Comments on: Cams, rips and release dates

By: Jacko

Jacko — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:55:48 +0000

I don't know why studios don't come down harder on countries where make no attempt to stop the process. In Sweden, Pirate Bay has been continually dragged through the Swedish courts to absolutely no effect. Moreover, local polls show 75% of the population "against" laws that penalize ISPs of users who download illegal media! Under these circumstances, its like trying to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas!

Studios should just abate any and all "legal" distribution through TV, DVD and Cinema. Sure the same people will download, but the law abiding members of the public might just get off their apathetic arses and say "you know what, these illegal downloaders are fkg it up for all of us - let's change the law now!"

As a footnote, I'd guess that any return for the studio/producers on local distribution is pretty marginal.

By: Paul Ramos

Paul Ramos — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:45:44 +0000

So, just out of curiosity. Why push a new technological medium like 3d to prevent piracy. And, instead, release all formats at the same time? I don’t recall the name of the film but I seem to remember hearing about how there was a film released in the theater, on IFC, and as a DVD simultaneously. (With some success) Don’t get me wrong, a good 3d movie will be awesome to watch. I’m just not sure that a technological arms race could ever be won.

By: kip

kip — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:39:59 +0000

If you don’t care about preserving the 3D-ness of the film, you could just use one camera with the proper polarizing lens, so that you’re just recording the image shown to one eye. Then you’ll have something quite watchable, you just won’t get the full effect of the 3D gimmicks. Like when a gun is pointed at the camera and in 3D it looks like it’s right in your face.

By: Chris Regan

Chris Regan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:38:35 +0000

An independent film I wrote was all over the internet about a month before the release date. It only had a handful of screenings in festivals and we’d been careful about handing out screeners, so in this case it appeared to have been leaked from individuals at the various distributors in various territories. What’s scary was how quickly it spread once it happened. At that time I was googling the film pretty much every day anyway – one day there was nothing, the next day there were pages and pages of links to torrent sites. It’s annoying that it happens in the first place, but what’s worse is people don’t give films a chance when they’ve got them for free so we started to get a lot of reviews on forums and film websites before the film had been released from people saying they had given up on the film after the first 10 minutes. I’m not sure how much it hurt the film in the end but it’s annoying all the same.

By: Frank Reynolds

Frank Reynolds — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:46:15 +0000

I remember years ago, when RETURN OF THE JEDI was still playing in theaters, a theater in the Southwest was actually held up and the print stolen, apparently so the thieves could make their own pirated copies of the movie. The joke was on the thieves, though, since the print was a 70mm print of the movie, which was (and still is) very hard to project, much less make videos. (Videos are pretty much always made from 35mm prints.) The thieves must not have known that.

(In the 70s and 80s, films shot on 35mm were sometimes shown on 70mm because the sound was better...digital sound on movies has pretty much made this obsolete.)

By: Eoghank

Eoghank — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:48:42 +0000

Isn't piracy the real reason the studios are pushing 3D? It's harder to pirate, creates a sense of an event and during it's rollout has a certain buzz about it which will ensure extra attendees. Will audiences conclude that it's just another gimmick that costs another 5 bucks?

Note: 20% of the male population are red/green colourblind, so the 3D won't work perfectly for them. Instant audience isolation.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:25:12 +0000

Do you also know why sometimes the DVD is released “BEFORE” the film has hit the theaters? I just found that out about J. Lynch’s “Surveillance”. I bought the DVD a couple of weeks ago (in Germany) and was even more surprised to find it among the Apple trailers which set it for release in June 2009.

By: Gabe

Gabe — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:50:17 +0000

Warner Bros delayed the release of “The Dark Knight” in Puerto Rico to a week after the US release due to the vast amount of cams originating from here. It was torture to have to wait that extra week. I almost hopped on a plane to see it in the states.

By: Dorkman

Dorkman — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:51:20 +0000

The difficulty of bootlegging a 3D film is one of the reasons some industry folk like James Cameron are pushing so fervently for it.

By: John

John — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:10:44 +0000

I really meant this last part as a consider-for-yourself, not a show-your-work.

Bottom line, I'm sure there are ways to do it which are passable. But for this brief moment, the gap between 3D in a theater and something you can buy three days later on a street corner in Bulgaria is significant.

By: Lex

Lex — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:42:38 +0000

I didn't know that RealD projected from a single projector. This makes it easier to do (I think). New procedure:

Using the Panasonic HVX200 (I'm most familiar with this camera, but there could be others that work) set the framerate to 48 fps. Set the shutter angle to 120 degrees or lower, then tweak the synchro scan (I think you can do this in film cam mode - I've never tried) so you don't have a flickering screen.

Now your camera should be recording the movie at 48 fps, with alternating left and right eye frames. Separate them by using something like the posterize time effect in After Effects (set to 24 fps), offsetting the start times by one frame, then take out the red channel and blue/green channels appropriately.

Piece of cake.