S1E14 - Cinema Reels and Digital Revolutions

Cinema is built on technology, from the shape of the very first movie frame to the LED walls and AI tools used today. In this episode, Marc and Renee explore how film evolved in both sight and sound, and how the industry kept reinventing the moving image every time audiences drifted toward a glowing box at home.

They walk through the widescreen battles of the 1950s, the triumph of magnetic sound and 70 mm spectacle, the rise of Dolby, the shift from mechanical projection booths to digital servers, and the invention of virtual production that blends cameras with giant LED volumes. Along the way, they share personal memories of revival houses, 70 mm double features, and the messy reality of transitioning a major theater chain into the digital era.

The tools have changed, but the goal has always been the same. Cinema keeps searching for a new way to feel alive, even if the audience is not always as impressed as the engineers are.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:46 Film Technology Unveiled
• 30:40 Nostalgic Movie Experiences
• 34:43 Digital Switchover
• 51:32 The Future of Film and AI

Transcript

0:37

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Nostalgia Nerds podcast, where we look at the tech that shaped our world and sometimes the tech that shaped how we see it. I'm Marc. And I'm Renee. And this week we're talking about something close to both of us, film technology. Yeah, this one's kind of personal. I worked at a couple of computer shops in L.A. that catered to the Hollywood crowd. I won't drop any names, but there was a pretty well-known one. We had all the software for writers and production houses and directors and producers. We sold this one software movie magic budgeting and scheduling and that thing was that thing was expensive it was like 15 or 1800 bucks a pop and you know because production companies are you know thieves they they want to try to you know they want to try to you know copy it it's creative well film accounting that's how they call it film accounting and not accounting right Well, they would never want to buy the software, so it got a little tricky, but they had copy protection. Anyways. But, you know, there was all sorts of different folks we met in that organization. And I worked on the other end of the pipeline, IT for man theaters, if you guys remember, you know, man's Chinese theater. Somebody owns it now. It still exists. Man does exist, right? Don't they? Probably somewhere. It expanded so big so fast on the Titanic money. Everybody got drunk off the Titanic money. So it turned into, anyway, like when the Titanic money ran out and it turned out that was just an anomaly and there was no real, you know, yay, we're coming back to Hollywood. They kind of went away. But here's what I will say. You know, they, IT, they took seriously. They really spent a lot of money on good accounting platforms that were attached to, you know, the store inventories. And that automated the ability to put in orders with, you know, their vendors. And you got to learn a lot about the business. And I thought the most shocking thing about, especially Titanic, the most shocking thing about Titanic was when they negotiate that. So these guys go to Show West, right? They see the movie stars. They talk to everybody about the movies. And they do all that, right, back in the day. And you'd meet Will Smith. And they'd talk about the Matrix. And you were on the know. It was fun. But what you were really there to do was see what the product was and see whether or not you had stores, i.e. theaters, that you would want to bring that to. And then you would go cut a deal. But that deal usually was the studio makes all the money the first two weeks or the first four weeks, right? And so if your movie has legs, the theater makes all the popcorn sales, all the candy sales, all that, right? And they incur the cost of the screen, the technology. But after that first four weeks, and this is why Titanic's so important, that thing ran for years. Years. I saw it in the theater three years apart. Saw it twice, right? It was crazy the legs it had. So theaters were making a ton of money because they were still selling tickets a year later when the cut was really 90-10. They only owed 10% to the studio and they were making 90% of that box office. And so when a film had legs like that, it really made the theaters a lot of money. So, yes, I spent time on that side of it. And I got to watch everything go from analog to digital. I got to watch, you know, theaters no longer get big cans and reels and cut them together. And like they didn't do that anymore. And the real importance of, you know, securing that digital product, because at the end of the day, when the guys from IT steal it and make CDs of it and give it to their friends and family, they go to jail. So that's, yeah, so I learned all that, right? That's what I learned working in film. I remember there was, because we worked with a bunch of, you know, kind of digital production houses and stuff. And there were literally movies that, because remember jazz drives, they would transport the content on the jazz drives. This was the biggest thing that you could put anything on. But, you know, so anyways, between us, we've both seen different sides of the business. Growing up and being in L.A., you can't help but be attached to entertainment in some way, shape or form. But before all the pixels and projectors, the shape of the frame mattered, right? The famous Academy ratio of 1.37 to 1 wasn't designed for art. It was an engineered compromise, right, Marc? This is, like, this is, we were talking about it before we recorded, unfortunately. We should have recorded our awe and wonder at the fact that, oh, my God, it's only the 19th. We couldn't microwave a potato, but we came up with this one as a culture. I