When the audience Miss Ai went to the theater a few days ago to enjoy the long-awaited "Lyceum Theatre", she found that when the vertical subtitles appeared in the movie, the words in the first row were cut in half, which greatly affected the viewing experience. Similar situations are not uncommon, and many "recruited" viewers still think that the film is deliberately tailored. On the day of the release of "Lyceum Theatre", the film is convenient to issue a notice to remind the theater that "the screen is covered and not wide", and it is necessary to pay attention to switching. But miss Ai still sees the "cut version" of the movie after nearly a week, and apparently there are still many theaters that have not made adjustments. This also makes many people curious: "Lyceum Theatre" has become a touchstone for testing the ability of theater screening?
Lyceum Theatre is not a special format
Is the "Lyceum Theatre" screening of the mid-frequency "overturning" because of the special format? The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Film Distribution and Projection Association said in an interview with the Jiefang Daily and Shangguan News reporter that the "Lyceum Grand Theater" uses a 1.85:1 mask, which is a standard frame for the film. Some theaters have incomplete display of left subtitles when screening "Lyceum Theatre", mainly due to two major reasons: First, the debugging personnel have improper screen debugging and excessive screen cutting. Second, the screen proportions are not standard when individual theaters are built, and usually in order to ensure that the picture is maximized, the theater will fill both sides of the picture by itself. To ensure the integrity of the bottom caption, the upper part will be cut beyond the frame.
Usually, there is no key information at the top of the film, and even if it is cut, the audience may not notice it. However, the left subtitle of "Lyceum Theatre" is directly up to the sky, and it is easy to find out if the display is incomplete. "I usually like to watch art film festivals, and there are often some special format films, such as old movies are generally 1.37:1 format, close to the square picture, the picture will have black edges on the left and right." After the screening of "Lyceum Theatre", Miss Ai and other audiences reflected the problem of incomplete display to the theater manager, and the other party helplessly said that because of the concern that "leaving a black edge" on the screen would affect the viewing experience, it was usually screened in this way. But as a viewer, she is more concerned about whether the picture information is complete than seeing the black edge during the screening.
A theater manager in Shanghai said that because the theater uses a universal version of the screen, there was no incomplete display during the screening of "Lyceum Grand Theatre" and no operation was required. He also said that when screening masked films every day, the white edges that theoretically need to be cut have always been there, and no audience has yet been dissatisfied with this.
The 1.85:1 format of Lyceum Theatre is one of the most common frame ratios in modern cinema, and 2.39:1 format films have become popular in recent years. The real special format films include "Assassin Nie Yinniang", "Mountains and Rivers of the Past", etc., they also have the situation of changing the format, and behind them are the artistic pursuits of the director. Director Wong Kar-wai was controversial when he was doing a 4K restoration for his film, changing the format from 1.85:1 to 1.66:1. He said that films such as "Fancy Years" were originally shot and distributed in a 1.66:1 format, which is also his favorite format, but it was converted to 1.85:1 in the videotape, and he wanted the audience to see the film as it was. The upcoming "007: No Time to Die" also made an article on the format, with a 40-minute special format shot with IMAX cameras, in the IMAX theater, can present 26% more complete pictures than the ordinary theater, so that the audience can get a better sense of immersion.
"Weekly Film Festival" helps the theater "train troops"
Compared with the 1.85:1 format, the black-and-white form of "Lyceum Theatre" makes the audience obviously feel different from the general new film, and also brings some trouble. When the film premiered in the Daguang Cinema, the dark part appeared red and purple, and was complained about by some viewers like a "ghost film". For this reason, the lead actor Gong Li specially apologized to the audience after the screening.
There are also many viewers who feel dizzy about this black-and-white film, and even some people "want to vomit". When Miss Ai went to see "Lyceum Theatre", she found that the theater side reminded that "some shots are prone to dizziness". She believes that the dizziness is not brought about by black and white, nor is it a problem with theatrical screening, but because director Lou Ye has adopted a handheld photography shooting method, "Nanjing! nanking! " is also a black and white film, but the impression did not hear people say halo, but the handheld photography of the film, there is a count of one, all halo. ”
Do I need special commissioning when showing black-and-white films in theaters? "The individual screen color cast problems of "Lyceum Grand Theater" screen screened by the Great Bright Cinema were found through layers of investigation that the server turned on the Dolby 3D ghosting function." The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Film Distribution and Projection Association said that this function basically has little impact on color films, and the accident that occurred during the screening of "Lyceum Grand Theatre" was the first time that the theater found problems when screening black-and-white films. In addition, black and white films have higher requirements for color pictures and contrast, and some cinema equipment will be more obvious in black and white pictures due to their long service life, and the light engine will leak if the maintenance is not in place.
Although "Lyceum Theatre" inadvertently "tested" many problems, the relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Film Distribution and Projection Association said that when the theater was inspected annually, the new film would not be used as an "additional test project", "In the annual testing of the theater, there are standard 1.85 and 2.39 format test films, and the film industry has relevant screening standards, and the annual inspection work has been tested in accordance with this standard." ”
In contrast, the "Zhou Zhou You Film Festival" project launched in Shanghai in 2020 has more "training" significance for theaters. The "Weekly Film Festival" brings audiences diverse art films from all over the world, and the latest edition of the "Italian Film Masters Exhibition" is held from October 23 to November 7. The Shanghai Art Film Alliance said that it will test every film festival and film in advance, and once it encounters a problem, it will ask experts from Shanghai Film Technology Factory to solve it. "At present, we will encounter a little problem when screening some black and white films, such as the red and green mirror color cast of the theater projector, which causes the color bar on the edge of the character. The Great Bright Cinema had never found that there was a red and green mirror color cast before, until it encountered this problem when holding the Polish Master Exhibition, which was solved in time after investigation, which also did a good job of screening for the subsequent film festivals, including the Shanghai International Film Festival. ”
In addition to troubleshooting screening problems, the "Weekly Film Festival" also pays attention to improving the level of screening services. Recently, more and more film festivals have done "embedded subtitles" to avoid mismatch problems caused by subtitlers' operation errors or subtitle machine failures, so that the audience has a more comfortable viewing experience. "As long as there are conditions in the future film festivals of the Shanghai Art Federation, we will do inline subtitles." The relevant person in charge said.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Shi Chenlu
Source: Author: Zhong Han