1917

Batutta said:
Cool video, and before anyone says, see, there was editing involved, I knew that. But there was no artistry involved in whatever editing took place in this movie. It's equivalent to a welder fusing two plates together and making the seam smooth. The movie doesn't draw it's power from the editing, where two shots juxtaposed against each other create a new moment or meaning. Or how the arrangement of scenes tell the story. It was a technical process here, closer to VFX compositing and while cool, not worthy of an award for editing.
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Serious question - are the Critics Choice Awards a joke like the golden globes or is it normally a respected award?
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Perhaps I don't fully understand the difference yet. To me, considering the size of most rooms (such as my intended room), the limiting reagent is more often on the horizontal axis, not the vertical. As such, a 16:9 screen makes way more sense to me as then you won't have to shrink your width (which you're already limited on due to room size) when viewing 2:35:1 content.

I also don't fully understand the limitations of the Sony, but as you mentioned, I believe the JVC has better ease of use for projection size and scope adjustments compared to the Sony. Sony's next step up has these features, but for a few thousand more dollars, which is more than I want to spend. You're right about the home theater forums loving the JVC. I think I'm leaning toward the JVC, and if the input lag is too slow, I could always still game on my laptop or the TV I plan to eventually get for my office.

I also have a larger more open room in the basement which could be another home theater option, planned to be a game room, so the screen could be even larger there, but then it would not be a dedicated room and the general consensus seems to be that a dedicated room works better for a home theater than say turning a larger family room type of room into a home theater, I gather because it's easier to seal in the audio more than an open room, and also light control is typically easier (no that blacking out several windows is impossible).

But going back to UST vs old school, if I ever wanted to drag the projector into the larger room or say another location and use a bigger screen, then that remains an option. On the flip side, the Sony and JVC are both under 2000 lumens, which I would imagine limits the size of the screen as you'd loose too much brightness. I was talking with someone recently who is coming from their OLED TV and their 8000 lumen projector, and they were saying an 1800 lumen projector would not be nearly bright enough, even for a light controlled room. From what I read on the home theater forums, 1800 is bright enough assuming the projector is not too far away, the screen size not too large, etc. Ultimately, I did not read about anyone complaining about the brightness levels of the Sony or JVC in light controlled rooms. I'd also read that the Sony lacks an iris to lower the lumens if it's too bright, while the JVC has an iris to adjust brightness. I do sort of wonder though if there'd be cases where you don't want the room pitch black aside from the projector, such as if you're eating, at which point the brightness may be lacking.

I wonder if the 6000 lumen Vava would be too bright for a small room, or are UST's easily dimmable like LED lights?



I would imagine a UST projector's maintenance costs to be well under $3200, the cost difference between the LG and the Vava. You could basically buy two Vava's at that price point and have a backup ready to go. That is, if they're actually the same quality.
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Actually with a CIH(constant image height) 2.35:1 screen it would be wider and you'd lose screen width when viewing 16:9 or 1.85:1 content. But If you view mostly 16:9 or 1:85:1(still the most common movie AR, as far as I know) content(lots of TV dramas and Netflix and other streamers are using 2:1, now), then that's a lot of trouble and expense to go through. It all depends on your preferences, your space and what you want to spend. My set-up is both TV and movie viewing with it weighted towards TV, so 16:9 makes more sense for me. That and 2.35 isn't an option currently with UST projectors.

Without having seen either one in-person and just going by the home theater forums, I don't think you can go wrong with the JVC over the Sony.

Yeah, lots of variables to take into account that all interact with each other with regards to screen size, screen type, distance and how powerful the projector is.

I can't speak to the Vava, but with mine, besides your standard "brightness" and "gamma" settings, there are energy conservation settings that basically change whether it's going to run at full, medium or low output. So there are multiple settings that can adjust the brightness. I think my projector is rated(from LG) at 2700 lumens(max) and most of the reviews say it actually hits it and above. In the eye bleeding Vivid setting, one reviewer measured over 3000 and in the "Cinema Home HDR" setting over 2900. But I doubt those are calibrated readings. Something else to keep in mind with UST projectors, you have to use them with UST screens designed for that purpose and most of them are around .6 gain(which means compared to a baseline 1.0 gain screen, it's only going to be 60% as bright). I'm not sure how much maintenance there really is. If the lasers crap out after warranty, I think it's cheaper to chunk them in the trash. But they're rated for at least 20,000 hours, so...

Hanging out on the theater forums... There are some insanely rich people with insane, world class set-ups. One guy out in CA was the first person having a Samsung 'The Wall' MicroLED set-ups installed(six figures) in his existing theater and I just read an article on one guy who is a former DP and his theater room was easily a quarter million if not more(I'm probably being extremely conservative on that estimate. Half a mil wouldn't surprise me in the least). It's one thing when we talk about spending $30K-$40K-$50K on cameras or lenses for business, but there are guys spending $50K-$100K on projectors. And in a lot of these, especially the bigger ones, the real money is in the audio.
 