can hardly believe it. Go ahead. So, okay, 1930s, when Hollywood is figuring out how to fit sound onto 35 millimeter film, the optical soundtrack took up space. So they shrank the image a little, and that rectangle, the Academy frame, became the global standard. But, okay, so I just simplified, like, a whole bunch of really cool technology into, like, one sentence there. Go ahead. It's like, okay, first, there was no sound. And then, wait, we've got to put sound, because people weren't coming. Not everyone can read? Yeah, not everyone can read. You've got to draw people. We're going to hear this over and over while we talk about this stuff. Exhibition of film, every generation, essentially, you have to draw more people. Because people are like, you know what? Been there, done that. And so, what's the thing? Sound. Like, that's a, this is just a mind-blowing revolution, right? All of a sudden, you can hear Charlie Chaplin speak where you couldn't hear him before. But, you know, the film standard for that, you know, there's all these sort of logistical problems. Okay, I'm projecting film. And I could, you know, play a record, a phonograph if I wanted to. Sure. And some did try that. But syncing that up, and then when you have to change the reels and syncing it and all of that stuff, no bueno. No bueno. So how do you do it? How do you do it? Well, you got to put the sound onto the film. Well, how do you put it onto the film? There's like the film is the film and the frame of the negative is the frame of the negative. So what do you do? You flip the negative and you put a little dot, you know, on the side. And there it is. you shine a light through it and that's the optical track and it's just takes that that it takes that shade of gray and what it is is it just looks like a ups code down the side of the frame right and so and some of these things are darker than others but they go from being clear to being black and in between there is how loud the sound is and what it is right so it takes in the sound creates an optical print of that. It then goes into the projector. The projector sees it, takes the optical print of that and turns it back into sound. It is the craziest idea ever. Ever. It's so awesome. Ever. It's the actual literal waveform encoded in dark and light. Yes. And then a sensor, you know, picks it up because it, you know, the light is darker and lighter and it turns it back in. It's like, that's the actual waveform. How nuts. And it's 1930s. Like, that's what's nuts. We went from, and you're right, Buster Keaton and the words underneath and a piano player in the room because that's how you gave sound to the comedy, right? You know, sometimes orchestras, right? You could still go to Catalina Island and see where they used to go watch. Oh, that would be fun. Right? We could still go do that. Next time you visit, we'll go. So, yeah. So, you know, that's how it worked to think that that turned into, I always think back to, like, when was Wizard of Oz? Like, when did they make that film? 38? 39? Yeah. Okay. 39. How much, like, I just look back at the World War II footage, like, combat footage of World War II. There's almost none in color. Yet, yet, in 1938, you went to that film, and you sat down in that seat, and you watched in 35mm black and white what you thought was going to be like any other movie. And then she opens that door and she's in Oz and oh, my God, it's color. It's not just color. It's technicolor. It's like this vibrant. Well, it wasn't technicolor yet. But it's unbelievable, right? To think that we went from the Dust Bowl to that. Yes. Right? Literally. Literally. Like, I think that to me, like, that sums up that whole thing. And when I think back about that, like, but they did it with sound, right? We did the exact same thing with sound. We decided that that idea, the idea that film is not just a visual art, it's an audio art too? That's pretty amazing. That's a pretty big leap in culture, I think. Yeah, this is, I mean, it's so, like, we're so jaded because we'll never experience that, you know, that transition ever again. But, you know, I don't know. Very special. Yeah, the iPhone sent us on the wrong direction, but it was the perfect compromise, right? Every theater could show it, and every camera could shoot it, and it held together through two decades of cinema. Yeah. And then, and then, and then television and everyone in Hollywood just panics. Yeah. So we entered the era of the widescreen wars when the movies stretched themselves to stay special. So picture Hollywood around 1950, everybody's shooting in 1.37 to one, right? And then bam, TV shows up. Yeah. The little black and white box in the living room. And I love the part in Back to the Future, right, when he says, nobody has more than one television, you know? It's like, and he was rolling it around, you know? Yeah, because it was on a cart. Yeah, it was on a little cart. Yeah. You know, yeah. One little black and white box in the living rolling around. Why would you go out when Milton Berle is right there and your pajamas are with you? Right? Hollywood's answer. Make the screen so big you can't fit it in your house. That's how we're going to make you come to a film. We're going to make that experience of widescreen so much better. More visually striking that not only will you come out of your house but you're going to pay me even more money yeah yeah so the first the first of these kind of widescreen formats is is cinerama and they all had great names i love the names of all of them they're just the perfect names but what cinerama is is three synchronized cameras three projectors and a curved screen And it's like it wraps around your head. I forget how many degrees around it is, but I think it's almost 200 degrees or maybe even more than that. You still see it in your peripheral vision if you're sitting still. I love Cinerama. There