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5 hours ago, medjuck said:

I saw it at a preview screening at the  Cinerama Theater in Toronto.  It was shot in 70mm anamorphic which gave it almost the same aspect ratio as Cinerama and I think they did something optically to compensate for the curved screen. The main thing I remember about it is James Garner and a lot of split screen and multiple images.  

I might wet my pants if I ever got the chance to see a Super Panavision print of GRAND PRIX projected in a Cinerama theater. There are really no other racing movies that compare, with the possible exception of Steve McQueen's LE MANS.

I believe the optical compensation or rectification wasn't done for any of the Super Panavision films like GRAND PRIX, only for Ultra Panavision films. Instead of an anamorphic squeeze being applied uniformly across the frame, rectified prints had a gradient squeeze, with no anamorphosis at the center of the frame but applying it increasingly toward the edges of the frame. So when such a print was projected on a deep-curve Cinerama screen, the squeeze along the sides of the frame was offset by the curved sides of the screen and appeared to be unsqueezed. 

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1 hour ago, Dave Garrett said:

I might wet my pants if I ever got the chance to see a Super Panavision print of GRAND PRIX projected in a Cinerama theater. There are really no other racing movies that compare, with the possible exception of Steve McQueen's LE MANS.

I believe the optical compensation or rectification wasn't done for any of the Super Panavision films like GRAND PRIX, only for Ultra Panavision films. Instead of an anamorphic squeeze being applied uniformly across the frame, rectified prints had a gradient squeeze, with no anamorphosis at the center of the frame but applying it increasingly toward the edges of the frame. So when such a print was projected on a deep-curve Cinerama screen, the squeeze along the sides of the frame was offset by the curved sides of the screen and appeared to be unsqueezed. 

What was the difference between the two: Was Ultra Panavision anamorphic 65mm and Super Panavision just 65mm?  BTW As you might expect when I saw it the sound was terrific.  8 track I presume but I don't really know a lot about it.    As I remember it when I saw West Side Story on its first release the whistle that opened the film came from the very back of the theater.  Of course, what I remember, and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. 

 

Just looked it up (Google is your friend): you're right Super Panavision is spherical  and does not have as wide an aspect ratio. Grand Prix was Super Panavision.  However according to Wikipedia the they also compensated for the curve when Superpanavison films were shown in Cinerama theaters.   What do you know about the sound? 

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I had forgotten that it was on Cinerama or something like that. I saw it when I lived in Barcelona and it made a big impression on me. My heroes were people like Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill. They were cool, driving those race cars. A year later, they held the Grand Prix of Barcelona, which I attended. It wasn't Formula 1 but Formula 2 but still good enough for me. I took some photos with my Brownie camera, which I will try to post later tonight.

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On 7/11/2019 at 8:26 PM, medjuck said:

What was the difference between the two: Was Ultra Panavision anamorphic 65mm and Super Panavision just 65mm?  BTW As you might expect when I saw it the sound was terrific.  8 track I presume but I don't really know a lot about it.    As I remember it when I saw West Side Story on its first release the whistle that opened the film came from the very back of the theater.  Of course, what I remember, and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. 

 

Just looked it up (Google is your friend): you're right Super Panavision is spherical  and does not have as wide an aspect ratio. Grand Prix was Super Panavision.  However according to Wikipedia the they also compensated for the curve when Superpanavison films were shown in Cinerama theaters.   What do you know about the sound? 

AFAIK, Super Panavision used 6-track mag sound (five channels up front and a mono surround channel). There's a summary of the format specs here:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/superpanavisionspecs.htm

in contrast with Ultra Panavision's specs:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/ultrapanavisionspecs.htm

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41 minutes ago, Dave Garrett said:

AFAIK, Super Panavision used 6-track mag sound (five channels up front and a mono surround channel). There's a summary of the format specs here:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/superpanavisionspecs.htm

in contrast with Ultra Panavision's specs:

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/ultrapanavisionspecs.htm

So they were both 6 track with 5 of the tracks up front and mono surrounds.  I remember (wrongly I guess)  it being more directional.  I'm surprised there is no sub woofer.  In the ''80s when we made 70mm prints of anamorphic 35mm films the main attraction was the subwoofer. 

The three films that made the greatest impression on me in terms of sound were Grand Prix, West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone  (which I believe was shot anamorphic 35mm but blown up to 70mm with 6 track sound for big cities).  In each case I remember them being more directional than they probably were if they were mono surround.  In the case of Grand Prix it was probably just loud in the surrounds. 

 

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3 minutes ago, medjuck said:

So they were both 6 track with 5 of the tracks up front and mono surrounds.  I remember (wrongly I guess)  it being more directional.  I'm surprised there is no sub woofer.  In the ''80s when we made 70mm prints of anamorphic 35mm films the main attraction was the subwoofer. 

Well, on a huge deep-curve screen, I can see 5 front channels giving more of an illusion of directionality than may really exist, especially in a movie like GRAND PRIX with the cars zipping back and forth within the frame.

As far as the subwoofer, 6-track mag can deliver pretty substantial low-frequency effects without one, given the right sound mix and B-chain. Around twenty years ago I saw a 70mm print of BEN-HUR with 6-track mag, and when it got to the scene with the thunderstorm and Christ on the cross, the rumble was definitely visceral and quite impressive. 

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This is a very odd Hungarian movie about a young woman who supposedly stumbles into a plot in 1913 to start WWI. 

IMG_0968.JPG

My son made me rent this and then he decided he changed his mind so not wanting to throw the $6 away I watched it.  I never read the book or saw the 1989 version so I thought it was good and gripping in its later stages.  Maybe that's more a testimonial to Stephen King than the movie. 

IMG_0969.png

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