Michael Bay plans The Dark Knight-style IMAX sequences for Transformers 2 Blu-ray
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jul 24th 2009 2:28PM
posted Jul 24th 2009 2:28PM
Hope you liked The Dark Knight's treatment of its shot-for-IMAX scenes, as it may be a trend. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen director (and Blu-ray fan for life) Michael Bay has stated that among other unspecified extras, the disc release will see similar frame filling transfers that let viewers see top to bottom. This is your chance to be heard, are you a fan, or just want everything in one aspect ratio?
I'm all for it. The more pixels on my TV being used, the better.
Hell yeah, I really enjoy the full HD screen usage, but I'm still a fan of proper 16:9 at heart because of the bad taste left in my mouth from cable "HD" stations.
I'd say easily 85% of the stuff you see on cable, even movie stations, billed as "HD" are really the original 16:9 film just cropped/pan+scanned to full screen "720p." Don't even get me started on the stretched out 4:3-->16:9 aspect ratios, somehow making Peter Griffin look even fatter...
I can't wait until providers finally get their head out of their asses. Just one more reason to stockpile my own media and not have cable.
Bay has found a way to fill the screen with more suckage !
Show meeeee the pixels!
Bay needs to be stopped from directing movies. Let him do the special effects where he belongs
The Dark Knight is currently one of the only Blue ray movies that are worth the extra price because of the IMAX screens, so I say Bring It On!
Confirmed a month ago. Read article with Bay quotes at The Blu-ray Blog:
http://www.theblurayblog.com/2009/06/michael-bay-talks-transformers-2-revenge-of-the-fallen-blu-ray-confirms-shifting-aspect-ratios/
What pisses me off is the fact that the movie isn't in 16x9 in the first place! And before anyone gets high and mighty on me, I realize that a movie theather is bigger and wider so the movies are shot in a wider format. Blah blah.
It's b.s. when you spend thousands of dollars on a tv only to have bars on the top and bottom during a kick ass movie.
The reason many movies are shot in anamorphic is not because of the movie theater lay out; it is because the human brain sees better horizontally than vertically. It is much easer to see action moving across the screen rather than up and down; that is just how our eyes work.
Originally, Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) televisions were in a 4:3 ratio because of the CRT technology at the time, while films have almost always been in widescreen because they were projected, thus they could be in widescreen. The 4:3 aspect ratio never was intended to stick as a standard format for media; it was just settled with due to CRT limitations of the past.
Once LCD technology came to displays, most computer manufactures switched to a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio due to the fact that it is easier for us to organize information horizontally, as mentioned before.
For those looking for credibility, I just graduated from Purdue University in Pre-Med Honors Biology with a 3.8 GPA, so I have taken many classes involving the anatomy and physiology of the human eye as well as the neuroscience of the visual parts of the brain.
And my point remains. People are unhappy with black bars on their televisions.
Additionally, I am humbled by your eloquent yet arrogant reference to what school you went to, you GPA and your studies. Now that you have graduated it's time to learn two more things:
A: Your GPA will never ever matter again
B: People are pissed about black bars on their tv's
The standard disc should be in 16x9 and the minority of people who have 2.35:1 should figure something else out. It makes no sense to leave the mass of 16x9 owners with black bars. Rather, those who own 2.35:1 should deal with black bars on the right and left.
I'm not pissed about having bars. If you are, I'm sure either your TV or BD player have a zoom function, so use that.
Zoom? Yeah, that will make it look better *note the sarcasm*
In reply to Max;
Nice and arrogant. And wrong. Most films were presented in the "Academy Ratio" of about 4:3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_ratio) all the way through 1953; when 'widescreen' formats like the "Flat Ratio" were introduced by the film industry to combat the threat from that new-fangled television gadget.
Also, our eyes see just as well vertically as they do horizontally. Each eye sees pretty much a circle. Only since (most of us) have two of them placed apart from each other horizontally on our faces, do we see the world in "wide" mode.
Well you are either suggesting the majority of Blu-ray discs be sold as cropped or open-matte to fit 16:9 or are calling for directors everywhere to abandon 2.35:1 in favor of 16:9. It's highly unlikely either will come true, so if you personally want a 16:9 experience, use the zoom. And yes, I'm aware it would be pretty crappy.
