So the chips are 1920x1080?

Since Star Wars was 2.35, was it anarmorphic or cropped?

If cropped that means an effective resolution of only 1920x817! That's amazinging low for something that looks so bloody good! How can it be???

They don't list the chip's specifications, other than to say 2.2 million pixels, so yeah, 1920x1080 active pixels is a pretty reasonable guess.

As for cropping or anamorphic, I don't know for sure, but I'd strongly suspect cropping. Anamorphic would require some specially-engineered 1.33x anamorphic optical lenses, and I don't recall hearing anything about those, so... may be wrong, but... yeah, I'd bet simple cropping.

And -- how can it look so good? I keep trying to say -- pixel count is only one small factor in overall image quality! They're using $120,000 camera bodies with $100,000 lenses on the front, and recording full uncompressed dual-link HD-SDI output... it's gonna look pretty darn good. I've seen a couple of DV movies projected in the theater that weren't bad-looking at all. Having six times the resolution would sure make it plenty sharp, especially since Lucas et al certainly put it through first-class post-production techniques as well.

Also, keep in mind the way they're projecting 2.35 nowadays. Back in the "old days", they used to widen out the movie screen -- there were curtains over the side that pulled away to reveal more width. Not anymore, not at the new theaters here. Now when it's a 2.35 movie, they actually letterbox the screen -- curtains lower from the top and rise from the bottom, so the 2.35 screen is actually smaller than the 1.85 screen! So if it's magnified less, it'll inherently look sharper too...

I could be wrong, but couldn't Lucas have used the Pro35 with normal 35mm anamorphic glass and gotten the 2.40/2.35:1 aspect ratio on the CineAlta? That would give him the anamorphic image, using the full pixel count of the chips... then it's just a matter or setting your project up correctly to stretch it back out... right?

<<Now when it's a 2.35 movie, they actually letterbox the screen -- curtains lower from the top and rise from the bottom, so the 2.35 screen is actually smaller than the 1.85 screen! >>

Yes I know and it is funny that really in effect it is "letterboxed", but the Average Joe never complains! Because there are no black bars that he notices...

<<but couldn't Lucas have used the Pro35 with normal 35mm anamorphic glass and gotten the 2.40/2.35:1 aspect ratio on the CineAlta?>>

I was thinking and with anamorphic lenses its easy to tell, since all out of focus lights are not circular but oval. In Star Wars, I can see perfect circles in the out of focus background, so it must be cropped and not anamorphic.

So if 1920x1080 can produce such good quality, why do they scan 35mm film at 4K res to do any post work on it? What exactly is 4K? Is it 4096x2048?

No, because cine anamorphics are 2:1. So if you used a pro35 with anamorphic lenses on a 16:9-native camera, your actual recorded aspect ratio would be in the ballpark of 3.54:1!

Barry,

I didn't think about that, but now that you mention it, it makes perfect (and obvious) sense. However, I did just find this product by Canon that could be used for anamorphic aspect ratios (on 2/3" cameras anyways)--I don't suppose this would actually work on the crop of 1/3" HD cams...

Canon's Anamorphic Adapter

Actually, I believe for typical effects films they scan at 2K. 4K is probably much, much more expensive and frankly no one complains about movies scanned at 2K. That's why Lucas went HD - 1920 aquisition is basically considered close enough to a 2K scan.

And yes, EpII and EpIII were cropped.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com

Episodes II & III were matted to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Anamorphic camera lenses were not used. The 2.35:1 safe area was displayed in the cameras and on the plasma screens the director used for monitoring and playback. When shown digitally, the source material can be scaled to use more of the effective pixels in the more common 1280 x 1024 DMD chips. An anamorphic projection lens returns the image to its native wide screen format.