was one by us that was really cool. But that's a wrapping around your head. It was kind of part movie and part amusement park ride. Then Fox debuts Cinemascope in 1953. Instead of three cameras, they used an anamorphic lens that squeezed a wide image into regular 35mm film. Projectors unsqueezed it and then voila, instant wide. That's pretty that's another thing we got really good at right we can shrink we can blow up 35 millimeter to 70 millimeter we can shrink 70 millimeter down to 35 millimeter we might lose a little of the space but it wouldn't be enough for you to care yeah we got good at that yeah cinemascope so i this is probably what started me down this whole like i do you know renee we've got to do this we've got to do this because i was i watched like a whole history of cinemascope oh and And it's like, and it starts with this dude in France and he, he makes this patent around anamorphic lenses and, and all that. And, and, you know, you shrink, you know, when you're actually filming the lens of. It takes a wide format and then shrinks it down onto the film and you're negative. Then you process it and it's the same size and it goes back out the other way. And that's cool and all, but these lenses are very expensive and they also have artifacts. If you get too close to it, you get distortion around the edges of the theater. Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up and my close-up looks like a fish eye. Like, just like my face is rolling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's got the worst, like, filter ever. Yeah, exactly. Well, and you should see some of these early lenses. They're super thick. So it's a big old piece of curved glass. And, yeah, Bausch & Lomb ends up being the company that builds a bunch of these. A bunch of these. But it even has, like, a name. Projectionists called it the CinemaScope Mumps. Because everything looks a little bit swollen if it gets too close to the camera. Yeah so audiences didn't care right the robe looked massive next to tv and disney jumped in with 20 000 leagues under the sea in 1954 the first major non-fox cinemascope feature that's a good one don't you think that's a good one to do that's a good one yeah 20 000 it is a good one i think and yeah because i went too far into the cinemascope like pit of you know information so fox basically owns cinemascope like there nobody else can do this widescreen format nobody else gets to touch it because fox basically you know controls the patent they had licensed it from this french dude for like fifty thousand dollars or something they you know paid bausch and lomb for the for the lenses and, You know, they had access to all the lenses. They're very expensive to manufacture. So basically, you know, nobody gets access to this. Disney is like, well, we want to do this. They say, let's do 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And they pay an arm and a leg to try to make this work. They had to build all these different underwater housings. And they're huge. They're huge. Arclight's the size of cars. And by the time they finish, a new one comes out. Panavision had already fixed all of CinemaScope's distortions. And so that's like the total irony, right? Hollywood spends a ton of money on bleeding edge technology that's basically obsolete before the premiere even happens. That whole decade was a laboratory. VistaVision, Todd AO, Panavision, Technorama, everyone chasing width and spectacle. And for good reasons, right? Like those big screen. We were just saying one of your favorite movies is Ben-Hur. Like there's no Ben-Hur without 70 millimeter wide screen. There's just, there's no Ben-Hur, right? Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's, I don't know. I just love it. I just love it. So that's where, so that's where I get hooked. Right. So I had a buddy that was in high school who is obsessed with movies and old formats. And he would drag me to these kind of revival screenings. And they still have them in LA. Real film, not VHS, not, you know, it's, you know, legit stuff. And they would show them in the old formats with the widest film stock. There was the Egyptian theater in Hollywood. I think the Egyptians still does these like Thursday night 70 mil features. The Cinerama Dome in orange. And I think there's one on Sunset as well. Still one on Sunset. Yeah. There's only a couple of those, right? Normally, like, nothing is filmed in Cinerama anymore, right? But you can kind of fudge it and project, you know, these wider screen formats onto a bigger screen. And, you know, you just sit in that right in front of that big giant screen, the curved screen, the lights dimmed. And it was like it was the immersive experience before immersive was a buzzword. But that's what widescreen was really about, restoring the wonder of it all. Right. Like we just said, like going to a film used to be an event. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have that anymore. No, we don't have that anymore. I mean, the picture quality is so good. Like my eyeballs are the like lowest common denominator and i wear glasses right like yeah i mean but but like and this my kids they don't i think they kind of understand it because obviously there's a size difference but if you think about 1950s television even through the 60s you know they're not even square right the boxes are square yeah but the tubes the tubes are round and it's curved. Yes! You know, the resolution is trash. When you shut it off, it all went down to one tiny, like, black hole and then disappeared because it was a tube. Yeah, I mean, so it's not... Sure, you could watch sitcoms and game shows and stuff like that, but watching a movie on that little screen with really bad resolution and black and white. Yeah, you watched Star Wars on the back of a TV, on the back of your plane seat. That's what it was like watching. And