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Post #441654

Author
Fang Zei
Parent topic
Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/441654/action/topic#441654
Date created
18-Sep-2010, 4:54 PM

AMC switching completely over to digital projection by 2012 is good news to me and I'll tell you why. Like ChainsawAsh said, every new movie these days goes through a DI anyway, so you're not really gaining anything by seeing it on film.

Secondly, let me give you a couple stories:

I saw Star Trek on opening day and then went back to see it again less than two weeks later. There was a line running down the right side of the print during the last act. Yeah, it's really thin and easy enough to ignore if the scene is relatively dark, but when Spock was flying his ship above the BIG BRIGHT EARTH through the BIG BRIGHT ATMOSPHERE, the line was really noticeable and just made me think "wow, that wouldn't be there if I was seeing this in digital projection."

Then there's my Inception story, oh boy ....

Didn't see it until the Monday after it opened. For starters, there was a thread/fiber/hair/whatever stuck in the gate, so on the lower center of the screen there was this shape sticking out and moving every 24th of a second, really distracting especially during those bright white snow scenes towards the end. It was there from when the trailers started and never went away throughout the entire movie (as a side note, I've learned that if you ever notice something weird about the projection during the trailers then you'd better say something because that's how it's gonna be during the movie). Also, about 30 minutes into the movie the projector turned off and then started up again a few seconds later.

Funny thing is, there was also a screw-up with the one movie I saw projected digitally this summer. Splice was shot in Super 35 but framed at 1.85:1. In other words, it was shot Godfather III style. Whoever was in charge must've thought it was framed at 2.35:1, forgotten to open up the screen, who knows. Subtitles got cut off, tops of heads were getting cut off to an unusual extent (even for Super 35) and - even though I hadn't seen the movie before - it was pretty clear that there was picture information we weren't seeing. For instance, in an establishing shot where we're supposed to see a car driving across the horizon .... we only hear it. I also noticed the odd framing during, ahem, that scene (you know the one I'm talking about if you've seen the movie).