35mm movies to Blu Ray

<davidm2.RemoveThis@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1176446140.676531.198130@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> For television work, it's a non-issue since you don't need to make
> prints with soundtracks on them.
>
> For theatrical work, for awhile now, the main reason to shoot Super-35
> was to be able to use a slightly wider negative, crop vertically to
> 2.35, and then squeeze & dupe in an optical printer to a 2X anamorphic
> image (which fits into the sound aperture area) onto a new 35mm
> anamorphic internegative for making scope release prints, as a way of
> avoiding shooting with anamorphic camera lenses.
>
> But now that more and more features are using digital intermediate
> technology where you scan the negative, color-correct digitally, and
> then record back to film, then there's not much reason to not use
> Super-35 for both 2.35 and 1.85 images, since you can resize and
> reposition them for the projection aperture formats (ones with a
> soundtrack) when to output them back to film again. So in the case of
> "Super-1.85" you expose a 1.85 image across Super-35 (full aperture)
> and reduce this when doing the film recording so that the 1.85 image
> now fit inside sound aperture that excludes the soundtrack area. In
> the case of Super-35 for 2.35, you'd crop and stretch to create a 2X
> anamorphic image for film-out to the 35mm "scope" format.
>
> However, photography using anamorphic lenses to get a scope image
> still has the advantage of using more negative total; even though it
> doesn't use the soundtrack area, it uses more vertical film area than
> cropping Super-35 to 2.35. Anamorphic photography has about a 40%
> larger negative area than Super-35 cropped to 2.35. This larger
> negative area gives you a more detailed, less grainy image even when
> doing a D.I. However, anamorphic photography can have depth of field
> problems (too shallow in focus unless you stop down the lens) and the
> lenses tend to be bigger, heavier, slower, and more expensive to rent.
> And grain can be reduced digitally, so these days, Super-35
> photography for scope images looks closer in quality to anamorphic
> photography thanks to digital intermediates, which don't have the
> grain problems that doing the blow-up in an optical printer used to
> cause. Also, the fact that many D.I.'s are done at 2K resolution to
> save time & money, means that the loss of resolution from using 2K
> sort of mutes the difference between Super-35 and anamorphic even
> further. However a lot of people still think that true anamorphic
> photography looks better, especially if it doesn't go through a 2K
> D.I. For example, almost all of Christopher Nolan's movies ("Batman
> Begins" and "The Prestige") have been shot in 35mm anamorphic and
> avoided using a digital intermediate to get as much quality as
> possible from normal contact-printing (ignoring the D.I. used only to
> blow-up "Batman Begins" to IMAX.)
>
> David Mullen, ASC
>

Thanks for that but it still doesn't answer my query that for it to be
appreciated, wouldn't you need a specially adapted projector with gate and
lens to play the full super35 image? I mean if it has to be "cropped" to get
it back to standard 35mm (for the cinemas) what is the point? Obviously
there is a point but I can as yet see it.

DAVO
 >> Stay informed about: 35mm movies to Blu Ray 

I'm not sure I can explain it any more clearly. Super-35 is NOT a
theatrical projection format because it has no room for a soundtrack.
So only film labs have projectors with Super-35 (full aperture) gates
to project dailies, answer prints, etc.

Current theatrical releases in 35mm are projected in two formats:
"matted" 1.85, where the projector masks the 4-perf 35mm frame to
1.85, and "scope" 2.35, where an anamorphic projector lens unsqueezes
a 2X-squeezed image out to 2.35 (actually 2.39). Both formats leave
the left side of the printing negative and print alone so that a
soundtrack can go there -- this is often referred to as a "sound
aperture" or the "Academy/1.85/anamorphic apertures".

Super-35 was first appeared in the early 1980's (even though it
breifly appeared in the 1950's as a format called SuperScope-235) for
the movie "Greystoke". The director wanted to shoot the movie for a
35mm 2.35 anamorphic and a 5-perf 70mm 2.20 spherical release, but
because of the low light levels planned, cinematographer John Alcott
(who had shot Kubrick's movies including "Barry Lyndon") did not want
to use anamorphic lenses to achieve the 2.35 aspect ratio because of
their problems shooting in low-light.

So the other option was to crop the 35mm negative to 2.35 and blow
this back up, with a 2X squeeze, to 35mm anamorphic (and without the
squeeze, to 5-perf 65mm). In order to keep this blow-up from looking
too grainy, Alcott decided to use the Full Aperture width instead of
the Academy Aperture width. During the blow-up, the image (squeezed
in the optical printer to a 2X anamorphic image) would fit into the
standard anamorphic projection aperture area so that a soundtrack
could be added.

