READ MORE: The Lost. Unmade & Possible Future Projects Of Quentin Tarantino
The press screening at the Majestic Crest Theatre in Westwood was very near disastrous. By the time the intermission for the picture came around, Twitter was already alight with complaints from those in attendance about the shoddy presentation and other problems throughout the screening. Playlist contributor Russ Fischer was on hand, and he shared his account of what went down. Here’s what he had to say:
——————————
From the very first moment announcing the Overture, it was obvious there was a problem with the projector setup at the Crest. The "overture" title card is a stark artistic rendering of the opening image of the movie: a stagecoach moving across a landscape at the base of a mountain. The mountain was crisp and the letters in the overture" looked good, but the stagecoach, in the lower middle third of the frame, was constantly fluctuating in and out of focus, a small but very noticeable spot.
As the first half of the film ran, that spot was constantly a problem it was always flickering, jittering, and moving in and out of focus, mostly out. The image had big jitter problems overall, most noticeably when the stark letters of chapter titles were onscreen, but also easy to see in other scenes with lots of contrast. One of Tim Roth‘s first big moments takes place over a small table lit with a hot light, and in this presentation that very highlighted part of the image was right in the trouble spot, bouncing and soft, it was impossible to ignore.
As the first half went on, things got worse, with the focus problems sometimes reversing, with that lower middle third spot now crisp, but most of the rest of the frame out of focus. Racking focus from foreground to back is a basic narrative device Tarantino and cinematographer Robert Richardson often use in the film, and that effect was ruined, as there was often nothing in sharp focus.
Meanwhile, the Crest didn’t properly place the matte curtains around the screen, so the top and bottom edges faded off into fuzziness rather than having the crisp delineation those mattes are meant to provide.
After the intermission, the second half of the movie was shown digitally, as the 70mm projection problems simply could not be resolved. But what must be more worrying to the studio is that this isn’t the first time a press screening for "The Hateful Eight" has gone awry. A showing in New York City two weeks ago was reportedly delayed by ninety minutes due to projection woes.
There has been much spilled ink about the efforts by Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and other major filmmakers to preserve film stock and to project on film when they can. But the hurdle will always be that they must convince audiences they are truly getting a noticeably different and presumably better experience than seeing a movie digitally. There’s still a couple of weeks to go, but let’s hope for the sake of "The Hateful Eight" and the investment made to bring back a long dormant format, that audiences will be getting a special experience without any issues, or the big comeback of 70mm may be over before it ever really starts. — reporting by Russ Fischer
Most of these people couldn\’t handle an autothread Super 8 projector, never mind a 70mm! Hire professionals or get the original people back who operated them
Tonight\’s pre-screening at the Park Theater in Vancouver BC went off without a hitch, pardon the pun, and as a former projectionist, felt somewhat like retro-tech porn to consume. Only noticed crows feet style scratches briefly during one real in the 3rd act, otherwise an immaculate presentation that held a depth of detail, a breath of peripheral, and nearly stage theater compositional width I\’ve not personally previously experienced, as sadly I missed Far and Away when those 70mm prints made the rounds.
70mm is great! No doubt about it, you don\’ have to be aCineast in order to enjoy a big clean steadyalmost window like movie. And the 2 Todd AO\’s that were shot at 30 fps looked almost like REAL IMAX in clarity and grainlessness. Why not hoot it in 3fps. 70mm projectors have (most of them) a switch for either speed.
I had a feeling this was to happen…we have too few people left now in this industry with the proper experience with film, especially 70mm format…the proof is always in the pudding…talk is cheap, it\’s experience both technical & projection wise that\’s lacking….
Forget the union. No man or woman can replace gate runners, shoes or file an apature plate on the run. This is all to do with setup in the first place. The target film can be different stock and produce different results than the supplied print.
The Grand Lake theater in Oakland California always has a qualified UNION PROJECTIONIST running the shows at every performance year round.This film will be presented on 70mm projectors that were installed in the 1980s and have been used and properly maintained since then.
Every screening of a movie should, for the sake of optimal immersion, run smoothly of course. But still, there\’s a comfortable irony in this story, because of the inspiration Quentin Tarantino\’s has drawn from celluloid vulnerability, like celluloid burn, early cuts, bad sound et cetera. Furthermore, I think, the union projectionists may have as well started out as just kid pushing buttons. Still, a press screening; you want things to go smooth.
It\’s a sign. The police?
@CHIZZ – Dates participating theaters listed at the bottom in70mmDOTcom/news/2016/hateful_8/index.htm
Man, I want this to work and be awesome. But the truth is that film is hard. It\’s not just the equipment and celluloid. Projecting from film requires knowledge and experience. This used to be a union job for a reason. The theaters got rid of the union projectionists and replaced them with minimum-wage kids who mostly just have to press a few buttons. Training them for a couple days will not be nearly enough knowledge to deal with whatever technical problems arise.
I hope I\’m wrong. I so want this to be awesome.
How many theaters are actually scheduled to play this in 70mm? There was supposed to be a full list issued recently and its absence is certainly troubling in light of these screening problems.