This is stupid and lame, I admit that, but in one respect Justin Beiber and I park our cars in the same garage. I’m referring to the 18 year-old pop star having dissed Prince William for not doing something about his thinning hair. “There are things to prevent that,” Beiber recently told the Daily Mail‘s “Rolla Coaster” magazine. “You just take Propecia and your hair grows back.” When William and Kate got married in late April 2011, I ran a riff called “I Take Thee, Baldie.”
I don’t know why I’m posting this. I guess it’s comforting on some level to have someone in your corner or to be in theirs, even if it’s Justin Beiber. I know. Lame. Yes, if was Prince William, I would definitely do “something” about it….but who cares? He can be as bald as he wants.
High-frame-rate cinema has the potential to dramatically improve moviegoing and turn exhibition around by increasing the impact of movies. HFR movies are a new kind of wow, a hyper-real experience that is extremely immersive. It’s a brave new world, ladies and gents, so put on your brave face, buy your ticket and get on the train.
And if you’re feeling discomfort about the super-clear, un-filtered, you-are-there look of 48 frames per second, “don’t worry because that goes away” and when you go back to a normal 24 fps film, “you’ll ask yourself how could I watch movies like this for so long?”
That, in a nutshell, is what the three big guns on today’s High Frame Rate panel at SIGGRAPH — FX and HFR pioneer Douglas Trumbull, ILM’s Dennis Murren and Lightstorm’s Jon Landau — had to say about this new Hollywood technology. True, they waited until the very end of the panel to say it, but at least they stepped up to the plate and explained the deal.
That was the vibe inside Hall K at the L.A. Convention Center…cool. I loved it. But the mood elsewhere, as well all know, has been different.
At last April’s Cinemacon the 48 frame-per-second Hobbit footage was greeted with derision by at least half of the audience. Warner Bros. was so freaked by this that they declined to show 48 fps Hobbit footage at ComicCon last month and yesterday Variety‘s David Cohen reported that when The Hobbit opens in December WB plans to keep the 48 fps venues “fairly small” in “select locations.” It’s therefore no stretch to say things aren’t going especially well for HFR movies right now.
But you’d never know that to judge by comments heard this morning. The 11 panelists — Trumbull, Muren, Landau plus Christie’s Paul Salvini, Park Road’s Phil Oatley, DreamWork’s Lincoln Wallen and Jim Beshears, Digital Doman’s Darin Grant, ReadlD’s Matthew Cowan, Side Effects Doftware’s Luke Moore and Screen Industries’ Research’s John Helliker — were full of optimism, hope and excitement and vision-sharing.
High-frame rates are very cool, and will deliver filmmakers and moviegoers, finally, from the shackles of 20 Century filmmaking technology, etc. And once the public gets a taste of high-frame rates…blast-off! Boom!
Landau screened a Lightstorm-produced 3D instructional short in which James Cameron (who will be shooting Avatar 2 and 3 in 48 or 60 fps) showed and explained the differences between 24 fps, 48 fps and 60 fps. Footage of a medieval banquet and then a sword fight, shot and projected at these frame rates, was shown. Cameron also presented show-mo footage of dancing medieval maidens shot at 120 fps and projected at 60 fps…very cool.
It was pretty damn beautiful, to me. Like I said last spring, 48 fps (or 60 fps) is the only way to go with big-canvas movies that are heavy on action, effects, CG, big explosions and scenery. The Avengers would have been much, much cooler in 48 or 60 fps.
Which is fine in and of itself, but what about the elephant in the room, guys? What about the people out there who are booing, sneering, scared and unsure of HFR cinema? What about the chickenshit posture of Warner Bros. regarding The Hobbit? I asked this at the very end of the panel (SIGGRAPH allowed about ten minutes for questions) and then some guy from the audience got up and said he was “disturbed” by the high-def video look of 48 and 60 fps in Cameron’s demo film. And finally the panelists got into it.
Trumbull’s answer was that high-frame-rate cinema, which he called “hyper cinema” becaise it’s so real and immersive, is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing, and if filmmakers want to shoot a film in 24 fps, fine, and if they don’t, fine. But Peter Jackson is doing a great thing by having shot The Hobbit in 48 fps, he said, and once people get a taste of what 48 fps is, everything’ll be jake. Let’s hope so.
