The Ohio Sci-Fi and Horror Marathons

I split this line of discussion off into it's own topic. I figure that it's going to be one of the major Marathon debates for some time to come. Have at it! -Joe

I missed last year's sci-fi and this year's horror, but my only request is less video projection than what I hear happened last April. I know 35 mm prints are hard to find sometimes, but they aren't impossible. A few years ago, from what I hear, The Thing From Another World was video projection because Jeff didn't want to pay the extra cost for a print. That kind of stuff will kill the marathons. I think only premieres of films where there aren't any prints should be shown on video. It took over 20 years to find the print of Logan's Run but we did.

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If a 35MM print is available than YES the marathons should be showing those and the cost of the print should be factored into the cost of the tickets, However if there is no print available (like with GREEN SLIME) than I have no objection to video projection (pardon the ryhm). I hope video projection does not become the standard for the marathons for years to come but we all have to face facts 35MM is going away and it won't be long before video projection is the standard world wide.

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"That kind of stuff will kill the marathons."

That is a very concise and correct analysis. For me, there should be no argument over film prints versus video projection. If more than half of the lineup is on video then to me there is really no point. Vintage prints are more difficult to find and probably exponentially more expensive than in the recent past. However, there are many ways to balance this out, but in recent years, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Granted, the way the industry is nowadays, it is so much easier to get independent stuff out there digitally without the added cost of striking film prints without any distribution model in place. But then I would argue, if that is the case then dispense with the 4 or 5 digitally projected "premieres" that are clogging up the lineup. One or two is fine, but the odds are stacked against all of them being good when you fill half your lineup with independent features. As I mentioned before, it is ironic that one of the highlights last year was a FILM print of Stingray Sam which wasn't even framed in widescreen, go figure.

Along with that is the added headache of having to stack all of the "premieres" at the front of the lineup, which leads to awkward scheduling mishaps (specific to last year, the gorgeous print of Battle in Outer Space lost in the middle of the night and the dreadful Galaxina at 8AM where it had absolutely zero chance of being any kind of "guilty pleasure" for the year).

So, yes, if you were trying to sell a newbie on the marathons, then last year's SciFi is a terrible example to lead with. My guess is that the planning stages were not given a whole-hearted effort last year, for whatever reason.

For what it is worth, I have decided to skip the spring SciFi marathon next year in favor of hopefully attending a Joe Neff produced blockbuster Horror marathon next fall, which I know is still a passion project all-around and is thought out months in advance.

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I guess my point is that eventually 35MM will not be the standard and most theatres won't even have 35MM projectors anymore and those that keep them around will have a hard time finding parts to keep them running, especially the bulbs. When this happens I hope the marathons don't die, YES I prefer 35MM over video projection but the time will come when 35MM simply is not an option and I hope when that day arrives that Marathon Goers will understand and still attend.

For me the marathon has always been about the event itself and not necessarily the films being shown, I am only human so I do complain from time to time when I don't like the line up and I get frustrated that JASON X has not shown yet (35MM are available) but year after year I still attend regaurdless because the event is fun no matter what films are being shown or what format they are in.

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THE DEVILS played in L.A. in August. It shows up here every few years. Who knows why they make it hard to book in other cities (heck, it's been a hard-to-find on home video title as well).

As to 35mm vs. DVD Projection. A coupla points.

1. The cost of booking and shipping (a BiG hidden price) has grown exponentially over the years. As revival houses have become virtually extinct, studios keep fewer and fewer prints. Therefore......

2. Studios routinely offer DVDs to show. Unfortunately, cost-cutting theater owners are more and more willing to jump at the opportunity to show DVDS. It becomes a vicious cycle for honest Film Print First theater owners - the more and more DVDs become the norm, the less and less they are offered 35mm prints and the MORE and MORE said film prints cost.

3.DVD projection should be limited. What I think most people object to is taking a standard DVD, a so-so DVD player and blowing it up to fill a movie screen. I don't want to fly across country to see a DVD that is sitting on my bookshelf shown at the Marathon, when I can see it at home. Yes, there are the occassional "Premieres" where you "have no choice", but they should be the exception and not the rule.
SLEEP DEALER played in both Boston and Ohio. Both on DVD. It's a decent movie. There ARE 35MM prints. Maybe, it warranted showing once on DVD, not 3 times (in Boston it played both the Marathon and the Pre-Festival)! The Boston & Ohio powers-that-be should have told the distributors to fork over their precious 35mm print - or, shove their dvd up their @$$!

