Does modern 35mm match up to 60s 65mm?

[Coenskubrick]

Just wondering, you know, with how film stocks have improved... anyone compared prime examples of modern 35mm negatives and old 65mm negatives from the 60's (or pristine transfers thereof)?

[42041]

Match up how? In terms of resolution? 65mm from the 60s would win out - although with the sharpest anamorphic glass (or super35 scanned from camera negative, for that matter) and careful shooting, modern 35mm gets within spitting distance for any practical purposes. Hard to fight against a 2x increase in linear resolution though.
Grain, probably a toss-up for stocks of equal speed... my guess would be in modern 35mm's favor overall. Modern ISO 50 (the only speed for most of the 60s) negatives have almost no visible grain in 35mm.
Things like color, dynamic range, speed, archival life - modern film stocks are far better.

[ZoetMB]

Back in 1992, Ron Howard shot "Far and Away" in 65mm and it was supposed to revive the format. The only thing is that it really didn't look better on the screen and it pretty much killed the format.

Since then, only Baraka (which did look really good), Hamlet, Samsara (which was never actually shown in 70mm) and The Master have been shot in 65mm. And when I saw the The Master in 70mm, I thought it looked like crap. No way could anyone tell it was shot in 65mm.

Tarantino is shooting the upcoming "The Hateful Eight" in 65mm Ultra-Panavision. Hopefully, that's going to look great.

As far as film stocks are concerned, 35mm and 70mm stock is exactly the same. Today's stocks are pretty good.

But as others have pointed out, 70mm is a lot larger frame than 35mm. 35mm anamorphic films are ideally projected with a gate of .825" x .690" (x a 2:1 unsqueeze). 70mm is projected at 1.912" x .870". That's 231% the image area of 35mm.

Digital sacrifices a bit of warmth, color subtlety and natural looking grain, but gains sharpness, screen brightness and a rock-steady picture. 2K digital will also exhibit the "screen door effect" on bright scenes. Film prints get dirty, scratched and wear out while a DCP is going to look as good 50 years from now as it does today, assuming there's still a device to break the security code and play it.

I watched a low-budget independent film from the late 1970s on TV the other night ("Girlfriends"). Especially during the first reel, the film image jumped all over the place (sprocket holes in the negative were probably worn out) and the film was scratched and dirty. But back then, unless you saw a film within the first few days of its premiere, that's how film used to look projected in a theatre. So while film has the capability of being superior to digital, in the real world, it's frequently not. Also, most of today's films get digital intermediates, and when they do, you lose a lot of the advantages of film anyway.

It's like the people who now collect vinyl because "analog sounds better", but they don't realize that over 85% of new vinyl pressings are from digital masters, so they're just fooling themselves.

[42041]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

And when I saw the The Master in 70mm, I thought it looked like crap. No way could anyone tell it was shot in 65mm.

I think you got unlucky with either the print or the projection. The one I saw was gorgeous - tack sharp, bright, no grain (except for the segments shot in 35), rich colors. Easily the best image quality I've seen theatrically.

[applemac]

I would put a vote in for 65mm in the 60s vs modern 35mm.

Modern 35mm is very good, but having over double the emulsion area surpasses improvements in the stock.

[trevanian]

I think the more modern stock show a bit too much in the shadows, I'm much more in favor of the contrast from older slow speed stuff, or, if you're of an old super-8 or slide mindset ... KODACHROME!

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by 42041

I think you got unlucky with either the print or the projection. The one I saw was gorgeous - tack sharp, bright, no grain (except for the segments shot in 35), rich colors. Easily the best image quality I've seen theatrically.

But that's the point, isn't it? It's not what one medium can accomplish under ideal circumstances - it's what it accomplishes on a daily basis in the typical theatre. And in most theaters, film is presented extremely poorly, especially now that most of the trained projectionists are long gone. While one can screw up digital, it's much harder to do so if only because you don't have the negative impact of dirt or wear. One piece of dirt in a gate can ruin an entire print since the age of the platter.

