Tarantino takes up the 70mm film format for the projection of his new western, ‘The hateful eight’. The Ultra Panavision was a type of negative which ceased to be used in the 60 in films like ‘Ben Hur’.
18 december 2015
The hateful eight, the next film of Quentin Tarantino which will premiere in Spain on 15 January, arrives preceded by the great expectation that its trailer has aroused, in which a striking overprinting at the end of it advertises: “see it in glorious 70mm Ultra Panavision”.
And what is new about The hateful eight- Los odiosos ocho in Spanish- is that, with its 70mm negative, it will double the 35mm of traditional films. An innovation which is actually not so much, as it means a going back to the roadshow exhibition or to the itinerant cinema of the USA from the 50s.
The Super and Ultra Panavision formats were no longer used during the middle 70s, when super-productions like Ben-Hur y The Greatest Story Ever Told were projected in screens of Biblical proportions, just like the stories they told. More specifically, they had an aspect ratio (the proportion between its width and its length) of 2.75:1. To get the idea, the IMAX screens have an aspect ratio of 1.43:1. In the 30s, the Fox Film Corporation also played with a large dimension format which received the name of Fox Grandeur, although after two movies, it was finally rejected. Currently, some renowned directors like Cristopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese have used this type of screens to project their films.
Image source: fotogramas.es
Ultra Panavision, in detail
The Ultra Panavision system uses MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) cameras Camera 65, which recorded at 24 frames per second, anamorphic lenses -successors of the old CinemaScope lenses- and compresses the image 1.25 times. But using a disused negative causes a clear problem, the fact that cinemas from a long time ago had left behind this type of film to adapt to the new projection models. Tarantino’s team is going to solve this structural problem by using their own projectors.
These techniques will be used for the first time in the USA, where Chapin Cutler, co-owner of Boston Light & Sound (one of the most important companies of maintenance and installation of cinematographic projection equipment), has repaired almost 100 projectors for the occasion.
The hateful eight will be premiered in two different formats: the commercial one, six minutes shorter and without pauses; and the roadshow version, 3 hours and two minutes long, which will also have an opening and an interlude. The director himself has made it clear that both versions were edited by him and that the digital version loses those scenes which will be less spectacular in smaller screens.
In Spain, we will have only one chance to enjoy this experience. The Catalan company Phenomena Experience will project the film in 70mm negative in the Phenomena cinema in Barcelona.
The hateful eight is the second western of the American director after the success of his new film Django Unchained. This time, the action takes place in a small town called Red Rock (Wyoming) shortly after the American Civil War, where two bounty hunters, a confederate soldier, a fugitive and other characters take shelter in a saloon in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm. Tension is on the table.
