Michael Bay's Letter to Projectionists: Transformers 3

“Dear Mr. Projectionist”

There are female projectionists, too.

Got a similar letter from Jan De Bont re “Twister” when I showed that. He suggested projectionists “turn it up”

You can’t really up the light levels of Xenon projection bulbs. Their wattage output is constant for new bulbs unless you have a malfunction rectifier. What you can do is make sure the reflectors are clean and properly adjusted to maximize the concentrated light output, and put new bulbs in the lamphouses you’re going to be running 3D films in — at least for the duration of the run. If you really want to project them correctly using actual film projectors, pair oversized lamphouses designed for twice the projected distance throw with water-cooled projectors… THEN you’ll see the film as the brightness level it was meant to viewed. I was finally glad to see a non-3D Avatar on Blu-Ray at the correct level of brightness. What a treat. But don’t expect theatres to invest in this kind of setup when the whole presentation process is in flux between film and digital.

My local, the bussiest in the country and the tallest in the world, has recently sacked all the projectionists and gone all digital, thanks lagely to 3D.

And is proud to do so.

I hope Michael Bay is proud of that!

Or, here is a thought, do away with 3D altogether, start rolling out MaxiVision 48 because it gives something that is actually an enhancement over current home theatre capability, and stop letting people like Michael make films that are exclusively for morons! Imagine!

There is one film I know of that is older than my grandmother and is still looked on with such reverence that cinema experts virtually had an orgasm when they found missing pieces of it recently. It suffers this fate because it was intelligently made and had something to say that is still relevant in spite of the world having changed dramatically. By contrast, when the alien archaeologists find the remains of today’s society and see films like Michael’s, they will not know whether to laugh or cry.

What’s with the minimum wage earning projectionist talk? In Chicago they earn, depending on the day and the time, $100 per hour. That’s not a mistake – $100 PER HOUR.

1) People were commenting that Terrence Malick “just did this” with his latest film, Tree Of Life. Someone else replied that “Terrence Malick is allowed to act like that. His movies are intensely visual.” Just to clear things up, I saw “Tree Of Life” (on *OUR* National Holiday, July 1, aka Canada Day, aka this past Friday). There WAS a “cautionary note” on top of the poster – basically responding to Malick’s letter and informing the audience – that the **SOUND** of the film was not the projectionist’s fault.

Specifically, the note said that they had recieved a letter from Malick telling them to set the volume levels at certain settings, and NOT to adjust the sound during the movie. So, “we apologize, but when the movie goes painfully loud, or so quiet that you can’t make out the dialouge, we cannot adjust the volume levels. We give our apologies; however, the filmmaker has instructed us to set the sound at one level for the entire movie.”

Uh… so I guess my point is, a) Malick did his “letter to the projectionist” about sound, not visuals; and b) Malick undoubtedly did his “crazy sound fluctuations” ON PURPOSE, while Bay, as someone said, was just trying to make a turd a shiny, polished turd, in order to fool the audience.

2) I *think* it was Martin Scorcese that would go to theatres where his latest film was being played, get out a “light measurement device” (yes, I don’t know the real, scientific name for it), and check to see if his movies were being played at the correct luminosity level. According to Rodger Ebert, Scorcese found that theatres were playing the movies 30-75% darker than intended, all to save the “wear and tear” on the thousand-dollar “projection lights”. (Yes, again I do not know the correct name. But it’s some interesting ish, no?)

3) In the same Rodger Ebert book (“Questions For The Movie Answer Man”), Ebert prints a letter from a lady who said that she was in a multiplex, watching some John Grisham movie (or something), when the was started vibrating so loud that it was distractingly audible. Turns out Ebert had gotten many letters with the same complaint, looked into it, and found that multiplexes with paper thin walls would have “Twister” or “Jurassic Park” playing on one screen, and the screens that shared a wall with the “noisy movies” were experiencing said noise problems.

-AK

This letter has no barring on theaters what so ever. The problem is that when these film makers decided on making their movies in 3D, all most all theaters cannot handle it, meaning it would cost millions of dollars per theatre to upgrade their systems to be capable of showing a 3D movie with the right lighting. You cannot turn up the wattage of a regular projection light bulb like you can a dimmer switch in your own home. It just doesn’t work that way. The film makers go the bright idea to make the movies in 3D to make more money, but neglected to take into consideration that many theaters in this country are not run by digital projectors, thus causing their 3D meal ticket to fail. Unless they cough up the billions it will take to upgrade the country’s projectors, 3D will continue to bomb.

No, someone needs to write to Michael Bay to tell him how to make a film.