June 6, 2011
How to project “The Tree of Life”
Project the film in its proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
The correct fader setting on Dolby and DTS systems is 7. Malick asks that faders be kept at 7.5 or even 7.7, system permitting.
The film has no opening credits, and the booth operator is asked to make sure the “lights down cue is well before the opening frame of reel 1.”
With all the recent talk of “darkier, lousier” images, operators are asked that lamps are at “proper standard (5400 Kelvin)” and that the “foot Lambert level is at Standard 14.”
As reported in the San Diego Reader.
(Gracias a JJ.)
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I have no idea what most of that means, but I love that instructions like these exist.
Also, I haven’t been participating in the Tree of Life thread, mostly because I hope to see the film one day but partially because all of the films I watch in the theater these days are animated and have audiences that are at least 50% toddlers (because I prefer the less crowded first showing, sometimes I’m 50% of the audience and the Iz is the other 50%). Also, I tend to prefer watching serious films from my couch. This allows me to enjoy the film the way I’d like to and prevents me from accidently being a jerk to other people who have paid for a certain experience.
I think, in general, my generation has lost that sort of reverence for the theater. Most theaters (all modern theaters) feel like a theme park to me and not a place to be serious. I remember going to Grand Lake theater in Oakland through High School – it was one of the cheapest theaters around but it had character too. In the main theater, an organist still played before each film and then disappeared into the stage.
In Alameda, they’ve recently re-opened the old cinema and done a good job of maintaining a lot of the character the historical theater had but it’s still watered down by things that are distractions from serious film appreciation.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t project at 1.85:1.
Was the image visibly distorted?
Deron we can go see it again if you’re in LA in two weeks. At the Arclight, with all properness in place.
I would love that.
Joel, I think it was cropped.
In defense of laughter: On the other hand, I have been with audiences who are too damn reverent. Over ten years ago an older friend and I went to a revival showing of Gus Van Sant’s “Mala Noche” at Chicago’s Facets, and the mostly under-thirty audience acted as though they were in church. Even when Stuart and I laughed at the hilarious car-crash line, “You drive like you fuck!”
I was once disruptive during a film. For you Dallasites, it was at the Granada in 1980, back when it was an art house. We were watching In The Realm of the Senses. Scott kept pouring rum into my Diet Pepsi. During a scene that I seem to recall involved a small child’s penis, I blurted out, “Well, for fuck’s sake. I thought this was supposed to be a documentary about the census bureau!”
I wonder what Deron or the Iowan would have made of that.
That is funny. That is art. I would have admired your involvement in the film. I can’t speak for the Iowan.
In the Realm of the Senses is my go-to first date movie.
And that is my go-to Criterion joke.
In the Realm was the first Criterion film I ever reviewed, and seems to come up a lot in casual conversation. Which is funny.
Amanda, I talk about that film all the time. We’re a couple of peas in a pea holder, we are.
The funny thing is, honest to god, I did think it was a documentary about the Census Bureau. I was 21 and naive and they’d only told me the title. Scott and Mark liked to put me in situations and watch. Like the time they gave me poppers. Like the times they took me dancing at the gay disco. Like the night they got me drunk for the first time in my life and I started re-arranging the paintings on the wall of a restaurant. Stuff like that.
They loved you.
Yeah.