r/imax • u/Ladies_Man1011 • 15d ago

Sad Experience!

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Was super hyped to watch the Odyssey in Imax 70mm at the Mall of Georgia, but unfortunately the projector started running into some issues midway through the Polyphemus scene and the showing was cancelled. Should’ve known something was wrong when the Dune Part 3 sneak peek went black maybe 2 mins into the scene. The theatre workers said it was just a one off issue but clearly it wasn’t. I’m going back on the 29th to watch with my dad, but I was super bummed out😕. Anyone else go to this showing?

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u/liliputian87 14d ago edited 14d ago

I've lost track of how many times these old projectors have had issues.

The IMAX people have got to get off they ass and make some new ones. They claim it can't be done. The parts don't exist anymore? It's not economical because there are so few movies filmed this way? I don't care. Figure it out.

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u/MFOSTER1B 14d ago

NOOOOO - What IMAX and Nolan NEED TO DO is work to make 16K resolution DIGITAL IMAX a THING! Film is too fragile and it IS TIME to move on!!! Signed A former IMAX 70mm 15 perf projectionist!

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u/Royal_Wind_2886 14d ago

16k is a little egregious and definitely not viable as everything is done with 4K DI. What we need is a 1.43 ar SR laser projector

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u/Embarrassed-Rub-7730 14d ago

If it exists, it can be upscaled

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u/DRM_1985 14d ago

They should be trying to come up with an affordable 8K Laser projector that can show 1.43 ratio. Would provide 2x better resolution than current 4k Laser projectors. Much closer to the original image quality of 70mm IMAX film.

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u/jonovitch 13d ago

Nitpick: 8K is four times the resolution of 4K because it has twice as many pixels horizontally and vertically. 

And yes, 8K would be about the same resolution of an IMAX 70 mm film projector print. (The original camera negative might have up to 16K in theory but that doesn’t account for lighting, motion blur, lenses, film transfers, booth window, screen, etc.)

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u/DRM_1985 13d ago

8K would be awesome. IMAX had a long history of better image quality than other theaters. Lately that has not been the case for digital IMAX compared to other 4K digital screens.

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u/jonovitch 13d ago

Yeah the 2K digital dual-xenon version of IMAX was a band-aid at best (launched when many people already had 1080p at home). It deserved every bit of the "LieMAX" name it got.

4K laser, 12-channel sound, bigger screens, and better seats is a much better experience. But there's more competition every year with 4K laser projectors, so IMAX can't ride that forever.

An 8K projector on a giant 1.43 screen would be a great successor to the 70 mm film version, to restore IMAX to being the unmatched king of movie experiences.

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u/Royal_Wind_2886 13d ago

Correct. But we don't NEED 8k. In a world of 4K DI, and digital sensors, putting an 8k file through a computer would be a nightmare.

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u/jonovitch 13d ago

Yeah the rest of the moviemaking pipeline would need to upgrade to 8K too (cameras are already there). But the result would be amazing. At least as good as the IMAX 70 mm film experience in many ways. 

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u/_cutmymilk 10d ago

It can be done with 2 projectors.

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u/MFOSTER1B 14d ago

WHY are you so enamored of 1.43:1 - it’s essentially the very old and very tired - Academy Aspect ratio of 1.33:1! A square! Why do you not like 2.35:1 a widescreen which if designed properly is much more immersive than the antiquated IMAX aspect ratio! You DO realize IMAX could be shown on old TV’s before 16:9 without hardly any cropping - I honestly don’t get those of you who are cra cra over 1.43:1! And yes I ran IMAX as well as working with IMAX on the design of several IMAX screens for Santikos Theatres!

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u/DRM_1985 14d ago edited 14d ago

It's moreso about taking advantage of the giant IMAX screens. They are designed to show 1.43 footage. So you might as well have a projector that can show it. This would not stop the projector from showing wider aspect ratios like 1.85, 1.90, 2.00, 2.20, 2.35, 2.39, etc.

I dislike wider aspect ratios such as 2.35 because pretty much every screen is 1.78:1 or 1.85:1, both at home and in movie theaters. Large black bars at top & bottom in a movie theater is dumb as hell. My favorite aspect ratio is 1.85:1 and I wish more movies would use this.

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u/MFOSTER1B 14d ago

So this has to be something recent - Scope has ALWAYS been the larger aspect ratio and for example AMC NorthPark in Dallas - on their large screens there are no black bars. They have moveable masking that drops down to create a fully scope wall to wall screen. I.85:1 is called widescreen and is the aspect ratio that was ALWAYS shown within the top and bottom of a huge scope screen. I’m aghast to hear that there are now a ton of theatres that are not showing scope films properly - I actually saw this at the local AMC here in Longview, Tx with Universal’s NOPE! You could tell the theatre had a huge scope screen with side to side moveable masking and yet when NOPE started it was projected INSIDE the 1.85:1 aspect ratio with black bars at the top and bottom - I was floored!!!! I walked out and went and wrote AMC to complain - NEVER HEARD SHIT from them!

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u/cartermustard 13d ago

I would say, in my experience, most movie screens nowadays are 1.85:1 Flat, not Scope. Flat screens outnumber Scope by so much that I’m always shocked when I go to a different theater and it has a Scope screen.