that's even a better picture than we had. Exactly. Right? Yeah, definitely. You had to play with the contrast. Like, if you wanted to see the wrinkles in somebody's face, like Walter Cronkite's face, just turn up the contrast. It's not, yeah, I don't know. It's, yeah, I think this is why I love those kind of old format movies, because it's such a stark difference between, you know, the different types of media of the time. And it's, you know, I don't see us having that contrast anymore. Like, it's just not, it's not going to happen, so. But that race around wide formats and displaying bigger, more vivid color, you know, bigger and wider, it works for a while, right? And so, like, the golden age of Hollywood, you know, that kind of 1950s, 1960s period, you know, works for a while. But the next obsession in film tech is fidelity. So once the screens got wider, the race was on to make it sharper, richer, and most importantly, I think, louder. Just louder. Louder. Louder! So VistaVision, Paramount's VistaVision turns 35mm sideways. So if you think about how this works, you know... Intuitively your brain is thinking oh it's a film reel and there's the images but then you can actually turn sideways and you you basically double the frame size and todd ao which is a kind of um you know production house company a film production and and post-production company they come along with this 65 millimeter negative and a 70 millimeter print and and then this crazy innovation six track magnetic sound and the first one to get that is oklahoma in 1955 and because of the size of the print and the technology to play that magnetic stripe it's different than a academy academy format and an optical projector audio you have to have special equipment to read the magnetic strip track and play the, and it basically flips the negative or the film to its side. And so they had roadshows around these movies. And Oklahoma in 1955 is the first one. Oklahoma, and then it just keeps going from there. So, you know, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, like pick a West Side Story, like pick a musical. If it was a great American musical. They pulled out all the stops. They were beautiful and brutally expensive. Only flagship theaters could afford the projectors. So I would guess if it was Hollywood, it would be any theater that any of those people would go to to watch it, right? And possibly the one in Westwood. Like, that would be the one where you would go see it. You'd get all dressed up. You'd go to, you know, to the big theater in Westwood and go see that film. And it would cost you a pretty penny, I would think, or at least a nickel, a pretty nickel. Expensive and only flagship theaters could afford the projectors. You know, 35mm kind of remains a workhorse while Panavision refined the lenses and then Dolby quietly, you know, sort of reinvents the sound. And, you know, if you think about the 60s, you know, you rattled off a bunch of them, right? Were the musicals as an event in the 40s and 50s as they were in the kind of the late 50s, early 60s. The late 50s, early 60s is like the period for the stereotypical big-time Hollywood musicals. You know, South Pacific and, you know, My Fair Lady and Oklahoma and all of these, like... They're huge. My mom loved The King and I. That was her favorite. There you go. People love Fiddler. Yeah. Yeah, so I would go back to the idea, though, that having done those musicals, you have an orchestra, you have a chorus, you have singers, you have quartets, you have... And then you have all the foley, because it's all live action, sort of, too, right? So, like, it's not necessarily you're watching, you know, the sound of music and she's standing on a stage singing. No, she's on a hill singing her little heart out, right? But to get the foley, get the sound, get the wind on the hill, get the, like, to create that soundscape, you need more than one optical channel. So, guess what? We need to reinvent this because if we want to create that rich, immersive environment that is a musical, because you fall for it every time. When people just start singing out of nowhere, you're like, yes, you fall for it every time because it's immersive, right? They did it on purpose. It seems normal. Like, yes, that's what makes them great movies. But that immersive sound experience is a huge part of it. And to do that, we needed multi-channel recording and multi-channel playback. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, you know, this whole reinvention of sound is a huge thing. Yeah. And so that's when my chapter starts, right? It's the late 90s. I was running IT and we were still built around. I swear to you, they would come and deliver like five cans of film. Somebody's job would be to cut all that film together, put it on the reel. And if you got two because you're going to run it on two screens, you got six if you were going to run it on six screens. Like, that's how that worked. And you're running them back to back because you're trying to get it in as much as you can because you're going to sell as much popcorn. Because remember, you're making no money on this film if you're a theater. You're only making money so think about that though because what what they're asking them to do at this point is say i need you to give up the idea that optical sound was how we were going to do any of this and now it's going to be this multi-channel like dolby magnetic stereo and you're like sounds fantastic and like here's how much it's going to cost you and you're like are you nuts no like why would i do that like that seems crazy like i don't have like a company that makes money on popcorn like they're not going to give that up on every screen in every theater right they're going to pick and choose and they're probably going to pick markets where they think it's going to sell and they're going to get one of those prints they don't want them on the rest of it so think about what that means if you're doing that if if you're doing that film right you're either limited to the theaters you could show the film in so now you're limiting how much money you're going to make or you have to do a reprint of that in optical with crappy sound, Like, that's your only two choices, right? And it seems to me like they always went for good sound. