:

Transformers 2, Others To Use IMAX

~Alan

It’s good to see; however, I just hope that there is real substance (i.e.– it really makes the feature film more entertaining to view) with any future endeavors regarding limited capture sequences utilizing IMAX cameras, rather than it just becoming an advertising gimmick to draw more people into theaters.

You know, all the forum talk regarding inter-cutting 35mm and IMAX’s 15/70 format and whether people like the changing aspect ratios, etc. would be alleviated if good ole 70mm theaters still existed in a plentiful fashion today, or at least were as commonplace as IMAX theaters.

Despite what is listed on the site…………………..
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893382/technical

For some of the wide shots ^, Marty S. also used an Arri 765 camera (which is a 5-perf 65mm camera).
Heck, the resolution is similar to IMAX 15/70 and if you intercut that with 35mm, aspect ratios no longer become a real *issue*.
I would have liked to have seen Marty’s utilization of that camera (which is a lot lighter and less noisy) also spur some sort of interest/movement in the direction toward that larger format ; however, I think word got out among DP’s that Marty’s team experienced considerable focus issues with that old camera, which is now long in the tooth.

[Slec]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

For cripes sakes, we’ve got over 1500 people reading “Blu-ray movies and Releases”
https://forum.blu-ray.com/

Is that typical for this time of day ?
Anything singularly happening that I’m unaware of ?

Servers overloaded as everyone tries to download BD-Live material for Iron Man it seems. Mixed with the recall news from last week and its

Petra is pointing out all over the sight that the BD-Live content needs to download. Also, if you turn off internet connectivity it works fine for immediate viewing, just download BD-Live content later (or wait it out),

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

lol, well I’m thinking complete retirement is getting further and further away day by day, as time goes on.

Well, hopefully, you got your 5% back today.

So, since Braveheart is "in the bag", let's talk Ridley Scott's Gladiator...

[PaulGo]

I know this isn't the place to report this but since the industry people read this thread I'd like to report this:

I have a PS3 as a Blu-ray player. I have the latest firmware (2.43) and I tried to play Iron Man - this was one of the worst experiences I have ever had! As you know the PS3 is Blu-ray live capable. Well I put the disk in this evening and all I see is this Iron Man circle symbol. I saw HD activity but after five minutes I give up!. In the Blu-ray live folder it downloaded about four megabytes of data! I deleted the data and tried again this time waiting for over a half hour before I aborted the loading. This time the download stopped at 6 megabytes. I finally was able to see the movie by disabling Blu-ray live!

Several hours later (I guess the servers were congested) I was able to use Blu-ray live - the download at the beginning took about 10 minutes and it was about 12 megabytes.

The user interface needs fixing - instead of staring at a circle their should be a status bar showing the percentage of the download and a method to abort the download and go directly to the movie. Why should their be such a large download just to watch the movie. If the user wants to use the Blu-ray live feature then their should be a download.

Anyway the movie was great but the user interface sucks!

[PaulGo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

For cripes sakes, we’ve got over 1500 people reading “Blu-ray movies and Releases”
https://forum.blu-ray.com/

Is that typical for this time of day ?
Anything singularly happening that I’m unaware of ?

See my post above - Iron Man was released and their are problems with Blu-ray live.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

It’s good to see; however, I just hope that there is real substance (i.e.– it really makes the feature film more entertaining to view) with any future endeavors regarding limited capture sequences utilizing IMAX cameras, rather than it just becoming an advertising gimmick to draw more people into theaters.

I consider the entire "DMR" effort to be pretty much a marketing gimmick. That especially goes for movies shot on video in what amounts to HDTV quality blown up to IMAX. It's a waste and ultimately self-destructive to the IMAX brand.

IMAX seems bent on finishing the self destructive process by rolling out "IMAX Digital," which is nothing more than a pair of 2K digital projectors throwing an image not really any better than the capability of 4-perf 35mm. But when most of the movies being shown in IMAX aren't originated in IMAX anymore then who cares, right?

The trouble is who is going to care about paying to pay a premium to see a "digital" version of something branded in IMAX in an auditorium really not much different than any large-ish sized stadium seated theater? Might as well save a couple or so bucks and just watch it in 2K. Gonna see just as much of the movie anyway with so many digital intermediates still done at the 2K level.

The "DMR" thing reminds me of how the 70mm presentation process was set up for its own destruction during the 1980s. Dozens of movies mainly used the mag-stripe prints for the surround sound capability. The 35/70 "blow up" prints looked noticeably better than mass produced 35mm prints during that time. But they sure did not hold detail levels of something photographed on 65mm.

I think a lot of people truly don't know what they're missing when it comes to the capabilities of 5-perf 65mm photography. To me, seeing native 70mm versus 35mm is the movie theater equivalent of jumping from 480p SD on DVD and upgrading to 1080p HD on Blu-ray. There's a big difference, and a lot of people have never seen it. If it was more common there wouldn't be such a giant obsession in pushing movie photography to "100% digital."

