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IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

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Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#111
post #34
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say one of the advantages of analog filming is it's more expensive to "color correct" digitally after. So maybe you get less monochrome films?

Every film is colour corrected and graded digitally (in addition to all the special effects and compositing work), and this is in fact one of the cheapest parts of the process. So no, it's not remotely a consideration.

I thought I saw a video showing they were color-grading The Odyssey in analog using old style color filters?

edit, this user found the video:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127489

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now we're being told the opposite. The choice of unusual film standards has always been to make the film a bit "special" when viewed in a suitable cinema. The original format 1.33:1 was simply using 35mm wide film (originally 1.35") and after putting sprocket holes on each side, there was 1" of usable width, and someone decided to make a frame 1" x 0.75". The projected image was just scaled linearly. When they star…

I don’t think you covered the difference between 70mm and IMAX 70mm. One frame of IMAX is basically 3 frames of normal 70mm. So it is physically 3 times bigger I’d say that yes it’s a marketing technique, but for these releases it’s not a gimmick. If you have a chance to watch a film in 1.43:1, you should try it. The difference is how big it is, and especially how tall it is. Most theatres don’t physically have the s…

> between 70mm and IMAX 70mm.

Im not sure how many vertical 70mm projectors there are left. I don't think its a delivery format any more.

In terms of shooting, I think the only person mad enough to use 65mm is Ken Branagh on his agatha christie movies.

its easier and a fuckload cheaper to shoot anamorphic on 35mm or 35mm digital. Plus I think the choice of scanner is wider.

Thats also another good point, I'm not sure what scanners you can actually use on imax.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#113

I think it's interesting how we went from 4:3 to 16:9, and are now back to something very close to 4:3 again. And both changes were sold as "you can now see even more of the movie".

There is more than the AR though, there's framing. In 4:3 the framing is quite tight, and actors mostly fill the vertical space and the width feels somewhat constrained. Widescreen movies are framed about the same height as 4:3, but with more space on the sides. IMAX is filmed with the same width as widescreen movies, but with more space added to the top and bottom. You can typically crop IMAX to widescreen without c…

[deleted]

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to remember what resolution we rendered two face for when it went into imax. This was using 32bit renderman, and it was constantly OOM'ing because we were really pushing it. I seem to recall that we rendered out at 7k, even though the optical resolution was meant to be 12k.

I wonder if the render resolution was actually determined by the output resolution of the film recorder being used to get the sfx out onto film for display? I can't obviously find a film recorder that offers more than 8k on 65mm/15-perf. As I've not seen anyone else mention it, I feel the need to point out that Digital IMAX (which is the vast majority of screens and showings) maxes out at 4K.

https://www.awn.com/news/framestore-puts-grave-face-harvey-d...

Tim webber says it was rendered at 4k. Which contradicts what I remember. If he meant 4k textures that would make sense. 4k textures might have been why renderman kept on OOMing though and we had to tile the render even more.

Also I don't know how they printed it back out to film. It might have been sent to hollywood to laser/print out.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#115

If you want a very in depth technical look at the differences between IMAX 70mm, 70mm and 35mm for _The Odyssey_, I wrote an article about this last month. https://www.theppt.org/rewind/articles/where-can-you-watch-t... But here are my nit-picks from the article linked here. I'm only commenting on the 15/70mm IMAX parts, because I'm not knowledgable enough about the digital IMAX foramats. > The extra resolution, up t…

To add another nit-pick to the list, the author confuses 18K as being four times the resolution of 4K.

8K is four times the resolution of 4K. (counter-intuitively to most people as it only measures the pixels in one dimension yet the image resolution is increased in both width and height)

Diagram:

https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/articles/07toBDd6lpyucCyM0xWrcQv...

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#116
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aspect ratio by itself tells you very little about the theatrical viewing experience. What really matters is the "angular image size," i.e. the horizontal and vertical angle that the image fills in your field of view. This is determined by the aspect ratio of the image, but also critically the size of the screen and the distance from the screen to the viewer. 1.43 IMAX screens are really really big and fill more of y…

I chuckle at the thought of going back to letterboxing with people arguing that “we need to see the top and bottom of the frame, like the director intended!” What’s old is new again. Are hemlines up or down this year? Skinny jeans or baggy?

One important difference is that modern movies that shoot in 1:43 IMAX typically shoot everything with other aspect ratios in mind. So a 16:9 home release of The Odyssey is going to be less creatively compromised than an anamorphic film from the 1980s adapted to a 1.33 pan and scan home video release.

We also have two things working in our favor for home video releases on 16:9 displays. First, 16:9 is geometrically well-positioned between 4:3 and 2.39:1, so displaying either of those pillar/letterboxed on a 16:9 screen only leaves 25% of the screen area unused. (We literally chose 16:9 because it's the geometric mean of 4:3 and 2.39:1.)

