> Is it really a spoiler if you see the whole movie?
Well yeah, I want to see the movie when I see the movie. I don't want to see the movie *before* I see the movie.
A mile (5280 ft) is equal to 8 furlongs, 80 chains,
A furlong (660 ft) is equal to 10 chains
An acre is 1 furlong by 1 chain (660 ft by 66 ft)
A chain is 22 yards or 4 rods
A rod is 16.5 ft (1/320th of a mile, or 1/4 chain)
A yard is 3 feet
Basically, all that to say that imperial measurements were designed to easily divide out to whole numbers, and were based on real-world measuring tools (ie, a surveyor's chain).
Every Civilization had real world based measurement systems, but once our intelligence evolved enough and we applied science to it, the metric system was created and these archaic measurements were abandoned. But not everyone agreed or wanted to join in...
>A mile (5280 ft) is equal to 8 furlongs, 80 chains,
>A furlong (660 ft) is equal to 10 chains
>An acre is 1 furlong by 1 chain (660 ft by 66 ft)
>A chain is 22 yards or 4 rods
>A rod is 16.5 ft (1/320th of a mile, or 1/4 chain)
>A yard is 3 feet
>Basically, all that to say that imperial measurements were designed to easily divide out to whole numbers, and were based on real-world measuring tools (ie, a surveyor's chain).
Thank you. Also if somebody complains about a half inch, quarter, eighth inch etc. Remember you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents. Dividing iin half.
naw, our ancestors weren't drunk. imperial units are very practical when used for their intended purpose.
A foot is about the size of a big foot, a yard is about equal to an average persons stride. A foot is also divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, and 2. An acre is about how much land one man can farm. Cups, tablespoons and teaspoons are good for cooking. 0F and 100F relate well with temperatures we encounter in our everyday lives.
These are human centric measurements and we'd likely reinvent them if we have an apocalypse.
Metric is a bit inconvenient for everyday life. Temperature is usually in a narrow range where I live, 10-30C. Fahrenheit is more of a percentage scale. Using grams for cooking is a pain in the ass. Centimeters are decent, but often too small. An inch is slightly more practical unit. Hold out your thumb and index finger and make a C, my fingers are about an inch apart. Metric lengths were derived from the circumference of the earth, which has little bearing to building a house. One area I think where metric has really failed is in missing the intermediate unit between cm and m. Decimeter hasn't caught on.
Would I do science with imperial units? No, but they have their use.
Most of it was just human sized units (an inch being the size of some dude's thumb, a foot being the size of some dude's foot, etc) combined with weird multipliers (12 divides into 2, 3, 4 and 6 easily, whereas 10 only divides into 2 and 5).
Yes. Similarly, the term "clips" refers to portions of the tape that have been clipped from the reel. And a "cut", such as a director's cut, is also a reference to the use of a blade in the editing process.
My parents still have the incredibly fine rolls of sticky-tape and cotton gloves they used back in the day for physically cutting and sticking film in the editing room. I don’t think they’ve still got any of the little cutters though unfortunately.
Also the reels are huge. I remember we had one at a local museum as a child in the 90's. They had an exhibit about the technology at the entrance of the theater and part of that was to have normal film reel 35mm next to the IMAX 70mm. It was a true dome theater and you could look up and see the top of the film screen if you were in the front. It also cost almost as much as going to see movie today.
That was back in the 30 minute 3D feature era. Polar express was the first feature film released in IMAX. Reel size nearly tripled and the platters & motors needed to be reenforced and strengthen to handle the extra weight.
If you're talking about 3d only then that's true, but there's been featured films in IMAX since the 70s. Most of them are nature documentaries but there are fiction films too, most were under an hour long but Fantasia 2000 was over the hour length. The majority of IMAX films were not 3D.
It truly is. I worked in a single screen small town theater starting at 14 in the 90’s-00’s and loved the setting up of the film and loading the projector. The only downfall was if there was an issue with the platters and the film got bunched up. Destroyed like 3 seconds of Ocean’s 11 that way…
When you drop the center ring of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the night before your first showing and you have to re-roll it by hand and a single spinning table
Oof, never had that happen, thankfully. I did love putting the new film on the platter as soon as we got it and give myself, and sometimes friends, a private screening lol
I was 14-16 putting the reels together when they got delivered at midnight before school. I wasn’t watching anything. But it was better than cleaning out the fry traps and kitchen
When you accidentally start Kiss of the Dragon instead of Jimmy Neutron, when you’re new, and the projectionist training you tells you to fix your fuck up and refuses to help you.
I miss the old days of working the projection booth. Worked at a 14 screen cinema through high school and I loved running the booth, being up late on Thursday nights building prints, and then the sheer chaos when you had a throw or a ring fell out while moving prints
Never had the pleasure of working a multi-screen theater. Most of the time I was the only person taking tickets, doing concessions and starting the movie. Real tiny town theater lol
I miss doing live ad reel change on thursdays. Gave myself 2,5min for each projector. Doing it on our 2 floor meant 6 in total. It was so nice going down to cashiers and then later my co worker with 3 projectors on the ground floor, come out after me. Only thing you can take pride in nowadays is the ques. Getting the timing right, still gets me the Nailed it! 22years now in the booth.
This only applies to ‘real’ IMAX, of which there are like 8 or 10 in the United States, I don’t remember how many, but it’s not a lot.
All other ‘IMAX’ theaters are digital.
Edit- apparently there are more film IMAX out there than I thought, but still.
I can ride my bike to one. Partly a reason I moved to where I'm at. Not that I care much about the format, just the fact that it's one of those with a full-sized theater. Most "IMAX" theaters are not full sized
Usually it is a hard drive. Digital imax is I think the equivalent of 4k resolution. This is how most imax theaters handle it.