Blu-ray is about bringing the director's vision home with a quality never before possible. (Except maybe DTheater, but that didn't have lossless audio, and was just 1080i mpeg2)
The black bars are needed in order to show the image as the director intended. Cropping the sides or filling in the top and bottom changes the composition of the scene, and thereby compromises the director's artistic vision. Although it's arguable that Micheal Bay has no artistic vision to compromise, there are some other films that would suffer from cropping to fill a wide-screen television.
@FLskydiver
Indeed you are correct about Academy Ratio, and I apologize for my error. While it is true that the human eye can see just as well horizontally as vertically, the efficiency of viewing horizontal motion is much greater than vertical motion. This makes evolutionary sense considering that most land animals, including humans, have spent most of their time looking laterally along the terrain for food, danger, etc. The eye stays focused along the horizontal axis and the eyelids and/or eyebrows do not have to move to account for vertical movement. This is also why most current languages are written horizontally. Reading a newspaper with words going up and down would be a much more strenuous task. In short, the human body "likes" to do the easiest thing, and horizontal motion is easier to track than vertical motion.
I also apologize for sounding "arrogant" and providing my credentials. You never know who posts on Engadget anymore, and I have seen my fair share of mindless, illogical statements in the comments over the years. I do commend you for doing the research and correcting me, in all seriousness. It is nice to have an engaging discussion in the comments for a change. Learn something new everyday...
Tough. It is the director's choice, not yours. If you don't like it, don't watch it. If it is really that bothersome to you, zoom it in. If you are watching an HD source, it won't look that bad.
Most films these days, even if they are shot and released in theaters with a 2.35 aspect ratio, are actually framed for 16.9 so the yahoos who complain about the black bars at the top and bottom can watch it full screen without missing anything in the shot. However, there are many, many, many films that are shot utilizing the full 2.35 frame. Zoom that in and you can end up missing crucial parts of the image. Or watch a conversation between two people with only half their heads in the frame. Again, it is your choice how you want to watch it, but it isn't your choice how it is shot. So deal with it and don't ruin the experience for others.
I know it is "market uber alles," but I am sick and tired of whiny consumers ruining my ability to enjoy a film as it was intentionally shot. Back in the early days of VHS, finding widescreen copies of films was hard. So I had to go to Laserdisk, where the masses stayed away and let me enjoy films how the directors intended them to be seen and heard (as close as could be done in a home theater environment at least). I was relieved when DVD caught on as strongly and quickly as it did. Now the duncehead masses want to screw up HD? Thanks. Why don't you all stick to downloads/streaming crap and leave the high end products to those who will appreciate it.
As for Bay's plans for Transformers 2, I will say the same thing as I did about the Dark Knight: Give me the option to enable or disable the aspect ratio switching and I won't care. This fancy new technology should make that effortless for the disk authors.
Max,
Interesting comments. I'll take your word for it that the brain interprets horizontal movement differently than vertical movement, as I have no knowledge one way or the other. But being pretty familiar with vertical movement myself, I've never noticed any difficulty resolving whatever cloud, cliff face or antenna I happened to be plummeting past. At least, any more so than I'd have resolving roadside objects whizzing past the side windows of my car.
There are some pretty common languages written vertically - so I'm not sure that what you say about language is necessarily true. Chinese, for example, is written and read vertically most probably because it was the most practical and comfortable way to write while simultaneously rolling / unrolling the scroll with the now-writing hand. It is becoming more common to see languages like Chinese written horizontally these days, but that's probably due more to the globalization of western influence and computers than the way our peepers work.
Speaking of peepers, it is my understanding that movement is detected most easily in the peripheral. When we actually look at a moving object, it doesn't really move much anymore because our eyes (in their sockets) and heads (on it's remarkably flexible stalk of a neck) tend to track it and keep it centered in our vision. Detail is seen in the center, movement in the peripheral. At least my layman's understanding.
But all of this is pretty Off-Topic. The reason it is cool to watch movies in widescreen is because "widescreen" is how we see the world. If we developed with eyes one above the other instead, we'd prefer "tallscreen". I don't think movement has anything to do with it at all.
*noN-writing hand.
well i spent 1000's of dollars on a 2.35:1 anamorphic set-up and i want my stuff in 2.35:1 or in 16:9 but not switching between the two...
