I wonder if there is going to be more substance to the film than shocking acts of violence and sex. If so, I am interested, but I have yet to hear this is the case.
I have yet to find someone who has mentioned my opinion in th thread yet, so I can give my own interpretation.
There are a few things that struck me. Chigurh was representative of “evil” (obviously). In most Hollywood films, religious teachings, and societal views, evil can go unpunished for only so long. The structure of the film starts off in a manner that is suggestive of a typical Hollywood chase movie:
= protagonist finds something of value
= antagonist pursues protagonist for object of value
= protagonist outsmarts antagonist
= protagonist beats antagonist in final showdown
= evil is punished
= happy ending
Even though the films starts off in typical Hollywood fashion with allusion as to how the film will end, this seems to only be a ploy to set up the real film. Llewelyn is killed, so the protagonist in the encounter does not punish evil. This twist has happened in films before, but the villain is usually punished by other means beyond the grave (i.e. Cruel Intentions). Chigurh then kills Llewelyn’s wife. This is even further past our expectations, but we still know in our heart of hearts that evil will be punished. Then the car scene happens.
The car scene is my favorite of the film, because it lets us know the true intentions of the filmmakers. When Chigurh’s car crashes, “karma” dictates that Chigurh has to go. He does not die (instead, the other person dies). This is when we know that evil truly goes unpunished. There were three chances for equilibrium to be established and for evil to be punished, and it did not happen. This is to reinforce the theme.
When the sheriff is talking about his dream, he is talking about how they are in darkness, and that the light seemed so small compared to the darkness, but that they had to make the fire anyway. This is the statement of the theme:
There is evil in the world, and that evil is more powerful and destructive than anything because evil is not dictated by rules. Evil can get away unpunished. That being said, just because being evil can go unpunished, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be “the light” (be good). Just because Evil > Good, doesn’t mean we should be evil.
Film is a technology, not an art. “Film”, whether that be celluloid or digital, is just a medium in which to communicate ideas with. The technlogy does not dictate the content.
I have been a member of the ScarletUser and RedUser (and DVXUser) communities for years now, just to go ahead and give you my bias. The film versus digital debate has been raging for a while now, and it is hard to get both camps to meet on some sort of common ground.
Different uses of technologies can give you different aesthetics. People talk about Mann’s new project as looking “digital” because of the video smear, but if you were to slow down the shutter speed for a film camera, you would achieve similar motion blur. Though blur and video smear may look a little different, they both achieve the same kind of effect. When you slow down the shutter, you are going to create a departure from what we percieve as the “Hollywood look” whether you are shooting film or digital.
From the film camp, it just seems silly that one would want to discredit a new motion image medium. If you take film as an example, there isn’t “one film look”. A different film stock is essentially a completely different look, just as a Red One looks different from a Viper. There isn’t this unified film look out there to conform to.
The main problem with digital has always been dynamic range. The latitude of film has always been higher, but digital is quickly catching up (already has in the still world). If digital can exist or exceed film in the still world, why can’t this happen in the motion picture world?
With the Red One, digital has come exponentially close to film in terms of dynamic range. With the next generation of cameras, digital will have every advantage that film does. At this point, it is using the right tool for the right job. In the end, you will be able to create films that audience members will be able to connect with, regardless of aquisition medium.
For the record, you can do a period piece successfully with digital: i.e. Zodiac. If Mann chooses to slow down the shutter and such with his digital camera, then that is more of his utilization of the medium rather than what is indicative of what the medium can accomplish. (Who is to say what aesthetic is the “right” one, anyway?)
I know some here may criticize me for suggesting this, but watching the original Star Wars trilogy always cheers me up. It has a wide range of emotion in it, but none of it is too over the top. There is love, but not overly desperate. There is action, but it isn’t an Arnold movie. There is mystery and suspense, but not overdone. I feel that they are good “balance”-ers, if that makes any sense, especially if you loved the films as a child. :}
Either “Full Metal Jacket” or “Aliens”. I think “Apocalypse Now” was a good film to watch, but I just can’t get over how it’s “Heart of Darkness” wrapped in a Vietnam blanket.
“All of the “possibilities” you say these achievements can open up are more distractions from real art concerns. By the way, don’t get me wrong when I say the movie camera isn’t important. I love all the great films that I have seen but technology, for me, is never “important.” A man on a desert island with no dvd player and nothing but the complete works of Shakespeare isn’t missing out on anything important because he lacks knowledge about Cameron’s lame advancements.”"
