EinCB

So a director shoots a movie using 35mm film stock and he gives a theater both a film print and a digital cinema package in order to show to moviegoers.

My question is, would there be a difference in the audio or visual regardless of which projector the theater uses? Would the movie have a better quality if shown on a film projector? Thanks in advance.

Dan

I'm sure others will chime in with far more technical details, but based on the scenario you suggest:
I think the 35mm version would look better in general, since the DCP is probably only 2K. 35mm is effectively "better" than 2K, assuming it's a good quality print.

For audio, I imagine the DCP would sound better, but I'm not certain.

But over time, if not handled with the utmost care, the 35mm will just get worse over time. Scratches, damage, etc. would cause it to look and/or sound worse, the more it gets used.

The DCP would never be affected by that. The only thing I would imagine is data corruption or hardware failure or something, but I don't know how common that sort of thing is.

My answers aren't very technical, so I do hope someone else can explain why I'm wrong.

Mabuse

The quality of the projection equipment is a major factor. Poorly maintained 35 mm projectors with dirty gates and lenses and dim bulbs were frequently a problem in the 35mm days. Also the print will look great the first time it goes through and will progressively diminish with each trip through the projector.

Where digital has the advantage is the lack of this diminishing quality. The digital file looks pristine every time. Digital equipment can also suffer from poor maintenance and dim bulbs, however at this stage in the game the quality is very good and the standards have been set high and maintained.

That being said, a 35mm print, on a well maintained, properly adjusted projector will always look better than digital. It will also be the way that it was meant to be seen, meaning it was captured with 35mm film and you are viewing it on 35mm film.

From here we can get into more esoteric concepts like digital projection lacks a shutter and that 35mm projections possesses a subconscious flicker that many feel makes film more engaging than video.

In regards to sound: It's important to understand that sound went digital more than a decade before film. By the end of the 35mm era all the soundtrack systems (Dolby Digital, DTS, SDDS, etc) were disc based. Along with the print, theaters would receive a disc, or discs. For all intents and purposes the soundtrack was not on the 35mm print. The print contained cue marks that kept a CD/DVD like device in synch with the picture.

So with a modern film 35mm vs. Digital I would say sound would be a draw.

Now if you want to look to the past there were analog sound systems. Four-track mag was actual magnetic tape the size of a 35mm film reel. The soundtrack would play in interlocked synch with the picture on a separate machine. Also, 70mm presentations offered a magnetic soundtrack strip bonded to the celluloid print that provided 5 or 6 channels of sound. Throughout the '80s and well into the '90s 70mm blow-up prints of films shot in 35mm were common not because of greater visual fidelity, but because of the analog magnetic surround soundtrack that 70mm offered. Many people would argue that these massive magnetic recordings were superior to the digital.

EinCB

Thanks, Mabuse, that's very helpful.

A lot of movie theaters use digital projection to show their movies. Why would a person shooting digitally still provide a film print?

Mabuse

Not sure what you're asking. Do you mean why are 35mm film prints of new movies still made? The answer is that increasingly they are not.

EinCB

Yeah, that's what I meant.

I'm looking at the technical specifications on IMDB of Skyfall and it says they also had 35mm and 70mm printings of it, even though Deakins himself said he wouldn't be shooting on film anymore.

dugan

The film version would have CAP Code and therefore be unwatchable.

hanshotfirst1138

Much as I hate to admit it, digital is largely capable of emulating many of the aesthetics of celluloid. I've seen some DCPs and Blu-ray transfers that look wonderfully film-like. That said, generally speaking, digital intermediates which are scanned from film or raw digital "negative," are only done at 2K resolution (or 1080p for HDTV, though some digital cameras run at 1080/24p or 2K) for reasons of workflow, which is significantly less than the resolution many digital cameras are capable of using and way less than the resolution of 35mm film (much less the huge resolution of 70mm film). That said, there are a lot more factors in celluloid projection: the experience of the projectionist (one of the God-knows how many trades the digital age has destroyed), how far removed from the master the print is, how much wear and tear the print has had (there's a certain charm to this, I think, but charm doesn't pay anyone's bills and "magic" won't stop an industry-wide change), and other factors. DCPs don't wear and tear, and if they're working correctly (a big if), they don't require a projectionist to change the reels, etc, though if they stop working, unlike film, you're sort of SOL unless someone knows how to fix the digital projector.

I may be talking out of my ass, so if someone knowledgable like Jay G, Alan Smithee, or Supermallet shows up, I'm sure they'll correct me and give you much better information.

