Has there been any movies shot on larger than 70mm film?

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Oller Visuals

Well-known member
So, I just read about last years 4K restoration of Lawrence of Arabia, and a few weeks ago I restored a 6x6 wedding photo (also half a century old) and made a great print of it.

Just thinking if there has been experiments with even larger formats? There's no hits on google on "large format motion picture film" so I assume that has never been done?
 
IMAX 15 perf (70mm filmed horizontally) and Cinerama 3 strip ( three 35mm cameras in sync side-by-side).
 
Oller Visuals said:
So, I just read about last years 4K restoration of Lawrence of Arabia, and a few weeks ago I restored a 6x6 wedding photo (also half a century old) and made a great print of it.

Just thinking if there has been experiments with even larger formats? There's no hits on google on "large format motion picture film" so I assume that has never been done?
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The requirements for motion pictures are a lot different than still photography. But the optics and laws of physics apply to both.

What happens when you increase the area of the capture (either film or digital), is that lenses get bigger and heavier, DOF decreases making it more difficult to control what's in focus, the camera gets physically bigger, so the tripod has to get bigger too, etc....

If you are talking physical film, going bigger is a serious mechanical challenge. F = ma still applies, which means more force on the film to accelerate and decelerate the frame to get it in position for a shutter activation (not only is each frame bigger and therefore has more mass, but the inter-frame distance is longer so you have to accelerate and decelerate even more when moving the frames). If you double the area of the film, you can expect an 8x increase in the forces (your mass went up, and your accelerations went up, so your forces went way up) to move the film, and acting on the bearings inside the camera, and in particular, acting on the sprocket holes in the film itself. It's going to mean thicker film because of that, and that's going to mean less footage in a magazine, or physically bigger magazines that weigh more... I'm just sayin' that increasing the film area takes you down a mechanical engineering rat hole. There's way more to it than you'd think, and very little of it scales linearly like you might hope it would.

So what do you get for your trouble? A bigger capture area can mean higher resolution, better tones, better tonal transitions, and film grain / noise will be smaller on screen assuming you're talking about the same size screen for both of the formats you are comparing. If you compare prints on a wall made from a 35mm camera and an 5x4 camera, the differences in decent sized prints (say, 20 x 16 inches) are relatively easy to spot. If you're close enough to the print. But motion pictures aren't prints on a wall, they are ever changing images on a screen seen from way farther back.

So the important question is, would the larger image capture area result in a better picture on the screen? When each frame is up on the screen for less than 1/24 second, I have my doubts. Where motion pictures are concerned, 65mm *is* large format. Horizontal 15 perf IMAX is the 10x8 of motion pictures, and it requires a humongous screen to make it work for the audience. Screens so big that your local cineplex can't easily build them and project onto them, so they resort to the "fauxMAX" concept of showing IMAX on their biggest screen. Many people, myself included, think this is a waste of time and a rip-off of the customer.

All that said, I imagine that somewhere someone has experimented with motion picture film larger than 65mm. People do amazing things. But from what I've seen in my searches of the literature, there was never much interest beyond the IMAX format, and no commercial activity. Even IMAX is more of a novelty than a useful format IMHO.
 
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so they resort to the "fauxMAX" concept of showing IMAX on their biggest screen. Many people, myself included, think this is a waste of time and a rip-off of the customer.
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+1

Interesting info creative types don't normally think of. Thanks!
 
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Bruce Watson said:
All that said, I imagine that somewhere someone has experimented with motion picture film larger than 65mm. People do amazing things. But from what I've seen in my searches of the literature, there was never much interest beyond the IMAX format, and no commercial activity. Even IMAX is more of a novelty than a useful format IMHO.
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Outside of a 'specialty' camera, and attendant film stock, I believe the largest 'standard' film stock width is the '70mm' stock, which serves for still film 6x4, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9 cm formats, as well as the "70mm/65mm", either traditional frame format or the 15 perf IMAX, movie film requirements.

Kodak may still make a 'large format' roll film that would allow for 4x5 imaging, used in 'aerial reconnaissance', but that may be gone the way of the Dodo these days along with most other film stocks... In any case, the 'mechanics' of a 'movie' camera that would use such a film size are daunting...
 
Oller Visuals said:
So, I just read about last years 4K restoration of Lawrence of Arabia, and a few weeks ago I restored a 6x6 wedding photo (also half a century old) and made a great print of it.

Just thinking if there has been experiments with even larger formats? There's no hits on google on "large format motion picture film" so I assume that has never been done?
Click to expand...

I just watched the latest restoration of To Catch A Thief on blu-ray. I was struck by the relative lack of grain from a film that was shot in the mid 1950s, and the shallow DOF, even in the daylight scenes.

Turns out, it was shot in VistaVision. Individual frames run horizontally -- it's 8 perf, or a little over 2x the film area of S35. This is the "little brother" to IMAX, which is the same basic thing but on 65mm film at 15 perf pull down.