Well, I'm heading out to see this at ArcLight here in Hollywood. I saw Once Upon A Time, and Pain and Glory there, and liked both, so I'm hoping this one will be a trifecta. I gotta admit, I'm a bit nervous, because another film that seems a cousin to 1917, Nolan's Dunkirk, was a giant failure to my mind. It too was big on the technical side, but what good is the best technique if the story is garbage. Of course it's down to taste to some degree, so well, I guess I'll see if 1917 will do it for me. I thought it was important to see it on the big screen to give it the best shot - and btw. I thought Once Upon A Time was fantastic on the big screen. I hope the audience will be respectful - when I saw Pain and Glory, someone was constantly cutting the cheese, it was super unpleasant and made everyone mad... it sux when you spend a bunch of $ and someone decides make the air unbreathable.
 
Run&Gun said:
Hanging out on the theater forums... There are some insanely rich people with insane, world class set-ups. One guy out in CA was the first person having a Samsung 'The Wall' MicroLED set-ups installed(six figures) in his existing theater and I just read an article on one guy who is a former DP and his theater room was easily a quarter million if not more(I'm probably being extremely conservative on that estimate. Half a mil wouldn't surprise me in the least). It's one thing when we talk about spending $30K-$40K-$50K on cameras or lenses for business, but there are guys spending $50K-$100K on projectors. And in a lot of these, especially the bigger ones, the real money is in the audio.
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$400k for IMAX home theater setup.

http://www.imaxprivatetheatre.com/en/index.aspx

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...atre-brings-the-1-million-screening-room-home

Good to hear a former DP could afford a home theater setup at that caliber. I guess a lot of the top dogs can make over a million per year.

I have not really begun much research on audio yet. I'm thinking to budget around $2k-$3k for audio setup, but once I have a better understanding of what's out there, that should have more effect on what I budget for it.


Nothing against gay black people, but it would be nice if a movie could win an Academy Award for Best Picture without having a pro gay and pro black message to it. Last three years in a row, Moonlight, Shape of Water, and Greenbook all had pro gay and pro black messages in them. Which is fine, but should not be the reason a movie wins Best Picture. I recall thinking and somewhat jokingly saying after watching Greenbook in theaters, "This will win Best Picture. It's about a black gay person." The movie was good, like the other two, but none of them were great.
 
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Eric Coughlin said:
Nothing against gay black people, but it would be nice if a movie could win an Academy Award for Best Picture without having a pro gay and pro black message to it. Last three years in a row, Moonlight, Shape of Water, and Greenbook all had pro gay and pro black messages in them. Which is fine, but should not be the reason a movie wins Best Picture. I recall thinking and somewhat jokingly saying after watching Greenbook in theaters, "This will win Best Picture. It's about a black gay person." The movie was good, like the other two, but none of them were great.
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Should this happen again, I guess you'll have to console yourself with the other 80 some Best Pictures that were about straight white people. And guess what, not all of them were great either.
 
Batutta said:
Should this happen again, I guess you'll have to console yourself with the other 80 some Best Pictures that were about straight white people. And guess what, not all of them were great either.
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The difference is, they didn’t win because they were about straight white people. They won for other reasons.

If the other 80 movies did win mostly because they were about straight white people, I would have a problem with that too.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
The difference is, they didn’t win because they were about straight white people. They won for other reasons.

If the other 80 movies did win mostly because they were about straight white people, I would have a problem with that too.
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Those movies didn't win mostly because they were about gay, black people. Was that a factor, sure, but it's not like that's all they had to offer. There are always other factors that go into which movie gets best picture. Sometimes it's also about world politics, sometimes it's about industry politics, sometimes it's about who spent the most on ads. But the movie has to be considered good first, and art is by and large subjective. Just because you thought Green Book wasn't that great, doesn't make it empirically so. I know several people who thought it was great and deserved best picture. I'm not one of them, but, we could go down the years and find so many times where other movies more deservedly should have gotten it, and didn't for other reasons. You're assuming because you didn't like them, they must have won only because they are about blacks and gays because that's what stands out. And, I know you say you're "fine" with blacks and gays, but if something about that subject matter didn't make you uncomfortable you wouldn't point it out and think it would be "nice" if a movie that wasn't about those people won best picture. I know you're just making the old "it should only be about merit" argument, but the Academy Awards have never been just about merit, so why did it take race and sexual orientation for that to suddenly make it a problem? Maybe you were just trying to be funny. If so, you might have wanted to choose your words more carefully.
 
