Supermallet

Okay, I'm at the Chinese and the show's going to start in two minutes. I grabbed extra napkins in case of eyeball orgasm.

Supermallet

Well, that looked good enough. Not that much different from 4k to my eyes. The best looking part was the IMAX pre-show promo, really showed off the depth of the blacks and the expanded color palette. The movie itself had some oddly soft shots, but I suspect that's a production issue.

Matthew Chmiel

It was the first Furious film shot in digital with the master existing in 2K, so that's not a surprise. I'd like to see how laser projection looks with films shot with IMAX cameras, let it be 15/70 or their new 2D/3D cameras.

Supermallet

Oh, it's 2K? No wonder it didn't blow me away. I agree, I'd love to see something shot with IMAX cameras, or at least shot with a 4K camera.

RocShemp

Same thing happened when I went to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies at the CXC theater they opened in PR. It uses a 4K projector and the movie looked great but it was mastered in 2K.

hanshotfirst1138

The F&F movies have had 2K DIs ever since #4.

Aren't 4K DIs still fairly uncommon? I assume it's the amount of time doing the rendering, etc just becoming huge with that much data.

Matthew Chmiel

The only ones that I know of this year are all Sony releases: The Wedding Ringer, Chappie, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.

To be fair, Sony and Warner are fairly consistent for those films shot either on film or 4K digital cameras. The other studios are hit-and-miss.

While the Red cameras used are capable of 5K, due to costs and time (more specifically time), Jackson chose HFR 3D at 2K.

RocShemp

Most people do. The reality most consumers don't comprehend is that very few movies are mastered at 4K. The workflow for 90% (if not more) of all movies produced is done no higher than 2K.

hanshotfirst1138

I'd still just go with the 15/70 were it possible. Alas.





I think that Men in Black 3 had one a few years back, and one of the Amazing Spider-Man movies. Also Sony releases. It actually seems to be much more commonplace for old-school film restorations than it does for DIs for newer films.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Men in Black 3 were shot on 35mm . Of the major digital cameras, it seems like the Sony F55 and the RED are the ones that do 4K and 5K, most movies shot with Alexa seem to use the RAW 2.8K downscaled to 2K. to just shoot on HDCAM 1080 24p like most TV shows or smaller movies do and upscale to 2K if it's a movie. You can count off the TV shows that still shoot film on one hand. The Walking Dead and...well, now that Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and True Blood have stopped, I can't think of any others.

The workflow for 4K is probably enormous as it is, I imagine that the data would've been even harder to handle if it was dual-strip 3-D plus the HFR issue. I think it was shot at 5K Redcode RAW and then just scaled down to 2K for the DI.

Don't some DCPs just come right off of the 2K DIs and upscale to 4K and hope that you won't notice? My local AMC occasionally runs the big "SONY DIGITAL CINEMA 4K" logo before some presentations. I've always just assumed that in the age where everything is done digitally-compositing, rendering, FX, etc.-that doing at 4K would be time and cost prohibitive. The render times on my old DV videos in my film classes were stupidly long, I can only imagine how long it takes that kind of resolution, even with render farms, quad cores, etc. It is interesting just how well film has lasted and how much resolution you can squeeze out of those old stocks though. Pretty amazing that a restored 4K scan of 75 year-old celluloid can produce an image every bit as stunning as the highest end digital resolution cameras these days. Properly preserved, anyway.

I remember hearing that some of FX renders for Transformers movies took 100+ hours for a single frame.

Giles

The Udvar Hazy converted IMAX screen opens tonight for 'Avengers: Age of Ultron'

Seattle's Boeing IMAX Science Center converted screen opens tomorrow

Giles

whoah - wow!

went to a demo/showcase of the new system over at Udvar Hazy this morning and while there were clips and trailers seeing the 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' Burj Khalifa skyscraper scene in full screen 4:3 the scene still left my jaw on the floor. A specifically created 'Interstellar' montage had me nearly weeping as around half a dozen 4:3 scenes were cobbled together to simply spectacular effect. Another IMAX created bit which showcased both the 12 channel sound and presented in 3D - the blasting off of the shuttle and the shaking and clamoring of the cockpit put sound to the sides and above the listener to equally impressive effect. I can't wait to see/hear 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' there next week.

TomOpus

I wasn't sure if I should start a new thread or just post this here. Dolby & AMC are teaming up with their own laser projection system. My go-to theater by me is having the upgrade done now and will open next week (May 22nd) as 1 of 4 theaters to get the initial set-up.

Dolby Cinema Experience Announced for More 'AMC Prime' Venues

Since they probably won't have an IMAX laser system close by, this will be cool to be able to see. Since "Tomorrowland" opens next week I am hoping that will be the movie shown in the new theater. Well, it makes sense it should be. I will report my findings

Matthew Chmiel

That's cool ...

... but what about AMC changing 40% of their auditoriums to recliners?

Vegas only has two AMC locations, both acquisitions, so I am genuinely surprised they'll be installing a Dolby Cinema + AMC Prime other than to show it off during CinemaCon.

TomOpus

Dang, did not know that. It will be interesting to see how they affect box office. On one hand you have higher attendance but on the other you have less seats.

Matthew Chmiel

Significantly less seats. An auditorium that usually holds 400+ stadium seats will only hold anywhere from 150-200 recliners. When theaters have been doing the conversion from standard seatings to recliners, you could lose anywhere from 50-75% of your occupancy.

For the three theaters in Vegas that have recliners, they're also the only three theaters in town that do assigned seating meaning if you see a film on a weekend be prepared to buy your tickets days in advance.

Giles

personally I find the recliners a big no... for AMC to rejig their ETX auditorium at Tysons as such - would be one major stupid move

Giles

the Lockheed Martin IMAX screen is closed for the change over to laser, will be reopening in March - so for those visiting / checking out a movie at the Air & Space museum in February ... well it ain't happening.

still no word from AMC when the laser conversion will happen at New York City's AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13

hanshotfirst1138

The Henry Ford IMAX is closing up for the laser upgrade too. I've never forgiven myself for missing The Dark Knight Rises.

Maz Kanata

Cool but the Hazy is still bigger than the Lockheed Martin. As far as I'm concerned it's the best place to see a movie in the entire DMV area.

Giles

You're forgetting the IMAX screen over at Natural History - it's the largest screen of the three and the deepest distance (and best) of the seats in relationship to the screen.