| 2MuchMark |
07-09-2019 11:30 PM |
First, Wow. This video is just ... strange. Brainstorm is one of my all-time favourite movies, and Douglas Trumbull is one of my idols.
To put it simply, Showscan is an idea for higher frame rates in movies. When we watch movies, we almost always see 24 frames per second. Douglas Trumbull's Showscan process would shoot and playback at 60 frames per second.
The comments in the video that watching video at this rate would produce more emotion is just nonsense. The image looks clearer yes, but this does not translate well when it comes to movies.
In 2013, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was released in a special format called IMAX HFR48, for "High Frame Rate / 48 Frames Per Second". The movie was actually shot and rendered in 48 frames per second. Let me tell you that it looked terrible. The high frame rate was so distracting, the only thing it did was take you out of the picture. The hype at the time was that it made the movie screen look more like a window into another universe. Wrong. Everything about the movie, every single frame, was gawd-awful.
But you already know this. If you purchased a new TV in the last 10 years or so, its high refresh rate give you motion smoothing which is fine for sports and great for video games, but shit for movies.
Brainstorm is a special movie because it was shot in 2 aspect ratios at the same time. Most of the movie is presented in 1.7:1 aspect ratio, with the "mind scenes" presented in Super Panavision 70mm 2.2:1 aspect ratio. The sound mix also changed from Mono to Stereo in the theatre (and today, from Mono to Surround Sound).
This was very cool to see in the theatre. When watching this movie on a big screen, I would forget after a few seconds that the screen was so wide while watching the regular parts of the movie. When the mind scenes came on, it was always a surprise.
Trumbull wanted to shoot the mind scenes in 70mm 60fps, and since some parts of these scenes are animation / special effects, it might have been pretty cool. The idea was scrapped because it would have meant that a lot more film would have been required, the more reels of film would have to be changed faster in each theatre, and special projectors would have to be purchased by any theatre that wanted to show the movie.
When Natalie Wood died near the end of principal photography, studio executives tried to kill the film and claim the insurance, saying that director Douglas Trumbull could not complete the film. However, Trumbull's contract gave that decision to him, and he insisted on completing it, using a stand-in and changing camera angles for the few remaining shots of Wood's character. (Thanks IMDB!)
This didn't kill Trumbull's career though. He went on to do a lot of other projects. One of my favourite projects of his, is Back To the Future: The Ride, at Universal Studios. Trumbull's company, Berkshire Ridefilm, created the ride, shot the film in a giant IMAX format, constructed the models, everything.
Brainstorm is available on Blu-ray, and you can experience Showscan for yourself with it if you have a modern Smart TV. Pop-in the movie, and then on your TV, re-enable that feature you already disabled, called Motion Smoothing ("TrueMotion" on LG TV's, "MotionPlus" on Samsung TV's, or "MotionFlow" on Sony TV's). After 5 minutes, you'll give up and disable it again. But that's ok - the movie is better without it.
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