Why don’t we see film grain in theaters?

[videonut]

Originally Posted by ZeeMan84

I saw a lot of grain in 300 in theaters. So much grain that it seemed it was swarming with mosquito near a swamp. I saw the same thing on blu-ray too.

The grain in this film was added in after the fact. The movie was film digitally so there was not really any grain.

They also did this in the animated film Surf's Up. They added grain to give it a real effect.

[Bobby Henderson]

300 was shot on 35mm film (in the Super35 process, 2.39:1). It was not shot using HD video cameras.

People often assume 300 was shot on video for its similarities in production with that of Sin City. Film cameras can and are very often used in "digital backlot" style production techniques.

However, the seemingly excessive grain in 300 does indeed appear pretty artificial and looks very much like it was later added in post production.

[Neo65]

?? I see grain all the time in theatres. ??

300 and the start of CR had very intense grain (both are perhaps added deliberately). Most movies, it's also there, but not as obvious. It's more visible in indoor scenes and especially dim areas. It's just about impossible to find in bright scenes.

[Jalekk]

If you want to see less grain..the get to the movie about 30-45 minutes before showtime..so you arent sitting in the first row staring straight up.

There's a solution for you.

[Uhfgood]

Realizing this is 4 years later, I still don't notice grain in the theatres. The only exception being the opening scene in Casino Royale which was obviously grainy on purpose.

[nmycon]

Originally Posted by Uhfgood

Realizing this is 4 years later, I still don't notice grain in the theatres. The only exception being the opening scene in Casino Royale which was obviously grainy on purpose.

Don't really know what to tell you...

It's noticeable when a film is projected digitally and very obvious when 35mm film is used.

The most recent film I've seen was Ghost Protocol, it was the first movie I've seen in about 2 years that was projected from 35mm film as opposed to digital and the grain was definitely there.

[42041]

I don't know what theaters you folks go to. I see grain in both 35mm and digital projection. The projector lens/focus is usually kinda soft compared to my TV so it's less defined, but it's there.

[Blu-Velvet]

Now that this thread has been revived, it's the first time I've seen it. Basically almost nobody who's posted anything so far apparently has the slightest clue what they're talking about except Bobby Henderson and a few others.

Video images are made up of rows and columns of pixels. With film, a random dispersal of tiny pieces of light-sensitive material called "grain" is what contains the image. The larger the grains, the less light is needed to register an image, so scenes shot at night or with natural available light usually look grainier, because the light-sensitive grains are bigger. Documentaries and newsreels use "fast" low-light film that is naturally grainer, so many fiction-film directors like to use intentionally grainy film to get a gritty "realistic" documentary-like look. Others just like the grainy texture as an aesthetic, obviously non-realistic, stylized aspect to their picture.

If you truly can't see the film grain in theatres (assuming you're watching film being projected or a digital cinema file transferred from film rather than a digital file sourced from digital photography), than either you're sitting too far away from the screen so your eyes just can make out the fine details, or the projectionist is an incompetent who can't see the screen from the booth and hasn't bothered to check the focus from in the auditorium. People who like to sit in the back rows of a theatre might as well be watching a TV screen, since they can't really see the sharpness that film (or even a full HD image) can deliver.

Assuming that modern "HD" video pictures are naturally sharper than "old" film merely displays a complete ignorance of the two very different technologies. The picture resolution possible on well-shot and well-processed 35mm film was already equal to or better than today's HDTV/Blu-ray standard by the 1910s and 20s (although there have long been a variety of different film stocks and processing options that will change the relative graininess). Film stock resolution and light sensitivity have been steadily improving ever since, and larger film sizes always give better images than smaller images, which is why real 70mm film IMAX looks so incredibly sharp, and why 35mm anamorphic looks about four times sharper than Super 35, and why 35mm looks better than 16mm and why Super 16 looks almost as sharp as 35mm, and slow-ASA Super 16 may even look sharper than fast-speed 35mm film stocks. It's also why the large-format VistaVision and 65mm films from the 1950s that are scanned from original negatives look just as sharp and often sharper than today's movies shot on 35mm or "HD" video. It's also why the Blu-ray of 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, good as it is, still doesn't come close to reproducing what an original 70mm film print looks like.

Also, many 35mm theatrical film prints over the past fifteen years or so are not only three or four generations away from the original negative (camera negative-interpositive-dupe neg-release print), but they have been rushed through the film labs on high-speed printers to get them into theatres on tight release-date schedules, so they naturally look grainier and less sharp than a carefully made step-print struck directly from the camera negative would look. Until the 1970s when wide releases of over 500 or 1000 to 2000 prints became common, most theatrical release prints were struck from the camera negatives (which put a lot of wear on those negatives by the end of the print runs of 50 to 500 prints).