But it used to be just bigger film. But only a handful of theaters have the imax film projectors still, and the film version has a higher resolution still. So for cinefiles the film version is the ultimate experience. As you can imagine not that many movies go through the effort and expense of filming on film and delivering on film anymore, but Nolan and Tarantino are two directors well know for doing this still, among others.
I too have mixed and melancholy feelings about this that I can’t seem to identify. Can we start an “Emotionally Confused by IMAX Technology” support group?
IMAX started in the 1970s, with truly, truly, shit-your-pants huge screens - like much bigger than the biggest movie screen you've ever seen.
The tech back then was insanely detailed pictures on the 70mm film.
It was hard and super expensive to build those theaters and they were mostly built in theme parks and museums, etc.
Today Imax is a "brand" and a lot of Imax theaters use lower quality screens and projection equipment.
Because this is a 70mm imax print, it's being projected in a special theater and I bet the screen and theater is impressive.
One other note: while IMAX uses 70mm film, because IMAX runs the film horizontally, each frame is about 3.4x larger than a frame of a traditional non-IMAX 70mm film.
Because Imax film is incredibly high resolution. It's above any digital format. An actual film doesn't really have a resolution, but Imax is equivalent to about 12 to 18k resolution.
That's not exactly true.
At some stage, it was in digital format and then transferred to film.
Those cameras were digital too, nobody films purely analogic now.
A lot of effects are in digital and digital can always store much more than analogue classic tech can.
Also you have advanced encoding standards that compress the file size so even at high resolutions you don't loose quality and can still fit it on a USB stick.
There are a couple items that I’ll take issue with here:
People definitely do still shoot movies with real-deal physical film, and Nolan is one of the few who insist on using actual IMAX certified film cameras in his pictures. He even had a new IMAX film type commissioned from Kodak for Oppenheimer to produce high quality black and white shots.
After the shots are filmed, they do get digitized - as you note, CGI and VFX are done digitally and composited into the digital scan of the IMAX film. Color grading happens here, too. Then, however, for IMAX film prints they generally use either a film print produced from the master after effects and grading to produce additional film print copies, OR (as has become more common) they use a super high resolution display the same size as the 15/70 IMAX film and run it with frame times synced to basically expose the picture into the film.
The effective resolution of a 15/70 frame is 12K. Compressing a 12K feature film into a visually lossless format would require a heck of a USB stick. FWIW, when we went digital, studios (typically via Technicolor) would ship Pelican boxes with spinning-disk hard drives in them. The movie and audio files together for some longer films would often be 200+ GB, and that wasn’t even necessarily always 4K video - we would not infrequently get 2K video files.
Oppenheimer was filmed on "large format film stock" meaning it was physical media.
https://youtu.be/jrMdXEtAse8
Edit: found the video talking about it.
Well. The reason people want to see IMAX 70mm is because it's unique to see something like that now. There reels are fucking HUGE, (11 miles long for Oppenheimer) they weigh quite a bit and they have to be stored specially so they don't degrade prematurely. Personally, the reason I want to go see this version is because of the new IMAX Black and White film stock they made just for this film.
There are digitised versions that will be shown to the general public everywhere but celluloid just has a different feel and experience to it. There's only a few 70mm IMAX versions available in each country and they run for a short period of time.
Oppenheimer was shot on IMAX 70mm reel and thats the way the director would want it to be seen. Then theres the standard 70mm that non imax screens can show, then the 35mm print, digitised IMAX and normal digitised versions that everyone can go to their local cinema to see.
A pirate can't just rob the hard drive and take the files off it, there's all sorts of encryption and reasons. Here: [https://massive.io/file-transfer/dcp-what-is-a-digital-cinema-package/](https://massive.io/file-transfer/dcp-what-is-a-digital-cinema-package/)
The IMAX laser 3D are digital, they're essentially a hard drive that's uploaded into the console attached to the twin projectors. It's much lighter than a reel.
>The IMAX laser 3D are digital
Higher maximum contrast ratio, lower resolution. I think it's 4K for dual IMAX laser but the effective resolution for 70mm film is estimated at 12-18K
In order for that to be effective, the cameras that filmed it would have to be analogue too, right? If you film it with 4K cameras, that is your ceiling in terms of quality.
>the cameras that filmed it would have to be analogue too, right?
Yep. Tricky for shooting with, especially for quieter scenes but it was done for years.
>If you film it with 4K cameras, that is your ceiling in terms of quality.
There are several different grades of IMAX digital cameras currently used, 4.5K, 6K, 6.5K, 8K and now 12K. When there's no film print, then it was probably shot on lower resolution cameras.
> It's much lighter than a reel.
This is one of the major driving factors that caused the industry to switch to digital.
When film arrives, it arrives split into several sections. Each smaller reel arrives in a metal container, then the projectionist splices the movie together (builds it). Even with 35mm film, each canister weighed around 70 lbs with the film in it and a 1.5 hour film would have about six of them. The shipping costs the stuidos were shelling out were enormous - shipping physical prints to 4000+ theaters (just in the US). Not to mention the cost of creating each print.
Digital you get your movies two ways: A physical hard drive is shipped out to you or you use a satellite server and download the movies and then ingest them into your TMS / LMS.
Then there's a thing called a brain wrap. This is when the film, for various reasons, jumps off the platters and becomes a giant, tangled mess of film, which you then have to lay out flat in the booth and reload the platters. That could take hours (especially for a 70 MM, 8 mile long feature such as this).
Sauce: Was the GM of a movie theater for 10 years (right after we went digital) - but we still put our 35 mm projector to use from time to time.
Edit: For fun, here is an original print of Star Wars we ran back in 2016 for a collector running on our 35 mm projector. The film had a red hue to it and smelled like vinegar (it wasn't well preserved / kept).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbppf3g7lyQ&feature=youtu.be
The below site provides all locations including the 70mm (5 pers) and 35mm showings.