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, most, by the time, you know, like the 70s and 80s, for the most part, magnetic readers are available, but not necessarily all of the, it's like stereo. It's not the whole, you know, broad, Dolby, digital, you know. Decoded and all of that. But, you know, you definitely have this, mixed experience like the person in you know some place in the middle of kansas doesn't have the same experience as you know time square right it's not right right right right but digital was always knocking at the door right the servers the scheduling systems the networked projection how we were moving things around was definitely changing and the investments being made on the theater side were starting to turn digital there was no interest in adding you know more Dolby Magnetic. They were looking for a different answer. And so I was there when that was happening. So 10 years later, it's only 10 years later, the whole thing has flipped over. Right. And so that means every theater decided, OK, well, you know, we're going to need to see something different. And what was I looking at? I was watching a transition, right? Yeah. So that that infrastructure on the infrastructure itself, it was moving around. Yeah, I mean, projectionists didn't trust that executives worried about, you know, piracy. Studios were still shipping 50-pound film cans. It was chaotic. It was a chaotic way to make money. And then at the end of it all, you reported your numbers right back to Nielsen because they wanted to say what the box office numbers were on Monday morning. Like, it was just a crazy business. It's crazy business. you know during this time you have this sort of evolution of the sound standards as well so dolby don't there's so many different dolby standards dolby dolby a dolby stereo 76 dolby sr that's around in 86 then digital sound in the early 90s dolby digital dts sdds and each of them needs a different set of readers and wiring so the infrastructure in the studios themselves or not in the studios but in the, The theaters, all the speakers have to change and the, you know, the decoding systems have changed. And Dolby was the one doing the change. So I don't want you guys to think that I was running around theaters ripping out Dolby sound systems and putting in new ones. Like that wasn't my gig. Dolby came and did that. And then when they were done, they would certify the theater. So Dolby would come back and double check their own work and then come back and say, okay, this is the right sound. And they would put sensors everywhere in the theater. They would run a film. That's cool. Yeah, and then they would come back and certify it as complete. So they would do that transition for you and you paid a lot of money for it, which is why I think you would see maybe a, you know, a Dolby Digital in a couple of theaters because at some point they had done those first, but the next ones they turn over are going to be like SDDS, right? Because it's just, that's the way they're going to do it because it's the newest technology, but you'll still be able to see theaters in Dolby Digital because, you know, you still have digital theaters. So, yeah, I mean, it was a lot. I don't want anyone to think I was doing any of that. But that's a lot of tech to sort out. And that is a full-time job for the theater people that run the actual theaters, not home office where I hung out, but the people who are actually managing the technology in the theaters. It's stuff for them to try to figure out. And they have to keep pace with the studios. Otherwise, they lose the chance to make money. I remember because i this this guy that was a buddy of mine in high school and he would always want to try to find the theater with the best sound you know or or you know this movie was you know had this sam does that yeah my husband does it and like all these different dolby standards and stuff like i can't keep them straight so i have no idea like is dts good Is it a D? It's got a digital. Is that as good as SDDS? Is that good? Is that... I don't know. I just want to hear... I just want to hear, like... What the director intended. That's what I want. Oh, okay. All right. You don't want the best your ears can get. You just want whatever that old man could hear. I'm for that. That's good. I think. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. So, gosh, man. Okay, so I'm going to tell this story around one of the first dates Meredith, Beth, and I went on. We were, I think, yeah, I was still in high school. She was still in high school. And it was a double feature. Because you married your high school sweetheart. Yes, you did. Okay, go ahead. And it's 30-something years later. So, okay, so the first dates we go on is a double feature. And this is it. The alien and the exorcist in 70 millimeter. And it wasn't like, it was early on when we were dating because this guy, it was my buddy was Brent. We went with him as well because he wasn't going to miss a double feature of Alien. 