A short film (http://www.shythefilm.com/) that I shot on the HDX-900 last summer has been making the festival circuit, and the director just decided to submit it to the Academy which indicated a 35mm print. The project has seen a few too many compressions for my liking including an unexpected downrez back to 720p after it had been mastered to D5 (don't ask) so I was justifiably a bit nervous about it looking soft on the big screen. After seeing the answer print projected at FotoKem today, I am actually quite pleased; they did a great job including a bit of sharpening during the filmout which didn't seem to add any negative artifacts. I think the film print viewed side by side with a high-end digital projection would be pretty comparable, although there is of course a bit of grain in the film print that is undetectable at a certain distance.

The story revolves around an agorophobic youth who ventures outside for the first time in years, and I opted to present the exteriors as somewhat bleached and blown-out. Normally this is the very opposite of what I would do with digital acquisition, and it was an interesting experiment--it worked out OK (a few shots actually look very interesting) but overall it's hard to make blown-out look great on HD compared to film. The trailer on the site has a lot of this but not many of my favorite interior shots...! ah well.