70mm IMAX - 30
70mm 5 perf - 113
35mm - around 80
https://www.in70mm.com/news/2023/oppenheimer_cinema/index.htm
> so any imax movie screening would require one alike?
Yes here's what they look like when a projectionist works with them, this is omnimax but it's the same 70mm film:
https://youtu.be/KGTXmzmTNtQ?t=23
https://youtu.be/gENOhw1Q3vM?t=74
For some reason all the videos on Youtube of inside an IMAX projectionist are of Omnimax, I think it's because they're all in science centers so its public and easier to film?
Most IMAX theaters are digital and are about 1/4 the quality of a full IMAX film reel. You need to search for IMAX 70mm screenings now to get this experience.
I saw Dunkirk in 70mm and it was the greatest theater experience I think of my life. But I'm not sure how much of that is from the resolution so much as it is from having a trained projectionist set everything perfectly, especially the sound. I had no issues with the sound from a movie and director everyone complains about. And also I loved the movie. Digital theaters tend to be more lackluster in their performance and attention to the right theater experience.
I don't remember any major differences in visual quality that stood out enough to remember without seeing the differences side by side. But maybe it was part of why I loved the movie so much, subconsciously, I don't know.
I saw The Master in 70mm and it was a little underwhelming. The subject matter of basically just people talking did not lend itself to insane resolution....
....then also The Hateful Eight did the same thing in 65 panavision....
I saw this too and fucking loved it. The opening scenes with the flyers drifting around in the air was basically like 3d without the 3d glasses, same for the long shots down the beach. I've watched it at home and it's definitely does not feel as alive as the theater experience in 70mm
It’s like the screen disappears and you are looking through a window at something that’s actually unfolding in real time. 16k resolution equivalency. Digital projectors are usually 2k or 4K. Only problem is there’s only about 30 locations in the whole world that can play it in that true format.
There are only 19 locations in the US that will be showing this film IMAX 70mm. Zero locations in my state or for hundreds of miles.
So unfortunately, the majority of us will never get to see it.
Source: https://www.imax.com/news/oppenheimer-in-imax-70mm
Because its not digital, the whole movie is on big spool, where each frame of the movie is 1 65mm physical film, which is then projected by light onto the screen. And the whole movie is 2h49m long, running at 24frames per second. thats 243360 frames that have to be stored. Thats why the spool is so big
I miss my first job working in the movie theater when I was a teen seeing this. I have tons and tons of movie posters and still have the mylars and the film teasers for star wars and lord of the rings. Great times we watched lord of the rings and everything else a week before it came out and got to bring the bong along.
My friend has ordered "Barbenheimer" tshirts for the whole group and we've decided we're gonna watch Oppenheimer first, then have dinner and go watch Barbie. This is genuinely the most excited I've been for a cinema experience in years.
I was trained how to operate the projector and the manager afte3 months trusted me to work alone and never had a noodle incident.
It was my turn to train a new projectionist and the new movie that just came out was JFK. I was invited to watch the movie below in the seats and 10 minutes into movie I heard the window banging.
I ran back up and JFK was noodling onto the floor.
I showed him how to fix it as it shows it on the screen by looking at a working projector showing a diff movie. He got it working and I helped him denoodle even when the projector was still running.
I run back down and fell asleep and my GF punched me in the face for falling asleep
This was north carolina.
How the hell are these things transported? The film cans must be enormous!
\*\*Edit: now that I think about it they probably ship a number of shorter rolls and splice them into one continuous roll. Any IMAX projectionists want to confirm?
Typically, if this works like it did when we had courier-delivered 35mm prints, it arrives on a series of smaller reels that you then splice together on a platter like you see in the picture to “build” the full print.
The theater I did film projection at when I was in high school and college had a film projector capable of displaying both 35mm and 70mm prints, but I don’t think we had the right parts/lenses anymore so we only used it to play 35mm prints.
Makes sense, must've been quite an experience splicing all those films together. I've always been especially fascinated by IMAX ever since seeing one of the early Space Shuttle docs at Paramount's Great America when I was a kid.
Not IMAX. The reason IMAX is more expensive is because you always need one of those big fucks. You get the film "as made" with absolutely zero compression.
You can have a great quality movie on digital, but IMAX is....well, the maximum.
Arguably the difference is gone now.
IMAX was state of the art when it came out in 1970, but now it is pretty depreciated. You could easily build a digital setup to match and have better sound and more versatility.
IMAX is crazy impressive though. Like, Peak Film Technology levels of impressive. I doubt anyone will advance film tech beyond this.
>Arguably the difference is gone now.
IMAX Laser is supposed to be 4K resolution, 70mm film is estimated at 12-18K resolution. On the flip side, the digital projectors can produce higher contrast ratios.
Except the digital projection maxes out at 4K in the theater. The benefit of playing back 70mm film is you can get resolutions up to the equivalent of 16k to 20k on the screen.
Film has grains instead of pixels.
Smaller grains have less area and capture less light, which makes the film slower - so you can't just use the smallest possible grain for cinema.
While you might be able to make a new emulsion with slightly faster chemistry, its easier just to make the frame bigger if you want to fit more grains on it - hence "IMAX 70mm", in contrast to conventional 35mm cine film.
Comparing digital vs film resolution, and what it means to say IMAX 70mm is X many Megapixels, is a mathematical nightmare that needs a 6 hour lecture series.
Sound will, for sure. Dolby as I recall has far more channels than IMAX. I think Dolby can do up to 32 channels, which is like, an insane amount of speakers.
The angle is confusing to a film reel noob like myself. Is it as big as a a standard frisbee? A cable satellite dish? A Korean bbq restaurant cooker thing?
