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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

It's weird then because he did choose to shoot on super35 for a part of the movie to get a rougher look, no?

Most of the movie was shot during the day, concerning which the DP convinced the Director that this fact would pretty much negate the advantage of the Panavision Genesis’ strengths in terms of subdued lighting scenes.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by GabrielB

If he doesn't like grain he could have chosen to shoot to whole thing on anamorphic... Must have still been sensible in getting different looks...

Practical considerations……………………..

1. Probably most importantly for this particular title, the fact that composition of Super 35 is pretty much set when you shot (with just a little bit above and a little bit below the frame line of the 2.35) in contrast to full frame (anamorphic) where you may have to do a lot of jiggling of the composition in post to hide things that you didn’t want to have on the screen for audiences to see in the first place.

2. Shooting anamorphic is more expensive ($$) than shooting Super 35, this becomes even more significant to the total budget when you add on the cost of a planned digital intermediate to the whole process.

3. Shooting Super 35 gives you about 25% more film so that a 4 min. roll of film becomes almost a 5 ½ min roll of film which is an advantage in that you don’t have to re-load so often, esp. important with steadicam shots, like the sequence in the cave, for example.

4. In general, anamorphic lenses aren’t quite as sharp as the best available spherical lenses and can sometimes cause objectionable distortion problems.

[Brain Sturgeon]

Originally Posted by horseflesh

I know.
And that's not like saying "I live in New York"; Swords is a small (although growing) suburb of Dublin city.
Even if BS had said he was in Dublin, that would have been spooky enough.
But Swords.........

Wow-- that is pretty weird!

I was renting a flat at the Boroimhe Maples development just off the N1 just north of the airport while I was a registrar (Doctor-in-training) at Beaumont Hospital (The National Neurosurgical Centre). We loved living there-- spent quite a bit a time in Malahide and grabbing some fish 'n chips @ Bischoff's (IIRC) in Howth was one of our favorite Sunday pastimes-- along with watching the American Football game of the week on Sky Sports.

Slán!

[Esox50]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Anyway, onto film stuff.
I’ll take two questions...

Gladiator (2000)?

[HeavyHitter]

Penton,

Given the enormous economic problems we are facing (with the worse may be yet to come) is it likely we'll see decent price drops on Blu-ray movies? So far, we're not really seeing it too much although I think it's possible especially with Christmas around the corner.

[Jeff Kleist]

You won't see new release prices drop

You'll see people pricing down the catalog titles a lot of which has already happened. I think WB's approach is quite novel, refunding the difference on actual sold discs. This encourages the retailers to push them hard

[Bobby Henderson]

Catalog titles are the main product line that needs to see some serious price cuts.

I don't think it's hurting the situation very much to have brand new BD releases ranging in the $24 to $29.99 area. It doesn't help to have an old movie priced the same way unless there is something very "deluxe" about the release.

Some minor discounts are already taking place in stores. When Transformers was first released on Blu-ray a couple months ago Wal-Mart wanted $29.99 for it. After several weeks they dropped the price $5 to $24.95. After another couple months I think the price needs to drop below $20. It may be a point of debate whether it should be cut to under $15 before this time next year.

Nevertheless, some minor yet steady price cutting needs to happen with aging Blu-ray movies on store shelves. A person who avoided buying a certain Blu-ray movie because of a $25 or higher price tag may be more inclined to purchase it several months later for $15. Essentially this is the same release model DVD has been using for the past several years.

[Jeff Kleist]

The price cuts are happening, Fox just did 2 big cuts. You're going to see more specials of the week type scenarios than cuts in SRP.

[Mr. Cinema]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The price cuts are happening, Fox just did 2 big cuts. You're going to see more specials of the week type scenarios than cuts in SRP.

So something like The Dark Knight "could" be priced around $24.99 during release week?

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by coolmilo

My issues: I cannot play The Matrix with my Pioneer player and I am having issues with the Bond films too. My player crashes when I switch between the standard and extended cuts with the latest Universal comedy offering. At this point I am not watching any Blu-ray movies until these problems are fixed. I have an $800 boat anchor (BDP-051).

I know we are stepping beyond Penton's area of expertise (where's Paidgeek?), but:
At what point do these become problems with the player such that a firmware update is mandated? The studios, encoding, and design houses can code around known bugs in players. However, they can't do this forever for all bugs. At some point they have to move beyond being limited by some bugs.

Now, speaking as a software engineer, it would be personally interesting to know what is wrong since it appears to be multi-player or multi-brand. They do test their discs on multiple players, but still sound like they are being surprised in the field. Interesting...

[horseflesh]

Originally Posted by Brain Sturgeon

Wow-- that is pretty weird!

I was renting a flat at the Boroimhe Maples development just off the N1 just north of the airport while I was a registrar (Doctor-in-training) at Beaumont Hospital (The National Neurosurgical Centre). We loved living there-- spent quite a bit a time in Malahide and grabbing some fish 'n chips @ Bischoff's (IIRC) in Howth was one of our favorite Sunday pastimes-- along with watching the American Football game of the week on Sky Sports.

Slán!

So I've had two eminent visitors from this thread

[coolmilo]

Originally Posted by cjamescook

I know we are stepping beyond Penton's area of expertise (where's Paidgeek?), but:
At what point do these become problems with the player such that a firmware update is mandated? The studios, encoding, and design houses can code around known bugs in players. However, they can't do this forever for all bugs. At some point they have to move beyond being limited by some bugs.

Now, speaking as a software engineer, it would be personally interesting to know what is wrong since it appears to be multi-player or multi-brand. They do test their discs on multiple players, but still sound like they are being surprised in the field. Interesting...