Batutta said:
Those movies didn't win mostly because they were about gay, black people. Was that a factor, sure, but it's not like that's all they had to offer. There are always other factors that go into which movie gets best picture. Sometimes it's also about world politics, sometimes it's about industry politics, sometimes it's about who spent the most on ads. But the movie has to be considered good first, and art is by and large subjective. Just because you thought Green Book wasn't that great, doesn't make it empirically so. I know several people who thought it was great and deserved best picture. I'm not one of them, but, we could go down the years and find so many times where other movies more deservedly should have gotten it, and didn't for other reasons. You're assuming because you didn't like them, they must have won only because they are about blacks and gays because that's what stands out. And, I know you say you're "fine" with blacks and gays, but if something about that subject matter didn't make you uncomfortable you wouldn't point it out and think it would be "nice" if a movie that wasn't about those people won best picture. I know you're just making the old "it should only be about merit" argument, but the Academy Awards have never been just about merit, so why did it take race and sexual orientation for that to suddenly make it a problem? Maybe you were just trying to be funny. If so, you might have wanted to choose your words more carefully.
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Again, I don't have a problem with say directors with golden hair, but if I noticed Hollywood was only awarding golden haired directors awards, I would have an issue with that. It's not about the subject matter making me uncomfortable; it's about noticing a political pattern in choosing Best Picture winners that does not have to do with the actual artistic merit of the film. Yeah, they're still good movies, but even you seem to agree that those issues likely helped in them winning Best Picture, and considering that having an agenda that fits what Hollywood wants to push at the time is not the equivalent of actually being a better film, I'm basically just saying I don't think political issues should be a factor in what wins Best Picture. Sure, perhaps the Academy Awards have never just been about artistic merit, but that doesn't mean they should be that way. I think it becomes more of a problem when the political agenda outweighs artistic merit by a long shot and very noticeable trends start to develop which keep great movies that don't fit the political agenda from having a chance at the awards.

So yeah, Academy Awards have likely always had a political aspect to them, and over the years the amount of influence that has goes up and down. I'd imagine now it's on the higher side, and while we can never imagine it ever being completely eliminated, I think we can hope that it gets toned down in the future in favor of artistic merit.

This kind of gets into subjective vs objective art; I lean toward the objective side so I could probably argue that objectively those movies were not the best films of the year, without just putting it forth as my own possibly flawed opinion. Just like I could objectively say that Catwoman (2004) and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 are not the two greatest movies ever made. I don't consider that a subjective opinion.
 
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Eric Coughlin said:
This kind of gets into subjective vs objective art; I lean toward the objective side so I could probably argue that objectively those movies were not the best films of the year, without just putting it forth as my own possibly flawed opinion.
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It's still subjective to a degree, once you filter past sheer incompetence and get to the level of good vs. great. The past three years of nominees haven't been especially strong. There is no obvious choice to me among the nominees, so those films winning doesn't feel especially egregious. And with so many nominees I'm guessing the vote tallies on the top few were probably pretty close.
 
My mum, who is 82, went to see 1917 last week after hearing me recommend it. She had to leave the cinema half-way through because the camera movement made her feel sick. She rushed home before vomiting-up her lunch - lucky it was a matinee performance so she didn't waste her dinner.
 
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Technically speaking the Trinity is still Steadicam, just with a gimbal on top of the Steadicam.

I still found some of the movement to be jerky and mechanical looking compared to the more organic feel of Steadicam. Perhaps this can be fixed in future technology of gimbals. I was impressed by how slow of a push in was achieved for the scene with the girl and baby. And of course the Trinity has much more range of movement. But for shots that don't require booming up and down during the shot, I still prefer the look of Steadicam in most cases.
 
I agree that there were some results I didn't love with the hybrid Steadicam work in 1917. In the leading shots in the trenches at the beginning, which was I believe done with a gimbal literally mounted on top of a Steadicam (vs the Trinity which is a more self-contained/unified device) and Roger operating the pan/tilt remotely, you can see the resulting reactive delays when the rig took a corner or course-corrected and the frame played catch-up. One of the great things about Steadicam is that the operator can anticipate and coordinate all of the axis together so that the rig may be making massive changes to the lens position, but it is minimized by the ability to counteract that motion simultaneously. Here it felt a little off.

Additionally there was one scene where the edges of the frame revealed a herky-jerky type of motion that I associate with a gimbal that isn't properly tuned. I'll have to wait to see it on video to be able to analyze further and ID that scene.

That said, these were small concerns amongst the larger whole and I was really impressed with the work (and stamina) of the various operators that were involved.
 
Is that İlkay Gündoğan next to Roger?

PS. As a military history buff - more Second than First - the film's premise is absurd. One would not send a pair of infantrymen for this task but likely a full squad. In other words, as ridiculous as the Mac Guffin in "Saving Private Ryan" was, this is much worse so, being a borrowed item and all.

Here's a summary of the pre and WWI communication technologies.

https://www.usmcmuseum.com/uploads/...wi_military_communication_resource_packet.pdf

Furthermore, I'll add that the development of aviation trumped the above.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anecdotes-from-the-archive/aircraft-communication-1915/
 
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