Secondly, a typical home TV now is simply much larger than a typical home TV 30+ years ago, so the reduced size of a pillar/letterboxed image is still just straight up bigger than most home TVs were prior to the flatscreen revolution.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every film. It was widely reported that Oppenheimer was color graded photochemically, and the 65mm film physically spliced (the editor of course worked in Avid with digital film scans). This means that 70 mm screenings were projecting a fully analog end-to-end pipeline. The exception, of course, is the visual effects shots, which went through a digital intermediary. The same seems to be true of The Odyssey, altho…

> It was widely reported that Oppenheimer was color graded photochemically, So I'm deeply sceptical of this. There was a DI colourist in the colour department and the editorial had a digital conform team and a colourist. I'm sure there was some photochemcial fiddling. but it was all conformed digitally and lasered out to be finished. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_c... Photochemical gradin…

As I mentioned, they obvious did a digital intermediary for visual effects shots. For Oppenheimer I don't think they was much CGI, but at the bare minimum I sure they did some digital compositing, so they must have matched their photochemical color grading with digital color grading for some scenes. Also, they had a digital colorist to produce the grade for the DCP anyway, to match the look of the film master.

But it seems to me that reputable sources have clearly stated that they did a fully analog film path all the way to release prints.

There's this interview with the DP: https://fotokem.com/oppenheimer-hoytema-fotokem/

> And once production began, FotoKem printed literally everything Nolan shot. Then after the edit was complete, FotoKem brought in Negative Cutter Simone Appleby from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image Animée in France to cut each section and glue it together, which starts with a list that comes out of the Avid that provides every single one of the over 3,000 shots. That list, coupled with a work print (a film version of the list of shots), was then rolled against the negative, using also a QuickTime reference with key numbers—all of which allowed Appleby to cut the physical negative together into the final assembly, from which final prints were made. And from there, Van Hoytema and Color Timer Kristen Zimmerman painstakingly perfected the color of each and every shot by hand.

> Theodosiou’s focus was matching the color of the digital master to that of the analog film master because Nolan and FotoKem knew that not everybody in the world would be able to view Oppenheimer on analog film. “We were able to manipulate the images and make them look exactly how Christopher intended for them to look on film,” says Theodosiou. “For the final tweaks, we had to split screen the image between a digital and a film on the screen and match the film identically throughout, from reel one all the way to the end.”

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#118
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aspect ratio by itself tells you very little about the theatrical viewing experience. What really matters is the "angular image size," i.e. the horizontal and vertical angle that the image fills in your field of view. This is determined by the aspect ratio of the image, but also critically the size of the screen and the distance from the screen to the viewer. 1.43 IMAX screens are really really big and fill more of y…

I chuckle at the thought of going back to letterboxing with people arguing that “we need to see the top and bottom of the frame, like the director intended!” What’s old is new again. Are hemlines up or down this year? Skinny jeans or baggy?

Preferably, I'd have a 4:3 OLED TV or laser projector at a decent enough size that it can just comfortably show all kinds of formats.

My desktop is 21:9, my Macbook and Steamdeck are 16:10, my TV and Nintendo Switch are 16:9, and my iPhone is some weird aspect ratio. So it's not like I'm not used to varying formats. And I actually like it when movies take liberties with the screen format instead of forcing everything into 16:9 just because it's the common TV format.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#119

If you want a very in depth technical look at the differences between IMAX 70mm, 70mm and 35mm for _The Odyssey_, I wrote an article about this last month. https://www.theppt.org/rewind/articles/where-can-you-watch-t... But here are my nit-picks from the article linked here. I'm only commenting on the 15/70mm IMAX parts, because I'm not knowledgable enough about the digital IMAX foramats. > The extra resolution, up t…

There is no such thing as resolution in films. There is accutance and sharpness, but it is not resolution.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#120
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a complaint about your post but this stuff about film formats and aspect ratios has always had me scratching my head. For years I heard people arguing that wider aspect ratios were preferable because they afforded a wider view, and that narrower aspect ratios were too restrictive horizontally. This always seemed confusing to me because theoretically they should allow for more vertical space for the same width. No…

Aspect ratio by itself tells you very little about the theatrical viewing experience. What really matters is the "angular image size," i.e. the horizontal and vertical angle that the image fills in your field of view. This is determined by the aspect ratio of the image, but also critically the size of the screen and the distance from the screen to the viewer. 1.43 IMAX screens are really really big and fill more of y…

Related: Chart Of Common Viewing Angles from Steve Yedlin, ASC https://www.yedlin.net/NerdyFilmTechStuff/#:~:text=Chart
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