TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
01-23-12, 09:22 PM
#51
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
I wonder what this means for the effects shots? I'm thinking they were rendered for 2.35:1. I doubt they spent the money to render effects that they thought at the time would never be seen. The film was already going over budget, would they really have spent the extra cash back then to render out a full Super 35 frame?
I wonder if that means they will "pan scanned" for the larger format? Or did they go back and re-render/re-compose for the IMAX frame? And if that is the case, do the original CG files still exist? (and can they even be used with todays programes?) Or are these "new" effects? This is an interesting bit of news.
I wonder if that means they will "pan scanned" for the larger format? Or did they go back and re-render/re-compose for the IMAX frame? And if that is the case, do the original CG files still exist? (and can they even be used with todays programes?) Or are these "new" effects? This is an interesting bit of news.
01-23-12, 09:44 PM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
...hrm. Yeah...I dunno. A lot films do the cg for the full size of the frame. That's a damn good question.
01-23-12, 09:50 PM
#53
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
I'm thinking they were rendered for 2.35:1. I doubt they spent the money to render effects that they thought at the time would never be seen. The film was already going over budget, would they really have spent the extra cash back then to render out a full Super 35 frame?
Originally Posted by Entertainment Weekly, 1998
The most successful movie in history ($1.8 billion at the box office worldwide) is poised to become one of the most popular VHS tapes ever (with a reported 25 million copies initially shipped to stores), and almost nobody is choosing to see the movie the way it looked in theaters.
Not that viewers don't have the option to do exactly that. Using his clout as king of the you-know-what, Titanic writer-director James Cameron has Paramount Home Video releasing two different editions of the movie (neither with any extra footage added). The one that most faithfully re-creates how the film played in theaters is the wide-screen edition (the one with the bronze box spine), which shrinks such vistas as the ship's full, four-smokestack expanse and frames them within black bands. However, few Titanic fans seem to give a hoot about such pictorial fidelity. Judging from conversations with store managers leading up to the title's Sept. 1 debut, something less than a tenth of the first wave of distributed copies have been wide-screen. Few customers showed much interest in pre-ordering this edition — the typical reaction being ''I hate letterboxing'' — and some stores don't have the wide-screen version for sale at all. Instead, the masses will mainly be watching the ''pan-and-scan'' edition, the one with the sky blue spine and the teeny type hidden away on the bottom of the box warning ''This film has been modified...to fit your TV.''
If Titanic were a typical wide-screen production, this language would mean that every image in the film had been cropped nearly in half to fill up your TV's squarish frame. And for most Titanic shots involving special effects — there are 550 with some sort of computer-generated imagery — that is, in fact, what's been done. But Cameron makes his movies with an eye on the subsequent video and TV market. Knowing how unpopular letterboxing can be, he had the foresight to use a flexible film format called Super-35 that allowed him to frame every non-effects shot in the movie two different ways while filming: rectangular for movie screens, and square for TV. (Producing dual versions of all the trick shots as well would have been too expensive, even for a spendthrift like Cameron, so these are generally filmed only in the rectangular wide-screen shape and then cropped at the edges for the video version.)
Result? Virtually all of the straightforward live-action shots in the movie have been opened up, typically trimmed a tad at the sides but with a good deal of picture added to the top and bottom of the frame. Many of the close-ups between the story's star-crossed lovers, young adventurer Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and high-society refugee Rose (Kate Winslet), thus show a good deal more of the performers. (If that news arouses your prurient interests, calm yourself: There's barely any extra skin exposed when Rose poses in the buff for a drawing, and no untoward glimpses are revealed of Leo's loins in that steamy backseat lovemaking scene — something that has happened to many an unsuspecting male and female star in other home-video transfers.) The squarer framing does shift the movie's tone toward star-besotted soap opera, though. Titanic now plays like a TV miniseries, focused on the principals rather than the ship's teeming hordes.
Is this blinkered ''standard'' edition as good to look at as the theatrical one? Not consistently. It's adequate until the ship approaches its fateful rendezvous with an iceberg near the end of cassette No. 1 (the movie is too long to fit on a single tape). Then cropped effects shots begin to take over, and you'll notice more panning and scanning of the image as Cameron and the transfer technicians try to take in the spectacle of the ship's splitting innards. Also, since the shots of misty breath required computer-generated puffs of vapor, Rose and Jack's tender, post-sinking pep talk winds up claustrophobically cropped.