Bay forgets that there is a large segment of home cinema enthusiasts that project on large movie screens rather than watch on TV. This back and forth from 1.85 to 2.35 is utter nonsense.
This is nothing more than an exercise in CGI with a hot broad and a snot nosed kid playing hero.
Yeah, but the vast, vast, VAST majority of blu ray owners have regular 16:9 tv screens, and nobody cares about the minority.
At first, The Dark Knight took a little getting used to with the fullscreen shots, but in the end, the switch in aspect ratios can be very effective for some scenes. If the director does it correctly, it can be a very powerful tool for enhancing the cinematic experience, as evident in The Dark Knight.
Anything Michael Bay wants, I want the opposite.
Sadly, many movie theaters these days - particularly the movieplex breed - mask the screen vertically at the top and bottom to create a 2.35 image - meaning the screen is considerably smaller. Very disappointing when the electric masks do their thing just before the movie begins.
It's always nice when curtains start moving back to reveal a larger screen for 2.35 movies. That's the way it should be!
Too bad the IMAX scenes weren't really anything spectacular, at least in the theater. Michael Bay is like a 6 year old on crack with the camera, cuts scenes every two seconds. I found myself lost in the action, and trying to figure out what was what, and by the time I figured it out, the scene had changed already.
Stuff rendered or shot with IMAX should linger and let the viewer take it all in. Chris Nolan understands that and held shots much longer with Dark Knight, and really used the technology to great effect. The few scenes where Bay chose to use IMAX resolution, I felt it was largely useless, and other scenes that I wished were in IMAX were not.
Anyway, hopefully the BD will be better. Smaller screen = easier to track? Maybe.
I agree with you 100%. In a way you just float through Transformers. Things look cool and they blow up real loud but Dark Knight was a great visual and audible experience.
Some directors can cut action extremely well - Christopher Nolan, Paul Greengrass, Martin Campbell come to mind. From one shot to the next you can generally follow the action even if its cut fast. Movies like Bourne are a master class in how to do action properly.
Then you have people like Michael Bay who couldn't produce a coherent action scene if his life depended on it. What's annoying are the apologists who pretend this is intentional or that you have to be young to get it. Nonsense, the guy is simply a bad director and incompetent even for what he's most reknowned which is big explody action sequences. There are plenty of other directors who could pull it off better, and they'd probably find time to ensure the script made sense and the actors acted too.
I had a lot of trouble watching that movie too, didn't understand a darn thing going on. Everything kept blowing up, Shai kept getting nervous/screaming (P.S., he sucks just about as bad as Bay), and Meg Fox is still a two-bit whore. Luckily, I made out for the first half of the movie. As soon as the two of them were walking through the desert and he said "it's about two miles away!", I decided I would rather walk to the exit of the theater than watch any more of that trash.
They need to film movies fully in IMAX format from now on. The imax scenes on the Dark knight blu-ray are the best looking scenes out of the whole movie.
as for the idiots hating on Micheal Bay, Shut the f*ck up you whiny little bitches. There is no reason to hate him. You're not f*cking cool because of it. You're damn pathetic.
Bad Boys 1 & 2
The Rock
The Island
Armageddon
all great movies he directed.
Even all five of those combined will never make up for the abomination of "PEARL HARBOR".
Out of those movies, the only one remotely deserving of viewing is The Rock. And that has more to do with the leads than the person behind the camera. Bay even managed to mess up The Rock in parts with ridiculous cuts and bombastic music, making a total pigs ear of a car chase at the start and other moments.
Oh and MOST people do not like the black bars. a vast majority doesn't. When widescreen movies start becoming popular on dvd, people start getting the widescreen tvs thinking it would get rid of the bars. Most of those who dont have widescreen tvs prefer to get the fullscreen version.
People want the full screen filled. They feel cheated when the picture is smaller then their tv screens. The majority of people complained about black bars when this started becoming standard on dvd. They complained also when they still got bars with their widescreen tvs.
Is anyone registering the fact that the movie was shot in 1.85:1 so there would be no effective difference between the two formats on home video?
