![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Digital Dust
Saw "Stardust" at Pacific Place with Susan last night. Great, wonderful film. Perfectly crafted fairy tale, hits all the right notes, kept me riveted the entire time.
Not posting here to discuss the film, but rather the projection.
For all of my childhood and much of my adulthood, movies were on 35mm film, on multiple reels, and the soundtrack was analog optical stereo.
That last bit means that a box bolted onto the projector shines a light through the edge of the filmstrip, and photoreceptors plus some electronics convert that into stereo audio.
As anyone who's ever seen "Fight Club" knows, an observant person can tell when the film reels are about to change because of the oval marks that blink on the screen. (I think the oval marks are actually circles on the film itself, and the anamorphic projection stretches them into ovals.)
You can also tell because the quality of the film stock degrades significantly in the few seconds before the reel change; you get more scratches and dirt, and frequently the color balance of the film gets poor at that moment. Also, if the movie is being projected with standard audio (as described above), you usually hear a fairly loud "POP" through the sound system about 1 second after the reel change. (The 1-second delay is because the optical soundtrack reader is bolted onto the projector 20 frames downstream from the actual projection lens.)
The first time I saw a film with proper digital audio, it happened to be Jurassic Park. I was suitably impressed by the quality of the sound, but what made me the most surprised was how disconcerting it was to reach a reel-change and not hear that awful "POP".
I had never paid attention to the reel changes when watching movies. But decades of Pavlovian conditioning had me subconsciously bracing for that "POP" when the other signs of a reel change appeared. Reel change... *CRINGE*... *POP*... *relax*. Every time. For decades.
So my local theater gets DTS with Jurassic Park and suddenly each reel change is *CRINGE*... *nothing*. And suddenly my brain's conditioned behavior is thrown into sharp relief, and I realize what I've been doing all these years. This is a good thing. Now, movies with digital sound are the standard, and I've become conditioned the other way: analog-audio movies are jarring to watch during the reel changes now.
Along comes digital DLP projection.
I'd heard about it. Never seen it in action, until yesterday.
Prior to yesterday, I had been into many theaters which would use a digital projector to project their local-chain ads prior to the film. They look like they were done with badly-calibrated LCD panels. They were very low resolution; you could see the screen-door effect if you looked closely. The color balance was awful. The brightness level was very low, everything looked murky and yellow.
I couldn't imagine that a theater would own more than one digital projector, so I assumed that this was also the way their digital feature movies were projected. Obviously I was very skeptical of digital projection because of this. I was sure that a nice 35mm print would be higher resolution, have better color balance, and be more enjoyable to watch than any digital projection could ever be.
We settled in to watch Stardust last night, and the local-chain ads were playing. Yuck! They looked absolutely awful. Even from fairly far back, the screen-door effect was pronounced. The color balance was so far off that some of the flesh tones of the people in the ads looked downright green. And the screen size was minuscule, the area being projected didn't even fill the whole screen. Susan and I talked about all of this. We braced ourselves for an awful experience.
Then the lights dimmed for the main previews. The first thing I noticed was the whir of the motors pulling the curtains back, and suddenly the screen seemed HUGE.
Then the first preview screen appeared. The big green screen that says "The following PREVIEW has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES... etc. etc..."
And my fears about digital projection were blown away in that instant. I didn't even need to see anything else other than that green preview screen.
The green field was flawless. Not the slightest variation of color across the entire screen. The lettering was razor-sharp, sharper than I could possibly have imagined it could be. After watching a lifetime of 35mm prints, I had no idea they could project text that sharp and focused. The whites of the letters were pure, vibrant, and bright, with no hint of yellowing. The resolution was amazing, there was not the slightest hint of aliasing.
My Pavlovian conditioning was once again thrown into sharp relief. I had been conditioned for decades to accept the shaky frame-jitters, dust, scratches, and focus problems of 35mm film. Instead, this was rock-solid and flawless, as if someone had walked up and painted the text onto the screen. Just like hearing digital sound for the first time, this was so good it was jarring.
