PULP & POPCORN

Page 10
Yes, I’ve seen some horrible accidents with film. I was a projectionist for a
while, and there were some wild things that went on sometimes. I had a print come
unspooled that managed to wrap around the brain on one of the platters in our
system, and the more the film played, the tighter it got wound around the inside
pieces, until the entire thing snapped from the pressure. I had a film print get
dropped once, and it got all weird and out of shape, and I had to sit next to the
platter for the entire film, manually keeping the print in something close to the
correct shape so it wouldn’t end up sliding off the platter completely. I’ve seen film
burns that were just apocalyptic. But so what? Digital has its own projection issues,
and I’ve seen plenty of examples of digital files or digital systems screwing up in
exciting and unusual ways.
When I was sitting in the Cinerama Dome, watching this incredibly crystalclear
3D image unfold in front of me, there were several times where it felt like I
could just stick my hand into the screen. It was so incredibly clear, and with such
depth of field, that no matter where you’re looking, you can see something in focus.
Lee uses a visual plan that repeatedly drops a character dead center in the shot, in
close-up, speaking directly into the camera. In each of those shots, it feels like that
person is just inches away. It feels genuinely intimate. But there are plenty of places
where Lee does something that would be fine if he did it in film, but it doesn’t work
the same way in 120 fps HD 3D. It doesn’t track the same, it doesn’t have the same
impact on the viewer. There’s going to have to be a fundamental shift in the way you
stage and shoot things if this is ever going to work, because it does not create the
same sort of dream-state right now. Sure, not everyone goes to a movie to get lost in
it, and people watch films in so many different distracted ways now that I’m sure it
all seems precious, the idea of protecting some ineffable effect that film has on the
viewer. After all, 120 fps resolution has to be better than 24 fps by definition, right?
Isn’t it always a good thing automatically to push progress forward?
Honestly, I don’t get how James Cameron thinks he’s going to pull off the
Avatar sequels shooting in 120 fps. The additional work that’s going to have to be
done to make a 3D character feel real in this format is mind-boggling. It’s going to
require an exponential jump in rendering power, and I’m not sure we’re there yet.