Originally posted by: Mielr

Originally posted by: zombie84

No, gate weave is not part of the film--its a by-product of the projection stage, and its visibility is dependent on human and technological factors, including how well the film is threaded through the projector and how well the projector is built. On lower budgeted formats and projectors there will be some slight weave--ie, 16mm film only has one perf for frame--but it should never be visible. In fact, the most essentially testing phase of the camera prep before a crew shoots a movie is called a registration test, and its the first thing that is done in order to eliminate gate weave being built into the film by making sure that the movement of the camera gate is rock-solid.
Inevitably, when you see a movie in theaters there will be some very minor weave that is only noticeable if you look for it--this has to do with the fact that you are seeing less than ideal prints that are getting a bit banged up, and run by a projectionist that likely is not doing his job to the best of his ability because its just a mutiplex screening that gets done ten times a day. However, if you were to watch a carefully made and thoroughly examined transfer on dvd, you will notice that gate weave is totally absent--in fact, many now use stabalising filters to eliminate even the most subtle of weave to make sure that the image is perfectly still and natural, as it should be.

I don't agree. The "stabilizing" filters you speak of are not part of the usual film process, which is why such tampering is sometimes criticized by videophiles. Like I said, I personally don't have a preference, but many videophiles dislike anything that deviates from the movie theater-like experience.

Even waaaaaay back in the dark ages (1993) I'm sure they knew how to properly load the film into the telecine (if their fingers weren't too scabbed up from their knuckles dragging on the ground) and the transfer was state-of-the-art at the time, with plenty of $$$ to buy top-notch telecine equipment (even by today's standards), and I'm sure they did a much better job than the average projectionist at today's local multiplex. The quality issue I think resides not with the telecine process itself (or the equipment used) - but with the fact that the resulting masters were made for a much lower-resolution medium (laserdisk).

Your quarrel seems not so much to be with the exessive gate weave you perceive, but with the film medium itself. I'm guessing you would prefer that all movies were shot digitally, completely devoid of film-related anomalies?

Seeing a movie in a theater is still the zenith that every home-theater buff strives for- and yet movie theaters still use plain-old 35mm film and (*gasp!*) projectors, WITHOUT "stabilizing filters", and WITH sometimes inexperienced projectionists with heavily-used prints and projectors. I wonder why it is that so many are willing to accept a bit of gate weave in a movie theater, but not at home?

In any case, I didn't mean to create acrimony. You see excessive gate weave- I don't. I only see aliasing (in SW- not as much in the other 2) in non-anamorphic DVDs. Guess I'm the lucky one then?

I speak as a professional motion picture camera assistant who works almost exclusively in film. I am the one doing the registration tests at Panavision Toronto and loading the camera magazines onto the Panaflex Milleniums that shoot the actual movies. And although, yes, occassionally you will see the slightest and almost invisible traces of gate movement on some lower-cost equipment (ie. older camera such as the Arri BL3 35mm model or the Arri BL 16 16mm model), gate weave is pretty much completely absent. Gate weave occassionally gets intoduced in the reproduction stages--perhaps the making of the IP results in a few frames wobbling as they are scanned, and then the IN might introduce a few more frames of wobble, and then the print itself another few and then the telecine a few more; even these on a modern scanner don't add up to anything really noticeable, but just to be perfect, this is why sometimes stabilising filters are now being used--they return the film to its original condition, free of any wobble.

Star Wars was filmed on Panavision Platinums by a top-notch crew. Panavision Platinum's are the most rock-solidly registered cameras that you can buy--the film literally does not move. If you have ever opened up the body of one of these things, the film is threaded through teeth and gears and registration pins over ten times--and just to make sure, a registration test is done in the prep stage as well. That image isn't going to move a millimeter in the gate.

Just as burn marks, scratches and dupe grain are not part of the original image and are taken with the best efforts to eliminate, gate weave is also a foreign element to film. Perhaps it re-creates the shoddy theatrical experience of watching it with a sub-par projector, but its not part of the film. And the GOUT weave is not just the slight weave created through less-than-steller camera gate registration--its very pronounced, and obviously due to factors in the equipment made to telecine it. These factors may include human error, poor print conidition and poor equipment used. Perhaps because it was from the 1985 IP the print already had lots of weave built into the print itself since it is third generation to begin with, faults which were then built upon by the actual 1993 telecine.