4. There is DVD projection, and then there is DIGITAL projection. DVD projection, no matter how good the player is limited by resolution that is geared for a 40 inch TV. Professional Digital Projection is a whole other matter. I, for one, still feel that it is inferior to 35mm film (it still has problems with contrast and has murky blacks in dark scenes), but a true top-of-the line system is pretty good. Once studios start making digital transfers of their archive prints, then the game will change. Until then - DVD projection should be used sparingly.

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I think most of us agree that 35 or 16mm prints are preferable to DVD projection. I also think most of us understand that sometimes prints simply aren't available. But I think that an older film should either be shown on film or not at all. There are so many titles out there that have yet to play that it seems silly to play a DVD of something when there are prints available of other films. Living in Chicago, like LA obviously, we are a bigger market and there are more revival houses and bigger audiences for older films that make the cost of film less prohibitive. For example: I know for a fact that "They Live" has screened 3 times on 35mm over the last 4 years here but it has yet to play a marathon. I think most marathoids would agree that they'd rather see a print of that play than the next Lost Skeleton sequel premiere. With Logan's Run, we begged every year but we never gave in and I'm glad we eventually got to see a beautiful 35mm print. The prints are out there if we just search harder and be patient. I personally would rather see 35mm films that have screened before (let's say 8+ years before) than settle on video of some dubious premiere. What do you think?

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As much as I would love to see "They Live" on 35MM this year at the Sci-Fi marathon it probably won't be shown because John Carpenter failed once again to be voted into the Hall of Fame at the horror marathon even with "Prince of Darkness" being the event closer, seems most Sci-Fi fans just don't appreciate the Genius filmaking of John Carpenter.

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It's an imperfect analogy, but in many ways the film vs. video debate is much like the vinyl vs. cd/digital debate. Records that are mastered properly on vinyl (especially if they were recorded in an analog format) generally sound better and have more warmth than digital files on cd's (or even more degraded mp3s). In the same manner, a nice print of a film that is shown in a good system generally looks better and has more warmth than one projected in a digital format.

You'll notice that the major sticking point for both superior formats is in their presentation systems. For years, vinyl gained an unfair reputation as a flawed format because of all its supposed clicks, pops and scratches, even though anyone who's taken proper care of a vintage vinyl record can attest to its superior sound. It also didn't help when mass market turntables and stereos became cheaper and of lesser quality, resulting in greater access to the product but also the greater likelihood that the average user would experience much lesser fidelity. It's ironic that in an age where the visual and aural strengths of home video presentations continues to grow by leaps and bounds, we're plunging further and further in the opposite direction when it comes to home audio. And this doesn't even touch on the brickwalling that's so common to modern recording, which compounds the lossy sound of most digital formats (although, granted, well-mastered cd's can still sound very nice).

I could go on for awhile, but the main point is that film has suffered the same fate. As L.A. so succinctly pointed out, it's an expensive medium, and in this era of diminished repertory houses, it's becoming more financially trying for studios to maintain full print archives. But part of film's seemingly flawed reputation (at least in comparison to the seeming convenience of digital) is due in large part to poorly maintained and operated projection systems. I'm still stunned to see first run films that have emulsion scratches in only their third week or so at generally well-regarded multiplexes. We've generally lucked out with studio prints at the Marathons, but once in awhile a print that was newly struck in the previous year will come through with scratches or other problems.

Simply put, if more theaters and projectionists took better care of their systems and the films that they play, film might not have as bad a reputation as it's starting to get. The Grandview is proof positive that a properly calibrated system can make films look fairly pristine; David even told Bruce and I that a customer was so impressed by their presentation of Megamind that they wondered if the theater had switched to digital.

Now, much of what I've written is still just preamble to the debate at hand. As others have pointed out, there are more and more independent or low budget films that now shoot on digital and hold digital screenings in the hopes of raising money to finance at least one or two 35mm prints, so there's sometimes no choice when it comes to screening some of them. But L.A.'s Sleep Dealer story also rings true. Blu-ray is, in many ways, a wonderful format. I worked in theaters for eight years, and BR titles like Easy Rider or Red Desert offer a tantalizing facsimile of the filmic experience. I've seen 2001 in 70mm twice, and the BR of it comes oh so close to approximating the experience. But as L.A. also points out, this format is intended for smaller screens, so even blown up it tends to lose something.