I am going to have to disagree with you here. Film, like any medium, IS technology. Like the telephone, film is simply a medium in which to communicate ideas. The screenplay, the acquisition of images, editing, and projection of said images are all technology to send light into your eyes for your brain to interpret. How these images are manipulated to manipulate you COULD be considered art. To say that technology has nothing to do with anything, and then to mention print immediately after is a contradiction, because print is just another technology: a medium in which to communicate those ideas. How that medium changes affects how communication takes place.
Music, print, film, architecture, etc, are all technology and carry ideas, yet saying this technology doesn’t mean anything, and only the ideas are important is a misunderstanding in my humble opinion. Though a song and a film may have the exact same message, the way this technology interacts with people physically and emotionally are completely different, and that is 100% in the technology. I am not suggesting that technology is or isn’t art, rather that ideas that are communicated have different effects depending on the technology.
That being stated, I am not saying that Avatar will be good or bad (I haven’t seen the film yet), that it will change everything, or that it is the most important film ever made. Time will tell what really matters and what doesn’t.
The main aspect of Avatar that interests me is the advancement of film technology. Stereoscopic cinema has always been a gimmick, with poor execution. A serious attempt to use it for something other than cheap tricks is very important to me. Throughout cinema, we have gotten different advancements: lenses (the ability to use shallow or deep focus, to guide the audience emotionally throughout the piece), digital technology (ubiquitous access to content anywhere), and now maybe stereo cinema. Depth could be used in unique ways to help carry ideas in a new aspect through cinema, we just don’t know yet because it is so new.
“On that note, I will agree to disagree with you about the importance of technology and Cameron’s use of it. This goes for Kubrick and the steadycam and, for me all the way back to the Lumiere’s and others who invented the cinema. None of it is “important.” If the movie camera was never invented we’d all be just fine working our way through In Search of Lost Time for the fifth or sixth time before we started reading the entire works of Balzac or doing something else worthwhile.”
This illustrates the exact opposite of how I feel about cinema and film technology. The more ways you can communicate, the more you CAN communicate. Language (also a technology) is the perfect example of this. The more words you have, the more words you have to chose from and can more clearly and accurately describe what you want to communicate. The more facets and dimensions to film there are, the more ways we can communicate with one another.
I am not suggesting that stereoscopic cinema is the answer to everything, nor that James Cameron’s version of it is the best version, nor that Avatar will or will not be anything, but to say such things and not understand that technology is PIVOTAL in communicating with one another and simply dismiss a film because it is actively trying to expand film technology is an attitude I don’t share. Film is technology, simple as that.
The thing I am hearing the most in this thread is that this film is tripe because it costs a lot of money to make and that it is in 3D, but does that mean that all 2D films that cost less than $100k are somehow better?
Again, film is a technology, no matter what form it takes or how much it costs.
First, I want to congratulate Claus Harding, Zot!, and Strawdawg. All three of you have hit points that needed to be made in this thread.
This is not at all to be condescending, but there is some obvious misinformation in film as technology progresses, and this seems to be the point of contention in this thread.
First, let’s talk about the theater and 35mm film. The vast majority of theatrical films shown in the United States have been shot on 35mm film. Claus and Zot! are right, 35mm film is indeed more resolution than Blu-Ray and DVD. This is not really indicative of the theatrical experience, though. Depending on the film stock, grain, and even exposure of a scene, the average range of “resolution” for 35mm film is about 3k-3.5k resolution. When research first began on digital conversion of 35mm film, Kodak (obviously one of the main film stock companies for feature filmmaking) decided that in order to preserve the full quality of 35mm film, you would need to scan 35mm film in at least 4k. This doesn’t mean 35mm film is in fact 4k, but you will be safe capturing the 3k-3.5k of normal 35mm film in an uncompressed 4k DPX file. So yes, the original production stock will be over the 1080p resolution of Blu-Ray. However, after color grading, film manipulation, and the most compromising stage of all (the multitudes of theatrical film prints), what you are ACTUALLY seeing (depending on the care and time period of the film) on the big screen when you are munching on your popcorn is much lower: EVEN AS LOW AS LESS THAN 1080 LINES OF RESOLUTION (1080p, for those who do not know). So if you are watching a film print in a theater, YOU ARE NOT WATCHING a 3k-3.5k 35mm print!