99.9% of cinemas project digitally now. It's not a matter of choice, hardly any prints are made anymore and unless you're independently wealthy like Tarantino or Nolan, you can't afford to have them made. Vinyl can sustain a small collector's market, but film is much too expensive and not designed for direct-to-consumer distribution. There may well be a group of celluloid-lovers out there who look out for film screenings and are trying to keep it alive, but I wouldn't know where to find them .

As for films shot digitally and transferred to film, apart from the rare occasions where they're created for celluloid presentations (a few are occasionally still made for this purpose and for certain cinemas capable to affording the prints or for certain occasions), film also has, when stored properly, a 100+ year lasting shelf-life, something digital is having trouble with as of now. Files decay and at present, there's still a lot of difficulty creating a medium you can store digital data on which will last as long as film or analog.

With the possible exception of that purpose though, film is basically dead. It's limping along right now because some filmmakers (Tarantino, Nolan, Anderson) have gone to bat and temporarily saved it for that Kodak deal, but it won't last long. Even a lot of filmmakers who prefer film (Justin Lin, Tim Burton) have been transitioning over to digital, sometimes out of necessity (labs capable of processing film are almost non-existent now, forcing their hands in some cases). If there are any film (or TV) productions still shooting on film by the end of 2016, I'll be very surprised.

Alan Smithee

Nope- despite George Lucas claiming that, a properly-run film can look great for YEARS- but run it badly and it can be trashed its first day. Scratches are mostly from improper threading (like letting the film drag on the platter after missing a roller), a very small percentage are equipment-related. One theater I worked at routinely had prints get tiny scratches on one side and I don't think we ever figured out why that was happening.

VERY few 35mm prints of new movies are being made now- I've heard the average number is something like 10 when it used to be in the thousands. Most theaters have thrown out their film projectors, not even trying to sell them (I've heard for some, scrapping them was one of the terms for getting digital equipment.) I've heard at least in the early years of digital getting the same movie via both digital and film so they could run the film as a back-up if the digital system quit working, but that doesn't happen now.

CAP code ruined the last few years of film- that was one thing that kept me from going to movies in the past decade. I never liked the change-over cues either since that gave away how long the movie had been going, one good thing I'll say about digital is that those are absent. I can still usually see the pixel grid on digital though, and they got the scope format COMPLETELY wrong as the frame is natively 1.85 and scope is letterboxed and then zoomed on screens with proper side-masking. The frame should have been 2.35 or used an anamorphic lens, though that'd be one more thing for theaters to get wrong.

EinCB

So when I went to see Django Unchained back in early 2013 at AMC Theatres, I was more than likely watch it on a DCP?

hanshotfirst1138

It's 99.9% sure it was. I'm almost certain all AMC locations have transitioned to digital projection. If anything gets a noteworthy celluloid release after The Hateful Eight, I'll be very, very surprised.

DthRdrX

The industry widely fought against 35mm prints being released to the general public, so it makes sense that they would try and prevent the equipment from getting out there.

35mm was a hobby for much less than 1% of the hardcore collectors, as the machines were bulky and noisy anyway and most needed a separate room adjoining your viewing room.

I imagine the real concern in the 80s/90s was bootleg material being mass produced that looked better than the official VHS/DVD releases. During the DVD era I remember many of us had the belief that they would never allow us to have 4k quality content in our homes. How times change.

Mabuse

I can only guess why those prints were made, but evidently for distribution in a few markets that were still using film projectors. Possibly some independent theaters that are hanging on or more likely foreign theaters.

Paff

You probably know more about this than I do, but wasn't it only DTS that required a separate CD-like disc? I'm talking about a frame like this:


The Dolby Digital signal was encoded (I thought) on the QR-code-looking stuff on the left sprocket holes. You can see the Dolby Digital logo in it. Or is that just the "cues"?

Mabuse

You are absolutely right. Dolby Digital was encoded between the sprocket holes. And the blue to the left of the sprocket holes is SDDS.

FYI for everyone: The squiggly lines to the right of the sprocket holes are the analog optical soundtrack.

Take a look at the photo here which shows all of the above and also the DTS "cues": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_D..._Digital_Sound

Alan Smithee

Sorry, but that's wrong. DTS was the only disc-based format (and it's not included on the film in that picture.) The theater I worked at the longest mainly had DTS because the head projectionist thought it sounded best, but it was a royal pain in the ass. SEVERAL times we got films with no discs, which meant we had to play them in analog. I went on several wild-goose chases trying to get the discs. The worst (which I think I can openly share now) was when "Contact" had a sneak-preview showing on the 4th of July. It turned out the DTS discs for that hadn't even been MADE in time for that show. I ranted about that on a Usenet group and someone from DTS tried to get me in trouble with my manager for posting it. To top it all off, when the regular run of the movie started on Friday they STILL hadn't sent us the fucking discs and I had to make a few more phone calls! I can imagine that in theaters where nobody cared, they just did without the discs and played the whole run in analog. When the digital sound formats were new, usually studios used just ONE of them exclusively (Universal being DTS-exclusive, Disney being Dolby Digital and of course Sony Pictures being SDDS) but after a few years most films used all 3- "Speed" was the first print I saw that had all 3 tracks on it.