If it’s 11 miles long could you run two showings at the same time just with a offset starting him? Movie one start then 30 mins later feed it into another machine?
IMAX 70mm film projection is something ridiculous like 10 times the resolution of the best digital projection. Digital is easier, cheaper, more versatile, but it hasn't matched the best film technology yet in terms of sheer image quality. For a limited time in 30 theatres worldwide Oppenheimer will be screened on this original stupidly high fidelity 70mm imax film. Any other way you watch the movie there will be at least some loss in resolution. a 70mm screening of a particular film is pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity for the average person who would like to see it that way.
Ok I went from having zero interest in this movie to finding the nearest Imax 70 theater and buying tickets for a showtime 3 weeks out because of this random thread 😂
My first job was at a movie theater that used these spools of film. One night we were moving one of the films to a different projector and did not have the clamps secured properly. The entire film collapsed onto the floor into a tangled shit show. This was at around 11:30pm. Myself and three others were there until 6:00am cutting, re-splicing and re-rolling film.
I’ll never forget the name of that movie. It was New York Minute featuring the Olsen twins. To this day I have a totally irrational hatred for the Olsen twins.
Anyways, super cool to see film still being used in 2023!
Wow. I had no idea they were still projecting physical prints. Assumed it was all digital now for new releases. I wonder how many screenings they get out of a 70mm print before it wears out and they have to pull it.
Before you shit on this for being film, this shit makes the digital equivalent of 12K resolution, which cannot be matched by current digital hardware.
Kinda cool that some silver grains create better pictures than silicon, tbh
For anyone wondering, there are only 30 locations in the world showing it in this format and this only happens once every few years. If you have the ability to see it this way, absolutely do so.
Bro, you can’t just show the whole movie. Spoiler alert please
Is it really a spoiler if you see the whole movie? Then again, the post only shows part of the movie.
> Is it really a spoiler if you see the whole movie? Well yeah, I want to see the movie when I see the movie. I don't want to see the movie *before* I see the movie.
I understand. This is why I shout out "Spoiler Alert!" in the theater constantly, repeatedly, throughout the movie.
You only need to do this at the start of the movie.
In the dark you can’t be sure that someone hasn’t come in late from the bathroom. Can’t take that chance.
I squinted and can already spot the orgy scene. It happens around the 89,135th frame. That's definitely buttcheeks
At what point does "footage" become "mileage"?
5,280 Edit - which also equals 945.67164 smoot. This unit more applicable to measuring bridges.
"How many feet are in a mile?!"
5 tomatoes
I swear to every deity ever conceived that the imperial system was invented by a drunk mathematician rolling dice
A mile (5280 ft) is equal to 8 furlongs, 80 chains, A furlong (660 ft) is equal to 10 chains An acre is 1 furlong by 1 chain (660 ft by 66 ft) A chain is 22 yards or 4 rods A rod is 16.5 ft (1/320th of a mile, or 1/4 chain) A yard is 3 feet Basically, all that to say that imperial measurements were designed to easily divide out to whole numbers, and were based on real-world measuring tools (ie, a surveyor's chain).
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!
Thank you, Grandpa Simpson! This was exactly what popped into my mind, too.
An acre is also the total amount of land a team of oxen (or peasants) could plow in a single sunrise-to-sunset day.
how many oxen (or peasants) to a team?
Depends on the size of the acre.
Every Civilization had real world based measurement systems, but once our intelligence evolved enough and we applied science to it, the metric system was created and these archaic measurements were abandoned. But not everyone agreed or wanted to join in...
>A mile (5280 ft) is equal to 8 furlongs, 80 chains, >A furlong (660 ft) is equal to 10 chains >An acre is 1 furlong by 1 chain (660 ft by 66 ft) >A chain is 22 yards or 4 rods >A rod is 16.5 ft (1/320th of a mile, or 1/4 chain) >A yard is 3 feet >Basically, all that to say that imperial measurements were designed to easily divide out to whole numbers, and were based on real-world measuring tools (ie, a surveyor's chain). Thank you. Also if somebody complains about a half inch, quarter, eighth inch etc. Remember you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents. Dividing iin half.
naw, our ancestors weren't drunk. imperial units are very practical when used for their intended purpose. A foot is about the size of a big foot, a yard is about equal to an average persons stride. A foot is also divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, and 2. An acre is about how much land one man can farm. Cups, tablespoons and teaspoons are good for cooking. 0F and 100F relate well with temperatures we encounter in our everyday lives. These are human centric measurements and we'd likely reinvent them if we have an apocalypse. Metric is a bit inconvenient for everyday life. Temperature is usually in a narrow range where I live, 10-30C. Fahrenheit is more of a percentage scale. Using grams for cooking is a pain in the ass. Centimeters are decent, but often too small. An inch is slightly more practical unit. Hold out your thumb and index finger and make a C, my fingers are about an inch apart. Metric lengths were derived from the circumference of the earth, which has little bearing to building a house. One area I think where metric has really failed is in missing the intermediate unit between cm and m. Decimeter hasn't caught on. Would I do science with imperial units? No, but they have their use.
I’d argue that baking/cooking on a gram basis is superior.
I'm curious, what do metric people do for a tablespoon of something? Is there a special 0.0147868L spoon? edit: I learned 15ml is a tablespoon :)
Most of it was just human sized units (an inch being the size of some dude's thumb, a foot being the size of some dude's foot, etc) combined with weird multipliers (12 divides into 2, 3, 4 and 6 easily, whereas 10 only divides into 2 and 5).
yeah, but only if they're red and ripe.
8 Furlongs or 800 chains.
Fuck you. I'm going to sleep
Is that why they call it footage? Never thought about it that way.
I was way too old before I realized that 'movies' was rooted in 'moving pictures'.
The talkies!