S35 frame size -> 24.0 mm x 12.97 mm = 309.8 mm^2
VistaVision -> 36.0 mm x 18.30 mm = 658.8 mm^2, 2.13 x the area of S35
Todd AO, 65mm 5 perf -> 48.56mm x 20.73mm = 1006.7 mm^2, 3.25 x the area of S35
IMAX, 65mm 15 perf -> 69.6 mm × 48.50 mm = 3375.6 mm^2, 10.9 x the area of S35

Lawrence of Arabia was shot on Todd AO format (technically, Super Panavision 70 which turns out to be almost exactly the same thing). That 4k restoration didn't pull all the information off the film. There's probably 8k worth of information there; that's a big honking piece of film.
 
I think that 65mm origination is probably the largest gauge film that has been used for narrative or documentary motion pictures. There may have been some one-off experimental works done on larger gauge film, but I am not aware of any. Motion picture technical standards were standardized pretty early in the development of the technology, which I believe is a triumph of economies of scale. Of course, there have been a lot variations on the film standards over the years but that was still using the standardized film gauges. I think that the actual largest amount of film negative space used in a working film format was the original 3 strip Cinerama process.

One experiment with the 65mm origination gauge that I think is very relevant to today is the work that Douglas Trumbull did for his proprietary film format Showscan Showscan was 65mm film projected at 60 FPS. A lot of folks today, who are proponents of higher frame rates, trace their rational back to the work of Trumbull on Showscan. Trumbull is still a very well respected voice for the adoption of higher frame rates.

I never saw a Showscan presentation, which I believe was only commercially adapted for specialty theme park motion simulator rides and the like, but WOW, I bet it looked fantastic.
 
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Bruce Watson said:
Lawrence of Arabia was shot on Todd AO format (technically, Super Panavision 70 which turns out to be almost exactly the same thing). That 4k restoration didn't pull all the information off the film. There's probably 8k worth of information there; that's a big honking piece of film.
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The film was scanned at 8K and finished/projected at 4K. So all the info the negative is there and then downscaled. Saw the 4K restoration on the big screen (first time I saw the film). I was awestruck, amazing cinematography and a true masterpiece of a film.
 
Gabel said:
The film was scanned at 8K and finished/projected at 4K. So all the info the negative is there and then downscaled. Saw the 4K restoration on the big screen (first time I saw the film). I was awestruck, amazing cinematography and a true masterpiece of a film.
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I think this is a problem with people these days... to be sure I don't doubt the 'wonder' of seeing a big screen presentation... but "Lawrence of Arabia"(1962) looks 'good' on a ratty screen, in a theater in the middle of the desert, with the air conditioning broken... (which is how I first saw it... when it was in its first run in theaters...).

On the other hand... no matter how high a resolution used to remaster "Around the World in Eighty Days"(1956)... it will still look like a long travelogue to me...
 
I was lucky enough to see a first screening of the 1989 restored 70mm print. Wonderful. I understand what you are saying about the film, but what are you saying about people these days? That they can't appreciate a movie without monsters, aliens, and special effects?
 
Paul F said:
I was lucky enough to see a first screening of the 1989 restored 70mm print. Wonderful. I understand what you are saying about the film, but what are you saying about people these days? That they can't appreciate a movie without monsters, aliens, and special effects?
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I don't think an 'epic' in the style of Lean could be made today... Perhaps it's a matter of shot length, subject matter, and tone/treatment... and in a sense... yes, I don't thing "LoA: 3-D" would be an improvement...

Here's an 'odd think'... it was 44 years from the events of "LoA" to the film... (or thereabouts...) what events would be 'epic' for the modern 2013 viewer... Vietnam? 1967 6-Day War?

The Wife and I were watching "X-Men: First Class"(2011), and the Wife being slightly younger than me asked "Did people really believe Nuclear War was a real possibility?", since the film weaves the fantasyfiction into 'real world' events... My response was 'yes, the parents and teachers at school were 'praying' (denominational school...) hoping such a result would not occur, and we did buy and put more stuff in the cellar than usual'...

But I have not gotten the same 'feeling' from films depicting that era, more 'real' than the fantasy X-men film, as I did/do when viewing "LoA"...

"The Good Sheppard"(2006) tries to depict the CIA through several decades... but for me it just doesn't 'work'... although perhaps 'secret' stuff doesn't give the same wide 'vistas' that a 'overt war' does... but then... "Saving Private Ryan"(1998) wasn't particularly 'epic'... I was ok with the film... but it was not epic...

Then there's "Australia"(2008) which to my mind was an attempt at 'epic'... but really didn't 'get me' as such...

"War Horse"(2011)... it would have been better to center a story around the horses that were 'conscripted' in New Zealand, served in the desert, and eventually shot in Egypt, as it was too expensive to return the survivors to New Zealand... but I digress...
 
Your odd-think is right along the lines I have when I see Lawrence. I wonder if it is possible to make an epic now. Part of what makes an epic what it is is not only the the spectacle, but the audience knowing what it took to make the spectacle.

The work it took to shoot Lawrence in exotic locations - It's not nearly the effort now to get around the globe to any particular location. The sets it took to make Ben Hur, easily accomplished with effects. The crowds, the thrill of a real chariot race all replaced by special effects. Knowing it was all done in air conditioned offices and stages leaves one with an open mouth due to yawning rather than being open because your jaw dropped in awe.
 
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