And I say that as someone who was in heaven watching a 70mm film in a great theater and who was inspired to work in the industry (I became a recording engineer) after seeing "How the West Was Won", "West Side Story" and "Lawrence of Arabia" in 70mm (and 3-projector Cinerama in the case of HTWWW) as a kid.

If you go to the projectionist forums, posters are already taking bets that 98% of the 100 forthcoming 70mm Ultra Panavision prints of "The Hateful Eight" will be ruined within three days.

It's like the vinyl freaks who brag about how great vinyl sounds when played on a $100,000 sound system. Well, if that's what it takes for vinyl to sound good, then it's not a very good audio delivery system (and I have 500 vinyl LPs in my living room).

There weren't that many 70mm prints made of "The Master" so I have trouble believing that one of them was bad. And I saw it at the Ziegfeld in NYC, which usually does a pretty good job (plenty of premieres are held there), although it's not as good as it used to be. On the other hand, "Interstellar" in 70mm IMAX looked about as perfect as a print could look and I don't think I saw it the first week, so there had been at least 30-40 showings before I saw it.

But as I posted earlier, no one could tell that "Far and Away" was shot in 65mm either, which is why so few films have been shot in 65mm since. It will be interesting to see how "The Hateful Eight" looks and whether audiences can tell the difference.

[KRW1]

What have you got against people buying vinyl? You've insulted us twice now, for no reason I can see, it merely detracts from your larger argument, which I think has some merit.

[applemac]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

But that's the point, isn't it? It's not what one medium can accomplish under ideal circumstances - it's what it accomplishes on a daily basis in the typical theatre. And in most theaters, film is presented extremely poorly, especially now that most of the trained projectionists are long gone. While one can screw up digital, it's much harder to do so if only because you don't have the negative impact of dirt or wear. One piece of dirt in a gate can ruin an entire print since the age of the platter.

And I say that as someone who was in heaven watching a 70mm film in a great theater and who was inspired to work in the industry (I became a recording engineer) after seeing "How the West Was Won", "West Side Story" and "Lawrence of Arabia" in 70mm (and 3-projector Cinerama in the case of HTWWW) as a kid.

If you go to the projectionist forums, posters are already taking bets that 98% of the 100 forthcoming 70mm Ultra Panavision prints of "The Hateful Eight" will be ruined within three days.

It's like the vinyl freaks who brag about how great vinyl sounds when played on a $100,000 sound system. Well, if that's what it takes for vinyl to sound good, then it's not a very good audio delivery system (and I have 500 vinyl LPs in my living room).

There weren't that many 70mm prints made of "The Master" so I have trouble believing that one of them was bad. And I saw it at the Ziegfeld in NYC, which usually does a pretty good job (plenty of premieres are held there), although it's not as good as it used to be. On the other hand, "Interstellar" in 70mm IMAX looked about as perfect as a print could look and I don't think I saw it the first week, so there had been at least 30-40 showings before I saw it.

But as I posted earlier, no one could tell that "Far and Away" was shot in 65mm either, which is why so few films have been shot in 65mm since. It will be interesting to see how "The Hateful Eight" looks and whether audiences can tell the difference.

The reason no one can tell is they are shown on small screens. If you show a 70mm print on a cinemark XD or IMAX sized screen (or even the cinerama dome size) you will definitely notice a difference. There just aren't enough screens that size with a 70mm projector in the booth around; or arent going to be filled with STAR WARS.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

...Tarantino is shooting the upcoming "The Hateful Eight" in 65mm Ultra-Panavision. Hopefully, that's going to look great.

it’s (good grammar one-handed) in post now

[Poya]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Back in 1992, Ron Howard shot "Far and Away" in 65mm and it was supposed to revive the format. The only thing is that it really didn't look better on the screen and it pretty much killed the format.