70 millimeter. Like, that doesn't happen all the time, you know? So, of course, you got to go see that. And, you know, of course, it's, you know, the best film print and all of that. And it was just, yeah, the jump scares in those movies was a different, it was a different thing. I don't think I'm going to see The Exorcist in 70 millimeter, since 70 millimeter anywhere i can hardly watch it like on the tv i there's no way there's no way yeah no you can feel yeah feel everything and okay another exorcist story because it's not it's not as good it's similar okay so in the in the like late 90s early 2000s right when keely was born, The Exorcist comes back around in a, you know, new, newly restored, whatever, whatever. I remember that. And it has digital sound now. So it's better sound than the original release. It's like crazy whatever. Yeah. And so we lived literally next door to a movie theater. And Keely is like two months, three months old, right? It's just the condo. Yeah, there's a condo, right? We were living in the condo. And so we were like, oh, we'll just walk over and watch the movie. And I was like, I don't know. And we can't leave Keely at home, obviously. She's three months old. She's like, oh, we'll just break her. Because she slept. We love to watch movies. And she would just sleep on me. Oh, okay. Put her in the little baby Bjorn or whatever. And then, so we go and we get in there and we're watching it. And, okay, the thing with The Exorcist is not so much that visually it's all that. I mean, it's a good movie. But the sound, the sound design, you know, the soundtrack and, you know, the music, all of this is it's it's it's top notch. So with this new digital recording and all of that, Keely starts getting like really uncomfortable. She's sleeping and she's, I've got her on my, on my chest, you know, the little baby Bjorn and stuff. And the, you know, that the, the really dissonant sound is playing and she's just, she's just not having anything of it. And I'm like, I just look at Beth and I was like, I'm going home. I'll see you in a couple hours. And I just walk, walk out and I'm sick. So because my dad took me to see heavy metal when I was like 10, it was awful. I'm still afraid of green glowing things. Yeah. Well, she was three months old, you know? Yeah. But that's okay. That's the sound, you know, that's it, it rattles. And I guess, you know, now with the, with the way that home speakers are, you can kind of get some of that, but you don't get quite the exact same, you know, the same thing, but yeah it's what i mean that's what did for me i probably for you because we're nostalgic nerds but i mean that's what digital never quite replaced was like the presence of film like there was something there's something about that yeah that i think you don't get when you talk about the i, the art form. Yeah. When you start calling it content, I think that's where we all got crazy. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something about that, like the booth, right? The sound of the film, sound of the theater, the sounds, you know, that hushness. And yeah, I don't know. Yeah. A time when you're sitting in a theater with 150 other people and you can hear a pin drop. Like it's, it's that experience that we just don't do anymore. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about digital switchover. So by the late 90s, now, what did we say digital switchover? Because you have some of the audio in digital, but everything is still projected on film. But by this time, the late 90s, film had kind of perfected itself. Hollywood was falling in love with pixels, essentially. Right. George Lucas. So I saw I saw Star Wars in the theater. I cannot tell you how mind blowing that scene is with the TIE fighter going down the trench. And he's like, Luke's trying to get he's trying to get that that honey hole. Like, and when you, I mean, I was 10 at the time. You sit there and you look at that. And for the first, I mean, I've been watching musicals from the 1950s until that point, right? I'm watching Dick Van Dyke's show on TV. And that, that, none of it was real. None of it was really there. But we're watching it. Like, that, to me, must have been what it was like sitting in that theater in the 1930s when Dorothy opened that door. Like, it was another one of those things. So, episode two, Attack of the Clones. Okay, just so we're clear, I just want to put this out there to the ether. I've never seen anything other than the first thing. Star Wars film. I saw the first one. I can see why the Empire struck back. I mean, it made sense to me, but I have no idea how they did it or what the outcome was. I have no idea how it went. Oh, you're missing. I guess. I didn't see Game of Thrones either, but I learned Dothraki. You tell me. All right. So, Attack of the Clones in 2002, the first major feature shot entirely digital on the Sony HDW-F900. So this is the first. 1080p, 24 frames a second. Technically impressive, but visually kind of, you know, I thought it looked sterile, right? But the economies were irresistible. A film print cost thousands. A DCP on a hard drive cost pocket change. Yeah. That's true. I mean, did the format, I mean, my gosh, again, whole armored cars did nothing but shuttle films around the theaters all day long, right? It was a crazy business. This changed everything in a lot of ways. Well, so at one of those places I worked at, you know, When I first met you, Todd A.O. was a customer. And, I mean, you just go, and Deluxe was a customer as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go to these places and, you know, there's racks and racks and racks of film. You know, and if they're working out of print, it's, I mean, it's expensive. It's not, you know, there's chemicals and there's film stock. And, you know, if there's issues, then it costs money to replace, you know, fix and replace. And, you know, there's wear and tear that has to be addressed. And it's not... Climate control, moisture control. Climate control. There's like so much you have to do for that thing just to survive the season, let alone the next 50 years. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, it's the price difference, definitely a change. You know that that cost is is just you know night and day but there's a there's a another side to that right the studios get control right encryption keys timed play playback you know the distribution of the of the film which is not film anymore is all through software and then came the dci spec in 2005 the rule book for color encryption and resolution it made the mass rollout possible you No, I'll give this to them. Hollywood, when it wants to make money, will figure out how to get along, right? Like, I will say that about them. In the effort to, you know, move technology forward, they as an industry usually did a pretty good job. Yeah. So this thing comes along called the virtual print fee. And this is basically like a scheme, not a scheme in a negative way, but a regime or whatever to help theaters replace an upgrade, you know, like a subsidy essentially from all the distributors. And by 2013, basically 35 millimeter is like almost completely gone. And they wouldn't have been able to do it without that, to be honest with you. I don't know how they would have ever made the money to. It would have been the loss of a bunch of theaters because, you know, you would have to, you know, liquidate the real estate. Yeah, that would have been sad. Well, I mean, it's not, it's like a projector. You think about a projector. Projector is a projector. Right. You know, you put the film in and it rolls through and there's a light and it shines on the silver screen. And there's some, you know, some speakers, you know, through whatever. Okay, fine. But these digital projectors, yes, there's a light and there's a lens, but there's no film, and there's basically hardware and software, and it's a server basically running there, and it's got redundancy and RAID and backup and all that stuff. It's not expensive. We used to train and certify projectionists. That was a legit job that people would belong to a union. There was projectionist unions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And overnight, that was all gone because projectionists just became file managers, and those files can run in batches, and those batches can be controlled by timers on the computer, so you really don't need anybody anymore. Like, you really could click a button, and that thing would run itself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of a culture shock, I suppose. The booth itself is less mechanical and more administrative. Yeah, well, what they gained was consistency and cost savings, but they lost, you know, the nostalgia, the texture, and the craft. And you know what? I guess I would say that's what I miss. You know, I remember the heyday of talking about film like it was art, right? Not content, art. I miss that, you know. Even the ones that are really good who you would say, like, that's an art film. Like there's every once in a while you'll see one and be like wow you know but I wish I saw it in a boutique theater who ran like art films like because that would have been a really interesting experience right what was the last art film you saw, Hideous Kinky Hideous Kinky oh I didn't yeah it's this little film done by Kate Winslet where she plays like this hippie who runs off to Marrakesh with her two kids oh yeah yeah yeah and it did it ran the art film circuit and, never saw it again And it's such a great film, though. But, I mean, there was, like, 2010 or something crazy like that. So, yeah, it's just— Did you see Sinners, the Ryan Coogler movie? I did not. Okay, so something interesting about that, Meredith and I, we saw that in the theater. It was actually filmed on film, and I'm pretty sure it was done on 65 and converted to 70. Yeah, so, like, it still happens. I feel like it's a lost art. I feel like they probably don't even teach that at the American Film Institute anymore. Like, here's how you look at, here's, we're going to go get the Fujifilm out. Like, I just don't feel like that happens anymore. yeah well it's yeah some some other time maybe we come back to something like this but the film like the film stock itself and the and the the you know the the development process there's certain movies that that you could look at and you go oh i know exactly what film stock that was on right right yeah you know it was like oh that's a code codex 1742 or whatever and you know you You don't get that with digital at all. No, but you do... You do open the door to people who don't have a lot of money to make films to make films. So you extend the art by losing some of what you thought was art, right? Yeah, that's true. I mean, you know, indie filmmakers, you know, lab bills don't exist. Instant dailies, global distribution. It democratized creation while centralizing exhibition. That's Hollywood's logic in one sentence. Like, of course, that's where we go, right? We would go digital. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think to some degree audiences just didn't notice, right? What matters, I guess, to them really is more story, not sprockets, not the clicks in the film wheel. Right. I don't think anybody cares how Titanic was created or the fact that it cost $300 million. It's just that it was a really, really, really great story. And it was incredible to see. Come on. Really, really, really great. Come on. No, it was. That was a good time in the theater. It was a long time. You did have to take a potty break, but it was, no, it was a good time. I loved seeing that in the theater. I could watch that movie anytime. I could watch it anytime. I know you love that movie. Yeah. So this brings us to now, right? Premium projection, LED walls and AI everything. Right now you can go to the sphere in Las Vegas and watch Dorothy in Oz in that crazy setting of the sphere. I can't even believe that. That's crazy. I've seen some videos of that. That looks pretty cool. Right? I have vertigo, though. Okay, so now we have IMAX laser, Dolby Cinema, 8K projectors, pristine images that still can't guarantee a crowd. Are