Studios and distribution companies have known about this issue for decades, so when the digital age of filmmaking began, there were some new standards. When features first started doing DIs (Digital Intermediates: The process of scanning 35mm film in order to manipulate the feature electronically, with the intent to either print back out to film, edit digitally and conform the EDL to the film stock, or to export as DPX files for digital theatrical distribution), formats and resolutions had to be decided upon at this point. Since 4K digital scans were taxing (i.e. not really technologically feasible or economical), and the final film print for theatrical distribution contained resolutions around or lower than a 1080p equivalent, the 2K DI standard was applied. When scanning in the original 35mm film (the 3k-3.5k kind), though you lose some resolution in that process (3k-3.5k down to 2k), they knew the end result of theatrical film prints were less than 1080p in the first place, so a 2k scan doesn’t really change the end result. Just so you have an example, Lord of the Rings was shot on 35mm film, and the entire trilogy was scanned in AT 2k RESOLUTION, and printed BACK OUT TO FILM. WHEN YOU SAW LotR IN THEATERS, YOU WERE SEEING A FILM PRINT OFF A 2k SCAN, THEREFORE YOU WERE SEEING LESS THAN 2k WORTH OF RESOLUTION IN THE THEATERS.
I need to pause for a moment to comment on Joseph Lutz’s post: “1920×1080 still doesn’t come close to the resolution of film. 2k? 4k? Closer.”
I think you are misunderstanding your resolutions. Television resolutions measure the vertical height of an image, film standards measure in horizontal resolutions.
1080p: 1920 × 1080
2k: 2048 × 1080
2k has the exact same height as 1080p, it is just a few pixelss squared longer. As for 4k, I have already explained above what resolutions you are actually seeing in theaters.
After talking about theatrical showings of film prints, we can now talk about theatrical showings of digital films. With digital projection, instead of taking in the scanned in 2k DI of 35mm film (or 4k, 2k, 1080p digital prints from films shot digitally) and printing this feature on 35mm film (which will give you a loss of quality), ditigal projectors can display these 2k DPX files natively (i.e. no loss of quality). The 2k digital projection of a scanned in 2k DI is EXACTLY what the studios have. If you are watching a 2k digital projection, you are seeing the film as it was intended for films that go through a DI process. W00t!
So where does this leave Blu-ray? Blu-Ray has a maximum resolution of 1920 × 1080 (1080p). Though this resolution is less than 2k, it is only 7% less resolution than what you would see in theaters IF YOU WERE WATCHING A DIGITAL PROJECTION OF A 2K FILM. The resolution is VERY close to that of a 2k DPX file, and in some clases, may be more resoltution than 35mm prints. In short, Blu-Ray provides an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would see in theaters on a RESOLUTION level if all things (and equipment to present it) are equal. The real differences between the Blu-Ray format and what you see in theaters is compression. The compression of Blu-Rays, though it is absolutely amazing, is still not uncompressed video. This is why in my opinion, though you cannot get a visually equitable or superior image from Blu-Ray versus the theater, what you are getting is VERY DAMN CLOSE.
This leads me to my next point that hasn’t been hit on at all here: audio. Since Blu-Ray discs have so much storage, though they cannot store uncompressed video, they CAN store lossless audio. That’s right, you can get REFERENCE QUALITY AUDIO from Blu-Rays: the same quality you get in theaters. This feature alone gives the end user an experience similar to the thaters.
So what’s the verdict? Blu-Rays give you very close to reference quality video, and definitely provide reference quality audio, the problem is that the format is slightly ahead of it’s hardware counterparts. In my opinion, if you were to play a Blu-Ray disc on the same equipment that you have in the theater (including $30,000 2k Christie digital projectors), you would have an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would expect to see in theaters…so close you may not notice the difference.
Some words of advice and further comments….
Not all Blu-Rays are created equal. Some Blu-Ray transfers are poorly done (or even worse, some just use the same master they used for the DVD which could be good or bad depending on when and hwo itwas done), so you need to look at reviews of the Blu-Ray discs before buying. If not, you could get a Blu-Ray that looks like a DVD. Also, if you aren’t noticing the difference, you probably don’t have the correct equipment or incorrect placement in respect to the image. HDTV’s that are less than 50 inches will not give you the full effect of 1080p. Also, if you are sitting too far away, you will not notice the difference. Most people are watching Blu-Rays on HDTVs that are 32 inches, and sitting 10 ft away (I am even guilty of this, but it is all I have right now. At least I have the 7.2 surround sound setup that will play the lossless audio…makes all the difference in the world).