Of course, nobody on the panel even mentioned the very first form of high-frame-rate cinema — Mike Todd‘s 30 frame-per-second Todd A-AO, which debuted in 1955 and was used for two films — Oklahoma! and Around The World in Eighty Days — and was a dead format by 1958 after exhibitors whined about cost and Todd AO was downgraded to a 24 fps process.
Industry friend: A colleague was at the Academy’s Goldwyn theatre yesterday and put up a reel of 2001:A Space Odyssey and found no problems. I have no idea what you saw [at the Academy on Monday night], as I spoke with someone else last night, a director, who was also there, and he thought it looked fine.
Me: I know exactly what I saw, and those guys are either lazy or clueless or full of it…or are looking for simplicity and calm in their lives and “don’t want to know.” The 2001 images I saw Monday night were dark, inky, shadowy and underwhelming. An array of visual values captured by Stanley Kubrick 45 years ago were almost completely unmanifested and unrealized. You couldn’t savor any of the hairs on the ape coats. No exceptional specificity to speak of.
I went home and watched my 2001 Bluray….finally, the way it’s supposed to look!
Your two pallies are just being polite or bland or whatever. I wouldn’t take their word for anything henceforth. I know what I saw. I hate people who work in this industry and are therefore presumed to know a thing or two, and then you show them something and they go “huh? really? I didn’t notice that.”
Industry friend: I need to ask the obvious question, only because [my colleague] said what he saw after a timing session. Did you take off your sunglasses?
Me: Yes, my sunglasses were off and stuffed in my breast pocket.
Indoor personal hygiene options were at a relatively early stage when Abraham Lincoln lived in the White House. While sources contend that Millard Fillmore was the first U.S. President to enjoy indoor plumbing while residing in the White House from 1850 to 1853, a 1989 article about White House plumbing in Plumbing and Mechanical magazine reports that Lincoln may have been “the first President of the United States to splash his way to cleanliness in a White House bathtub, the first tub having been installed during his presidency.”
This is precisely the kind of thing that I like to see and learn about when I see a historical film of any kind. What did everything smell like back then? How well did contraptions work? What kind of soaps, perfumes, bath towels and scented fragrances did they use? Did bathrooms have absorbent floor mats or did water just collect in pools on the marble or hard-tiled floors? Did the toilets function fairly well for the most part or were there issues? Did general stores sell rounded rolls of toilet paper like they do today, etc.?
This is what I want, partly, from Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln. Not just toilet and bathtub information but various hints of the quality and texture of life in the 1860s. Imagine how amazing it would be if Spielberg had decided to present the film in Smellovision or Aroma-rama, then we’d have an idea of what the White House might have actually smelled like from time to time. Think of the transportation!
Will we get this kind of thing from Lincoln? Of course not. Will there be even a fragmentary amount of quality-of-life information? Doubtful. You know Spielberg. Half the time he was shooting Lincoln he was probably preparing for Robopocalypse.
This clip of Steven Soderbergh discussing conservative-minded resistance to digital filmmaking is a Side by Sideouttake, but it’s an indication of the film’s spiritual and intellectual energy. Chris Kenneally and Keanu Reeves‘ doc, easily one of the best of the year and certainly the most historic, peeks out in Los Angeles on 8.17, on VOD 8.22, and then on 8.31 at Manhattan’s Quad Cinema.
Warner Bros.’s 48 frame-per-second Hobbit rollback was first announced at ComicCon on 7.12…”scared rabbits,” etc. Eight days ago I predicted that WB and Hobbit director Peter Jackson “are probably going to limit 48 fps venues when The Hobbit opens in December and characterize 48 fps as some kind of eccentric experiment.”
Today Variety‘s David Cohenreported that Warner Bros.will be “keeping the first high-frame-rate release of The Hobbitfairly small [in] select locations, perhaps not even into all major cities…hoping to test the marketplace and expand the HFR release for the second and third installments…provided auds are enthusiastic.”
