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Post by snsurone on Jan 16, 2018 15:34:29 GMT
This was one of the innovations, along with Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Todd-AO, utilized by movie studios to lure viewers away from their TV sets and back into theaters.
It premiered as a documentary called THIS IS CINERAMA in 1956. Since then, numerous films have utilized this technique.
I haven't seen all of them, but of those I have seen, I would rank Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as the best. But this is a movie that just has to be seen on a Cinerama or IMEX screen. Even the widest TV screen can't do it justice.
I wonder if Cinerama will ever make a comeback as did 3D a few years ago.
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CINERAMA
Jan 16, 2018 16:58:50 GMT
via mobile
Post by politicidal on Jan 16, 2018 16:58:50 GMT
The old DVDs for 'How The West Was Won' always had the three lines dictating the curved screen and it was always annoying. Still, it made the action set pieces stand out more.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 16, 2018 17:33:35 GMT
Only seven pictures were produced in the three-camera Cinerama process: five travelogues released from 1952-58, and two with traditional scripted narratives released in 1962 (The Wonderful World Of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won).
The system employed synchronized 35mm negatives in a single, three-lensed camera that exposed an image area on each over 50% larger than standard 35mm, and that was actually taller than it was wide (an aspect ratio of roughly .99:1.1). Projected together side-by-side, they filled a screen ratio of 2.59:1. The cumbersome camera and fixed 27mm lenses proved troublesome for the staging of dramatic scenes: closeups were impossible; actors playing scenes together in the same shot had to look past one another in a downstage direction to compensate for the curved screens so that they would appear to be looking at each other when projected; at the closest possible distance to the camera, they had to be careful of their body movements, as a too-casual gesture in the direction of one of the wide-angle lenses could cause a hand and arm to appear to swell to elephantine proportions.
Beginning in 1963 with It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which was advertised as "Single-Lens Cinerama), all films marketed as Cinerama (including 2001: A Space Odyssey) were shot on single 65mm negative formats (Ultra Panavision, Super Technirama or Super Panavision) and exhibited on 70mm prints specially manufactured for projection on deeply-curved Cinerama screens (employing an optical squeeze at the image's outer edges that was corrected by the corresponding angles of the screen).
It's with irony, then, that IAMMMMW, which opened Los Angeles's first theater designed for the process, the Cinerama Dome, was the also first film marketed as Cinerama that was not true Cinerama, and no feature film has been produced and released in the original process since 1962.*
*In 2012, a newly-produced short subject, In the Picture, shot with a surviving camera last used 50 years earlier on TWWOTBG and HTWWW, was exhibited at that year's Cinerama Festival at the Dome.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 16, 2018 17:41:38 GMT
The old DVDs for 'How The West Was Won' always had the three lines dictating the curved screen and it was always annoying. Still, it made the action set pieces stand out more. Remastered for Blu-ray, HTWWW has had the join lines digitally erased as much as possible. The image quality is quite stunning, but other limitations of the process can't be corrected, such as the appearance of wagons to abruptly change direction as they rolled out of the range of one lens and into that of another.
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Post by koskiewicz on Jan 16, 2018 17:54:07 GMT
I remember seeing the 10 Commandments in Cinerama in the late 1950's...
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 16, 2018 18:29:41 GMT
I remember seeing the 10 Commandments in Cinerama in the late 1950's... If that's your recollection, what you most likely saw was The Ten Commandments, which was produced in VistaVision, projected in a theater that had been retrofitted in the '50s with a curved Cinerama screen for exhibition of those films (the first theaters designed for Cinerama were built in the '60s). Many such theaters also ran non-Cinerama films; corrective lenses in the projectors compensated for the curvature of the screens to avoid distortion when such films were projected.
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Post by teleadm on Jan 16, 2018 18:41:32 GMT
Windjammer 1958, I remember my parents talking about this as more an event than a movie experience, as they had rebuilt the cinema for this movie only. It was before I was born, but they lived up in Stockholm at that time. Strangly Cinerama is called Cinemiracle here.
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Post by neurosturgeon on Jan 16, 2018 19:41:12 GMT
I saw "Tje Womderful World Of Brothers Grimm" and "How The West Was Won" at the Hollywood Warner Theater in Cinerama. I also saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" ther before it moved to the Cinerama Dome. This theater later became the Hollywood Pacific where I attended the LA. Premiere of "A Clockwork Orange" Iin December 1971.
I saw a few films at the Cinerama Dome in the lat 1960's, but though they were widescreen, I don't think they were Cinerama: "The Battle of the Bulge," "Grand Paris" and "Khartoum."
I was lucky to have parents who were movie fans.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 16, 2018 19:46:15 GMT
Windjammer 1958, I remember my parents talking about this as more an event than a movie experience, as they had rebuilt the cinema for this movie only. It was before I was born, but they lived up in Stockholm at that time. Strangly Cinerama is called Cinemiracle here. Cinemiracle was, in fact, a separate process that unsuccessfully competed with Cinerama, and Windjammer was the only film produced in the format. Operating on the same basic principle, with images photographed on three negatives across a field of vision identical to Cinerama's, there were some mechanical differences. Cinemiracle utilized three separate but interlocked Mitchell cameras on a single mount, and employed mirrors in the left and right cameras that allowed them to remain on the same optical center as the middle one, and were adjustable, allowing for flexibility of focus that Cinerama cameras didn't provide, thus mitigating some disadvantages inherent therein. The Cinemiracle negatives accommodated the manufacture of prints conforming to the Cinerama projection system, and Windjammer was indeed exhibited in the U.S. and elsewhere as "presented in Cinerama."