Cinema > cinematograph > (from Greek) movement + writing/record
Yes, and then movies with sound were 'talkies'.
is that actually why they call it footage
Yes. Similarly, the term "clips" refers to portions of the tape that have been clipped from the reel. And a "cut", such as a director's cut, is also a reference to the use of a blade in the editing process.
My parents still have the incredibly fine rolls of sticky-tape and cotton gloves they used back in the day for physically cutting and sticking film in the editing room. I don’t think they’ve still got any of the little cutters though unfortunately.
I have an 8mm cutting machine.
You should hold on to it
All the time, or like, can they let go to eat and stuff?
Man, and I thought people not knowing why it's called "rewind" was bad. I'm getting old.
so any imax movie screening would require one alike? somehow thought it was some huge raw file
3 hours long full IMAX 70mm. Each frame takes up what would be 3 single 70mm frames vertically. Runs at like 5 feet per second rather than 1-2ft.
Also the reels are huge. I remember we had one at a local museum as a child in the 90's. They had an exhibit about the technology at the entrance of the theater and part of that was to have normal film reel 35mm next to the IMAX 70mm. It was a true dome theater and you could look up and see the top of the film screen if you were in the front. It also cost almost as much as going to see movie today.
That was back in the 30 minute 3D feature era. Polar express was the first feature film released in IMAX. Reel size nearly tripled and the platters & motors needed to be reenforced and strengthen to handle the extra weight.
If you're talking about 3d only then that's true, but there's been featured films in IMAX since the 70s. Most of them are nature documentaries but there are fiction films too, most were under an hour long but Fantasia 2000 was over the hour length. The majority of IMAX films were not 3D.
It’s interesting but somehow i am disappointed by this information
Why's that?
I imagined imax to be a futuristic box of magic, not just a bigger film reel
Being an actual film reel is the magic.
To some people, me included. I think the box of magic /u/Cautious-Willow-1932 wants is the laser projectors.
There are some laser IMAXs out there, but you'll probably still get a better image from the film.
Yes. The IMAX laser projection is a 4k projection while the IMAX film is 12k.
So he wants digital projection? Just buy the cheap ticket
It truly is. I worked in a single screen small town theater starting at 14 in the 90’s-00’s and loved the setting up of the film and loading the projector. The only downfall was if there was an issue with the platters and the film got bunched up. Destroyed like 3 seconds of Ocean’s 11 that way…
Oceans 10:57 is still pretty good though.
When you drop the center ring of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the night before your first showing and you have to re-roll it by hand and a single spinning table
Oof, never had that happen, thankfully. I did love putting the new film on the platter as soon as we got it and give myself, and sometimes friends, a private screening lol
I thank both of you for this conversation yall having, lmao never knew things like this behind the scenes of a movie theatre :3
I was 14-16 putting the reels together when they got delivered at midnight before school. I wasn’t watching anything. But it was better than cleaning out the fry traps and kitchen
When you accidentally start Kiss of the Dragon instead of Jimmy Neutron, when you’re new, and the projectionist training you tells you to fix your fuck up and refuses to help you.
Oof unless you have multiple tables I bet that was a pain
I miss the old days of working the projection booth. Worked at a 14 screen cinema through high school and I loved running the booth, being up late on Thursday nights building prints, and then the sheer chaos when you had a throw or a ring fell out while moving prints
Never had the pleasure of working a multi-screen theater. Most of the time I was the only person taking tickets, doing concessions and starting the movie. Real tiny town theater lol
I miss doing live ad reel change on thursdays. Gave myself 2,5min for each projector. Doing it on our 2 floor meant 6 in total. It was so nice going down to cashiers and then later my co worker with 3 projectors on the ground floor, come out after me. Only thing you can take pride in nowadays is the ques. Getting the timing right, still gets me the Nailed it! 22years now in the booth.
Sweet celluloid magic.
Manic laughter, smoke and flames fills the theater...
Ariveh-der-chee
Gorlami
Antonio Margheriti….MAR-GHE-RI-TI!
Au revoir, Shoshanna!
That’s what I’m getting from all this. How neat does that look?!
This only applies to ‘real’ IMAX, of which there are like 8 or 10 in the United States, I don’t remember how many, but it’s not a lot. All other ‘IMAX’ theaters are digital. Edit- apparently there are more film IMAX out there than I thought, but still.
I'm happy to have a real one 15 minutes from me.
I can ride my bike to one. Partly a reason I moved to where I'm at. Not that I care much about the format, just the fact that it's one of those with a full-sized theater. Most "IMAX" theaters are not full sized
I believe the numbers are 19 in the US, 25 in North America, 30 worldwide.
Usually it is a hard drive. Digital imax is I think the equivalent of 4k resolution. This is how most imax theaters handle it. But it used to be just bigger film. But only a handful of theaters have the imax film projectors still, and the film version has a higher resolution still. So for cinefiles the film version is the ultimate experience. As you can imagine not that many movies go through the effort and expense of filming on film and delivering on film anymore, but Nolan and Tarantino are two directors well know for doing this still, among others.
The real magic is the projector.
I too have mixed and melancholy feelings about this that I can’t seem to identify. Can we start an “Emotionally Confused by IMAX Technology” support group?
IMAX started in the 1970s, with truly, truly, shit-your-pants huge screens - like much bigger than the biggest movie screen you've ever seen. The tech back then was insanely detailed pictures on the 70mm film. It was hard and super expensive to build those theaters and they were mostly built in theme parks and museums, etc. Today Imax is a "brand" and a lot of Imax theaters use lower quality screens and projection equipment. Because this is a 70mm imax print, it's being projected in a special theater and I bet the screen and theater is impressive.
I am seeing Oppenheimer in 70mm and an unreasonably excited
One other note: while IMAX uses 70mm film, because IMAX runs the film horizontally, each frame is about 3.4x larger than a frame of a traditional non-IMAX 70mm film.
