Barco has completed the first major rollout in Cinedigm Digital Cinema's Phase 2 with Texas-based Premiere Cinema. Premiere has been working exclusively with Barco since 2007 to provide digital cinema to their theatres with 138 screens deployed to date. The successful completion of Cinedigm's first large-scale Phase 2 deployment is another milestone for Barco and the digital cinema industry ” says Todd Hoddick vice president of digital cinema for Barco North America. “Premiere could not have been a better partner and we're very proud to have provided the best and brightest viewing experience for their screens. We continue to be impressed with Cinedigm and their intense focus on ensuring a great experience for both the exhibitor and their customers.” Premiere operates theatres in Texas Florida and Alabama and plans to complete the digitization of their remaining complexes by year's end — bringing the company's total number of Barco installations to 180. Premiere also has several new state-of-the-art digital cinema theatres under construction which are set to open in 2010. “Premiere is pleased to announce the completion of our first 138 digital systems under our deployment agreement with Cinedigm's Phase 2 initiative ” says Gary Moore CEO of Premiere Cinema. “The installation was professional and on-schedule thanks to the support guidance and expertise of Cinedigm and Barco in combination with Premiere's in-house technical staff. After the sale Barco's customer service was superb. We are delighted to be teamed with quality partners such as Cinedigm and Barco who share our commitment to a future of digital cinema excellence and ongoing customer satisfaction.” Two of Premiere's Alabama theatres opened in 2008 without mezzanines. At these two innovative locations the Barco projectors are mounted on platforms in the rear of each auditorium. The associated servers theatre management systems audio racks and peripherals are located on the main floor in unique “control rooms ” enabling the patrons to view the high-tech hardware through lobby windows. Bud Mayo Cinedigm's CEO says “I have a great deal of respect and confidence in the Barco. I value their partnership with Cinedigm as we jointly bring turnkey digital cinema solutions to the industry.” Barco www.barco.com Cinedigm Digital Cinema www.Cinedigm.com Premiere Cinema www.pccmovies.com ,1193
Take Off,2009-08-29,Yong Hwa Kim’s Take Off this summer’s top film in Korea tells how a small town prepared for a Winter Olympics bid. ,1197
Vision Statement,2009-08-29, By Julian Napier Writer/Director of London Eye 4D The starting point for the story was The Eye itself; so much more than just a soulless titanic assembly of steel and glass and definitely feminine in contrast to the dark towering and arguably phallic perpendiculars that typically define a city skyline. For me The Eye has a maternal quality; you are insulated throughout as it raises you above the city unlike what you experience at The Eifel Tower for example where it’s a very manual visceral and exposed process of climbing stairs and boarding elevators. Riding The Eye is more akin to being cupped within safe hands and being gently lifted to a place where you are delivered from and can make sense of the urban and overwhelming labyrinth that is London at street level. I think as a nation we have a collective admiration pride and affection for The Eye. She is world-renowned and a technical and financial success story unlike so many embarrassing and catastrophic money-pits we taxpayers typically have to bail out. Tapping into this I knew the story somehow had to about ascension elevation - about rising up but in a spiritual sense as well as the obviously physical one. For this reason I wanted to start the story as low to the ground as possible and so determined that it had to begin from the point of view of a small person a child and that child needed to have a vulnerability which I felt was easier and more instantly achieved by making it a little girl. Ultimately I knew I only had very basic visual archetypes to work with as this story needed to be told very quickly and be non-dialogue dependent - the majority of its passengers are foreign tourists. It was also paramount to set this apart from the typical adrenal pumping bone rattling 4D experiences you encounter at theme parks; not to say that these aren’t fun but The Eye is visited and enjoyed by infants pensioners and everyone in between; able-bodied less able-bodied all who have ultimately come for a serene and elegant flight above the city – our 4D experience had to appeal to the broadest demographic possible. I needed a hook something really easy and immediate for people to relate to. So I took my little girl idea and began to spin a tale about her on a day trip to London visiting iconic sights with her dad but with her view constantly impaired and obstructed by pedestrians and traffic and the city loud imposing and claustrophobic for her; basically every counter to the experience of riding The Eye. Of course things couldn’t remain this bleak throughout I needed an olive branch a messenger a way to get her to connect with and be delivered to The Eye so she could eventually rise up above the madding crowd. What you see from the top of The Eye is a bird’s-eye view of London so a bird felt like an obvious candidate for the role. But I had a casting problem. I couldn’t use a pigeon because they have too many negative associations. A white dove would have been too incongruous and contrived and therefore equally inappropriate. The answer of course was in permanent residence at The Eye itself. It was like a