Confirming earlier indications
The Dark Knight's
IMAX sequences would remain largely intact -- full widescreen with the rest of the movie letterboxed --on Blu-ray, director Christopher Nolan pushed for Academy members to receive that version as a screener (why not give them a guided tour
via BD-Live?), prompting Warner to mail them ahead of time offering the option of Blu-ray or DVD. The Hollywood Reporter mentions other studios are thinking about making the switch -- notably Sony regarding Will smith's upcoming
Seven Pounds -- but haven't done anything yet, with concerns about cost and piracy. We wouldn't be surprised to see watermarking systems like the one Fox
recently adopted come into widespread use, as much as studios want to avoid leaks they still want their productions seen in the absolute highest quality, right? Still, the first hurdle is making sure people can actually watch them, the report ends mentioning several members tossed the letter since they don't own a Blu-ray player yet.
[Via
MovieWeb]
posted Sep 28th 2008 12:13PM
Why cant the whole film be "full widescreen"?
Any film in letterbox/2.35:1 is not 1080p in my opinion, unless you count black bars of course.
so you'd rather see a modified version of the movie with the sides chopped off, than the version the filmmaker intended? The point that makes it nice that the IMAX portions of the movie will be intact is that it will be as it was originally shot. To crop the rest of the movie to 16:9 would be just as bad as modifying the IMAX scenes
Any academy member that doesn't own a Blu-ray player by now should have their voting rights revoked. I know the general public may not be ready for 100% adoption with costs being what they are, but for people who this is their job - they can afford a $300 used PS3 by now...
Just because you adopted Blu-ray doesn't mean the academy members have to also, if anything it shows that some of the members actually make choices for themselves and don't let the dictations of the industry tell them what to do, like the bunch of lemmings thinking that Blu-ray is the cat's meow.
@Penguin,
Nah dude, Paul Nick is right. If they are in the film industry, then theres no excuse NOT to want to see the movies you are considering in the BEST quality available for home viewing.
Your comment is complete fail. They ARE the industry you moron.
I have to agree with Penguin on this one. The argument "They must use Blu-ray because it's the highest quality available" thing falls flat when you consider that the same argument can be used to force academy members to buy $20,000 projectors, build home theater rooms, etc. It ignores the fact that a fair percentage of the population, which will inevitably include academy members, cannot see a difference between HD and ED. And, to boot, it's completely ridiculous. If a movie wins over another because it looks better in HD than the other, then, well, methinks the wrong values apply to the voters.
And, just to be clear, I'd be making the same argument if Sony had withdrawn Blu-ray in February, giving the field to HD DVD.
This is just silly.
At one point the studios were shipping special DVD players to academy members so they could ship DVDs with a DRM incompatible with regular DVD players, in an attempt to deal with screeners being used for piracy. I'm surprised they're not doing something similar here anyway.
Academy members should either view movies in their original format or the best possible representation of it. Which at the moment means Blu Ray. I don't see why they couldn't ship two disks for screeners if it was such an issue, or ask each member for their personal preference. Hell, just buy the tight fisted misers an HD TV and a BD player to watch their free movies on.
Nobody gives a crap about this!!!!!
orly?
There are a great deal of members of the AMPAS and BAFTA who fall under categories like; make up, costume design, carpenters, special effects, etc. who may wish to vote but under the rules are not allowed to unless they have actually seen the films. That is why screeners are sent out.
These people are not always those interested in technology for its own sake and so may not have upgraded to a high definition disc player. They may have chosen the other format, or they may favour digital downloads/something else.
I think it is a good idea to offer something like this as an *option* vs standard DVDs, it being closer to the cinematic experience. I know BAFTA run screenings in their building for those that like to see the films as intended, although in the case of IMAX films they might have to resort to booking the BFI I suppose :-)
Now onto the specifics of aspect ratio, well the visual effects scenes are reported as being done at up to '5.6K' which means 5616x4096 for the IMAX formatting or about 1.37:1, the other Anamorphic material would nominally be 2.35:1 (for negative/camera aperture). When projected these both get cropped and so the ratios can change, but in neither case can they be 'HD' 16:9 (1.7777...:1) without some kind of black adding or image cropping.
I suppose this is good, IF the members have Blu-Ray players. Of course they only need profile 1.0 players because they'll just be watching the movie and nothing else. So, what do they do if they don't have a blu-ray player?
If this means Blu-ray versions of movies come out quicker, I'm for it!