I'm hoping the upcoming BD release of Baraka smashes the ball out of the park on image quality. I'm also hoping the same for The Dark Knight. If there is a noticeable enough difference in image clarity with the IMAX footage versus 35mm sourced footage it could do more to encourage more productions to shoot in formats larger than 4/35mm.

It would be great if some really good, high interest movie project was shot entirely on 5/65mm. And not some silly movie either. I think one of the things that killed 65mm productions by 1970 is they became synonymous with very long bible epics and musicals, not all of them good either. 70mm would have lived on if it had been used on more rockin' action movies.

[mikejet]

If you had an idea for a show or movie, what's your recommendation for trying to get it made?

[Bobby Henderson]

Do your question mean what kind of movies would be best to shoot in 5-perf 65mm? Or do you mean what kind of pitch do you have to give to studio heads to let you spend a few hundred grand extra to shoot in 5-perf 65mm?

Just about any kind of movie intended for 'scope presentation could be shot in 5-perf 65mm instead. Movies with a greater degree of spectacle would see more benefit.

It's probably more difficult to pitch a studio head on the idea of shooting in 65mm, especially with "digital" being so fashionable these days. The benefits of true 70mm in movie theaters are very obvious. But lots of movie studios don't give a fart about the movie theater side of things (even though they should since the theaters are what makes their movies legitimate movies instead of TV shows). The way to reach them on that point is the notion that shooting in 65mm will make their very costly product look even better on Blu-ray and also future proof their product against higher resolution home video formats that may appear in the next 10-50 years. A 6K or 8K DI of native 65mm material is going to be more useful decades from now than some 2K DI from 35mm.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

......Might as well save a couple or so bucks and just watch it in 2K. Gonna see just as much of the movie anyway with so many digital intermediates still done at the 2K level......

Agreed, with all the 4K restoration talk, I think it may surprise some people to this day how many new feature films (that partake of a digital intermediate process) ultimately go through a 2K post production pipeline, rather than a 4K pipeline……the answer being 85 – 90%, easily.

And I really don’t see this changing for quite awhile until there is some big jump in processing and scanning speed along with much more economical storage. The handful of post houses that do nearly all the DI stuff in SoCal are already nearly maxed out (in terms of storage and scanning time) just with the amount of 2K projects they have going on a particular day.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

The trouble is who is going to care about paying to pay a premium to see a "digital" version of something branded in IMAX in an auditorium really not much different than any large-ish sized stadium seated theater?

I aint payin, esp. the way my 401K is lookin these days.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by PaulGo

I know this isn't the place to report this but since the industry people read this thread I'd like to report this:

I have a PS3 as a Blu-ray player. I have the latest firmware (2.43) and I tried to play Iron Man - this was one of the worst experiences I have ever had!

Noted.

Hi Paul.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mikejet

If you had an idea for a show or movie, what's your recommendation for trying to get it made?

Get a good agent (I see you’re in West Covina)…………………
http://www.wga.org/agency/agencylist.asp#top

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by Slec

Servers overloaded as everyone tries to download BD-Live material for Iron Man it seems. Mixed with the recall news from last week and its

Petra is pointing out all over the sight that the BD-Live content needs to download. Also, if you turn off internet connectivity it works fine for immediate viewing, just download BD-Live content later (or wait it out),

Or, on MAJOR releases such as Iron Man, give the on-line retailers "unofficial" permission to send out the pre-orders early. That way the traffic will be more spread out and not quite so focused. The Iron Man Blu-ray video itself was fantatic, but getting the load completed was like sitting in Houston traffic right before Rita.

[PaulGo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Noted.

Hi Paul.

Hi PM!

What a difference a day makes! I loaded Iron Man on my second PS3 and it went very smoothly. Before the Blu-ray live download a notice popped up telling me about the download and that it could take some time and asked me if I wanted to load the Blu-ray live material. I selected "yes" and this time the download was less than a minute. After the download another menu popped up stating the download was complete and to press the on screen widget to continue. This is the way it should have been yesterday. The only addition I would like to see in future Blu-ray live releases is a download progress bar and the ability to abort the download if the network is too congested.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by aramis109

Oooh I smell some pwnage coming...

You may also smell fear in their losing any more AVS members to blu-ray.com.
People, you know our forum has become a world power when a North Korean type segregated society has developed to prevent direct access to the outside world.

Read the edit by the mod………………..
“Last edited by rboster; Today at 12:22 PM. Reason: removed link to other site”
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post14777484

Forums gain and hold membership based upon their merits, not on North Korean type isolationist mentalities or accepting advertising dollars to turn their web pages into mini-billboards……at the top, the middle and the bottom.