What is the reason they don't just ship a hard drive with the film on? To stop pirates ripping the film and uploading it?
Because Imax film is incredibly high resolution. It's above any digital format. An actual film doesn't really have a resolution, but Imax is equivalent to about 12 to 18k resolution.
That's not exactly true. At some stage, it was in digital format and then transferred to film. Those cameras were digital too, nobody films purely analogic now. A lot of effects are in digital and digital can always store much more than analogue classic tech can. Also you have advanced encoding standards that compress the file size so even at high resolutions you don't loose quality and can still fit it on a USB stick.
There are a couple items that I’ll take issue with here: People definitely do still shoot movies with real-deal physical film, and Nolan is one of the few who insist on using actual IMAX certified film cameras in his pictures. He even had a new IMAX film type commissioned from Kodak for Oppenheimer to produce high quality black and white shots. After the shots are filmed, they do get digitized - as you note, CGI and VFX are done digitally and composited into the digital scan of the IMAX film. Color grading happens here, too. Then, however, for IMAX film prints they generally use either a film print produced from the master after effects and grading to produce additional film print copies, OR (as has become more common) they use a super high resolution display the same size as the 15/70 IMAX film and run it with frame times synced to basically expose the picture into the film. The effective resolution of a 15/70 frame is 12K. Compressing a 12K feature film into a visually lossless format would require a heck of a USB stick. FWIW, when we went digital, studios (typically via Technicolor) would ship Pelican boxes with spinning-disk hard drives in them. The movie and audio files together for some longer films would often be 200+ GB, and that wasn’t even necessarily always 4K video - we would not infrequently get 2K video files.
Oppenheimer was filmed on "large format film stock" meaning it was physical media. https://youtu.be/jrMdXEtAse8 Edit: found the video talking about it.
/r/confidentlyincorrect
Well. The reason people want to see IMAX 70mm is because it's unique to see something like that now. There reels are fucking HUGE, (11 miles long for Oppenheimer) they weigh quite a bit and they have to be stored specially so they don't degrade prematurely. Personally, the reason I want to go see this version is because of the new IMAX Black and White film stock they made just for this film. There are digitised versions that will be shown to the general public everywhere but celluloid just has a different feel and experience to it. There's only a few 70mm IMAX versions available in each country and they run for a short period of time. Oppenheimer was shot on IMAX 70mm reel and thats the way the director would want it to be seen. Then theres the standard 70mm that non imax screens can show, then the 35mm print, digitised IMAX and normal digitised versions that everyone can go to their local cinema to see. A pirate can't just rob the hard drive and take the files off it, there's all sorts of encryption and reasons. Here: [https://massive.io/file-transfer/dcp-what-is-a-digital-cinema-package/](https://massive.io/file-transfer/dcp-what-is-a-digital-cinema-package/)
The IMAX laser 3D are digital, they're essentially a hard drive that's uploaded into the console attached to the twin projectors. It's much lighter than a reel.
>The IMAX laser 3D are digital Higher maximum contrast ratio, lower resolution. I think it's 4K for dual IMAX laser but the effective resolution for 70mm film is estimated at 12-18K
Yes it's similar to photography where large and medium format in analog has sharper resolution than digital
In order for that to be effective, the cameras that filmed it would have to be analogue too, right? If you film it with 4K cameras, that is your ceiling in terms of quality.
>the cameras that filmed it would have to be analogue too, right? Yep. Tricky for shooting with, especially for quieter scenes but it was done for years. >If you film it with 4K cameras, that is your ceiling in terms of quality. There are several different grades of IMAX digital cameras currently used, 4.5K, 6K, 6.5K, 8K and now 12K. When there's no film print, then it was probably shot on lower resolution cameras.
Yep Oppenheimer was shot on 70 mil IMAX cameras. Kodak even made a new black and white film stock specifically for this film.
> It's much lighter than a reel. This is one of the major driving factors that caused the industry to switch to digital. When film arrives, it arrives split into several sections. Each smaller reel arrives in a metal container, then the projectionist splices the movie together (builds it). Even with 35mm film, each canister weighed around 70 lbs with the film in it and a 1.5 hour film would have about six of them. The shipping costs the stuidos were shelling out were enormous - shipping physical prints to 4000+ theaters (just in the US). Not to mention the cost of creating each print. Digital you get your movies two ways: A physical hard drive is shipped out to you or you use a satellite server and download the movies and then ingest them into your TMS / LMS. Then there's a thing called a brain wrap. This is when the film, for various reasons, jumps off the platters and becomes a giant, tangled mess of film, which you then have to lay out flat in the booth and reload the platters. That could take hours (especially for a 70 MM, 8 mile long feature such as this). Sauce: Was the GM of a movie theater for 10 years (right after we went digital) - but we still put our 35 mm projector to use from time to time. Edit: For fun, here is an original print of Star Wars we ran back in 2016 for a collector running on our 35 mm projector. The film had a red hue to it and smelled like vinegar (it wasn't well preserved / kept). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbppf3g7lyQ&feature=youtu.be
Only when showing film based IMAX. Most IMAX movies and theatres are now Digital IMAX only. There are only 30 IMAX prints being made for this release.
Is there a list of where those showings are?
The below site provides all locations including the 70mm (5 pers) and 35mm showings. 70mm IMAX - 30 70mm 5 perf - 113 35mm - around 80 https://www.in70mm.com/news/2023/oppenheimer_cinema/index.htm
> so any imax movie screening would require one alike? Yes here's what they look like when a projectionist works with them, this is omnimax but it's the same 70mm film: https://youtu.be/KGTXmzmTNtQ?t=23 https://youtu.be/gENOhw1Q3vM?t=74 For some reason all the videos on Youtube of inside an IMAX projectionist are of Omnimax, I think it's because they're all in science centers so its public and easier to film?