If a Blu-ray displays film grain, the reason is because it's showing all of the image detail it can resolve. If a Blu-ray transfer of a film does NOT show any film grain, it means that digital processing has degraded the original image, "smoothing it out" so that less detail is visible and the picture is softer and fuzzier than it would look in a theatre projected from the original film (or from a Blu-ray transfer that was done properly).

[ZoetMB]

Blu-Velvet (and Bobby Henderson a few years earlier) gets it right. Read their posts carefully because they indeed know what they're talking about.

However, 35mm projection is quickly disappearing from American theatres. Studios have already started the phase-out of 35mm prints. So for those who are somehow appalled by grain, the level of grain that you see that was caused by the process of making prints will disappear from new films.

At a somewhat lesser rate, more and more new films and being shot digitally. Obviously, there's no film grain there either. There can be digital noise, which will be there when filmmakers naively think that because it's digital and because it's HD, that there won't be any noise. That is most certainly not the case.

And just as most modern films, whether shot digitally or on film, purposely desaturate the color (compare any modern non-animated color film to the Technicolor films of the 1950s in which almost everything that one saw was a pastel), many of today's films purposely add artificial grain or noise as an artistic effect. And some films of the last 20-30 years have added grain by virtue of the film format they chose to shoot in. As Bobby pointed out several years ago, the 2-perf and 3-perf film formats will exhibit far more grain than standard 35mm Panavision anamorphic formats. The reason is the amount of negative area used in each format.

[ScarredLungs]

Here is what I understand in a few basic sentences about grain:

1. Grain is inherit in all film and gives a movie its detail (except movies shot in all digital aka Speed Racer)
2. If there is no grain is was either shot in all digital, or the film processed and removed

[42041]

Originally Posted by cvm

2. If there is no grain is was either shot in all digital, or the film processed and removed

Slower modern film stocks can have almost no visible grain even if it hasn't been removed, depending on how the film is shot.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by cvm

Here is what I understand in a few basic sentences about grain:

1. Grain is inherit in all film and gives a movie its detail (except movies shot in all digital aka Speed Racer)
2. If there is no grain is was either shot in all digital, or the film processed and removed

yes and no


All film (i.e. as in the object and not movies in general) is a transparent object (original film for picture was glass and then eventually it was celluloid) with a light sensitive chemical on it. that chemical is complex and will never be 100% uniform at the "molecular" level. And so that unevenness in the coating will react uneven to the light going through the film and so the final image will have an unevenness. Now that frame on film is real small (normally for 35mm it will be <1" wide and tall) and when it is made many times bigger (for example that image might be 50x bigger on a TV, over 100x bigger on an HT with a projector or much bigger for a theatre) what was microscopic before could now be big enough to see. And when we see it we call that FG.

So to get back to what you said

1. Grain is inherit in all film (except movies shot in all digital)

absolutely

and gives a movie its detail

yes and no, FG is a natural part of the film and without that chemical there would be no deatil, but it is not the detail itself. The issue is that there is no way to have film without (at some level FG) and there is no way to differentiate between FG and detail. Since what was recorded came from a mixture of both (the image that was captured and how the coating captured it)

2. If there is no grain is was either shot in all digital, or the film processed and removed

yes and no, the first issue is what does "there is no grain" mean. On a 3mm film we are discussing something that is mostly (if not completely) microscopic, on a display it will be much bigger, but maybe like on the film itself it could exist but not be visible (i.e in that way "there is no grain") also different formulas for the coatings used to make the films and different ways of applying it can change the size and appearance and quantity of graininess. Some people in this thread have said they see it in theatres all the time while others have never seen it, maybe it is due to their vision but that can also (and more likely) be due to how well the projectors are focused. Also even a digitally created image (from a digital camera or CGI) if shown on film will have film grain because once it is on film it is on film and that film will add its film grain to the image. And so what generation film we are talking about can also have an effect (the camera records a negative, that negative is then recorder to a positive for editing, that positive will be used for more negatives which will make more positives.... and so the farther along you are the more grainy it will (the same way a photocopy of a photocopy... is worst) that is why sometimes on older films you have some scenes that are a lot more grainy (or a lot less) just because they might have used some stock that was at a different level on the chain.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Blu-Velvet

Assuming that modern "HD" video pictures are naturally sharper than "old" film merely displays a complete ignorance of the two very different technologies. The picture resolution possible on well-shot and well-processed 35mm film was already equal to or better than today's HDTV/Blu-ray standard by the 1910s and 20s (although there have long been a variety of different film stocks and processing options that will change the relative graininess)....

