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Front Row Report: Beer Wars – A Live NCM World Premier

By Patrick von Sychowski
April 17, 2009
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This report just in from our friend and colleague Jerry Pierce:

Beer Wars – A Live NCM World Premier
Jerry Pierce April 17, 2009
National Cinemedia (NCM) that runs “Fathom” a “live” to the theater network for single play events. They have Concerts, The Met, Performing Arts, Anime, etc. Cinemedia’s main business is advertising for many theaters. But Fathom seems to be their new baby – below is the list of upcoming shows.
Enjoy one of our upcoming shows
MET – The Audition April 19, 2009
So I decided to attend the “World Premier” of “Beer Wars” held last night. (Never mind that I am getting involved in Beer Making … that’s a different story.) I attended a CineMark Theater in Northern California at 8 pm. Well, first off it was not LIVE, it was delayed. Not that it would matter much, but if you are attending a live broadcast it should appear to be live. The theater was the same one that housed “Monsters vs Aliens.” Seemed right, the rest of the screens at this location are still film.
So they got a late start – seems the DVR recording of the show didn’t work right and they had technical difficulty – did I mention it was supposed to give the IMPRESSION of being live? Funny seeing the EchoStar’s DVR interface on a 50 foot screen.
They the show finally started. They did not use the big projector! It was the little NCM advertising projector. Not a bad image, but the masking was set for 1.85 and the broadcast was 16:9 (1.77) so the top/bottom was cut off – not even in safe title – many of the titles got lost in the bottom masking. The projector was dim – but not bad. The contrast ratio was muddy to say the least. I mean really, who needs black? I was pleased that the silver screen did not have a noticeable hot spot, then again maybe you can’t have a hot spot with a dim projector (not).
They did show a live question/answer session with the film makers after the show. It was clear the LA premier was sparsely attended and there were about 50 people in my 500 seat theater. Lots of space to spread out. They charged $15 which was a $5 up fee from their normal presentation charge. Did not look like a money maker to me.
Finally, the presentation crashed at the end. Another 50 foot error screen with audio continuing in the background. I didn’t ask for my money back, but if this is their idea of a live, quality event – they had better go back to the drawing board and re-think the experience.
—-
Jerry Pierce

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Some Bright Ideas At ISDCF’s 3D Luminance Level Demo

By J. Sperling Reich
March 25, 2009
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ISDCF Chairman Jerry Pierce

On Tuesday at the AMC Burbank 16 in Burbank, CA, the Inter-Society Digital Cinema Forum (ISDCF) held a luminance level demonstration of digital 3D content which had been mastered for different light levels.  The ISDCF is not a standards body and thus the demo was not a test, but simply a way for industry professionals to see what 3D content would look like at brighter levels than the 4 foot-lamberts (ftL) to 4.5 ftL that is common luminance for most 3D movies today.  One of the goals was to examine the emotional and technical impact of screening the content at different luminance levels.

Speaking of the content, material from the following films was shown:

  • “Journey To The Center of the Earth 3D”
  • “Miley Ray Cyrus/Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds”
  • “The Polar Express”
  • “Tokyo Mater”
  • “U2:3D”

A brand new Christie XD projector was brought in and connected to Doremi DSVJ2 server.  Since it already existed at the theatre, the RealD XLS system was employed as the 3D technology.  As well, RealD’s dynamic EQ was used to “ghostbust” the content as it was piped between the server and the projector.  The Christie projector was set to triple flash (show each frame three times per  eye).

Unfortunately, the ISDCF did not receive raw footage so that they could be timed from scratch.  Instead they received material that had already been mastered for 4.5 ftL.  Any adjustments made to master the content for higher luminance levels were made on top of this.  As well, all of the clips were either set at night or were indoors.  There was no daylight footage.  All of the clips were originally shot on digital rather than film.

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Posted in Digital 3D, Digital Cinema, Miscellaneous, Organizations
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