November
20
Digital Screenings Bring Headaches: Che, Doubt, Button
First there was the story of the Landmark Cinema digital screening of the Spanish-language Che without any subtitles at all. Critics prepared to screen the movie were sent home when the projectionist couldn't solve the problem. Then there was a Aidikoff Wilshire Screening Room digital screening of English-language Doubt, which started off with Che's Spanish subtitles. (There had been a Che screening prior.) The projectionist stopped the film and after about three minutes started over again without the offending subtitles.
UPDATE: Thursday night Paramount screened The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at two venues. The SAG screening at the Arclight went smoothly. The "print" at the DGA, which the studio had spent eight hours testing on Thursday afternoon, was missing a color. Magenta. The film was green. And eventually, after about 20 minutes, because the cinematographer and sound mixer called producer Frank Marshall, the projection was shut down. Paramount technicians tried to reboot the hard drive, but couldn't fix the problem. Those of us who sat in the room saw them come close to a full-color projection, but something was wrong with the projector, a Paramount publicist said server, according to Marshall. "On the right setting it was wrong, and on the wrong setting it was right," he wrote in an email. "Welcome to digital."
David Fincher, the original perfectionist, must not have been happy. Marshall and partner Kathleen Kennedy, who had been working on this movie for some 18 years, were distressed; the screening was packed with key critics, press and industry Academy members. Other screenings are scheduled for Saturday. "This would not have happened to Stanley Kubrick," said one wag.
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I saw a number of digital screenings at the AFM last week,
all were fine. no problems.
Posted by: bob | November 20, 2008 at 05:57 PM
Aw that's a shame, AT. I was looking forward to hearing your thoughts on BUTTON. Hope you see it soon.
Posted by: ProgGrrl | November 21, 2008 at 07:16 AM
Don'tcha just miss those good ol' days of scratched prints, missing reels, missed cues, incorrect cropping and soundtrack pops??????!!!!!
Posted by: Mr. Milich | November 21, 2008 at 08:32 PM
No offense, but what idiot would schedule such an important screening without a 35mm backup print?
Posted by: cadavra | November 23, 2008 at 11:40 AM
The same idiot who shot his movie in 2k and wanted it screened in its native format.
Posted by: Mr. Milich | November 23, 2008 at 11:53 AM
Yes, Mr. Milich, I do miss the good ol' days of scratched prints, etc. I miss film grain, too. Whenever I watch things that have been digitally restored, I'm fully aware that the film NEVER looked like that when it was shown in theaters. I watched the DIRTY HARRY DVD recently and the blacks are so black that you can't see anything in the night scenes. Whereas in the theater you saw everything in those scenes, but it was grainy because they used fast film stock in order to be able to shoot at night in the back alleys of San Francisco without a lot of arc lights. When they transferred it, they eliminated the grain, but also the image. A bad bargain if you ask me. Call me a Luddite, but I like to see what I'm watching.
I recently watched a VHS tape of the Japanese drama, GATE OF HELL (1954), Japan's first color film. Now I'm sure I'd enjoy a restored, remastered transfer of this, but the grainy, scratchy, slightly faded print used for the tape transfer reminded me so much of the way I first experienced this film (and others like it) in film class watching it on 16mm or worn 35mm prints used at revival theaters, that I got excited about it and somewhat nostalgic. This is what "film" looked like in my early film buff days.
As for digital? I suspect that as more theaters switch to digital some of us will make fewer trips to them. I like the chemical look and feel of film. I'm a human being, which makes me chemical. Humans are analog, not digital. Although as people become more and more dependent on digital appendages, they become more and more like machines.
THE MATRIX, anyone?
Posted by: Brian | November 24, 2008 at 08:45 AM
Brian,
I think you kind of have things mixed up a little. If the night scenes were grainy in Dirty Harry, in 1972, it's not because they used high-speed stocks that allowed them to shoot in low light levels. It's because they would've either pushed the negative in development, flashed the film prior to shooting, brightened it during color-timing -- or some combination of those techniques. Film stocks were ridiculously slow back then. Furthermore, from what I've read with Clint Eastwood, the DH movies were artistically designed to look very dark -- however, WB would often override the directors' choices and brighten scenes they thought were too dark. So, it's very possible that the new re-masters, which Eastwood has "okay'd", are a return to the true intent.
As per the blacks vs. image depth thing. Again, I think you have it reversed. Everybody knows that film offers better blacks than digital. In fact, a lot of the time, when older movies have been re-mastered and are screened in theaters digitally, people complain that the blacks aren't crushed enough. It's digital that's known for being highly light sensitive (though modern Kodak stocks are comparable). When The Godfather disks came out recently, some critics were afraid that viewers not used to the films' dark blacks would complain that they couldn't see anything.
I love film. And I love movies shot on film. But film is on the way out. It is. Of all the viewing methods now available -- TV, DVD, Blu-ray, computers, iPods, etc. -- the only place the average person ever sees actual film projection anymore is in the theater. And that's the tiniest fraction. The more people watch images in digital, the more they're going to accept and expect that level of clarity and stability. That's just the way it is.
One isn't better than the other. They're just different.
Posted by: Mr. Milich | November 24, 2008 at 09:22 AM