Mabuse

Thanks for the stories. Very interesting. However I did correct myself in the post directly above yours.

I attended a 15th anniversary screening of Jurassic Park in 2007 and they didn't receive the disc. They played the analog and for some reason it was deafeningly loud.

Alan Smithee

There were a LOT of complaints about Jurassic Park being loud when it first played. The DTS mix was done so that the dino roars would be deafening, and if you turned that down when people complained then the dialogue would be too quiet. I never watched all of it on film with the analog track, but the 2-channel mix on the original laserdisc was pretty good.

The original DTS discs for that are formatted differently and won't play in the later units- we brought it back a couple times and had to get CD-Rs shipped that would work. I've got an original-model DTS unit in storage right now, I should see if it's at least able to load up discs.

Supermallet

As others have said, all else being equal, a properly maintained, properly run 35mm print will look better than a 2K digital transfer, but you might not even notice the difference unless you're sitting somewhat close. The fact is that digital is much easier to project well at the types of cineplexes where the "projectionist" is an usher, or at this point, an automatic timer. It's easier to project well and easier to fix than 35mm.

On the other hand, if you're talking about 4K projection vs 35mm, things change considerably, especially with the greater dynamic range and color pallet that 4K is capable of. Of course, in order to get those gains, the film actually would have to be shot with 4K cameras. Between 4K digital and 70mm film, I'd go for 70mm film though.

The other thing is that digital projection will only get better, and eventually the norm will be that digital cinema will have surpassed the limits of 35mm. 35mm can't get much better than it is, the image quality is dependent on the size of the frames of the film itself. And running larger film is more difficult and expensive, which is why 70mm projection was already rare by the time digital came on the scene.

Matthew Chmiel

Even a 35mm print that has been put through hell and back will look better than a 2K digital transfer. I've seen numerous revival screenings over the years and even some of the worst like Ghostbusters or The Goonies where it looked like the print has been in circulation for years, if not decades, look better than your normal 2K presentation.

If 35mm had a pixel count, it would most likely resemble that of a 4K presentation. While more films are being shot in 4K every day, studios are only rendering and mastering films in 2K due to cost and time concerns. 4K DCPs are rare and the only studios that are somewhat consistent with putting them out are Sony and Warner.

If 70mm had a pixel count, it would be close to that of an 8K presentation. I know for Nolan's films shot on 15/70, all the film had to be digitally scanned at 6K before going to post.

Supermallet

I've seen some beat to shit films, and they are nowhere near as nice to look at as 2K.

Giles

DCP sound is lossless audio - with a greater dynamic range. However 70mm magnetic sound comparing the two (like vinyl vs. CD) has a warmth and a difference, and to me sounds superior to 'digital' sound.

the 4K DCP I saw of Ghostbusters looked fantastic and much better than what I expected.

I read in American Cinematographer 35mm if given a pixel count would be around 6K.

I should give a shout out to Janus films that cull/creates 4K DCP's for it's restorations ... and thankfully the AFI Silver here in the DC area has 4K projectors on all it's three screens.

Paff

Disagree. I saw a 35mm print of Suspiria, and it was horribly beat up. Yet it had a "softness" that I've never seen in the film before. I know there's a restoration coming up, but it won't have the wonderful look of that 35mm print (and it was the heavily edited American version to boot)

eschak

Saw Spectre at a newly opened multiplex. Brand new digital projectors DCI 2k. Expected a really good viewing experience. Got disappointed Here’w why:
1. Brightness was adequate and resolution excellent but lot of noise.
2. Color rendering at times reminded me of straight to DVD movies.
3. Dynamic range was at a loss. The smooth transition from the whitest part of a white shirt facing the sun to the part facing away (which is smoothly handled by film) is clearly missing.
4. Night shots of London and rome had rainbows on the edge of all white lights. Dark parts were also chalky.
5. Explosions were loud but cracked at the edges. May be that had to do something with the speakers.
I am not sure whether all these depends on the projection or the shooting in digital but I have seen enough beat up movies on film. All looked better. Digital has a long way to go before it matches film.

Brack

I saw this last night at a Cinemark theatre. I plan to see it again at a local chain that uses Sony 4K, as I've been nothing but impressed with the presentation, both with video and sound.