There was a half-frame 35mm format called Techniscope that was
naturally 2.35 by dint of being half the height of a 4-perf 35mm
frame. But Techniscope didn't use the Full Aperture width of 2-perf
because that was too wide (half of a 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture frame,
which is 1.33 : 1, would be 2.66 : 1, so Techniscope only used the
Academy width, leaving room for a soundtrack even though it didn't
need to because 2-perf was not a release format). So since Alcott was
shooting 4-perf and using the Full Aperture width, creating a slightly
bigger 2.35 image than 2-perf Techniscope did, he called it "Super
Techniscope". This moniker was used for the next two features to use
this process, "Top Gun" and "Silverado". But after that, the term was
changed to "Super-35" -- partly because the name "Techniscope" was
connected to Technicolor, who developed it in the early 1960's, so
Super-35 was more neutral. It also was specifically connected with
the scope aspect ratio.

Now if you composed a 1.85 image in the 4-perf Super-35 frame, you'd
be doing an optical reduction in order to fit on the standard 1.85
projection frame, the one with room for a soundtrack. There were a
few movies in the early 1990's that tried this "Super-1.85" process,
thinking that the slight optical printer reduction, with the shrinking
of the grain, would counteract the increase in grain from going
through the typical IP and IN generations for making release prints.
However, while Super-1.85 did yield better 70mm blow-ups, in 35mm,
there wasn't much gain for all the trouble, because of the nature of
optical printing versus contact printing. Super-1.85 movies from the
time included "Godfather 3", "Malcolm X", "Fisher King", "Two Jakes",
and "Bonfire of the Vanities".

But shooting Super-35 for the purpose of optically cropping / blowing-
up / squeezing to create a 35mm anamorphic IN for making scope release
prints continued. James Cameron was probably the biggest prononent of
this technique, mainly because he hated working with anamorphic camera
lenses.

Then digital intermediates came along, minimizing one of the main
objections to Super-35, the build-up in grain from cropping and doing
optical printer work using dupes. At least with a digital
intermediate, though you were still cropping to achieve scope, your
output digital negative could be the same "generation" as the scanned
original negative. So graininess was reduced. In fact, one of the
first movies to go through a complete digital intermediate was "O
Brother Where Art Thou" and it was shot in Super-35 and cropped &
stretched to 35mm anamorphic.

Super-35 ALWAYS has to be converted at some point in post to a 35mm
projection format.

If you're shooting for a 1.85 release, there isn't much reason to use
Super-35 if you're doing a traditional film post and contact printing
every generation, but IF you were planning on doing a digital
intermediate anyway, for whatever reasons (like special digital color-
correction) then conversely there's no reason to NOT use Super-35
because the conversion to standard 35mm is easily done when recording
the digital files out to film, and technically it's a slight image
reduction, which is an improvement.

As for shooting for a 2.35 scope release, the main reason people use
Super-35, even though it involves cropping a lot of the negative, is
that they don't like working with anamorphic camera lenses.

David Mullen, ASC
 >> Stay informed about: 35mm movies to Blu Ray 

> Isn't there also a variant where the matting of the frame to create the
> widescreen image takes place on the camera lens and not the projector?

The 1.85 format always uses a 1.85 mask in the projector -- regardless
of whether you add a hard matte to the image itself either by using a
hard matte in the camera gate or adding one in post. Many 35mm
cameras have the option of adding a 1.37, 1.66, 1.77, or 1.85 hard
matte.

For example, a 16x9 (1.78 : 1) HD image, if shot for a "flat" 35mm
release, is transferred to the sound aperture of the 4-perf 35mm
format with a 1.78 : 1 hard matte, but this is hidden by the 1.85
projector mask unless the image is misframed vertically by the
projectionist (which is the main reason why people complain about
seeing mics in the frame - vertical misframing by the projectionist).

A 1.68 : 1 Super-16 negative that is optically blown-up to 35mm with
also have a 1.68 : 1 hard matte to the print image, again, hidden by
the 1.85 projector mask.

Some foreign movies are shot with the intent that they only use a
1.66 : 1 projector mask instead of 1.85 : 1.

Sometimes old 1.37 Academy movies are optically reduced so that the
1.37 image fits into window inside the 1.85 projected area for prints
going to theaters that don't have the right lens and mask for showing
1.37 Academy.

If you are going to use a camera matte, generally it's a good idea to
use a matte that is a little less tight than the projector mask, so
you don't end up seeing a black border on one edge of the image in the
theater, so for a 1.85 movie, you may use a 1.66 matte.

David Mullen, ASC
 >> Stay informed about: 35mm movies to Blu Ray 

> Current theatrical releases in 35mm are projected in two formats:
> "matted" 1.85, where the projector masks the 4-perf 35mm frame to
Isn't there also a variant where the matting of the frame to create the
widescreen image takes place on the camera lens and not the projector?
 >> Stay informed about: 35mm movies to Blu Ray