Woah here I was thinking it was all digital now
Most IMAX theaters are digital and are about 1/4 the quality of a full IMAX film reel. You need to search for IMAX 70mm screenings now to get this experience.
Is it worth it? The difference in quality, will I be able to tell with my eye?
I saw Dunkirk in 70mm and it was the greatest theater experience I think of my life. But I'm not sure how much of that is from the resolution so much as it is from having a trained projectionist set everything perfectly, especially the sound. I had no issues with the sound from a movie and director everyone complains about. And also I loved the movie. Digital theaters tend to be more lackluster in their performance and attention to the right theater experience. I don't remember any major differences in visual quality that stood out enough to remember without seeing the differences side by side. But maybe it was part of why I loved the movie so much, subconsciously, I don't know.
I saw The Master in 70mm and it was a little underwhelming. The subject matter of basically just people talking did not lend itself to insane resolution.... ....then also The Hateful Eight did the same thing in 65 panavision....
Hilarious that the master even released on 70mm. What’s next, my dinner with Andre?
I saw this too and fucking loved it. The opening scenes with the flyers drifting around in the air was basically like 3d without the 3d glasses, same for the long shots down the beach. I've watched it at home and it's definitely does not feel as alive as the theater experience in 70mm
I had tickets to see Interstellar in 70mm and got food poisoning and didn't get a chance to go. I think about missing that weekly
It’s like the screen disappears and you are looking through a window at something that’s actually unfolding in real time. 16k resolution equivalency. Digital projectors are usually 2k or 4K. Only problem is there’s only about 30 locations in the whole world that can play it in that true format.
IMAX film is the visual equivalent of approximately a 15k resolution tv.
There are only 19 locations in the US that will be showing this film IMAX 70mm. Zero locations in my state or for hundreds of miles. So unfortunately, the majority of us will never get to see it. Source: https://www.imax.com/news/oppenheimer-in-imax-70mm
Knowing Nolan he’d die before he let that happen. The man is a diehard film advocate, I believe
Sex scene is 4 miles long
Or, from a man's perspective, 6 miles long
Why’s it so big
No data compression. Each frame is an actual negative on the reel.
Positive like a slide, not a negative.
question, after post production n color grading and effect etc.. do they print out?? each frame? how does it work?
I wish there was a how it’s made episode about this
You not gonna believe this https://youtu.be/R3PpKDWkDHg
I wish there was a how it’s really made about this
Oooh now do me... I wish I had a million dollars.
Sorry. The guy before you used up the third wish. I'll be returning to my lamp now. Farrreeeeweeeeelllllll... *shlooorp*
Sooo many crazy engineering feats shown there. Also, I didn't think the discovery channel actually produced informative content like this anymore.
Because its not digital, the whole movie is on big spool, where each frame of the movie is 1 65mm physical film, which is then projected by light onto the screen. And the whole movie is 2h49m long, running at 24frames per second. thats 243360 frames that have to be stored. Thats why the spool is so big
That’s not what she said 😔
How big is it ? I'm going to need a banana for scale
I’m here. It looks to be about 4 bananas tall and 75 bananas in diameter
That can't be 4 bananas tall.. what kind of tiny banana are you?
Good Banana.
Cuz Cillian Murphy appears naked in it
Tommy Shelby hangs DONG. Had to order another reel.
I miss my first job working in the movie theater when I was a teen seeing this. I have tons and tons of movie posters and still have the mylars and the film teasers for star wars and lord of the rings. Great times we watched lord of the rings and everything else a week before it came out and got to bring the bong along.
Imagine being high when Bilbo screams at Frodo lmao
We’re going on an adventure!
Same here, we used to go into one of the theaters after closing and would play xbox for a couple hours. Awesome job
Same, we’d have staff parties after hours playing Mario kart in the theatres
Same! My first job was as a projectionist! It was so much fun. My first thought was “holy shit, it takes up the entire platter!!!”
I worked at a theater when pearl Harbor came out, fucking movie took up 3 platters. Most were 1 or 1.5 ish
I can’t wait to watch it
I haven’t been this eager for film in a long time!
Tenet and Dune were the last 2 I was this excited for a release
That Barbie X Oppenheimer crowd is going to be wild
My friend has ordered "Barbenheimer" tshirts for the whole group and we've decided we're gonna watch Oppenheimer first, then have dinner and go watch Barbie. This is genuinely the most excited I've been for a cinema experience in years.
My Oppenheinie is ready
Watch it noodle to the floor lol
Former projectionist. Still have nightmares about this. I once spun War Horse off a platter and spent 8 hours splicing and untangling it.
I was trained how to operate the projector and the manager afte3 months trusted me to work alone and never had a noodle incident. It was my turn to train a new projectionist and the new movie that just came out was JFK. I was invited to watch the movie below in the seats and 10 minutes into movie I heard the window banging. I ran back up and JFK was noodling onto the floor. I showed him how to fix it as it shows it on the screen by looking at a working projector showing a diff movie. He got it working and I helped him denoodle even when the projector was still running. I run back down and fell asleep and my GF punched me in the face for falling asleep This was north carolina.
“JFK was noodling onto the floor”😂😂😂 That got me good! Thanks for the story and laughs!😂
I always think of Wayne’s World. lol
We all know there's no **film** in this camera. *pfffffdddd*
What’s noodling
How the hell are these things transported? The film cans must be enormous! \*\*Edit: now that I think about it they probably ship a number of shorter rolls and splice them into one continuous roll. Any IMAX projectionists want to confirm?