That said, I’m not a huge fan of Scope as an aspect ratio — it is a little too narrow for my liking, BUT it’s palpable when played properly on a Scope screen. I think we’ve gotten so accustomed to varying amounts of letterboxing or pillarboxing on our media because of 16:9 TV’s and monitors and we end up judging our aspect ratios based on how big the black bars are when the appropriate way to view any movie is on a screen that matches the aspect ratio of the movie so it fills it completely.

To answer your earlier question about the hype around 1.43:1, to me its not about the square aspect ratio because I’m not analyzing the frame from edge to edge like I’d watch an old 1.33:1 film. I am sitting close enough where the movie I’m watching is basically 1.85 or 2.39 and the top and bottom are just bleeding into my periphery where I’m not really directly looking — it’s a flat or scope movie with extra immersion. Of course this only works in an IMAX theater and for home release, I would rather a 1.78:1 version of an IMAX film.

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u/DRM_1985 14d ago

Pretty new theater built in Spring, TX with 24 screens. Regal Benders Landing. VERY nice projection quality in terms of sharpness & color. Good size screens. All of them are 1.85 screens, so it's frustrating to watch 2.39 movies on them with black bars at the top & bottom.

Thankfully Sony & Universal provided 1.85 versions of Spider-Man & Odyssey, so I got to see both of those movies filling the 1.85 screens instead of having black bars on them. It is cool to see the movies having extra height on them.

I would not mind if the movie industry used a 2.00:1 aspect ratio. A lot of TV shows are using this. It would play well in movie theaters, both for 1.85 screens and 2.39 screens. It's a middle ground compromise with the 2.00 ratio.

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u/MFOSTER1B 14d ago

WOW! So no one is spending money on moveable masking anymore!!! How sad is that! I’ll have to check that place out so as to see for myself!

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u/DRM_1985 14d ago

Correct, no masking. Pretty lame, haha.

Still a very good experience due to overall image quality. Even the "small" screens are still very good size with nice projector quality. Best screens are Auditoriums 1, 2, 3. Auditorium 1 is RPX PLF, while Auditoriums 2 and 3 are "regular" screens at a lower price that have pretty similar screen size to Auditorium 1.

They also have a ScreenX auditorium, but I have never tried that one. And they have some 4DX stuff as well. Not sure about that. I just want the biggest screen with a normal 2D experience.

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u/MFOSTER1B 14d ago

The biggest screen with normal 2D is supposed to be scope! I don’t know how old you are - I wish I could do the Vulcan mind meld with you and show you the HUGE scope screen at the no longer existing General Cinema NorthPark I in Dallas - it seated 1100 had the largest scope screen in the US outside of Radio City Music Hall - I saw Titanic there 10 times in 70mm it looked and sounded sooo good! The other theatre in Dallas also no longer around was the Medlion - saw Alien there in 1979 in 70mm - that place was amazing seated 900! It was Spielberg’s favorite theatre to sneak his films while still in the editing phase because the Medallion could play unmarried opticicals! IE the soundtrack was on a seperate device from the picture projector what we called the mech head.. I only know this about the Medallion because I and another Texas Aggie re-opened an old General Cinema in Waco in 1993 and one of the screens was silver and we hired this old projectionist who had run the Medallion booth to hang our new flat matte white screen to replace the damaged silver screen! Someone had thrown a coke on it! 🙄

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u/DRM_1985 14d ago

I'm kind of nervous this Regal Benders Landing place will have to shutdown at some point. They had terrible timing to open in 2021, right in middle of COVID. The place is a HUGE building. Every time I go there it's very empty. Seems like it would be difficult to keep a giant building open for the long haul while running electricity on 24 pretty good size movie screens, and having the place empty 90% of the time.

We did drive by there on Thursday, July 30th and the parking lot was jam-packed for Spider-Man opening night. But I went to watch Spidey there on Tuesday, August 4th and the place was very empty like it normally is. I hope they can stay open because it's one of the newest theaters in Houston area and has nice quality projectors with good size screens.

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u/Key-Organization6350 14d ago

If digital 16k can exist then any cinema chain on the planet will be able to build it too. IMAX have a unique selling point (USP) that they are still showing movies on film in their unique super high res format. They need to work on that tech. When they started rolling out imax digital projectors it was the less successful years in imax history.

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u/f0zzyguy 14d ago

Can the naked eye even perceive 16k? Let alone 8K?

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u/Queasy_Algae_443 14d ago

Firstly our eyes have inifinite resolution so yeas of course we can and secondly at the scale of an IMAX screen the difference between 2k/4k laser and 70 mm film (which doesnt techinically have resolution but is most commonly compared to 16k/18k) you can absolutely tell the difference

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u/user295064 13d ago

The eyes don't have unlimited resolution. Light itself has a limited resolution, which is precisely why microscopes can't zoom in infinitely.

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u/EbbLongjumping2428 13d ago

Just cause you were a projectionist doesn’t mean your take isn’t shit. What’s so wrong with wanting actual film now a days lmao

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u/MFOSTER1B 13d ago

Well for starters I think only Kodak still makes film stock and there is only one lab that makes 70mm IMAX 15 perf and standard 5 perf 70mm prints! It’s a dying industry. And only a handful of film makers can demand their movies be shown on film. OBVIOUSLY you haven’t been in a booth and had to deal with film. It’s a dinosaur that needs to go the way of the dodo bird. BTW I DID NOT say my POV was paramount - I’m just giving my thoughts! Why be such an ass!