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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

Still waiting. Growing evermore impatient.

hah!
You remind me of …………………..me!
You know, we do have real jobs (at least for now) that demand some of our attention.

He’s currently buried in another dimension (3D) this week and between that and BD-Live stuff, he’s quite busy but, I’ll yank him out and post a few pics of paid doing his unpaid thing (much safer) later this a.m. when I get into the office.
Meanwhile this will have to suffice……………
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-151...6DCF5A&index=8


Gotta run.

[Penton-Man]

P.S.
Nice to see you back Bobby H.
I was wondering where you've been.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Brainstorm was shot with a mix of 35mm and 65mm footage at 24fps. AFAIK, none of it was filmed in true Showscan.

Douglass Trumbull indeed wanted to film the entire movie in Showscan, but no studio guys wanted to provide the extra funding it would have taken to shoot the whole thing in 5/65mm at 60fps.

A long time ago I read somewhere (can't remember) that Trumbull demonstrated the Showscan process to some studio heads, possibly at Disney. They rejected the format because the results looked "too real."

This conflicts with my information about the production, but I wouldn't be surprised if the people involved didn't have the most accurate memories about all the ins and outs.

Maybe the whole question is moot?

[GabrielB]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

There should be something like an adopt a movie program where wealthy people can give a studio money to prepare and release their favorite classic on Blu-Ray and maybe even strike a new print or two - now that would be a nice way to spend money for the billionaires of the world

Or they could do what small music bands have already done in the past. They pre-sale the classic films before any work has begun until they reach their pre-sales objectives and can start working on the title.

Of course the budgets are much higher than an overnight afterhours recording (anybody liked Once )
If a restoration would cost 500 000$, it would need about 16 000 people pre-buying a particular title. Ouch.

Plus the studios' egos wouldn't take the hit perhaps. "What? We can finance our own restorations! We're not a freaking funding show hosted by some of those TV people "


--> What I wonder though is how the BD catalog sales compare to the catalog sales of DVD back in the days. Are classics selling less on BD than on DVD?

[GabrielB]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Wally (Pfister) is currently building himself a spiffy home theater at home.

Please tell us more about it. What gear?

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

Please tell us more about it. What gear?

+1!

[Jeff Kleist]

I've read that King Kong (2005) only has an avg. video bitrate 16.33 mbit/sec for the extended edition to avg 16.41 mbit/sec. for the Theatrical, using seamless branching. Is this the same for the European version? Aren't these video bitrates lower than those used by Amadeus which people say could be a cause of a lower quality picture?

Two completely different animals. Amadeus can be encoded at lower bitrate BECAUSE it's been tampered with. King Kong can be encoded at lower bitrate because it's got a clean, new digital master and because it moves at a snail's pace and never ends

BTW Penton, when i was a paper boy and the bill was $2, they would never give me a tip. $2 months SUCKED because I actually made less money due to lack of tip, because it was always easier to give me $2 period, and I'd get a 40 cent tip, which amounted to an extra $10-12 in my pocket

[Mr. Cinema]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

--> What I wonder though is how the BD catalog sales compare to the catalog sales of DVD back in the days. Are classics selling less on BD than on DVD?

I would guess less, simply because back in the DVD only days, there was no cheap alternative to own the film.

[Jeff Kleist]

It's more that the primary audience for classic films doesn't have a blu-ray player, and usually doesn't have an HDTV, at least not yet

[Doctorossi]

You know, it might be nice also to see a format-wide (BDA?) ad campaign out there, generally touting the glory of classic films on Blu. Perhaps it could give a few epic examples (especially if done after stuff like Lawrence and GWTW arrive), but it would be an educational campaign not tied to any specific release. My experience is totally anecdotal, of course, but I see an awful lot of misunderstanding about BD/HD's value out there. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that BD can be of little or no service to classic movies and some even believe that only films of recent provenance (shot with "new HD cameras") can even truly be presented in HD.

[GabrielB]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that BD can be of little or no service to classic movies and some even believe that only films of recent provenance (shot with "new HD cameras") can even truly be presented in HD.

Sad but so true. I've had at least 5 people from Best Buy and even "specialty AV stores" tell me that. Like older films won't look good since "they're not hi-def". And then tell me something like Pirates of the Caribbean 2 looks so good because it was shot on HD cameras. I'm like WTF are you talking about??

Superman Returns looks weak BECAUSE it was Genesis-borned (my opinion).

