John Brawley wrote:A good friend of mine just made this. It premiered at the very film festival he works at.
That's a great trailer John, I'd love to see the film too.
I grew up with film: I'm old enough to remember going to the cinema, as a small child in the 60s, awe struck by the silver screen. I had a Super 8 projector at 5 and later made my own films on the format. Then later still on Bolex H16s. I was a location recordist on Nagras and shot myself on BLs, SRs and Aatons. I cut my first films as a professional editor on 16/35mm. And all the while going to the cinema and never getting over the magic Xeon arc throwing light onto that screen of dreams.
But, a lot of it looked terrible. In the main, premiere, first run showings it would be glorious; by the time the battered, scratch dupes of dupes arrived at your average local Odeon, it looked less than stellar. I remember thinking why do films at home, on TV often look perfect (as opposed to TV drama) and yet in the cinema sometimes they would have, grain as big as golf balls, scratches, weave and bad sound. Not all of course. The best cinema experience I ever saw was the restored reissue of Hitchock's 50's masterpieces.
Digital theatrical Cinema has stagnated somewhat. The DCPs are very often only 2K and 4K is still rarer. The projector technology still lags behind the brightness of an arc through celluloid and the magic of that organic experience has somewhat been lost. Many cinemas are like sterile airport lounges, particularly in the Multiplexes, with no sense of occasion. Whereas once they were often veritable palaces with magical décor. It is possible to have a much better quality presentation at home and perhaps the best use of huge wall 8K TVs would be to show 'films on TV', at the cinema, rather than project them.
And yet I hope and believe that will all get better. I love the whole thing of DCPs. The ability that we can all have now to release a 'print' that way that doesn't cost £25K for one print. Although I admire Speilberg, Tarantino et al, I think they are wrong. In relation to the discussion above, I believe if you transfer to film, it is film, if you really want that. Cinema is still very much alive but it will unlikely ever return as the mass experience it once was. The Digital Cinema experience has to get back the sense of occasion the theatre once held; Film will not completely die but having the luxury to release a few 65/35mm real prints to select first run houses in Los Angeles and major cities, is fast becoming a vanity and rarity, open to very few major directors.