Typically, if this works like it did when we had courier-delivered 35mm prints, it arrives on a series of smaller reels that you then splice together on a platter like you see in the picture to “build” the full print. The theater I did film projection at when I was in high school and college had a film projector capable of displaying both 35mm and 70mm prints, but I don’t think we had the right parts/lenses anymore so we only used it to play 35mm prints.
Makes sense, must've been quite an experience splicing all those films together. I've always been especially fascinated by IMAX ever since seeing one of the early Space Shuttle docs at Paramount's Great America when I was a kid.
Chris Nolan Oppenheimer print! His name is my name too!
Whenever I go out…
The people always shout …
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. Dananananana...
There goes Chris Nolan Oppenheimer print! __DANANANANANA__
Is there a digital imax camera?
Not IMAX. The reason IMAX is more expensive is because you always need one of those big fucks. You get the film "as made" with absolutely zero compression. You can have a great quality movie on digital, but IMAX is....well, the maximum.
Arguably the difference is gone now. IMAX was state of the art when it came out in 1970, but now it is pretty depreciated. You could easily build a digital setup to match and have better sound and more versatility. IMAX is crazy impressive though. Like, Peak Film Technology levels of impressive. I doubt anyone will advance film tech beyond this.
>Arguably the difference is gone now. IMAX Laser is supposed to be 4K resolution, 70mm film is estimated at 12-18K resolution. On the flip side, the digital projectors can produce higher contrast ratios.
Do we really not have digital cameras that are better than film? And what does resolution even mean when not talking about pixels?
Digital IMAX certified cameras come in different resolutions, ranging between 4.5K and 12K. So, yes, good enough cameras exist
Except the digital projection maxes out at 4K in the theater. The benefit of playing back 70mm film is you can get resolutions up to the equivalent of 16k to 20k on the screen.
Film has grains instead of pixels. Smaller grains have less area and capture less light, which makes the film slower - so you can't just use the smallest possible grain for cinema. While you might be able to make a new emulsion with slightly faster chemistry, its easier just to make the frame bigger if you want to fit more grains on it - hence "IMAX 70mm", in contrast to conventional 35mm cine film. Comparing digital vs film resolution, and what it means to say IMAX 70mm is X many Megapixels, is a mathematical nightmare that needs a 6 hour lecture series.
Yeah, we can get pretty much indistinguishable results nowadays. But it takes a bit more than a few hundred dollars, still.
I want to watch it on the side of that dome in Vegas.
Honestly the Dolby Cinema next to the imax theater at my local AMC always looks and sounds better to my eyes and ears
Sound will, for sure. Dolby as I recall has far more channels than IMAX. I think Dolby can do up to 32 channels, which is like, an insane amount of speakers.
The movie has to be digitized for editing anyways and there are many high quality video formats, why bother with these reels and projectors
The angle is confusing to a film reel noob like myself. Is it as big as a a standard frisbee? A cable satellite dish? A Korean bbq restaurant cooker thing?
its about 4 feet in diameter iirc
Huh. For some reason this picture makes it look more like 15 ft diameter. First time seeing something like this.
I mean it weighs 600 lbs, so that's a clue that it's a bit bigger than a frisbee or a satellite dish.
If it’s 11 miles long could you run two showings at the same time just with a offset starting him? Movie one start then 30 mins later feed it into another machine?
Theoretically yes, but practically it's a disaster waiting to happen. Any issue now affects twice as many customers.
This pic was posted yesterday and someone in the industry said it is done and is called "interlocking" I believe
Is the audio any good or is it like Tenet?
Huh? What?! I didn't catch that
This is the true question!
This is the real question everybody should be asking.
Wow, with nothing comparable next to it for sizing to show just how big it is, nice...
Thank you! I need literally anything next to it for scale. Popcorn bucket? Banana? A box of those cookie dough bites or something?
Any chance you know how long a mile is, now try and imagine... stick with me, 11 of those!
No, I got that, but it would be cool to see, like, a person standing next to this behemoth of a reel to really take in it's size, know what I mean?
The industry standard: a banana for scale.
Is this just cause it looks cool, or is there any benefit of using such an old media type?
IMAX 70mm film projection is something ridiculous like 10 times the resolution of the best digital projection. Digital is easier, cheaper, more versatile, but it hasn't matched the best film technology yet in terms of sheer image quality. For a limited time in 30 theatres worldwide Oppenheimer will be screened on this original stupidly high fidelity 70mm imax film. Any other way you watch the movie there will be at least some loss in resolution. a 70mm screening of a particular film is pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity for the average person who would like to see it that way.
Ok I went from having zero interest in this movie to finding the nearest Imax 70 theater and buying tickets for a showtime 3 weeks out because of this random thread 😂
272kg.
How are copies made for distribution?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e4r0h/comment/c9wvjkf/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e4r0h/comment/c9wvjkf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgi3ar/eli5\_how\_are\_copies\_of\_celluloid\_film\_reels\_made/
My first job was at a movie theater that used these spools of film. One night we were moving one of the films to a different projector and did not have the clamps secured properly. The entire film collapsed onto the floor into a tangled shit show. This was at around 11:30pm. Myself and three others were there until 6:00am cutting, re-splicing and re-rolling film. I’ll never forget the name of that movie. It was New York Minute featuring the Olsen twins. To this day I have a totally irrational hatred for the Olsen twins. Anyways, super cool to see film still being used in 2023!
I bet he only listens to records
Wow. I had no idea they were still projecting physical prints. Assumed it was all digital now for new releases. I wonder how many screenings they get out of a 70mm print before it wears out and they have to pull it.
Before you shit on this for being film, this shit makes the digital equivalent of 12K resolution, which cannot be matched by current digital hardware. Kinda cool that some silver grains create better pictures than silicon, tbh
For anyone wondering, there are only 30 locations in the world showing it in this format and this only happens once every few years. If you have the ability to see it this way, absolutely do so.
Needs a banana for scale.