What exactly is 70mm print and why does anyone care?

Question

There has been a bit of controversy lately over the release of Tarantino's Hateful Eight movie. As I understand it, the movie was scheduled to play in a particular theater in Los Angeles that plays 70mm format. Disney chose to push/force/coerce/convince/whatever this theater into showing The Force Awakens instead.

This has caused a rather large uproar from both Tarantino, as well as many of his fans.

I will be honest, before I read this story I had never heard the term "70mm" before in my life; I only last week learned that there is a theater in my area that screens 70mm prints. Now I'm wondering what the big deal is, how these are any different from the versions shown at my usual theater, and why this format seems to have suddenly, out of nowhere (at least from my perspective) become a big deal.

Answer 1

There are several orthogonal issues here:

• The physical size of the film the movie was shot on (the negative).
• The physical size of the film the movie is projected from (the print).
• How the frame is composed on that film, which is related to the aspect ratio.

Some of the comments and other answers are conflating various aspects, which can cause more confusion than clarification. For example, others have implied the 70mm and IMAX are the same thing. While it's true IMAX does project from 70mm prints, 70mm prints are used in a variety of other, non-IMAX formats.

Before the switch to digital, most commercial movies were shot on 35mm negatives and then distributed to theaters as 35mm or sometimes 70mm prints. (Yes, some 70mm prints are sometimes made from 35mm masters.)

A few big budget, "big screen" movies were sometimes shot in 70mm and distributed to big theaters on 70mm prints and smaller theaters on 35mm prints.

The sizes, 35mm and 70mm, refer to the width of the film itself. This width includes the room for the sprocket holes and analogue audio tracks. Some digital audio tracks use the spaces between the sprocket holes. I believe (but correct me if I'm wrong) that magnetic audio tracks are not included in that width.

Most film runs through the projector vertically (big exceptions are true IMAX and VistaVision), so the width the frame is limited by the width of the film minus the width of the sprocket holes and analogue audio tracks. Thus the width of a frame on a 35mm print is a bit narrower than 35mm.

The sprocket holes are often called "perfs," and many formats are thus referred to as a number of "perfs." That is, as the number of sprocket holes from one frame to the next. A typical frame size for 35mm prints is 4-perf. Thus the height of the frame was limited by that number. For 70mm, I believe common formats were 7-perf, but I don't have a source for that.

The aspect ratio is the ratio of the width to the height. In olden times, movies were pretty square, much like old television sets. To compete with television, the studios introduced different aspect ratios (typically wider) in order to make the movie experience seem more immersive than television.

Given that the width and height of the frame both have upper bounds, there are only a few ways to adjust the aspect ratio:

1. Use less than the full height available on the frame, and use a telephoto projection lens to compensate for the diminished height.

2. Shoot (or print) the frames with an anamorphic lens that squishes the image horizontally to fit it onto the film, then project with the complementary lens that stretches it back out. This is typically done for the widest of wide-screen formats. A telltale artifact is that lens flares appear as ovals rather than circles.

3. Run the film horizontally. The height is limited by the film size minus sprocket holes, and the width is limited by however many perfs you choose. This is what traditional IMAX does. (Traditional IMAX also uses 70mm film exclusively.)

Given identical aspect ratios, 70mm film gives far more area per frame, which means it can be projected larger or will have better clarity and detail when projected as the same size as a comparable 35mm print.

Some movies are shot in a variety of formats, but mastered into a common format during editing and post production. For example, the original Star Wars films used old VistaVision cameras for many of the motion-controlled model shots, even though everything else was probably shot with traditional cameras that ran the film vertically.

In the case of this Tarantino film, I suspect it was shot on 70mm using anamorphic lenses in order to make a super-widescreen. IMDB confirms.

Answer 2

The difference is that 70mm film is, from a simple mathematical perspective, twice as big as 35mm film.

70mm film is shot horizontally in the frame where as 35mm is shot vertically. This gives directors a much larger canvas to shoot on, with increased resolution (up to 18k in some cases, compare that to 4k televisions that are just hitting the market), as well as better color depth.

Further, true IMAX or 70mm projection screens are more square in shape, as you can see from the image included above. Overall this helps to provide a far more immersive experience for audiences as your entire visual field is filled with what's on the screen.

However, The Hateful Eight is also hitting on a lot of "film nerd" items, such as the fact it was filmed using the same lenses they used to film Ben-Hur. To quote Tarantino in his interview with Stephen Colbert:

"And when I say that, I don't mean lenses like the ones they used to film Ben Hur, I mean the actual lenses they used to film Ben-Hur."

The lenses used allowed them to film in what's referred to as Ultra Panavision 70, meaning the frame will have an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, making it exceedingly wide by most modern standards, and the first film to be released in that aspect ratio on 70mm film in nearly 50 years. See here for more information on that.

The roadshow Ultra Panavision 70 version will also be a longer cut, including an overture opening plus an intermission.

So, the long and short of why these will be different from what most other theaters get is they'll have a much, MUCH larger picture, with higher image and color quality. It's an experience that the vast majority of theaters simply cannot provide anymore, so much so that since 2014 the Weinstein company has been paying to outfit more theaters with 70mm projectors so they can show the roadshow version of The Hateful Eight (sadly they ended up coming up short by about half). Basically it's a film nerd's dream if they can see the film presented in its intended format.

Answer 3

65mm negative. When the audio track is added to release print, that piece of film is 70mm wide. Better resolution, film grain less obvious in relation to picture elements.

Mike Todd (Todd-A-O) intro'd it some time ago. It was for selling, and exhibiting to best advantage, a big picture (Around the World in 80 Days with David Niven, I believe) sold in what then was called a 'Roadshow Engagement'. That meant there was an Intermission, musical preludes to both 'acts', and assigned seats, like a play.

It's fallen out of fashion for some time; most audiences haven't heard of it.