And then they ask me what resolution is film. And then they really can't get the fact that film is an analog format and has no resolution until it is scanned and transfered in the digital realm. And even then that really doesn't cut what film is.

And these are the people who are educating the masses
Jeeebus!!

OK that's a reason why some people aren't adopting Blu-Ray.
That and the freaking marketing of upscaling DVD Players which "will transform your SD source into something nearly identical to HD".
Man the AV manufacturers guys should really stop advertising their DVD players this way and promote that on Blu-Ray instead. Then people would have two reasons to buy BD players.

No wonder why so much people are confused. People think these upscaled DVD Players are HD. (The labeling 1080p doesn't help)

So much things could be done to help Blu-Ray's adoption.

[Jeff Kleist]

Superman Returns looks weak BECAUSE it was Genesis-borned (my opinion).

Definately not. There is DNR, processing and bit starvation that are miles above it in the list. Fitting a movie that long into 22GB is no easy task, but they managed somehow

I've seen footage that hadn't been sent through the smoothie machine, it's not lacking

The real problem is that people don't pay attention when they go to the theater. You wouldn't believe how many people never noticed different screen sizes at the movie theater when I'd explain widescreen to them

I had a dollar bill and said. "This is your movie" *folds in half* "This is your movie formatted to fit your TV, any questions?"

There needs to be something that simple for this issue, that and people are right, there needs to be a major push on the studio's behalf to educate the monkeys who are the majority selling their movies to the public

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

That and the freaking marketing of upscaling DVD Players which "will transform your SD source into something nearly identical to HD".

Worse is when they don't even distinguish the product at all from a real HD source, and just say "will transform your SD source into 1080p!" All that a lot of folks know is that they don't have enough p's and they need to get something with 720 or, better yet, 1080 of them. These people are a step ahead of those who think they're watching HD because they plugged their DVD players into TVs that said "HD" on the box.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I've seen footage that hadn't been sent through the smoothie machine, it's not lacking

Yeah, the Genesis can produce some great images, IMO.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

there needs to be a major push on the studio's behalf to educate the monkeys who are the majority selling their movies to the public

Yeah, with the amount of misinformation about HD out there, it doesn't surprise me that catalog movies get the short end of the sales stick. So much of the bottom-line of HD marketing efforts seems to focus on a "New! New! New!" mentality. Who can blame the uneducated for thinking their Ben-Hur DVD is as "HD" as that movie's gonna get? After all, they've only been hearing about HD for a few years now, and Ben-Hur was made in... 1959!

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

He’s got a pic of himself with the throttle wide open at Laguna Seca Raceway (Doug Chandler's Motorcycle Racing School, I think?).

Here ya go SquidPuppet et. al.
And for those motoheads out there……..or just smart and observant non-motorcycle folks, why is paidgeek runnin that ugly grey plastic on his motor-sickle?

The answer is most obvious on pics #2 and #3.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

Hey you forgot about me!... I'm a Québécois...
But I know... I do not reside in your heart as much as some of the others.

The plethora of black flies and mosquitoes at a Mont-Saint-Anne international mountain bike race I participated in awhile back, will forever endear me to the fortitude of Les Québécois.

If you have a sister in her mid-twenties that is a hottie, then tell her Penton said…
“Vous êtes très jolie.” and join Blu-ray.com
We need more women here.
All I get to see are Maxpower’s fantastic icon picture thingees and my girls………..
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=5772

[Doctorossi]

Thanks, Penton! Got any corkscrew pics?

[Doctorossi]

Hey- did one of you guys give Disney permission to delay Monsters, Inc.? I sure didn't! If it doesn't get back on base in about two shakes, I'm declaring it AWOL.

[SquidPuppet]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Here ya go SquidPuppet et. al.
And for those motoheads out there……..or just smart and observant non-motorcycle folks, why is paidgeek runnin that ugly grey plastic on his motor-sickle?

The answer is most obvious on pics #2 and #3.

Sharkskinz. For when you cartwheel on play days.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

Superman Returns looks weak BECAUSE it was Genesis-borned (my opinion).

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Definately not. There is DNR, processing and bit starvation that are miles above it in the list. Fitting a movie that long into 22GB is no easy task, but they managed somehow

I've seen footage that hadn't been sent through the smoothie machine, it's not lacking

Jeff is oh-so-correct on this one, I saw it in IMAX and the HD version looks like DVD compared to what it could. It was very disappointing.

It's just bitrate starved to compensate for HD DVD's lack of space. The ocean scenes with nasty banding the bitrate drops to 4-8Mbps.