Background
Alasdair Lawrance went to see the British Film Institute restored version of “2001 – A Space Odyssey” .at Birmingham Big Screen (maybe a bit off-topic as this is a film.). He was asked if it was in Super Panavision 70: Alasdair said that the credits said it was “Cinerama”.
Alasdair Lawrance
The credits said it was Cinerama, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t 3-strip, as there were no joins visible. Was there ever a ‘single lens’ Cinerama? The Birmingham Big Screen used to be Imax, but it’s not now. The image was about 80′ by perhaps 50′? Hard to tell, but I assume the ‘print’ was Panavision 70mm. I don’t know if it was from a DVD or over the web, as I believe a lot of films are these days.
The monkeys did show their age and provenance more than I remember. We’ve been spoiled with all the “Planet of the Apes” films, I suspect.
Hugh Sheppard
I think there WAS a ‘single lens’ Cinerama, as I once went to a movie badged as that, which had nothing like the breadth. With the original, despite the 3 strips, being able to sit near the front and look to the left or to the right was magic.
Chris Woolf
It was intended to be 3-strip, but changed at an early stage to Super Panavision 70.
Graeme Wall, Barry Bonner.
The DVD credits say Super Panavision. According to Wikipedia it was presented in 70mm Cinerama in selected theatres. The Blu-ray version is high definition 2.2:1 1080p with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.
Chris Woolf
3-strip Cinerama didn’t last very long. The Cinerama brand hung on significantly longer than the obviously flawed original technology. The limitations of multiple linked cameras and projectors, the impossibility of close-ups or the use of zooms, the heavy distortion for most of the audience (etc) killed it pretty quickly.
What a shame that people using similar systems for generating 3-D (effect) haven’t read up history and recognised a similar short life.
Bill Jenkin
This is the IMDB tech specs page for “2001 …”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/technical
I also remember being told by Mitch Mitchell that for the Stargate sequence they used a VistaVision camera in some way to produce some of the effects but can’t remember quite how – some sort of slit-scanning process, I believe.
Alec Bray
70mm.
The “Coming of Age” DVD release of “2001 – A Space Odyssey” included a frame from the film print – here are the front and back of the frame mount.
(Click on the picture below to see a larger or clearer version of this picture:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the newly opened picture.)
Front:
Back:
The booklet with the DVD states the following:
“…Filmed in Super Panavision 70 and Todd-AO and exhibited in 70mm Super Cinerama, 2001 – A Space Odyssey premiered on April 2, 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C…”
Alec Bray
This is from a page in the DVD booklet …
“… The Digital Component Video Master of “2001 A Space Odyssey” was created from a new 35mm Reduction lnterpositive, manufactured directly from the 65mm Super Panavision Original Camera Negative.
The 2.2:l aspect ratio of the Original Camera Negative was retained in the 35mm Reduction and in the video transfer.
The 35mm lnterpositive was scanned directly to Digital Component Videotape using a Spirit datacine. A Pogle Platinum system was used in color correction.
The soundtrack was restored and remastered digitally from the original 35mm 6-track stereo magnetic soundtrack masters.
Dialogue and effects information was sourced from the separate 35mm magnetic (“stem”) units. Music cues were sourced from the original orchestral recording sessions. … “
Bernard Newnham
“2001 – A Space Odyssey” was first shown on TV one Christmas on BBC1. I was due to make the trail, and went to an Ealing viewing theatre to watch it again with the Purchased Programmes woman who hadn’t seen it before. She was making a big deal about showing it pan and scan. I was horrified. When it got to the bit where the Pan Am shuttle is docking I said, “Surely you can’t do that”. She decided to ask Kubric who apparently suggested full width with a star field in the upper and lower black borders.
The result was awful, and future 4:3 showings were in a compromise size with black borders.
Patrick Heigham
I recall going to see ” Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” at the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road. That had a very wide curved screen, but I think only a single projector – that could well have been 70mm Anamorphic.
In 1972-3 or so, I worked on “Fiddler on the Roof” and there was a crew screening at the Odeon, Haymarket, and the print was 70mm, not sure if that was ‘flat’ or squeezed, but the original shoot was 35mm Panavision anamorphic.
AMPS members who attended the AMPS arranged visit to the Bradford Film Museum, some years ago, would have experienced their Cinerama 3-strip theatre. This showed the original “This is Cinerama” promo with the rollercoaster ride, but the jitter between the three images was dire. There was a sawtooth edge to each side of the picture gate, which was engineered to move up and down, intended to smooth out the projected join.
It’s useful to check this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinerama
There was another Cinerama film I saw, “South Seas Adventure” which impressed me with a particular sound cut. A military band was filmed with cameras at ground level, the band walking over, the audio was magnificent. The next cut, to a shot from the top of a hill, had the band as a small item in one bottom corner of the frame. The sound followed to bottom right, very distant – very effective!
It’s worth remembering when you visit a cinema, that the optimum viewing position is dead centre, and halfway between the screen and projector, since the projection lens is twice the focal length of the standard 50mm camera (35mm film) lens. Thus the picture subtended will comfortably fit into your eyes’ normal acceptance field.