In other words, WB has next to no confidence in 48 f.p.s. Adverse reactions from old-fart exhibitors and big-mouth bloggers at last April’s Cinemacon scared them silly and they still haven’t recovered. So they’re going to peek out with the 48 fps Hobbit and test the waters and determine if Joe and Jane Popcorn are going to approve or not…and if they don’t, 48 f.p.s. goes under the bus. Or something like that.
As I said yesterday, I took no texting or bathroom breaks during Tony Gilroy‘s The Bourne Legacy (Universal, 8.10), and that is a form of tribute and respect. (This isn’t to imply that I routinely step out for text messaging, but I sometimes do when a film blows.) And I’ve always admired and respected director-writer Tony Gilroy, who spent two years on Legacy, he said, in the manner of a captain going on a whaling voyage. And yeah, he brought home the oil and the blubber.
“Every time I re-watch my Bluray of Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton, which seems a bit more masterful each time, I feel a little bit worse about not being more enthusiastic when it first came out 40 months ago. I didn’t put enough feeling into my riffs about it. Calling it “never boring,” “a tense adult thriller about some unsettled and anxious people” and “as seasoned and authentic as this kind of thing can be” didn’t get it. I held back and over-qualified. And I’m sorry.” — posted on 1.31.11.
Please, please, please don’t let Gabriele Muccino‘s latest film be as emotionally cloying as the trailer indicates. I say this as a fan of L’Ultimo Bacio and one who was at least okay with The Pursuit of Happyness. Presumably they changed the last word in the title from “field” to “keeps” because the former alludes to the adventures of a hound and the latter to the promise of a real man.
I just watched the Fox Home Video Bluray of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and it’s absolutely beautiful, scrumptious, dazzling. A breathtaking Technicolor high. Watching it is like eating an ice cream sundae with whipped cream and a cherry. On top of which it’s been mastered at a 1.37 aspect ratio…heavens!
Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
In going with 1.37 Fox Home Video’s Schawn Belston has delivered a gentle reminder to the Bluray community that 20th Century Fox wasn’t part of the 1.85 aspect ratio mandate that swept across Hollywood in the spring of ’53. 1.85 fascist theology says that all films released after April 1953 were projected at 1.85…nope!
This may sound anecdotal to some, but to me the 1.37 presentation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which originally opened in July 1953, is a slight crack in the dike.
Projectionist #1 at New York’s Roxy (on or about July 12, 1953): Here are the prints for that new picture, Gentleman Prefer Blondes. We can run it after the show tonight.
Projectionist #2: With what aperture plate?
Projectionist #1: You ask? 1.85, of course. That’s the new rule, what the boss wants.
Projectionist #2: Wrong. We’re showing it at 1.37.
Projectionist #1: Whaddaya mean? Everything is supposed to be shown at 1.85. The rule came down three or four months ago. S’matter with you?
Projectionist #2: It’s wrong, I tell ya. I’ve heard this one has to be shown at 1.37. Fox films are a different deal than ones from Columbia and Warner Bros. and Paramount.
Projectionist #1: Except Paramount wants 1.66.
Projectionist #2: And that’s not all. When From Here To Eternity opens next month we’re not showing that in 1.85 either. That’ll also be shown at 1.37.
Projectionist #1: But that’s Columbia!
Projectionsist #2: Whatever. We’re showing it at 1.37.
Projectionist #1: How’s anyone supposed to keep this shit straight?
“I’ve never found any evidence in [Fox’s] studio files of a ‘1:85 starts at midnight’ dictum,” Belston told me this morning. “There is plenty of documentation, as you probably know, about Fox from 1954 on making every movie possible in CinemaScope. Ditto the development of stereo and CinemaScope55 later.
“I can tell you from looking at the non-Scope Fox films of 1953 (Call Me Madam, Niagara, Inferno and Pickup on South Street come to mind particularly) that they look more correctly framed in 1.37 than in 1.85, in my opinion. Additionally, whenever these films have screened within the last decade, projectionists/archives/museums have always shown them as you might expect in a 1.33/1.37 aspect ratio.
“Neither of these points is proof of how they should be shown, but for whatever it is worth to you, I’m fairly certain most if not all academics would agree with the 1.37 approach.”
