Misuse of 3-D digital lens leaves 2-D movies in the dark
boston.com
boston.com
DRM has now made movies suck even at the theater. If I was a director, I'd be cheesed.
http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-poster... http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho...
Blue is a color omnipresent on earth - water is blue, the sky is blue. Also, on sunrise and sunset the sun's light gives everything an orange tint. The combination itself is the easiest for our eyes to tolerate as we can see it everyday. Other powerful alternatives would be red/green and yellow/purple, but these aren't so generic having limited applicability and are hard to bring in harmony (when trying to pick a harmonious color palette, almost all recipes exclude complementaries). And the reason for wanting complementary colors is because complements add contrast to your image, being the easiest technique you can use.
Even though you may be pissed about seeing blue/orange everywhere, the fact of the matter is that it's a working technique, also used by photographers.
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Movie Answer Man
Roger Ebert / February 7, 1999
Q. In your recent review of "Virus", you commented: "It didn't help that the print I saw was so underlit that often I could see hardly anything on the screen. Was that because the movie was filmed that way, or because the projector bulb was dimmed to extend its life span?" A dirty secret is that movies are under-lit in most theaters. Films are produced with the intent that they be projected at the brightness of 16 foot-lamberts. Field research by Kodak found that they are often shown at 8-10 foot-lamberts, well under the SMPTE standard for brightness. To get theaters up to this and other standards, Kodak is introducing the Screencheck Experience program. The under-lighting of screens may be acceptable for a few movies--lest you see the entirety of their badness--but in general it unnecessarily degrades the theater experience. (Carl Donath, Rochester NY)
A. I've seen thousands of movies and I believe the Screencheck Experience program would only confirm that "Virus" was severely deprived of foot-lamberts when I saw it in a Chicago theater not a million miles from the Water Tower. Martin Scorsese, who travels with a light meter, once told me movies are projected at the correct brilliance in New York and Los Angeles, because that's where the filmmakers live, and they squawk. In a lot of other places, he said, the theaters turn down the juice to save on the replacement costs of expensive bulbs.
If I wanted a sub par movie experience I would have stayed home.
(hopefully just a few years and not a decade!)
Take for example Thor 3D: most of the scenes involving wide shots are good if you take off the glasses, but if you put them on, the combination of 3D and the wide angle lens makes your brain think that you are watching small puppets, and not the intended "people next to huge rocks".
There are lots of bad 3D movies because of this, and I cant believe nobody complains about it. The only movies that seem to work in 3D are animated cartoons.
A big part of it is experience, too. DRIVE ANGRY was the second 3D film for its director. PRIEST is like the millionth 3D film for its cinematographer.
The time will come. I'm sure of it. I just hope it comes while people still see 3D films.
I could just be imagining this though. 8*D
It didn't help that the movie itself isn't that good.
I specifically chose to watch it in 2D but noticed one moment which might look impressive in 3D: the skeleton hand of Blackbeard reaching out of the whirling water. That's it.
That's been standard for all the big chains here for years.
Both http://villagecinemas.com.au/SessionTime/SessionTimes.htm and http://www.hoyts.com.au/vista/visSelect.aspx (the two big chains) have online booking with the option to pick your own seat. There might be a couple of their smaller cinemas that don't have allocation -- but all the one's close to me certainly do.
Well, to be fair, they may now. It has literally been years since I've visited a theater outside this group's control. I will drive 15 miles or more before I'll check the Cinemark two miles away.
If I buy a ticket with a reserved seat then I'll usually go in a few minutes after the advertised start time so that I miss most of the commercials.
The only theaters I go to these days are those showing third-run movies while serving pizza, burgers, and beer. :-)
Digital projectors allow for super-sharp images, in combination with a short depth-of-field (for cool bokehs) it's all you need for 3D effects without giving you nausea, not to mention the images are pseudo-3D at best. To make matters worse, I went to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean and the 2D option wasn't available.
To paraphrase other people - 3D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension; and it's getting shoved on people's throats, even if they don't like it.
I want to see some serious drama shot in 3D, I want to see the technology serve story and character.
(And yes, I am anxiously awaiting the local release of Werner Herzog's 3D cave documentary...)
First of all, the vast majority of people can't even come close to replicate this "technological experience" of movie theater. The huge screen as well as the audio system absolutely do change how you experience a film, be it Avatar or 2001 or Metropolis (the last two of which I've only recently seen for the first time on the big screen, and even though I have a pretty huge TV, this was an entirely different experience).
But aside from the technology involved, a movie theater is a completely different environment than your living room, it is designed to keep you entirely focused. I find I am much more immersed in a movie when I see it in the cinema. Also, some movies are just made to be watched as part of a larger audience (e.g. I can't imagine I'd find Borat even remotely as funny as I did when I watched it in a small theater packed with a cheering crowd).
On a somewhat more esoteric note, I seem to remember a study that showed rear-projection (like on a TV) had a different impact on the brain than front-projection (like on a movie screen). I can't find anything about this now and it might've been complete bogus, but maybe someone else knows something about this...
This is true - my living room doesn't have somebody eating out of a loudly crackling popcorn bag, people talking to each other a few seats away, a dude behind me who accidentally dunts the seat every now and then when he crosses and uncrosses his legs, a dim slightly out-of-focus picture with the top chopped off because the projector hasn't been set up properly, or a woman updating facebook on her smartphone in my eyeshot every few minutes+.
Truly magical.
+okay, admittedly that's a distillation of annoying Cinema crap.
Massively disagree. The huge screen is really not of great importance. Given a good-enough screen, quality audio is what sends the experience over the edge. I picked up fantastic NHT speakers and a variety of amplifiers for well under $1k. Surround sound adds nothing, while a center channel is crucial for dialog.
As for the environment, set your living room up however you please. I've never had anyone munching popcorn and nachos (!), talking to the characters, jingling their jewelery, or texting in my living room.
I agree about Borat, though a room of friends would have given the same experience.