Our advice: Even if you dislike letterboxing, try mixing and matching your editions, switching to a wide-screen copy for cassette No. 2. So what if that very slightly reduces the overall size of objects on screen? Hey, sit a little closer to the TV and congratulate yourself for watching a much more aesthetically pleasing rendition. (You wouldn't want to be an anti-artistic boor like Rose's fiance, Cal, who disses Picasso and Degas, now would you?) If you know anybody with a laserdisc player, that presumably better-detailed version will arrive Oct. 13; Paramount hasn't committed to producing DVD copies yet, but there's speculation that it could happen sometime early in 1999. Otherwise, if you simply settle for the tape version most in demand, you'll be traveling in something less than first-class accommodations — and missing quite a few of Titanic's picturesque nooks and crannies.
Not that viewers don't have the option to do exactly that. Using his clout as king of the you-know-what, Titanic writer-director James Cameron has Paramount Home Video releasing two different editions of the movie (neither with any extra footage added). The one that most faithfully re-creates how the film played in theaters is the wide-screen edition (the one with the bronze box spine), which shrinks such vistas as the ship's full, four-smokestack expanse and frames them within black bands. However, few Titanic fans seem to give a hoot about such pictorial fidelity. Judging from conversations with store managers leading up to the title's Sept. 1 debut, something less than a tenth of the first wave of distributed copies have been wide-screen. Few customers showed much interest in pre-ordering this edition — the typical reaction being ''I hate letterboxing'' — and some stores don't have the wide-screen version for sale at all. Instead, the masses will mainly be watching the ''pan-and-scan'' edition, the one with the sky blue spine and the teeny type hidden away on the bottom of the box warning ''This film has been modified...to fit your TV.''
If Titanic were a typical wide-screen production, this language would mean that every image in the film had been cropped nearly in half to fill up your TV's squarish frame. And for most Titanic shots involving special effects — there are 550 with some sort of computer-generated imagery — that is, in fact, what's been done. But Cameron makes his movies with an eye on the subsequent video and TV market. Knowing how unpopular letterboxing can be, he had the foresight to use a flexible film format called Super-35 that allowed him to frame every non-effects shot in the movie two different ways while filming: rectangular for movie screens, and square for TV. (Producing dual versions of all the trick shots as well would have been too expensive, even for a spendthrift like Cameron, so these are generally filmed only in the rectangular wide-screen shape and then cropped at the edges for the video version.)
Result? Virtually all of the straightforward live-action shots in the movie have been opened up, typically trimmed a tad at the sides but with a good deal of picture added to the top and bottom of the frame. Many of the close-ups between the story's star-crossed lovers, young adventurer Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and high-society refugee Rose (Kate Winslet), thus show a good deal more of the performers. (If that news arouses your prurient interests, calm yourself: There's barely any extra skin exposed when Rose poses in the buff for a drawing, and no untoward glimpses are revealed of Leo's loins in that steamy backseat lovemaking scene — something that has happened to many an unsuspecting male and female star in other home-video transfers.) The squarer framing does shift the movie's tone toward star-besotted soap opera, though. Titanic now plays like a TV miniseries, focused on the principals rather than the ship's teeming hordes.
Is this blinkered ''standard'' edition as good to look at as the theatrical one? Not consistently. It's adequate until the ship approaches its fateful rendezvous with an iceberg near the end of cassette No. 1 (the movie is too long to fit on a single tape). Then cropped effects shots begin to take over, and you'll notice more panning and scanning of the image as Cameron and the transfer technicians try to take in the spectacle of the ship's splitting innards. Also, since the shots of misty breath required computer-generated puffs of vapor, Rose and Jack's tender, post-sinking pep talk winds up claustrophobically cropped.