sign like a ‘build it and they will come’ epiphany seeing all the seagulls circling and alighting on the pontoons around it. From then on as far as the bird was concerned anyway no further casting was needed. What then followed in terms of story-form was so effortless and natural it almost rings like an Aesop’s fable – ‘The Little Girl and the Seagull’. I think you know when you’re on to a good story when it quite simply reveals itself to you as this one did and nothing ever feels contrived. I knew I would return to the little girl at the end of this journey and find her riding The Eye high above London. I knew in that same instant that the roles would have by which time been reversed and we would find her higher that the seagull and looking down on it. This simple little premise gave me a starting point an emotional base from which to build and reflect how The Eye does or might impact us all on a human level. Tensile strength and tonnage may make very interesting reading but if I was buying a ticket for the show I’d want to be engaged on an emotional sensorial and ultimately ‘feel good’ level. With a simple narrative to pin things to I could now experiment with various experiential ideas and how and where they might sit in the timeline and thus start to plot the emotional cadences throughout. Also important to consider are the 4D effects physical effects in the theatre which augment the film experience; you can’t just chuck these in arbitrarily they too have to be carefully considered so they too influenced the storyline at concept level. I count myself very lucky though I had many wonderful collaborators and it would be inappropriate to assume all the story credit for myself. I laid the broad strokes created the glue and the through-line but I am only one of a creative team. My friend and 3D producer Phil Streather artfully and delicately reined me in when the story shot off in tangents pushing me to remodel moderate ideas into better ones. Centre Screen our executive producer was very generous in the long leash they afforded me and were themselves wholly supportive and creatively insightful. I am indebted to Ralston Humble our editor for first uttering the phrase ‘Indian Wedding’ during one brainstorming session. Not least I have to give enormous thanks and credit to Merlin Entertainments for rallying behind the idea; because it is atypical there were easier options and without their faith and approval our little girl might never have gotten off the ground. Julian Napier [email protected] ,1198
AndTransfer Uses its Resolve on Dexter,2009-08-29,Dallas-based AndTransfer a spinoff of 30-year-old Video Post & Transfer recently upgraded its Da Vinci Resolve and is the first post facility in the Southwest to offer color grading of native Red Raw digital motion picture files. One of the first projects to use the Resolve was promotional segments for the hit Showtime series Dexter. The Dexter promos were supplied in multiple acquisition formats with various frame rates and color space. With Resolve AndTransfer colorists were able to import conform and seamlessly convert the varying formats into one format. Also because some of the source material was in DPX files with limited latitude scenes are colored and enhanced manually. Prior to the Resolve this was an intensive and time-consuming process. As new data formats emerge Da Vinci helps us keep pace with technological and industry changes said Kelly Rimenschneider a colorist at AndTransfer. The immediacy of importing and then working with Red files in real time is a huge timesaver for our clients and also gives our team of colorists more time for creative choices. ,1200
Malco Theatres Upgrades its Largest Screens to 3D,2009-08-29, To meet the increasing demands for 3D digital cinema Christie has delivered CP2000-SB DLP Cinema projectors to Malco Theatres a leading exhibitor in the mid-South for over 90 years.
Malco Theatres is a fourth generation family owned movie exhibition company headquartered in Memphis Tennessee that was founded in 1915. Serving movie-going audiences in Arkansas Kentucky Mississippi Missouri and Tennessee Malco Theatres first opened as a multiplex cinema in 1987. The company operates more than 320 screens in over 30 locations. “As an advocate of digital cinema technology from the very beginning we currently have more than 130 digital screens across the mid-South. With digital 3D gaining in popularity we wanted our largest screens to have the brightest image possible for our Dolby 3D systems. Christie was able to deliver the performance and reliability we needed ” says Mike Thomson vice-president of technology Malco Theatres. “At this time we found that the CP2000-SB projectors are the brightest projectors on the market. Their 1.2-inch full-chip triple-flash technology allows us to have five-six foot lamberts of light on 50-foot wide Harkness Purlux 220 screens using Dolby 3D technology. They arrived when we needed them and have been operating flawlessly since their installation.”
“Christie’s CP2000 series projectors continue to set the standards for 3D in both resolution and brightness ” says Brian Claypool senior product manager Christie Entertainment Solutions. “For the largest screens such as those at Malco Theatres the CP2000-SB is the best solution on the market. In addition the motorized lens mount allows theater operators to easily and reliably change between any format with a single lens set-up making it the most accurate and fastest lens solution available. It reflects Christie’s ongoing commitment to provide the best performing easiest to use projection systems in the industry.”
