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I dunno dad1153, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and all that. I just saw it about 2 months ago in 70 mm and my reaction was to weep on and off for 155 minutes. I had seen it before, but I was completely floored by how beautiful it looks, and by the artistic force of will that Tati had to employ to make it. It also helped a lot to see it with an audience that laughed at the jokes. By no means did it felt like an alienating cold experience, more like a flower arising from the concrete.

There was a 70mm copy of Playtime showing in Helsinki yesterday. It has been shown here once before too in 70mm, so I felt quite lucky to catch another showing. However, this time someone had the bad idea to project subtitles on top of it. In all caps and huge font size. And whoever was running the titling either had technical problems or didn't pay attention, since the timing of the titles was mostly way off (and trying to catch up at five lines per second occasionally). And, of course, the powerpoint menu screen was visible for a minute or so in two points of the film. To balance that off, the sound went off for maybe ten minutes also at the restaurant scene...

But anyway, it was still good to see that again. The print was very crisp and it was great to see clearly all the care that has gone to the details, for example the travel posters (for a graphic designer there was a lot of nice signage etc. to see).

According to a posting on the "tatifilms" listserv,

Rumour has it that Les Films de Mon Oncle has intentions on releasing Playtime on BluRay scanned from the original 70mm reels and digitaly remastered, due for release in late 2011

Anyone else hear anything about this?

Faux Hulot wrote:According to a posting on the "tatifilms" listserv,

Rumour has it that Les Films de Mon Oncle has intentions on releasing Playtime on BluRay scanned from the original 70mm reels and digitaly remastered, due for release in late 2011

Anyone else hear anything about this?

I wonder why Criterion made their copy from 35mm print and not the 70mm ones?....

I think they've addressed similar questions before, though I can't remember when or where. The idea was that you weren't going to see much of difference between 35 and 70 on home video. That and transferring 70 mm elements was hugely more expensive.

Doctor Sunshine wrote:The idea was that you weren't going to see much of difference between 35 and 70 on home video.

At this stage we all know this is bullshit.

Doctor Sunshine wrote:transferring 70 mm elements was hugely more expensive.

This is more likely to be the truth.

andyli wrote:At this stage we all know this is bullshit.

Do we? There is far more picture information in a 35mm frame than a 1080p Blu-ray is capable of showing.

Brian C wrote:

andyli wrote:At this stage we all know this is bullshit.

Do we? There is far more picture information in a 35mm frame than a 1080p Blu-ray is capable of showing.

That's irrelevant, isn't it? 35mm frame sure gives more information than a 1080p Blu-ray video. Yet 1080p already serves as a good platform to differentiate the quality of 35mm frame and 70mm frame.

1080p can more or less fully replicate the resolution of 16mm. Will a 16mm downconversion from 70mm look better than a 16mm downconversion from 35mm that is itself a downconversion from 70mm? I'm not an expert in these matters, but I would guess there's no appreciable difference.

swo17 wrote:1080p can more or less fully replicate the resolution of 16mm. Will a 16mm downconversion from 70mm look better than a 16mm downconversion from 35mm that is itself a downconversion from 70mm? I'm not an expert in these matters, but I would guess there's no appreciable difference.

Well that's a nice analogy. But downconversion (in practice) involves another factor - the optical loss.

The point is, though, that Blu-ray can't even hope to give an accurate representation of a 70mm film. It can only start to approach 35mm. So even if you're losing something in the downconversion from 70mm to 35mm, that "something" probably wouldn't be visible on Blu-ray anyway.

I will grant that I'm talking out my ass to a large degree here. But it seems like the "bullshit" claim above is really strong considering the obvious technical limitations of the Blu-ray format.

There might not be an appreciable difference between, say, a 70mm negative and a 35mm negative, but given the choice of a transfer taken from an interpositive struck from the 70mm negative and a 35mm reduction one or two additional steps away, I'd take the former any day. Which is pretty much what andyli is saying above.

You're not wrong. I'll also add that Criterion's BD does seem like it could be a bit sharper, especially considering that on paper, it should be one of their most impressive Blu-ray transfers.

Having seem the film numerous times in both 35mm and 70mm (both pre- and post-restoration), I can attest that the difference in detail is astounding -- seeing the 70mm print properly projected is practically a 3D experience. It's inconceivable that such a difference would *not* be discernable on a Blu-Ray made from a print properly laser-scanned at 4K (or even 2K) resolution.

Matt wrote:There might not be an appreciable difference between, say, a 70mm negative and a 35mm negative...

And this is all I'm really saying. Glad we got it all sorted.