Until 4k digital projection and beyond is commonplace…
Is Blu-Ray worth the price and is it important to everyone? That just depends on the person. Is Blu-Ray bullshit? I think not, Jasper.
There are a number of great options for you. For a starter mic, it is incredibly difficult to beat the Rode NTG-2. This is a shotgun mic (highly directional and would be typically mounted on a boom pole). I currently use this mic, and I highly recommend it. The NTG-1 is identical to the NTG-2 with the exception of power options. With the NTG-1, the microphone requires phantom power (which is an external power source), whereas the NTG-2 can use phantom power or battery power (AA). They are almost the same price, so the NTG-2 is a no-brainer.
For recording, you also have a number of options. You can record your audio separately using an external recorder (most popular starters are the Tascam DR-100 and the Zoom H4n) and sync in post later, or you could record directly to camera.
In order to record directly to the camera with an NTG-2, you are going to need at least 2 things: an XLR-1/8" adapter pad (this will allow you to plug directly into the camera and will put your audio signal into the corect output for the camera) and you will need the Magic Lantern firmware hack.
The ML hack is essential, because it allows you to control on-camera audio manually. Out of the box, the T2i has something called AGC that adjust the gain automatically depending on the surrounding noise levels (think of this like autofocus: bad). ML disables AGC so that you can set audio levels manually.
Your favorite title sequence over 3 years ago
2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Cannes Antichrist Reaction about 3 years ago
I wonder if there is going to be more substance to the film than shocking acts of violence and sex. If so, I am interested, but I have yet to hear this is the case.
Go to Comment
What is No Country actually about? about 3 years ago
I have yet to find someone who has mentioned my opinion in th thread yet, so I can give my own interpretation.
There are a few things that struck me. Chigurh was representative of “evil” (obviously). In most Hollywood films, religious teachings, and societal views, evil can go unpunished for only so long. The structure of the film starts off in a manner that is suggestive of a typical Hollywood chase movie:
= protagonist finds something of value = antagonist pursues protagonist for object of value = protagonist outsmarts antagonist = protagonist beats antagonist in final showdown = evil is punished = happy endingEven though the films starts off in typical Hollywood fashion with allusion as to how the film will end, this seems to only be a ploy to set up the real film. Llewelyn is killed, so the protagonist in the encounter does not punish evil. This twist has happened in films before, but the villain is usually punished by other means beyond the grave (i.e. Cruel Intentions). Chigurh then kills Llewelyn’s wife. This is even further past our expectations, but we still know in our heart of hearts that evil will be punished. Then the car scene happens.
The car scene is my favorite of the film, because it lets us know the true intentions of the filmmakers. When Chigurh’s car crashes, “karma” dictates that Chigurh has to go. He does not die (instead, the other person dies). This is when we know that evil truly goes unpunished. There were three chances for equilibrium to be established and for evil to be punished, and it did not happen. This is to reinforce the theme.
When the sheriff is talking about his dream, he is talking about how they are in darkness, and that the light seemed so small compared to the darkness, but that they had to make the fire anyway. This is the statement of the theme:
There is evil in the world, and that evil is more powerful and destructive than anything because evil is not dictated by rules. Evil can get away unpunished. That being said, just because being evil can go unpunished, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be “the light” (be good). Just because Evil > Good, doesn’t mean we should be evil.
Any thoughts? :}
Go to Comment
Soderbergh on Red Camera almost 3 years ago
Film is a technology, not an art. “Film”, whether that be celluloid or digital, is just a medium in which to communicate ideas with. The technlogy does not dictate the content.
I have been a member of the ScarletUser and RedUser (and DVXUser) communities for years now, just to go ahead and give you my bias. The film versus digital debate has been raging for a while now, and it is hard to get both camps to meet on some sort of common ground.