Christie Digital Systems www.christiedigital.com
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Tap Dreams,2009-08-29, Tap Dreams is a documentary in progress that illustrates the worldwide appeal of tap dance and the fervent devotion of its partisans through the international travels of Samuels Smith and Chloe Arnold to cities – Washington D.C. London Tokyo – where they give workshops for children and teens. Over the course of the four-day intensive workshop the youths’ raw talent is honed and a handful of students are selected to perform in a final performance with Samuels Smith in Washington and Arnold in Tokyo. The filmmakers intend to use these first two episodes to shop the project to broadcast outlets and festivals. Tap Dreams is produced written and directed by Dean Hargrove whose award-winning 2004 short Tap Heat starred also Samuels Smith and Arnold. Director of Photography Steven Poster recently shot two pilot segments of the documentary with Panasonic’s new AG-HPX300 P2 HD shoulder-mount camcorders. “I’d shot a documentary about Miles Davis with the AJ-HPX3700 P2 VariCam and loved the color science ” Poster says. “Then I saw the HPX300 at HD Expo and was impressed with its full AVC-Intra codec for shooting 24p. I wanted to try the camera out and Tap Dreams was in the offing and seemed like a good fit.” Poster himself operated the A camcorder on the Washington D.C. location shoot while cinematographer Gary Grieg operated a second HPX300. The equipment was rented from DC Camera in Arlington Virginia.
“We operated largely handheld and occasionally had the HPX300s on tripods ” says Poster. “We had the camcorders rigged out with matte boxes and follow focus and used wide and long zoom HD lenses. I’m enamored with the HPX300’s ergonomics. The HPX300 is so fluid and light it was easy to sit the camcorder on your shoulder and move around.”
“The camcorder’s light handling characteristics are impressive ” Poster says. “We did much of our work in dance studios where we could only minimally supplement available light. In one facility we worked in a practice area that initially had several different color fluorescents with two walls consisting entirely of full-length mirrors. We asked for table lamps and we were presented with 10 incandescent lights that we placed around the room for warmth. We repaired all the fluorescents and changed the bulbs so they were all cool white giving us at least one consistent color overhead. We also had two daylight Kino Flo ParaBeams and an exterior window with daylight coming in. The HPX300s mixed white and black balances beautifully and the images look remarkable.”
“We brought the material to Laser Pacific to do a full digital intermediate and projected it on a 33-foot screen through an AutoDesk/Discreet Lustre digital grading and color correction system ” he continues. “The footage looked terrific with an innate warmth and filmic quality and will clearly transfer out to film remarkably well.”
“The HPX300 is an excellent choice for handheld documentary-style work ” says Grieg who has extensive experience shooting commercial and political spots with P2 HD camera systems. “The camcorder was light mobile and easy to match so much so that Steven and I were able to switch cameras at will.”
“The HPX300 was pretty responsive in the dark ” Grieg adds. “We had very little lighting in most of our scenes but were able to successfully capture the unforced behavior of our subjects. Steven did a great job utilizing the available light and subtly supplementing his own to create a space where the action could unfold uninhibited.
The Tap Dreams segments were shot in 1080p/24fps in AVC-Intra 100. The crew used 16GB P2 cards in D.C. and 32GB cards in Tokyo. “Capacity was never an issue ” Poster says “For this kind of work I didn’t want more footage on a P2 card than would be on a roll of film. We recycled cards in an orderly fashion with our on-set digital downloader laying off footage and cloning it to two hard drives one that stayed with us and one that traveled for dailies.”
Tap Dreams is being editing in Final Cut Pro Studio.
“The P2 system is a brilliant idea that frees us from heavy recording gear being built into the camera ” Poster says. “The HPX300’s ENG-style means the camcorder is very well-balanced. Most important however is Panasonic’s color science and the way the chip reacts to light.” As DP Poster president of the International Cinematographers Guild and co-chair of the Technology Committee of the American Society of Cinematographers has filmed a wide variety of motion pictures including the Emmy-nominated Mrs. Harris Donnie Darko Stuart Little 2 Daddy Day Care Rocky V and The Cemetery Club. He received an ASC nomination for Best Cinematography for Ridley Scott’s Someone To Watch Over Me. Last year he completed filming The Box written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Cameron Diaz James Marsden and Frank Langella. He also filmed Spread directed by David Mackenzie and starring Ashton Kutcher which was recently released theatrically.
Premiere Cinemas Continues Rollout