Not if you’re talking about 35mm film exhibited with a film projector. See….https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ne#post5943472 , for the quick, easy read scroll down to the paragraph with the phrase ‘online film school’ and click on that link.

As a follow-up, just about two weeks ago it was again stated in a presentation at a SMPTE (Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers) section meeting that even with today’s modern stocks, one rarely (if ever) sees film projected at > 1.3K (with a film projector) no matter who is the projectionist.

If you’re an SMPTE member, the meeting report should be online sometime in the near future.

[brosephjames]

The question is pretty vague. Which theaters? Which films? Which blu rays? There's about 6 trillion variables at play here, when you saw the film, how it was projected, the quality of the film used in the high def scan, the quality of the scan itself. Without specifics it's impossible to generalize.

If anything the major complaint ought to be the opposite: why grain is seemingly absent from the blu ray, mysteriously replaced by waxy people and pastel landscapes

IMO I think the answer is simply more psychological. All those years of seeing plasma displays we couldn't afford back in the 90s demod with super saturated glossy scenes has made us associate modern high def home displays with that particular aesthetic, an association we dont bring in with us to the theater and so aren't adjusting our senses to expect it.

The real goal of high def should not be "does it look a certain way" but "is it transparent to the intended source." That alone eliminates any and all concerns about grain and such, but of course the studios disagree

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by brosephjames

The real goal of high def should not be "does it look a certain way" but "is it transparent to the intended source." That alone eliminates any and all concerns about grain and such, but of course the studios disagree

I can see that nobody is going to pull the wool over your eyes.

[segagamer12]

this is one of the side effects of where I live, we have a very cheap ($2.50 per ticket) theater that projects only digitally. I notice all the time the quality is not as good as I used to get at the bigger theaters but I am stuck here till I finish school and hey I won't complain too much because the price is pretty good. The other draw back is they only show 3D movies now and those don't always look as good on their cheap projector.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by segagamer12

this is one of the side effects of where I live, we have a very cheap ($2.50 per ticket) theater that projects only digitally. I notice all the time the quality is not as good as I used to get at the bigger theaters but I am stuck here till I finish school and hey I won't complain too much because the price is pretty good. The other draw back is they only show 3D movies now and those don't always look as good on their cheap projector.

If it's only $2.50 per ticket, I have a feeling that they're not using a true theatrical digital projector and instead are using the advertising projector or are using a home theatre or industrial projector.

The other issue is that if I'm wrong and they are using the Sony 4K projector, most theatres don't remove the 3D filters when projecting 2D movies (because the changeover takes about an hour and a tech has to do it) and it makes 2D movies dimmer and off-colored. 3D movies are bad enough on their own, but now they're ruining 2D movie presentations as well.

But $2.50 is very, very cheap. In New York City, I think most theatres charge $13.50 for 2D and something like $17.50 for 3D, more if it's IMAX or an RPX theatre.

And while the "sunset date" for 35mm has been pushed several times, most of the trades claim the end of 2014 or 2015 at the latest, is going to be the end of 35mm prints in the U.S. It could even be sooner, if Kodak's bankruptcy means they stop or slow down producing the last three color 35mm print films that they make.

[segagamer12]

No it is actually a very good digital 3D projector realD I think, they just got it donated to them they are a community theater all volunteer supported and movies are donated they don't have to pay for them to show them. It's one of the *only* benefits of living in backwoods Nebraska. And no they only show 3D movies now they never show 2D at all anymore. Well I am studying to be a film student at university now and our school doesn't have film in their film school anymore it is all digital because they say by the time we graduate and start looking for jobs, there won't be enough film left in film to bother so we do everything digitally.

[Blu-Velvet]

Originally Posted by segagamer12

No it is actually a very good digital 3D projector realD I think, they just got it donated to them they are a community theater all volunteer supported and movies are donated they don't have to pay for them to show them. It's one of the *only* benefits of living in backwoods Nebraska. And no they only show 3D movies now they never show 2D at all anymore. Well I am studying to be a film student at university now and our school doesn't have film in their film school anymore it is all digital because they say by the time we graduate and start looking for jobs, there won't be enough film left in film to bother so we do everything digitally.

If they're showing second-run movies (as most bargain theatres do) then it's also possible they're simply running standard DVDs or even (heaven-forbid) VHS rather than real DCP files off a hard drive or even Blu-rays (I know a commercial theatre that usually runs DVDs for its kiddie morning matinees and a non-profit theatre that actually received VHS copies from the distributor --cough, cough, "Swank"). I'd think a 3D movie would have to be either a DCP or a Blu-ray, however, so maybe they just have focus and/or general setup/calibration issues that degrade the image. They may not really understand how to run their equipment.