Different uses of technologies can give you different aesthetics. People talk about Mann’s new project as looking “digital” because of the video smear, but if you were to slow down the shutter speed for a film camera, you would achieve similar motion blur. Though blur and video smear may look a little different, they both achieve the same kind of effect. When you slow down the shutter, you are going to create a departure from what we percieve as the “Hollywood look” whether you are shooting film or digital.
From the film camp, it just seems silly that one would want to discredit a new motion image medium. If you take film as an example, there isn’t “one film look”. A different film stock is essentially a completely different look, just as a Red One looks different from a Viper. There isn’t this unified film look out there to conform to.
The main problem with digital has always been dynamic range. The latitude of film has always been higher, but digital is quickly catching up (already has in the still world). If digital can exist or exceed film in the still world, why can’t this happen in the motion picture world?
With the Red One, digital has come exponentially close to film in terms of dynamic range. With the next generation of cameras, digital will have every advantage that film does. At this point, it is using the right tool for the right job. In the end, you will be able to create films that audience members will be able to connect with, regardless of aquisition medium.
For the record, you can do a period piece successfully with digital: i.e. Zodiac. If Mann chooses to slow down the shutter and such with his digital camera, then that is more of his utilization of the medium rather than what is indicative of what the medium can accomplish. (Who is to say what aesthetic is the “right” one, anyway?)
Go to Comment
Movies For the Unemployed almost 3 years ago
I know some here may criticize me for suggesting this, but watching the original Star Wars trilogy always cheers me up. It has a wide range of emotion in it, but none of it is too over the top. There is love, but not overly desperate. There is action, but it isn’t an Arnold movie. There is mystery and suspense, but not overdone. I feel that they are good “balance”-ers, if that makes any sense, especially if you loved the films as a child. :}
Go to Comment
What do you consider to be the best film about Vietnam? almost 3 years ago
Either “Full Metal Jacket” or “Aliens”. I think “Apocalypse Now” was a good film to watch, but I just can’t get over how it’s “Heart of Darkness” wrapped in a Vietnam blanket.
Go to Comment
Avatar over 2 years ago
@ Mike
“All of the “possibilities” you say these achievements can open up are more distractions from real art concerns. By the way, don’t get me wrong when I say the movie camera isn’t important. I love all the great films that I have seen but technology, for me, is never “important.” A man on a desert island with no dvd player and nothing but the complete works of Shakespeare isn’t missing out on anything important because he lacks knowledge about Cameron’s lame advancements.”"
I am going to have to disagree with you here. Film, like any medium, IS technology. Like the telephone, film is simply a medium in which to communicate ideas. The screenplay, the acquisition of images, editing, and projection of said images are all technology to send light into your eyes for your brain to interpret. How these images are manipulated to manipulate you COULD be considered art. To say that technology has nothing to do with anything, and then to mention print immediately after is a contradiction, because print is just another technology: a medium in which to communicate those ideas. How that medium changes affects how communication takes place.
Music, print, film, architecture, etc, are all technology and carry ideas, yet saying this technology doesn’t mean anything, and only the ideas are important is a misunderstanding in my humble opinion. Though a song and a film may have the exact same message, the way this technology interacts with people physically and emotionally are completely different, and that is 100% in the technology. I am not suggesting that technology is or isn’t art, rather that ideas that are communicated have different effects depending on the technology.
That being stated, I am not saying that Avatar will be good or bad (I haven’t seen the film yet), that it will change everything, or that it is the most important film ever made. Time will tell what really matters and what doesn’t.
The main aspect of Avatar that interests me is the advancement of film technology. Stereoscopic cinema has always been a gimmick, with poor execution. A serious attempt to use it for something other than cheap tricks is very important to me. Throughout cinema, we have gotten different advancements: lenses (the ability to use shallow or deep focus, to guide the audience emotionally throughout the piece), digital technology (ubiquitous access to content anywhere), and now maybe stereo cinema. Depth could be used in unique ways to help carry ideas in a new aspect through cinema, we just don’t know yet because it is so new.
“On that note, I will agree to disagree with you about the importance of technology and Cameron’s use of it. This goes for Kubrick and the steadycam and, for me all the way back to the Lumiere’s and others who invented the cinema. None of it is “important.” If the movie camera was never invented we’d all be just fine working our way through In Search of Lost Time for the fifth or sixth time before we started reading the entire works of Balzac or doing something else worthwhile.”