The Greek mathematicians strove to work out the ‘Golden Rectangle’ and came up with a relationship of width to height of 1.62 ish.
Thus:
4:3 doesn’t work (1.33:1)
Cinemascope definitely doesn’t (2.66:1)
Today’s anamorphic (1.85:1) just a bit wider.
TV 16×9 is 1.77:1 also a tad wider than the golden ratio
TV 14×9 is 1.56 a bit less
IMAX seems to be rather squarer (1.43:1) and I do not agree with their website definition of Cinemascope, they say 2.40:1
IMAX film when I had a back-stage tour, was 70mm running horizontally. A whole new system of film advance was invented, as there could not be claws grabbing the film, bringing it to rest in the gate, and accelerating away. A flicking of the film loop was arrived at, momentarily stilling the film in the gate. For 3D, two projectors and polarising filters with a silver surface screen.
Why I am concerned about aspect ratios:
2 reasons;
I needed projection screens that I wouldn’t have to spend time on constructing edge black masking.
I get annoyed when TV broadcasts do not adjust the transmitted aspect ratio between different sources.
Bernie Newnham
When the first Imax in London opened we filmed an item for “The Frame”, an arts programme. The projection room had green strip lights, and I had the first Canon XL1 in the UK. The white balance machinery couldn’t cope, and the colours just went round and round whatever I did. We had to interview the projectionist in the corridor.
Chris Woolf
The first 3-strip system was much earlier than Cinerama – 1927 for Abel Gance’s “Napoleon”. Gance was no more able to hide the joins than later enthusiasts, so he made sure the scenes were different pictures, albeit that the projectors were fully synced. Aspect ratio was 3 x 1.33 = 1:4
The various attempts to hide joins using edge blurring, missing screen strips etc, have all been pretty hopeless. The only projection method capable of stitching 3-strip together is “digital”, in which case analogue film is a little pointless.
I always find it surprising how early a lot of impressive techniques – widescreen, synced multiple source sound, colour etc were tried out – very often 20-30 years before they became mainstream. Sometimes that was because of outside influences – war etc – but often because people were generally satisfied with the existing technology and it was the ~content~ that an audience wanted. That’s something that seems to have been forgotten.
Hugh Sheppard
When 625 came in, I can recall standing around a studio monitor with other crew 6 members, when we thought that the picture wasn’t any better than 405. Slowly we began to appreciate that it was texture rather than sharpness that had improved.Then with colour: working with Tony Stanley and Ken Howe on the huge RCA NTSC cameras, we soon reached the conclusion that b + w was so much better – and colour would never catch on.
Chris Woolf
Indeed. But in those days even moderately geeky people like us had an interest in content. You couldn’t just put any old bit of rubbish up and assume that people would watch it (or listen to it) just because it had “more lines”, (unrealistic) colour, or a version of 3D (if you stayed still and wore silly glasses).
Although the amount of belief-suspension, due to the cutting in of film, basic sets etc, required was large I can remember the acting, writing, performing and production quality of much TV stuff in the 1960s and 1970s being amazing. In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s people went to the cinema because they wanted to see the “stories” – they didn’t care if the pictures were still mostly monochrome and the sound cut off at 8kHz.
You can argue that our snacking culture has pervaded even our cultural lives, that manufacturers have become too involved and can only profit by the introduction of yet new formats – holographic-3D, infinite Sound SensioRama (copyright, thank you!) – we don’t bother to consume programmes as we used to. Instead we now have a vast array of technologies but staggeringly little content, and nibble a totally unsatisfying bit of burger TV when we can be bothered.
Alasdair Lawrance
A long time ago, I remember a broadcast interview with Morecambe and Wise, and they made the point that they could do a whole summer season of variety with one script essentially, and top and tail it with a couple of gags from the news and the local paper in Blackpool (or where-ever). Now, each of their TV shows needed a whole new set of jokes every week, albeit with the odd running gag – the harmonica player, for example. (“Not now, Alfred….”).
T|V is so voracious it inevitably reaches the bottom more quickly. That’s why shows like ‘The News Quiz’ and HIGNFY are successful – they have plenty of new material every week to draw upon, and (almost) all the audience will know about it.
Roger Bunce
And in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, of course, the News TV Screens were portrait format!
Alex Thomas
I began my BBC career in Lime Grove TK alongside Keith Swadkins who was an expert in Cinerama.
He also used 9.5 mm Pathe for film making and, I believe, ground his own lenses to make an anamorphic 9.5 mm system.
When TK became a total engineering set up, we TK operators transferred to Tech Ops under Potts and Mc Cullough and Keith went to Manchester. I occasionally met him on OBs with the Manchester units and he hadn’t lost any of his enthusiasm for 9.5mm and Cinerama.
Alasdair Lawrance
The cameraman is still ignored when Academy (4:3) framed content is ‘wide screened’ willy-nilly by people, somewhere, who obviously neither know or care. We spent ages trying to frame stuff properly and it’s apparently OK to show it in any aspect ratio that comes to hand. I can’t think of any other historic documents that are treated so carelessly.