Our advice: Even if you dislike letterboxing, try mixing and matching your editions, switching to a wide-screen copy for cassette No. 2. So what if that very slightly reduces the overall size of objects on screen? Hey, sit a little closer to the TV and congratulate yourself for watching a much more aesthetically pleasing rendition. (You wouldn't want to be an anti-artistic boor like Rose's fiance, Cal, who disses Picasso and Degas, now would you?) If you know anybody with a laserdisc player, that presumably better-detailed version will arrive Oct. 13; Paramount hasn't committed to producing DVD copies yet, but there's speculation that it could happen sometime early in 1999. Otherwise, if you simply settle for the tape version most in demand, you'll be traveling in something less than first-class accommodations — and missing quite a few of Titanic's picturesque nooks and crannies.
EDIT: Also, to point out, Avatar went out to theaters in both 1.78:1 and 2.40:1. While the 2D edition was strictly 2.40:1 only, 3D versions existed in both aspect ratios depending on the theater and their screen setup.
01-23-12, 10:14 PM
#54
Suspended
re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
I'd rather watch paint drying than sitting through this again.
/runs from thread for a film being released in 3D for no other reason than to get more money.
/runs from thread for a film being released in 3D for no other reason than to get more money.
01-23-12, 10:34 PM
#55
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Well there goes seeing it in IMAX.
01-23-12, 11:30 PM
#56
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
The ONLY thing that I can say that I hated off of this film was that damn song by Celine Dion. Just ruins the film for me.
01-24-12, 01:06 AM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Even though I deplore 3D - I am intrigued by the trailer and will probably bite the bullet for this one. I'm more excited/hopeful for a blu ray release, which I will definitely pick up. All the DVD copies are so expensive these days.
Either way, Titanic is a classic film.
Either way, Titanic is a classic film.
01-24-12, 01:08 AM
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01-24-12, 03:10 AM
#59
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Obviously you must mean the fact that it was overplayed on the radio, because the song doesn't actually play in the film until the end credits, and not even during the entire end credits. What has always annoyed me was that so many seemed to think that it was Dion that was responsible for not only the song itself, but all the music in the film including the vocals that are heard throughout the score. Shows like Entertainment Tonight have perpetuated that massive falsehood ever since the film came out.
01-24-12, 07:32 AM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Yes. Unfortunately I have to watch a trailer w/ cool imagery but then that some comes up...I'm sure my child self had to deal w/ it too. Overrated as fuck.
01-24-12, 08:16 AM
#61
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Yeah the song completely ruins the film for me when it is on. One of the worst songs in a motion picture ever. I always rush to turn this shit off when that song comes on.
01-24-12, 01:35 PM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
You don't hear the song during the movie, it plays over the end credits. The movie is over so how can it be ruined?
There's nothing wrong with the song at all, just how overplayed (not overrated, overplayed) it was. When something like that is everywhere, of course people can get sick of it.
01-24-12, 03:47 PM
#64
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
It is??
01-24-12, 03:49 PM
#65
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Right, but you hear the melody that Horner used as the basis for the song at several points in the film. I could see that being annoying to someone who grew to hate the song.
01-24-12, 03:55 PM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/X2WH8mHJnhM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
01-24-12, 04:19 PM
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01-24-12, 04:24 PM
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01-24-12, 04:42 PM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
I realize that many on this forum may not like Titanic or think it's overrated. That doesn't take away from its accomplishments or place in history as a part of 90's cinema. I certainly did not love it to the extent many do, but did find it enjoyable.
I think Citizen Kane is highly overrated, but would still call it a classic film.
01-24-12, 04:54 PM
#71
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Citizen Kane is not overrated. Titanic made a lot of money and broke a lot of records. That's nice. The fucking Eagles have one of the best-selling albums of all time. Doesn't make them a good band either.
01-24-12, 04:58 PM
#72
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
Back to Titanic...I am in for this in 3D and hopefully the blu-ray release that coincides with it's release.
01-24-12, 05:00 PM
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re: TITANIC in 3D (Cameron) - re-release
While we can discuss the reasons we love or hate Titanic like we could for any film (subjectivity = my favorite thing about movies), my original comment that sparked this debate was that it was a classic film. Any movie with that much box office success, that had America talking about it as if it were the greatest thing of all time (rightly or wrongly), and that won 11 Academy Awards does place an imprint on American cinematic history, making it a classic film.
01-24-12, 07:21 PM
#75
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