Also, no one seems to ever discuss the terrible amount of edge enhancement in the shots on the Dark Knight that were not shot with IMAX cameras. Considering when you see a 35mm movie in IMAX it is usually blown up and artificially sharpened (aka edge enhancement) for the bigger screen, I am guessing the Dark Knight could look considerably better if they did the transfer using a 35mm print and not the "enhanced" IMAX print. Essentially, my belief is that the non IMAX scenes were made to look worse so the IMAX scenes would stand out.
So if Transformers is taking the same approach then we will simply see a ruined/sharpened image for 95% of the movie and a cropped from 4:3 to 16:9 image that looks incredible for the other 5%.
Bring it on. And to address some misinformation I read here, The Dark Knight IMAX sequences were NOT "enhanced" 35mm shots - they were shot using IMAX cameras. Anybody who's watched the special features knows this.
That's not what he was trying to say at all.
He said that they made 2 prints of the film -- one for IMAX theaters and one for regular theaters. On the IMAX print, they sharpened the scenes shot on 35mm. DX is trying to say that if they hadn't done any sharpening, then the DVD would have come out looking better.
I'd rather the whole film take up the whole screen, that is why I bought a widescreen tv in the first place.
As long as it uses seamless branching so that i can choose to watch the whole film in its original theatre aspect ratio(minus imax parts), Ill be happy. If im forced to have to watch the imax parts i wont be happy. At least give viewers the choice of watching one or the other. I dont have anything against the imax portions of the film, but i didnt like the switching of aspect ratios in Dark Knight. Surely its not that hard to give viewers the option of which version to watch on the disc.
We are not hating on Michael Bay, well I am not. But Se7enwolf, look at the movies you listed, I also like Pearl Harbor and the first Transformers, but his directing style has changed, what bothered me about this movie (and I saw it in IMAX) the scenes are cut so quick and several times you cannot tell who was fighting and at times I could not even tell if it was good or bad. He needs to stop chopping movies so quick.
Now for the IMAX like Dark Knight, I wish all movies start this trend.
I don't care what the transfer looks like, I'm only buying it if they release a Transformers 1 & 2 Blu-ray box set that physically transforms into a huge robot.
I have always HATED the so called FULL SCREEN VHS and DVD movies. About HALF of the picture is missing because the sides are chopped off to fix a 4:3 screen. Then of course they use PAN & SCAN on top of that to make up for it. This is where they show the part of the film with the most action you could say. For Example you have 2 people talking to each other at a table, and on the Normal Widescreen version you see them both at the same time, on the FULL SCREEN version, it pans over to the person who's talking on the left, then pans on over to the right when that person is talking and so forth. You've now completely change the whole film. You have no idea what may be happening out of frame. It's a joke. I've always gotten Widescreen versions of the movies I've owned since day 1. I'd rather see the WHOLE MOVIE with large black bars on the top and bottom then a hacked up version. 16x9 was the format they wanted to go with for HDTV's. While in the PC world, 16x10 is the general widescreen format, like my 24" PC widescreen monitor.
On a HDTV, you'll get a full screen on any 1.78:1 which is 16x9, or 1:85:1 also. Other formats like 2.40:1 or 2:45:1, etc will have Black Bars. Using ZOOM on your own HDTV is a simple fix. It looks almost as good, but of course cuts out a bit of the movie on the left and right to fill the whole screen. At least you have that choice to do it or not. If you don't like the black Bars, do what the Movie Theater does, Cover that part of the screen up with Curtains!!! This is nothing new. Movies for YEARS and YEARS have been using different aspect Ratio's. What, should all movies starting NOW be shot in 1.78:1? That's just silly. Myself I want to see the whole movie. I'm so glad there's none of that FULL SCREEN garbage on Blu-Ray, and much less of it being done with DVD's.
Man if I was buying Full Screen DVD's all these years and then got a widescreen HDTV, that would REALLY, REALLY SUCK!! Think about it. Not only do you now have Bars on the left and right side of the HDTV, your still missing half the movie and dealing with Pan & Scan.
I really didn't notice the Aspect Ratio change on the Batman movie until I read about it and watched it again. That's really how much the Bars on the screen don't even bother me to notice. If you want to FILL your HDTV screen, look on the back on the movie box as it tells you exactly what aspect ratio the movie is in!!! Then only buy 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 movies. Problem solved!!!
