On Digital Projection

Last night, while wait­ing in line to enter Ocean’s Thirteen, I popped into a DLP the­ater show­ing Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. I was only there for a few min­utes, but I was able to form a lim­ited opin­ion of the tech­nol­ogy, which I had never seen in the­atri­cal pro­jec­tion pre­vi­ously. I’m hop­ing to make it to a DLP the­ater this week. A num­ber of rather odd films are play­ing dig­i­tally, includ­ing Pirates, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Shrek the Third, and even Ocean’s Thirteen at one the­ater. Having seen 2 film pro­jec­tions of Ocean’s, this might be my best option for an objec­tive analy­sis, but we’ll see. It makes sense that a Soderbergh film come out in DLP as he is such an advo­cate of the tech­nol­ogy. Shrek the Third also makes sense as it orig­i­nates in a com­puter, though I’d argue the chem­i­cal out­put only adds to the look. Fantastic Four was par­tially shot on Panavision’s Genesis so it’s only fit­ting it’s out­put as close to its acqui­si­tion. Pirates is the only sore thumb in this pack to me. While its mass appeal may be used to draw audi­ences into this new screen­ing envi­ron­ment, it seems almost against the visual stylings of the film itself.

For a block­buster epic in these the­aters these days, I’d argue that Pirates has an even higher filmic (read chem­i­cal) cache than most of whats out there. I dis­agree with the reliance on Kodak’s 5218, or rather it’s being treated as some­thing more than it in fact is, but nonethe­less, one can­not escape the organic char­ac­ter danc­ing through­out each and every scene: the film itself. In some scenes, the grain was so large, it appeared as though they had a can­dle in the room and pushed it 3 stops. They played around with the blacks a lot, some­times even get­ting rid of it on the palate alto­gether, to be replaced with a milky blue sub­stance, for bet­ter or worse. And of course, need I men­tion the salt lake? Verbinski has this knack for incor­po­rat­ing avant garde cin­ema in his work, and this pow­er­house sequence, incor­po­rates all the nuanced stop range that neg­a­tive film offers (which is higher than any video for­mat, period).

But for one rea­son or another, (Disney’s vast resources or Bruckheimer’s vast ego) the film is being screened where avail­able in DLP. Most audi­ence mem­bers don’t seem to care often won­der­ing why the movie times include the abbre­vi­a­tion “DIG:” before the title. Some even believed it to be pro­nounced the way one digs a ditch, not rec­og­niz­ing the rev­o­lu­tion happening.

And Finally, let me tell you what I saw. I for­get if it was Rodriguez or Soderbergh who said when they sat at their KEM, they were dis­traught to find an audi­ence would never see a cut of the film as clean as the one they would view and edit, for once the prints get struck and then get mailed and played and moved around. there is some nat­ural degra­da­tion. The idea behind dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion is to keep the image as clean as it can be, pre­serv­ing every bit of infor­ma­tion from acqui­si­tion through exhi­bi­tion. I can report that the image was very clean. Sterile is a more accu­rate descrip­tion. In the world of DLP, of course, the cig­a­rette burn is a thing of the past, for there are no longer reels worry about. To be hon­est, even for all my cin­e­matic nos­tal­gia, I’m happy to see the cig­a­rette burn go. While it’s a nice marker to see how long you’ve been planted, with­out leav­ing the world of the film by look­ing at your watch, I’ll be fine giv­ing an audi­ence every frame of the film with­out one every 15 min­utes or so with a large black dot. Otherwise, it was a life­less expe­ri­ence. It was lit­er­ally a giant DVD. The film had no life, no char­ac­ter. But on top of that, there appears to be an encoding/telecine prob­lem with this pro­jec­tion sys­tem. Don’t get me wrong, it looks REALLY good. This is not a home the­ater pro­jec­tor by any means. However, since the films are being com­pressed down to fit in media for pro­jec­tion, there are points I could notice the encod­ing show­ing through too strong. I also spend 7 hours a day look­ing at var­i­ous for­mats of video so I’m picky. There is a slightly con­fus­ing flicker through­out and quick cam­era move­ments get lost some­where in the pro­jec­tion. I don’t want to use the word ghost­ing, but some­thing along those lines I guess I would say happens.

All in all, I felt like I was watch­ing a DVD, not hav­ing the the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence I’m used to. I have always said that it is the com­mu­nal aspect of the the­ater that makes it a spe­cial expe­ri­ence, and while I still agree with that I would also have to say that see­ing some­thing one can­not repli­cate at home is another allure to not wait­ing for the DVD. When TV came along, we wor­ried, then Jaws hap­pened. When VHS came along, we wor­ried, then came 3D (again, actu­ally) and dig­i­tal sound. Now we have DVD, and dig­i­tal sound is now in many homes, and the fear is that one can build a home the­ater that rivals the the­ater for very lit­tle money (see Hollywood Ending). Now, it appears we are bring­ing the home the­ater into the mul­ti­plex. If DLP con­tin­ues down this path and takes off, then there really will be no rea­son not to wait for DVD (read Blu Ray) for most film goers. 35mm is not nearly as dead as many would like you to think. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see the num­bers on DLP the­aters I suppose.

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Reading:

Philip Roth

Zuckerman Unbound