This illustrates the exact opposite of how I feel about cinema and film technology. The more ways you can communicate, the more you CAN communicate. Language (also a technology) is the perfect example of this. The more words you have, the more words you have to chose from and can more clearly and accurately describe what you want to communicate. The more facets and dimensions to film there are, the more ways we can communicate with one another.
I am not suggesting that stereoscopic cinema is the answer to everything, nor that James Cameron’s version of it is the best version, nor that Avatar will or will not be anything, but to say such things and not understand that technology is PIVOTAL in communicating with one another and simply dismiss a film because it is actively trying to expand film technology is an attitude I don’t share. Film is technology, simple as that.
The thing I am hearing the most in this thread is that this film is tripe because it costs a lot of money to make and that it is in 3D, but does that mean that all 2D films that cost less than $100k are somehow better?
Again, film is a technology, no matter what form it takes or how much it costs.
Go to Comment
blu-ray is kinda bullshit over 2 years ago
Alright, just a few thoughts…
First, I want to congratulate Claus Harding, Zot!, and Strawdawg. All three of you have hit points that needed to be made in this thread.
This is not at all to be condescending, but there is some obvious misinformation in film as technology progresses, and this seems to be the point of contention in this thread.
First, let’s talk about the theater and 35mm film. The vast majority of theatrical films shown in the United States have been shot on 35mm film. Claus and Zot! are right, 35mm film is indeed more resolution than Blu-Ray and DVD. This is not really indicative of the theatrical experience, though. Depending on the film stock, grain, and even exposure of a scene, the average range of “resolution” for 35mm film is about 3k-3.5k resolution. When research first began on digital conversion of 35mm film, Kodak (obviously one of the main film stock companies for feature filmmaking) decided that in order to preserve the full quality of 35mm film, you would need to scan 35mm film in at least 4k. This doesn’t mean 35mm film is in fact 4k, but you will be safe capturing the 3k-3.5k of normal 35mm film in an uncompressed 4k DPX file. So yes, the original production stock will be over the 1080p resolution of Blu-Ray. However, after color grading, film manipulation, and the most compromising stage of all (the multitudes of theatrical film prints), what you are ACTUALLY seeing (depending on the care and time period of the film) on the big screen when you are munching on your popcorn is much lower: EVEN AS LOW AS LESS THAN 1080 LINES OF RESOLUTION (1080p, for those who do not know). So if you are watching a film print in a theater, YOU ARE NOT WATCHING a 3k-3.5k 35mm print!
Studios and distribution companies have known about this issue for decades, so when the digital age of filmmaking began, there were some new standards. When features first started doing DIs (Digital Intermediates: The process of scanning 35mm film in order to manipulate the feature electronically, with the intent to either print back out to film, edit digitally and conform the EDL to the film stock, or to export as DPX files for digital theatrical distribution), formats and resolutions had to be decided upon at this point. Since 4K digital scans were taxing (i.e. not really technologically feasible or economical), and the final film print for theatrical distribution contained resolutions around or lower than a 1080p equivalent, the 2K DI standard was applied. When scanning in the original 35mm film (the 3k-3.5k kind), though you lose some resolution in that process (3k-3.5k down to 2k), they knew the end result of theatrical film prints were less than 1080p in the first place, so a 2k scan doesn’t really change the end result. Just so you have an example, Lord of the Rings was shot on 35mm film, and the entire trilogy was scanned in AT 2k RESOLUTION, and printed BACK OUT TO FILM. WHEN YOU SAW LotR IN THEATERS, YOU WERE SEEING A FILM PRINT OFF A 2k SCAN, THEREFORE YOU WERE SEEING LESS THAN 2k WORTH OF RESOLUTION IN THE THEATERS.
I need to pause for a moment to comment on Joseph Lutz’s post: “1920×1080 still doesn’t come close to the resolution of film. 2k? 4k? Closer.”
I think you are misunderstanding your resolutions. Television resolutions measure the vertical height of an image, film standards measure in horizontal resolutions.
1080p: 1920 × 1080
2k: 2048 × 1080
2k has the exact same height as 1080p, it is just a few pixelss squared longer. As for 4k, I have already explained above what resolutions you are actually seeing in theaters.
