But what is 70mm? To dig a little deeper, we explored the past and present of 70mm with the help of Douglas McLaren, the projectionist at Chicago's Music Box Theatre. Essentially, the difference between 35mm and 70mm is similar to the difference between DVD and Blu-ray, if switching from DVD to Blu-ray also made your television bigger. The wider, sharper image allows viewers to see "details in these films that you have just never, ever seen before," as McLaren puts it.
He also points out that most theaters project films at a resolution of about 2, pixels, which is comparable to Blu-ray. However, the restoration scan of the 70mm film resolution Lawrence of Arabia was scanned at about 8, pixels, "and the negative had even more information than that. There's just so much more going on in these 70mm prints than even on your Blu-ray. But people have been shooting in 70mm for almost as long as there have been movies.
It wasn't until television started stealing viewers away from Hollywood in the s and '60s that the industry recognized the benefit in bringing 70mm to the mainstream. This is when sweeping epics such as Lawrence of Arabia and big-production musicals such as West Side Story used 70mm film to draw crowds. It might seem that similar factors are behind the mini-resurgence of 70mm. Some cameras can also take more than 24 frames per second — see motion smoothing, above — but this generally produces an image that looks too real to our used-tofps eyes.
The advent of videotape and the handheld video camera made physical media somewhat easier to work with, but all it takes is one afternoon spent carefully respooling the magnetic tape on a VHS cassette or one VCR chewing up a bunch of that tape to realize how easily ruined it all is. Instead of these potentially error-ridden physical procedures, many cameras now save these images as data to a digital bank, which can then be accessed like any other file.
As such, transportation, preservation, and even tinkering with the look of the finished product are now simpler than ever before.
Recent technological advances have streamlined this process beyond what the filmmakers of bygone eras could have even imagined. So digital is the solution, right?
Not so fast. Those with the spider senses to discern such things have a habit of claiming film "just looks better," much in the same way audiophiles can tell that vinyl "just sounds better," but these both circle back to the inherently vague "know it when I see it" phenomenon. As such, they have a lived-in look. A filmstrip saved from and shown again today has clearly seen some shit.
Little imperfections such as scratches or so-called "cigarette burns" take it away, Ed Norton appear on the strip, and quiet crackles and pops develop on the audio track. But, in many ways, these imperfections are an argument in film's favor.
Film is transportive; it inspires nostalgia, especially among film buffs. Compared with that, digital video can look antiseptic and polished. This is some of what Tarantino means when he calls digital projection "television in public. These technical distinctions dictate the daily push and pull of the film industry, but for the garden-variety viewer, digital and analog are no more than two visual modes for a film to work in, each with its own individual vibe.
Neither is better than the other, only more well-suited to the story the filmmaker has chosen to tell. Director Danny Boyle , for instance, used various film formats to subtly communicate the passage of time in his recent film Steve Jobs , which takes place at three product launches in three different years.
And if you know to look for it, the switch in formats in each time period is easy to spot. Manufacturers produce filmstrips in four different sizes — called gauges — each with its own properties and applications. The measure of a gauge refers to the width of a filmstrip, with wider stock providing sharper definition and more detail in the projected image. Most major releases shot on film — including the current number one film in the world, Star Wars: The Force Awakens — are printed on 35mm stock; a lot of movie theaters use digital projectors but might bust out a 35mm rig for special occasions, often meant to court cinephiles.
The next rung down is 16mm, a cost-effective alternative intended for low-budget student productions or amateur use. There was a time when use of 16mm was in common in the realm of TV. For instance, observe the world of difference between the look of Buffy the Vampire Slayer 's first two seasons shot on 16mm and those that followed it shot on 35mm, once the series' budget grew.
The lowest gauge of film stock is 8mm, which was cheap enough to produce that it was mainly reserved for home movies and experimental projects.
You might remember the J. Abrams film Super 8 , into which low-grade home movies figure prominently — its title comes from the name of a specific brand of 8mm film. That only leaves 70mm, the largest gauge and a recent subject of minor kerfuffles within the film world. Still an enfant terrible at 52, Tarantino made waves with his announcement that his latest feature The Hateful Eight would play in glorious 70mm at various "roadshow" locations around the country, complete with additional footage exclusive to the 70mm version.
Simply put, there's no physical film reels. Before all this, film reels were delivered to cinemas in usually two sizes - 35mm or 70mm. The 35mm refers to the size of the actual film-strip, which is then blown up on the screen by the projector.
Obviously, the bigger the size of the film-strip, the more picture quality you get. Hence, 70mm is considered better than 35mm because it can project more colours, more detail, more everything out onto the screen.
In the days before digital projectors, 70mm was sort of like the equivalent of IMAX. You only ever saw the major blockbusters printed out on the format. As well as being extremely difficult to ship because of the immense size of the film reels, 70mm film also required special projectors for the cinemas which were extremely costly to maintain - so much so, in fact, that even back then when film projectors were used, 70mm projectors were only used on specific occasions and at the studio or filmmaker's specific request.
Anyway, as you'd expect, the introduction of video and the internet meant that cinema chains had to cut costs and using DCPs - that's the format that almost all cinemas use to project films digitally - was the way to do it.
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