Of course, the previews and the movie that followed were equally as perfect. Sharper and more vibrant than anything I'd ever seen before.
And no reel changes.
Not posting here to discuss the film, but rather the projection.
For all of my childhood and much of my adulthood, movies were on 35mm film, on multiple reels, and the soundtrack was analog optical stereo.
That last bit means that a box bolted onto the projector shines a light through the edge of the filmstrip, and photoreceptors plus some electronics convert that into stereo audio.
As anyone who's ever seen "Fight Club" knows, an observant person can tell when the film reels are about to change because of the oval marks that blink on the screen. (I think the oval marks are actually circles on the film itself, and the anamorphic projection stretches them into ovals.)
You can also tell because the quality of the film stock degrades significantly in the few seconds before the reel change; you get more scratches and dirt, and frequently the color balance of the film gets poor at that moment. Also, if the movie is being projected with standard audio (as described above), you usually hear a fairly loud "POP" through the sound system about 1 second after the reel change. (The 1-second delay is because the optical soundtrack reader is bolted onto the projector 20 frames downstream from the actual projection lens.)
The first time I saw a film with proper digital audio, it happened to be Jurassic Park. I was suitably impressed by the quality of the sound, but what made me the most surprised was how disconcerting it was to reach a reel-change and not hear that awful "POP".
I had never paid attention to the reel changes when watching movies. But decades of Pavlovian conditioning had me subconsciously bracing for that "POP" when the other signs of a reel change appeared. Reel change... *CRINGE*... *POP*... *relax*. Every time. For decades.
So my local theater gets DTS with Jurassic Park and suddenly each reel change is *CRINGE*... *nothing*. And suddenly my brain's conditioned behavior is thrown into sharp relief, and I realize what I've been doing all these years. This is a good thing. Now, movies with digital sound are the standard, and I've become conditioned the other way: analog-audio movies are jarring to watch during the reel changes now.
Along comes digital DLP projection.
I'd heard about it. Never seen it in action, until yesterday.
Prior to yesterday, I had been into many theaters which would use a digital projector to project their local-chain ads prior to the film. They look like they were done with badly-calibrated LCD panels. They were very low resolution; you could see the screen-door effect if you looked closely. The color balance was awful. The brightness level was very low, everything looked murky and yellow.
I couldn't imagine that a theater would own more than one digital projector, so I assumed that this was also the way their digital feature movies were projected. Obviously I was very skeptical of digital projection because of this. I was sure that a nice 35mm print would be higher resolution, have better color balance, and be more enjoyable to watch than any digital projection could ever be.
We settled in to watch Stardust last night, and the local-chain ads were playing. Yuck! They looked absolutely awful. Even from fairly far back, the screen-door effect was pronounced. The color balance was so far off that some of the flesh tones of the people in the ads looked downright green. And the screen size was minuscule, the area being projected didn't even fill the whole screen. Susan and I talked about all of this. We braced ourselves for an awful experience.
Then the lights dimmed for the main previews. The first thing I noticed was the whir of the motors pulling the curtains back, and suddenly the screen seemed HUGE.
Then the first preview screen appeared. The big green screen that says "The following PREVIEW has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES... etc. etc..."
And my fears about digital projection were blown away in that instant. I didn't even need to see anything else other than that green preview screen.
The green field was flawless. Not the slightest variation of color across the entire screen. The lettering was razor-sharp, sharper than I could possibly have imagined it could be. After watching a lifetime of 35mm prints, I had no idea they could project text that sharp and focused. The whites of the letters were pure, vibrant, and bright, with no hint of yellowing. The resolution was amazing, there was not the slightest hint of aliasing.
My Pavlovian conditioning was once again thrown into sharp relief. I had been conditioned for decades to accept the shaky frame-jitters, dust, scratches, and focus problems of 35mm film. Instead, this was rock-solid and flawless, as if someone had walked up and painted the text onto the screen. Just like hearing digital sound for the first time, this was so good it was jarring.
Of course, the previews and the movie that followed were equally as perfect. Sharper and more vibrant than anything I'd ever seen before.
And no reel changes.
no subject