Since then, only Baraka (which did look really good), Hamlet, Samsara (which was never actually shown in 70mm) and The Master have been shot in 65mm. And when I saw the The Master in 70mm, I thought it looked like crap. No way could anyone tell it was shot in 65mm.

Tarantino is shooting the upcoming "The Hateful Eight" in 65mm Ultra-Panavision. Hopefully, that's going to look great.

As far as film stocks are concerned, 35mm and 70mm stock is exactly the same. Today's stocks are pretty good.

But as others have pointed out, 70mm is a lot larger frame than 35mm. 35mm anamorphic films are ideally projected with a gate of .825" x .690" (x a 2:1 unsqueeze). 70mm is projected at 1.912" x .870". That's 231% the image area of 35mm.

Digital sacrifices a bit of warmth, color subtlety and natural looking grain, but gains sharpness, screen brightness and a rock-steady picture. 2K digital will also exhibit the "screen door effect" on bright scenes. Film prints get dirty, scratched and wear out while a DCP is going to look as good 50 years from now as it does today, assuming there's still a device to break the security code and play it.

I watched a low-budget independent film from the late 1970s on TV the other night ("Girlfriends"). Especially during the first reel, the film image jumped all over the place (sprocket holes in the negative were probably worn out) and the film was scratched and dirty. But back then, unless you saw a film within the first few days of its premiere, that's how film used to look projected in a theatre. So while film has the capability of being superior to digital, in the real world, it's frequently not. Also, most of today's films get digital intermediates, and when they do, you lose a lot of the advantages of film anyway.

It's like the people who now collect vinyl because "analog sounds better", but they don't realize that over 85% of new vinyl pressings are from digital masters, so they're just fooling themselves.

I agree about DIs. Films like Inherent Vice, Interstellar, and even Transcendence, all look like actual film, because they were finished photochemically. They looked beautiful and I was fortunate to see it in celluloid, and in 70mm for the first 2 films. Even Tarantino, who preaches about film, finishes his in a DI, which defeats his points. It's sad how a lot of films shot on films don't even look like films anymore. I swore Edge Of Tomorrow was shot digitally when I saw it and was surprised to see it was celluloid shot.

As to the vinyl debate, I agree about the 85%, but that's why I do my research on which one was made the old fashioned way, and they do sound amazing than a normal CD. Heck, even with the LPs made from digital masters sound better due to the different process to make them. Still, I disagree that you need crazy expensive equipment to fulfill their potential. Many expensive equipment aren't as good as those priced lower, because price doesn't equal quality.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Poya

I agree about DIs. Films like Inherent Vice, Interstellar, and even Transcendence, all look like actual film, because they were finished photochemically. They looked beautiful and I was fortunate to see it in celluloid, and in 70mm for the first 2 films. Even Tarantino, who preaches about film, finishes his in a DI, which defeats his points. It's sad how a lot of films shot on films don't even look like films anymore. I swore Edge Of Tomorrow was shot digitally when I saw it and was surprised to see it was celluloid shot.

poya, if you’re a celluloid connoisseur, might want to follow this tweeter…https://twitter.com/newbeverly

next week for one day on traveling to the SMPTE 2015 annual tech conference and exhibition i’ll be passing thru your neck of the woods (North Hollywood) to get in some other business (2 birds with one stone) and just wondering if there’s still ? road work going on at Lankershim (off the 134). please pm if you know.

[Penton-Man]

poya, you around? zee clock is ticking…http://www.cvent.com/events/smpte-20...c90ae0b2c.aspx

[Opips3]

35mm film will perfect on 4K...

so that true???

[SillySauce]

60's 65mm films used inferior lenses and filmstocks. A user on cinematography.com was saying that modern 35mm is the same as 60's 65mm because of the lenses/filmstock. He had seen Lawrence of Arabia and other re-released older 65mm films. He also said the 70mm version of Lawrence had more detail in the far off mountains than the bluray version. I'm seeing 2001 in 65mm/70mm this November.