Really we should all have 2.45:1 televisions so that we never miss content. Sure, we'd have vertical black bars, but then we'd never have hacked up movies!
16:9 please. IMO I did not like how it went from full screen to bars in the DK. Felt it was distracting from the movie. Just my 2 cents =P
Everyone just needs to do what I am doing in my new theater:
normally, with my 10 foot viewing distance, I would want about an 80" 16x9 screen. But I live the IMAX features that are now available on Blu-ray and I also love a wider screen for 2.35:1 movies.
My solution is to install a 100" 16x9 screen with 4-way masking instead! For IMAX, I will open the masking all the way and zoom in my projector for a really huge screen experience. For 2.35:1 movies, I will activate the top & bottom masks. For a movie like The Dark Knight, I will simply leave the masks open and rely on the projected black bars for the 2.35:1 portions.
For regular 16x9 HDTV, I will close all 4 masks and zoom out the projector to give me the smaller 80" screen size.
And before people go complaining that this is some crazy expensive set up, it isn't! I'll be using the Panny AE3000U (very handy with it's automatic two position zoom settings feature) and a Carada screen with their Masquerade masking system. The left and right masks will either be a motorized curtain or just manual masks (I haven't fully decided yet).
Total price ends up being about $5000 so this is not a ridiculously expensive option folks!
So, you will get up in the middle of the movie and reposition the masks? That is what the dilemma is, not how to get rid of the black bars. I have a front projection system with masks as well and I just watch the Dark Knight without them installed. it sucks for the normal scenes, but is worth it during the IMAX scenes.
Reading some of the comments posted about "I just want my HDTV filled" makes me really weap for the future. Don't like the black bars? Use the zoom feature and quit complaining. Me... give me the intended OAR or nothing.
It seems to me, that if the format is advertised as 1080p, that it should be using all 1080 vertical lines of resolution. Any other aspect ratio is actually tantamount to false advertising.
Indeed I have read multiple comments claiming to have seen DK in an IMAX theater where it switched between full screen and widescreen. This may or may not have to do with what some call IMAX Lite theaters. The one I saw it in is one of the original IMAX theaters and when I saw DK, the whole film was presented in 4:3 (probably not the most accurate AR, but close to it).
Consequently, it was impossible to really tell the IMAX shots from the standard ones. However, given the content, it seemed the "real" IMAX shots were all the exteriors, for those shots it was pretty clear how he used IMAX.
I would have found the AR switching to be hugely distracting.
I have also observed that at times, films are released to DVD/cable in a 16:9 AR while shown in theaters with a theatrical AR of 1:2.35.
riverside_guy,
You must have been mistaken as all proper showings of the Dark Knight switched from 2.35:1 to 1.33:1. Now it is possible that IMAX created a slightly zoomed/cropped version at about 2.0:1 as I have seen that occur at real full sized IMAX screens (I live in Irvine and have been going to showings in the Irvine Spectrum IMAX since the original Men in Black in 1997 and have analyzed every showing to see how they deal with the aspect ratio switch from the OAR to IMAX's 1.33:1.
Also, I do not know why no one is paying attention to the fact that Transformers is shot 1.85:1 (16:9) so there will not be any black bars on any home video version of the movie no matter whether the IMAX transfer is involved or not. There will be no switching of aspect ratios unless Michael Bay is completely retarded and the movie switches from 1.85:1(35mm) to 1.33:1(IMAX) with bars on the sides.
Therefore, any conversation about black bars on the screen is not even important in the discussion about this title as their will not be any black bars no matter how the transfer is done.
The use of IMAX was to give a better quality picture. you're all talking about aspect ratio, but dont mention or maybe not know that Imax cameras use a much bigger film then a normal High res camera. The film is also in a more traditional 16:9 ratio
film difference
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Imaxcomparison.png
also its not the film that is cropped, nor is the camera. All that is done to get a difference aspect ratio of a movie is switching the view of the lens on the camera, thus physically limiting what the camera sees. Without these wider lens, the camera would see all of a 4:3 picture. Yes you can now buy cameras that a made for just 16:9 but most use change the lens
the lens on the front of the camera. the rectangle square. this is what crops the film
http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/images/models/ag-hvx200.jpg