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Post by snsurone on Jan 16, 2018 22:40:33 GMT
Dog, your knowledge of movie technology is absolutely encyclopedic! Is/Was it your career?
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 17, 2018 0:07:38 GMT
Dog, your knowledge of movie technology is absolutely encyclopedic! Is/Was it your career? Only off and on, over a period of about 20 years, and always in clerical or administrative positions rather than technical. But I always made it my business to learn as much as I could about the proverbial nuts and bolts represented by whatever documents I was handling, and got myself tutored by generous people in most areas of the industry. But it's also true that my thirst for such knowledge has continued in the 30 years since I left it, and I've learned as much in that time as I did when I was working in it, listening, studying and picking up things here and there. To paraphrase Vincent Price in Laura, I don't know a lot about any of it, but I know a little about almost all of it. Edit for an afterthought: Nice of you not to object to my inserting arcane technobabble into your thread on the chance that any others might find it as fascinating as I do.
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Post by kijii on Jan 17, 2018 0:42:19 GMT
The old DVDs for 'How The West Was Won' always had the three lines dictating the curved screen and it was always annoying. Still, it made the action set pieces stand out more. I totally agree, politicidal. I don't like to watch this on TV because I saw all three movies mentioned (above) in the original Cinerama. How The West Was Won makes for particularly bad TV viewing: Not only are there those vertical three lines, but it seems a though the movie is squashed in the middle (with even broader black bans above and below the movie image) than when watching CinemaScope in the in the correct aspect ratio. At some point, one loses all the actor's facial expressions. At some point, following the correct aspect ratio rule works against the story in the movie itself. At some point, it is all about getting the space too right..to the point that we lose the actors to the space. I have seen I t's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World on TV with no problem. But, I have never seen How The West Was Won or The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm on TV with any degree of satisfaction. All I see on TV is too much space .. and tiny little figure-like people on the screen. IMAX is THE thing now, but there are probably some George Pal fans that would like to see The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm the way I saw it.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jan 17, 2018 0:53:12 GMT
Your "arcane technobabble" is often the high point of many a thread and always fascinating, Doghouse6.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 17, 2018 1:28:44 GMT
Your "arcane technobabble" is often the high point of many a thread and always fascinating, Doghouse6 . You've given me an idea: if I ever change my username, I may very well select Arcane Technobabble. Has a certain ring to it.
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Post by snsurone on Jan 17, 2018 13:29:10 GMT
Your "arcane technobabble" is often the high point of many a thread and always fascinating, Doghouse6 . You've given me an idea: if I ever change my username, I may very well select Arcane Technobabble. Has a certain ring to it. Even if you do change your username, I hope Duncan will still be your avatar.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 17, 2018 14:20:18 GMT
You've given me an idea: if I ever change my username, I may very well select Arcane Technobabble. Has a certain ring to it. Even if you do change your username, I hope Duncan will still be your avatar. What a sweet thing with which to start the day! He'll be delighted to hear it (as are both we two-footed members of the Doghouse 6).
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Post by snsurone on Jan 17, 2018 15:20:32 GMT
Even if you do change your username, I hope Duncan will still be your avatar. What a sweet thing with which to start the day! He'll be delighted to hear it (as are both we two-footed members of the Doghouse 6). Hey, I love every living four-legged creature. Six or eight legs, not so much, LOL.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 17, 2018 15:44:19 GMT
What a sweet thing with which to start the day! He'll be delighted to hear it (as are both we two-footed members of the Doghouse 6). Hey, I love every living four-legged creature. Six or eight legs, not so much, LOL. You and me both...on both counts (just between us, though, even when I find one of those "six or eight" guests, I trap and release; if only I could figure out the "neuter" part).
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Post by snsurone on Jan 17, 2018 17:32:24 GMT
Hey, I love every living four-legged creature. Six or eight legs, not so much, LOL. You and me both...on both counts (just between us, though, even when I find one of those "six or eight" guests, I trap and release; if only I could figure out the "neuter" part). I live in a multi-unit apartment, so "trap and release" is pretty much out of the question. Actually. I have few qualms about killing those damned roaches, even though I'm aware that they will probably still be around when the human race becomes extinct. I admit that I do love butterflies, ladybird beetles. and--to a limited extent--praying mantises. And I have to admit that some caterpillars are kinda pretty. But dammit, I'm digressing again from the topic of this thread! Please feel free to return to the subject of Cinerama.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jan 17, 2018 18:25:29 GMT
But dammit, I'm digressing again from the topic of this thread! Please feel free to return to the subject of Cinerama. I always say: if the thread originator can't digress, who can? If I think of anything else to say about Cinerama, I shall return!
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