BTW, I've started watching Blu-ray movies again. I couldn't stop myself.

I am putting those problem titles to the side while the bugs get worked out. I may go for the redone PS3 (releasing next Spring???) that Max was writing about a few weeks back.

[Jeff Kleist]

Originally Posted by Mr. Cinema

So something like The Dark Knight "could" be priced around $24.99 during release week?

It's $23.95 on Amazon right now. I expect in the $24-25.99 range with variable in-store exclusives

Originally Posted by cjamescook

I know we are stepping beyond Penton's area of expertise (where's Paidgeek?), but:
At what point do these become problems with the player such that a firmware update is mandated? The studios, encoding, and design houses can code around known bugs in players. However, they can't do this forever for all bugs. At some point they have to move beyond being limited by some bugs.

Now, speaking as a software engineer, it would be personally interesting to know what is wrong since it appears to be multi-player or multi-brand. They do test their discs on multiple players, but still sound like they are being surprised in the field. Interesting...

That's probably a question for KJack or Talk more than anyone

Paid is a very busy guy, now that the war is over, he's turned his energies into building the format on the tech end instead of the PR

[Uxi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

The price cuts are happening, Fox just did 2 big cuts. You're going to see more specials of the week type scenarios than cuts in SRP.

Seems like new releases are cheaper then they raise up to a level typically $2-5 higher than the release price. Is that going to continue? Catalogs seem to come in at the "base" price and

Fox has always been atrociously priced, but that's welcome news.

[Jeff Kleist]

Seems like new releases are cheaper then they raise up to a level typically $2-5 higher than the release price. Is that going to continue? Catalogs seem to come in at the "base" price and

That's standard, release week is cheaper than the following weeks

Catalog, unless it's major doesn't follow the same pattern

[Bobby Henderson]

If Fox has made two price cuts on catalog titles, what retailers are honestly showing those price cuts in effect? I'm not seeing them.

I'll visit a store like Wal-Mart and see old titles like Die Hard sitting on the shelf still commanding $29.99 like they always have. And the stores in malls who, for various reasons, charge full MSRP, have it for $35 or $40.

As far as Fox catalog titles go, the only case where I've seen them offered for a more reasonable price at a retailer was at Sam's Club. They have some early Fox BD titles (some of the lesser quality 25GB releases) selling for just under $20. I'm not really interested in the single layer titles since they obviously smell like they will be double dipped with a future 50GB release sometime in the future. It's kind of funny that Speed has fallen into that camp. The first DVD of Speed was not very good. I had to wait a few years before Fox finally released a better "five star collection" version.

[kjack]

Originally Posted by cjamescook

At what point do these become problems with the player such that a firmware update is mandated? The studios, encoding, and design houses can code around known bugs in players. However, they can't do this forever for all bugs. At some point they have to move beyond being limited by some bugs. Now, speaking as a software engineer, it would be personally interesting to know what is wrong since it appears to be multi-player or multi-brand. They do test their discs on multiple players, but still sound like they are being surprised in the field. Interesting...

The studios and their partners test content on a variety of players before it hits retail shelves. Of course, they can't test all players with all firmware revision combinations.The player and SoC manufacturers also test content from the studios before it hits the retail shelves. Sounds pretty simple....

If a disc is authored correctly, and players don't play it correctly, firmware updates for the players are usually issued. Any patches to the disc to make it play would be so player/firmware dependent, they would be mostly useless anyway.

If a disc is authored incorrectly, the goal is to catch it as early as possible so it can be corrected before hitting retail shelves. Sometimes it's too late, and player/SoC manufacturers have to do a firmware update to work around the problem.

The overall goal is have the content be correct since it hangs around a lot longer than any player...

[micks_address]

seems to be a few north dublin people on the forum.. i live in lusk which is abuot 15 mins away from swords..

Originally Posted by Brain Sturgeon

Wow-- that is pretty weird!

I was renting a flat at the Boroimhe Maples development just off the N1 just north of the airport while I was a registrar (Doctor-in-training) at Beaumont Hospital (The National Neurosurgical Centre). We loved living there-- spent quite a bit a time in Malahide and grabbing some fish 'n chips @ Bischoff's (IIRC) in Howth was one of our favorite Sunday pastimes-- along with watching the American Football game of the week on Sky Sports.

Slán!

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by kjack

The studios and their partners test content on a variety of players before it hits retail shelves. Of course, they can't test all players with all firmware revision combinations.The player and SoC manufacturers also test content from the studios before it hits the retail shelves. Sounds pretty simple....

If a disc is authored correctly, and players don't play it correctly, firmware updates for the players are usually issued. Any patches to the disc to make it play would be so player/firmware dependent, they would be mostly useless anyway.

If a disc is authored incorrectly, the goal is to catch it as early as possible so it can be corrected before hitting retail shelves. Sometimes it's too late, and player/SoC manufacturers have to do a firmware update to work around the problem.

The overall goal is have the content be correct since it hangs around a lot longer than any player...

Thanks for the explanation Keith. Nice to see you around.

[Penton-Man]

Hey Guys,
I’m just checking in for a quick Hello as I’ve been super busy today trying to get out the door on time to attend an awards thing at the Skirball this evening.

Hope everything is well.
I noticed that Ben has a contest going for Transsiberian……….
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=2025

Just in case this movie is flying under the radar screen of some home theater enthusiasts………..
my wife and I watched the Blu-ray last evening and I recommend it highly as it is a very entertaining film with a good cast, excellent acting and neat storyline all the way to the very end.
Well worth a look-see.

Later.