Faux Hulot wrote:Having seem the film numerous times in both 35mm and 70mm (both pre- and post-restoration), I can attest that the difference in detail is astounding -- seeing the 70mm print properly projected is practically a 3D experience. It's inconceivable that such a difference would *not* be discernable on a Blu-Ray made from a print properly laser-scanned at 4K (or even 2K) resolution.

Well, naturally a 70mm print is going to look better on screen than a 35mm print, all else being equal. But I'm genuinely curious here - why would you use a 70mm print if you're only going to scan at 2K? That would simply be woefully inadequate for a 70mm print. I would suggest that it's quite conceivable that you'd have a hard time telling the difference between a 2K scan of a 35mm print and a 2K scan of a 70mm print. 2K can't even fully reproduce the resolution of even a 35mm print. Even 4K would be insufficient for 70mm.

For example, if I'm not mistaken, Robert A. Harris has said that the upcoming Lawrence of Arabia Blu is taken from the 70mm elements scanned at 8K. Which strikes me as laudable and terrific from a preservation standpoint, don't get me wrong, but the reviewers who will say that they can see that in the Blu-ray (and of course some will) will obviously be fooling themselves.

Film is unlike video in that it does not have a fixed resolution. There's a point at which you start to lose detail in film (e.g., to grain) and a point at which you can no longer clearly see detail (i.e., the resolving power). The point at which you can no longer clearly see detail in 35mm film is supposed to be around 3.2K in an ideal scenario (keep in mind that 35mm cinema stock is about half the exposure area of 35mm still photography stock, and very few films are shot and preserved in those kind of ideal scenarios). It stands to reason that the point at which you start to lose detail would be much lower than that.

Since film grain is often visible in 35mm-sourced films on DVD and generally quite so on Blu-ray (including Playtime), the fine-grainedness of 70mm should make quite a noticeable difference to someone viewing the disc under ideal circumstances. I doubt anyone viewing it on a 42" TV from 8 feet away would be able to tell, but that would also hold true for most of the transfers that the likes of this forum, blu-ray.com, and dvdbeaver complain about.

Or to put it back to you, can you find a 35mm-sourced film whose Blu-ray disc is of good transfer quality that has no visible grain or other filmic "defects" that would not be improved if it had been shot on 65mm and a source existed to transfer it from?

Also, at 8K, you've gone far past the point of capturing subject detail from Lawrence of Arabia and moved on to capturing the detail of the film grains themselves. Not that I have any problem with that, since I think film grain is beautiful, but if there were an eye exam chart in the film, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to read any more letters than you would from a 6K scan.

The original discussion doesn't mention scanning 70mm materials under 2K resolution. Why cannot 70mm film be scanned at 6K or even 8K then down-rezzed to 2K digitally, which is more likely the way to go in practice? By doing this, the 2K transfer will be massively superior to the direct 2K scan, don't we all agree on this?

The bottom line is you are doing a straw man argument.

david hare wrote:The proof is already in the pudding - severla 70mm prints have been scanneed and downrezed for 1080p and look stunning.

Yet another example How the West was Won.

As does Baraka and the 70mm scenes inThe Dark Knight. I think the Playtime Blu-Ray could be improved upon, and a transfer from the 70mm print would definitely make a difference.

andyli wrote:The bottom line is you are doing a straw man argument.

I was simply responding to Faux Hulot, who mentioned doing a 70mm scan in 4K (or even 2K). I quoted it and everything ... sorry you missed it.

I just watched the blu-ray a couple of days ago and, while it does look great, it would definitely (probably greatly) benefit if it was from a 70mm scan. Blu-ray is not going to really convey the grain and texture of a 70mm print, but will still convey a good amount of picture detail that will be lost once you downconvert to 35mm.

Someone mentioned How the West Was Won, and that's a good eyeball test. If the detail that differentiates a 70mm print and a 35mm downconversion is not supposed to be noticeable when transferred to blu-ray, then How the West should look like a 35mm sourced film on blu (or maybe a Vistavision print), but it screams 70mm, even if you don't have an actual print to compare it to.

Looks like the BFI isn't much of an improvement on Criterion's, if we go by the Beaver's caps.

New York's Museum of the Moving Image will have a 70mm screening of "Playtime" this Saturday at 1PM. Hope I don't get lost going from Manhattan over to... gulp, Queens! :-P

Heads up that Playtime is screening October 6 & 9 in 70mm at the Cinerama in Seattle.

A 70mm presentation will happen in NYC at the Museum of the Moving Image this Friday, the 4th, at 7pm.

If you haven't seen this in 70mm on a big screen, please please please, do.

Yes, I went to the Cinerama screening in Seattle and it was certainly worth it. Definitely one you have to see on the big screen at least once.