OT: Harry Potter (was Re: Yet Another cabe Pretty Printer)

[Bill Vermillion]

On Fri, Jun 25 11:29 , Jay R. Ashworth, showing utter disregard for 
spell-checkers gave us this: 

> On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 12:14:30AM -0400, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> > > I personally can't imagine the 35 to 90mm blowup is that impressive.
> > 
> > It was shot in Super35.
> 
> Ah.  Haven't been reading AC as regularly as I used to...
> 
> > But one reason for using horizontal IMAX is you don't have the
> > problems with the anamophic 35mm projection.   You lose more
> > brightness and contrast when you stretch it out and therefore by
> > using IMAX you retain more contrast and brightness, though you are
> > still limited in resolution of the original.

> So the optical printer doesn't have those problems when doing the
> anamorphic stretch?

Since Super35 is wider you get more useable area in filming, and of
they will probably be matted.  And when you make the printing
negatives you are going to shrink the picture and the strech it
back during projection.

The point I'm trying to get across is that if you take a 35mm
negative that is in anamorphic format, when you stretch the picture
in projection you spread the picture out so it is similar to
increasing the distance and you will lower the luminance and the
contrast.

For big rooms making an optical print on 70MM will give you about 4
times the film area and you'll be able to get a brighter picture
and maintain contrast.

However - watch for a lot of that to go away.  A couple of months
back I was at a local theatre and they ran a promo for one of the
TV networks - with 20 new shows.   I was blown away by the
sharpness, lack of grain, and the contrast.  I turned around and
saw the light coming from a much smaller window at the far side of
the booth and not the larger window in the center.

When the main film started it had less contrast, more muted color
and more grain.

And release prints aren't always of the highest quality - so the
above is not to say that a good print cant be made, but good prints
aren't that good.   I don't know what the difference in quality
the printing on Kevlar makes, but I've heard other says that the
difference between the old nitrate based films to the acetate based
films gave a decline in quality.

Kevlor is used as it's almost indestructible and it's on big
platters that hold the entire print.  I've  heard that if a Kevlar
print gets unthread, that instead of breaking the film as the old
acetate and nitrate prints did, it will bend parts of the
projector.

It's been years since I've had any film camera in my hand, but I
used to make extra money when I was in college filming the
basketball games for analysis.   And they could get them back in
about 24 hours - how times have changed.  I have no idea how many
miles of 16mm film I shot [we had 1200 foot mags - Mitchell mags
that were adpated to the Aurccons we used] but the department head
said I had shot enough to classify me as professional :-)

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com