After talking about theatrical showings of film prints, we can now talk about theatrical showings of digital films. With digital projection, instead of taking in the scanned in 2k DI of 35mm film (or 4k, 2k, 1080p digital prints from films shot digitally) and printing this feature on 35mm film (which will give you a loss of quality), ditigal projectors can display these 2k DPX files natively (i.e. no loss of quality). The 2k digital projection of a scanned in 2k DI is EXACTLY what the studios have. If you are watching a 2k digital projection, you are seeing the film as it was intended for films that go through a DI process. W00t!
So where does this leave Blu-ray? Blu-Ray has a maximum resolution of 1920 × 1080 (1080p). Though this resolution is less than 2k, it is only 7% less resolution than what you would see in theaters IF YOU WERE WATCHING A DIGITAL PROJECTION OF A 2K FILM. The resolution is VERY close to that of a 2k DPX file, and in some clases, may be more resoltution than 35mm prints. In short, Blu-Ray provides an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would see in theaters on a RESOLUTION level if all things (and equipment to present it) are equal. The real differences between the Blu-Ray format and what you see in theaters is compression. The compression of Blu-Rays, though it is absolutely amazing, is still not uncompressed video. This is why in my opinion, though you cannot get a visually equitable or superior image from Blu-Ray versus the theater, what you are getting is VERY DAMN CLOSE.
This leads me to my next point that hasn’t been hit on at all here: audio. Since Blu-Ray discs have so much storage, though they cannot store uncompressed video, they CAN store lossless audio. That’s right, you can get REFERENCE QUALITY AUDIO from Blu-Rays: the same quality you get in theaters. This feature alone gives the end user an experience similar to the thaters.
So what’s the verdict? Blu-Rays give you very close to reference quality video, and definitely provide reference quality audio, the problem is that the format is slightly ahead of it’s hardware counterparts. In my opinion, if you were to play a Blu-Ray disc on the same equipment that you have in the theater (including $30,000 2k Christie digital projectors), you would have an experience VERY CLOSE to what you would expect to see in theaters…so close you may not notice the difference.
Some words of advice and further comments….
Not all Blu-Rays are created equal. Some Blu-Ray transfers are poorly done (or even worse, some just use the same master they used for the DVD which could be good or bad depending on when and hwo itwas done), so you need to look at reviews of the Blu-Ray discs before buying. If not, you could get a Blu-Ray that looks like a DVD. Also, if you aren’t noticing the difference, you probably don’t have the correct equipment or incorrect placement in respect to the image. HDTV’s that are less than 50 inches will not give you the full effect of 1080p. Also, if you are sitting too far away, you will not notice the difference. Most people are watching Blu-Rays on HDTVs that are 32 inches, and sitting 10 ft away (I am even guilty of this, but it is all I have right now. At least I have the 7.2 surround sound setup that will play the lossless audio…makes all the difference in the world).
Until 4k digital projection and beyond is commonplace…
Is Blu-Ray worth the price and is it important to everyone? That just depends on the person. Is Blu-Ray bullshit? I think not, Jasper.
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blu-ray is kinda bullshit over 2 years ago
For theater goers. There are a handful of 4K projectors in theaters right now, and is the direction I think theaters will go.
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Editing Contest almost 2 years ago
I am interested. There is a competition similar to this, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it your own:
http://opencut.org/
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T2i Accessories about 1 year ago
Joseph,
There are a number of great options for you. For a starter mic, it is incredibly difficult to beat the Rode NTG-2. This is a shotgun mic (highly directional and would be typically mounted on a boom pole). I currently use this mic, and I highly recommend it. The NTG-1 is identical to the NTG-2 with the exception of power options. With the NTG-1, the microphone requires phantom power (which is an external power source), whereas the NTG-2 can use phantom power or battery power (AA). They are almost the same price, so the NTG-2 is a no-brainer.
For recording, you also have a number of options. You can record your audio separately using an external recorder (most popular starters are the Tascam DR-100 and the Zoom H4n) and sync in post later, or you could record directly to camera.
In order to record directly to the camera with an NTG-2, you are going to need at least 2 things: an XLR-1/8" adapter pad (this will allow you to plug directly into the camera and will put your audio signal into the corect output for the camera) and you will need the Magic Lantern firmware hack.
The ML hack is essential, because it allows you to control on-camera audio manually. Out of the box, the T2i has something called AGC that adjust the gain automatically depending on the surrounding noise levels (think of this like autofocus: bad). ML disables AGC so that you can set audio levels manually.
That should get you started in your Googling. :}
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