[WonkaBedknobs83]

Interesting point. The most regrettable habits of modern movie makers only stick out like a sore thumb even more with a large-format negative. Even today's celebrity directors can't match the imagery of the cornfield at the opening of in Oklahoma!, Audrey Hepburn and Barbra Streisand walking down the stairs in outfits whose designers either won or were nominated for Academy Awards, the lush multi-colored scenery of South Pacific, the sprawling prairies of How the West Was Won, the citizen's uprising from Spartacus, the helicopter shots of New York City in West Side Story, or any number of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia despite using similar film formats. It seems like the difference between technology and technique one of the nuances lost in the attempt to bring those days back.

Meanwhile, mainstream movies that family audiences are likely to go and see, the sorts of movies that actually used to get 70mm blowups, are getting the short end of this particular stick. Some of the biggest recent animated movies in particular could have benefited from this. Imagine Mario, Spider-Man, et al projected this way, especially when more and more animated movies are already being rendered at a 2.4:1 ratio to begin with. Walt Disney thought animation was worthy of large-format film since Sleeping Beauty was in Technirama, and Ron Miller agreed with him since they brought it back for The Black Cauldron. A digital-to-film transfer to a larger negative than standard 35mm still would not have saved Wish, but it might have at least showed that there was more of an effort to show that showmanship was still alive and well at the movies.

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by WonkaBedknobs83

Interesting point. The most regrettable habits of modern movie makers only stick out like a sore thumb even more with a large-format negative. Even today's celebrity directors can't match the imagery of the cornfield at the opening of in Oklahoma!, Audrey Hepburn and Barbra Streisand walking down the stairs in outfits whose designers either won or were nominated for Academy Awards, the lush multi-colored scenery of South Pacific, the sprawling prairies of How the West Was Won, the citizen's uprising from Spartacus, the helicopter shots of New York City in West Side Story, or any number of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lawrence of Arabia despite using similar film formats. It seems like the difference between technology and technique one of the nuances lost in the attempt to bring those days back.

Meanwhile, mainstream movies that family audiences are likely to go and see, the sorts of movies that actually used to get 70mm blowups, are getting the short end of this particular stick. Some of the biggest recent animated movies in particular could have benefited from this. Imagine Mario, Spider-Man, et al projected this way, especially when more and more animated movies are already being rendered at a 2.4:1 ratio to begin with. Walt Disney thought animation was worthy of large-format film since Sleeping Beauty was in Technirama, and Ron Miller agreed with him since they brought it back for The Black Cauldron. A digital-to-film transfer to a larger negative than standard 35mm still would not have saved Wish, but it might have at least showed that there was more of an effort to show that showmanship was still alive and well at the movies.

I saw the Roadshow for Hateful Eight 4 times because the opening sequences made full use of 70mm. It is odd that the spectacle of David Lean, Kubrick, Kurosawa has somehow gotten lost or forgotten. Seeing LOA at the Ziegfeld (before it closed) was a magical experience i will never forget. Same for the opening night of ALIEN ... the title sequence in space using 70mm left an indelible mark.

[WonkaBedknobs83]

Alien was a blow-up from 35mm. Prior to the advent of digital sound, but after 65mm and other large format formats became used mainly for special effects shots, it was the six-channel sound that still lured them in.

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by WonkaBedknobs83

Alien was a blow-up from 35mm. Prior to the advent of digital sound, but after 65mm and other large format formats became used mainly for special effects shots, it was the six-channel sound that still lured them in.

Ah .. i did not know that - it was presented in 70mm - always assumed it was shot that way.

Saw it at the Paramus Quad - according to this page it was presented in 70mm .. but you are saying it was a 35 mm blown up ?

https://www.in70mm.com/presents/1963...lien/index.htm

[UFAlien]

The very link you posted explains that it was a blow-up. It was shot 35mm anamorphic.

There were no feature films shot on 65mm between The Last Valley in 1971 and Far and Away in 1992; 70mm was purely a premium blow-up exhibition format during that time.