There have been a few recent cases where studios have not struck new 35mm prints for a re-release. For some reason, Kino only released the complete Metropolis (a landmark of world cinema if there ever was one) on digital formats. Now, seeing it at the Wexner Center with a sold out crowd was still a magical experience, but having seen the previous version in a gorgeous 35mm print, it's a different beast altogether. And yes, as the studios start to convert rep. titles into high quality digital formats, these questions will keep arising. But in truth, there are still many great 35mm prints of classic and not so classic films out there, whether in studio archives or personal collections. And seeing an image that consists of light passing through a physical object is still a richer experience than the output of a mass of 1's and 0's. We could've shown Day of the Dead on DVD long ago, but waiting to see it in a nice 35mm print was pure movie magic for me. In an era of instant gratification, waiting to see a film print helps the Marathon maintain some of the mojo that's made the event work for so long.

You are correct that digital vs. vinyl is an imperfect analogy, but it is still a good one. This topic brings up another question for me to pose to those of you who know a lot about this stuff than I.

What exactly is the digital format that is used by all those new fangled high falootin' fancy schmancy digital projectors? I mean, do the theaters get a disk of some sort or is it just beamed to the theater from space? (Not literally, but you know what I mean).

What I'm getting at is, is there a huge difference between a standard, studio endorsed digital movie projector and simply buying some sort of BluRay projector at retail and showing a standard, off the shelf BluRay disk?

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I would agree that 35mm is preferable over DVD projection. But pure digital projection will be the future. DVD and Blu Ray discs works better in a home setup.

The fact is that 35mm is going away.

Like a lot of "this will be gone in a few years" pronouncements, digital projection enthusiasts are probably a number of years away from reality -- Particularly, when it comes to vintage titles. It's hard to see the Studios committing to transferring many of their older films to digital any time soon. At least as long as their archive prints haven't disintigrated.

Viva la film!

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There are some theatres that receive their DCI (Digital Cinema Initiative) print via satellite, but the vast majority receive a hard drive in a cradle. The digital print itself uses the JPEG2000 codec. The cradle is plugged in to the DCI server, which in turn feeds the DCI projector. To "unlock" the film, an encryption key is sent to the theatre. Sometimes, those keys are set to only work after a certain time, so as to keep theatres from running a film before 12:01am on its opening day. Going digital is a very expensive endeavor, which wasn't moving quickly to begin with. The Great Recession has set deployments back even further.



Absolutely, their is a major difference. BluRay is effectively limited to 1k resolution in its current form, while "standard" DCI projectors are 2k. Sony and others are rolling out 4k projectors. Studios are making 4k prints available. This starts the cycle all over again. Theatres have to upgrade from 2k to 4k, because a direct competitor has gone 4k. And when Sony releases 8k, it'll repeat. LOOOOOTS of money going to equipment manufacturers, which was the basic goal of DCI to begin with.

35mm equipment can last for decades with marginal maintenance. I know of theatres that are using projectors built in the first decade of the 20th century. The current lifecycle for a digital system is around 2 years, 4 at the outside. That's an awful expensive treadmill.

And keep in mind that 35mm provides a potential resolution magnitudes or order higher than digital. As Joe said, a properly maintained print is nearly always going to be superior to digital. Pixel boundaries are absolute, film grain is not.

And, one should note, digital prints cost the studio just as much as a film print does, since any savings are paid as a "virtual print fee" (VPF) to third party integrators, who in turn provide equipment and services to exhibitors.

Thank you for the informative response. Knowing all this now, it really makes me wonder why they are pushing for this change which seems cost prohibitive even in spite of the arguably inferior quality.

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Heh, that's what exhibitors have been asking all along -- "Why do we need it, and who's going to pay for it?"

Another parallel problem is on the production side. Digital distribution has led more filmmakers to originate everything on video. This means that, unlike film, they are stuck with that resolution forever. With film, as digital technologies change, you can always go back to the original elements and re-scan. No such thing for video originals.

My movie job history was to manage a video store -- 10 years ago -- so I have to admit some of the technicalities in this thread have been a bit over my head.

But to take it back to a preference as a loyal marathon customer, I prefer film to video. Period.

I don't think a single premiere over the past 10 years (xince the great get that was Frequency) was so important that it was worth seeing on video.

Every premiere in 2010 save one was on video. And I got tired of seeing it. At this point, I would prefer premieres on film, or not at all. I thought Sleep Dealer was fantastic, but at that point, I would have rather have seen a film print of almost anything.

Where I think video should be used is to help fill out the line-up with a classic that may not be available on film. For example, if Metopolis is only available on video, I would accept that, because it is a classic I am itching to see with this audience.

Use video for classics we want to see. Not for premieres we won't really miss. That's my two cents.