you still surprised by the exhibition tech? I guess, fortunately, in London, there are a few kind of premier theaters right in Leicester Square, and they have the kind of the HDR laser projection. You know, it's cool. Okay, don't they take that incredibly pristine image and not to make you sick or give you a headache, they have to dirty it up again? Like, that's the thing that I don't understand. Like, why isn't good enough just good enough? When my eyeballs and my stomach tell you we're done, then we should just be done. You know, like, why do we have to keep pushing that envelope on visual? Like, that's the thing. How come it's not multisensory? Floors that vibrate. Seats that get hot near the volcano. Like, that kind of stuff. Like, it has to be other sensory stuff. I think we've hit the wall on sound, and we've hit the wall on visual. Unless it's VR. Then we're talking a whole different landscape. We didn't talk about 3D, because there was a whole thing about 3D. We didn't go into that. There was Smell-O-Vision in the 50s. And there are, yeah, there are, there were, it was a thing, what was it, like 4D or something? Some places had this. Oh, the seat would rumble when there was a rocket that would take off. Yeah, like, I don't know. I don't know. Feels gimmicky to me. Like, unless it's really, it's almost like, you know, when the movie is made specifically for that, you know, to show off that technology. Like when somebody's, you know, like, was it Jaws or something, you know, and he's coming to swim and swims at you in his jaw. Gravity, when she's, like, floating through the space station and stuff's flying right by her head, you're like, okay, I get it. I get it. Like, you don't have to be that obvious, for sure. Obviously filmed in 3D, thank you very much. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I think, so, yeah, I still think that there's some cool stuff out there, but when, what's his name, Peter Jackson did The Hobbit, trilogy a tragic trilogy of movies. The instead of 24 frames a second they up the frame rate and there were nobody could exhibit them except for a few theaters and nobody liked it anyways like everybody you know 24 frames works because because there's reasons you know that's the one that's how your brain works and upping the frame rate just kind of made people like feel weird you know yeah But it's the same thing when you watch Saving Private Ryan, they take out every other frame and it's like this constant jump. And it's like it's really disorienting. You start to feel like like you have a concussion. Like, yeah, weird. But the cool like what's cool for the cool kids right now is on set rather than, you know, in the camera, I guess somewhat in the camera. Led volumes this is cool stuff pioneered by the mandalorian instead of green screens productions use curved led panels showing real-time environments the camera tracks the perspective so the background shifts naturally let me tell you it's like i watched this i can't i wish i could remember the movie bruce willis is in it and he plays this actor and it's robert de niro is his agent and there's and bruce willis is playing himself as a really guy difficult he's good he's just difficult to get along with he's not coming out of the trailer they make him look fat they're like you are fat like it's a whole thing right but you get to see how the actors actually work and you get to see like there's two people in a scene they're both in different places. And they're both on screen screen and neither of them are talking to each other that's what it meant to act in that world to put you on a fake thing and then put you in front of a three like a two-thirds like you know l you know curved you know environment and then say act here like that's a completely different experience for the artist like that's just a completely different experience good for them go mandalorian that's what i'll say yeah no it's a huge really cool innovation The screens emit the light, you know, reflections are real, actors' faces glow with the environment instead of post-production fakery. And the whole, like, we said it, right, that the background shifts naturally because of this whole tracking perspective. But, like, the tech to do that is really complex, you know, because it's not like an old Alfred Hitchcock movie where, you know, the person's driving in the car, you know, you see, you know. You know, Janet Lear. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's not like that. Right. And it's hardware store, bank, hardware store, bank, hardware store, bank. Yeah. It's not like that. It's not like that. Like, it's the same concept. But what ends up happening is the computer, you know, hooked in with the LED volume. And the camera, you know, it says, well, I'm shifting the camera this direction. And so the background moves with the right perspective. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. It is freaking cool, though. Like, so, yeah, LED volumes. And you'd be so surprised at what movie, how many movies are using LED volumes now. Well, that's just it. How fast it spread. Commercials, music videos, indie films, virtual backlots. It's all like how we work now. It's no longer green screen. So you guys who have green screens and you're using your Zoom account, you're way behind the times, you nerds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You need an LED volume now. So, but cameras finally catch up. Large format sensors, huge, you know, the sensors, I mean, you've seen some of these, the CCDs on these cameras are huge. Precise lens metadata. Even lenses now chase imperfection again. Again, you can get glass that flares and distorts just like the old kind of old cinema. Just cool. And right behind that comes AI, synthetic actors, de-aging, voice doubles, and even full digital stand-ins. So don't get me started. Like if Jennifer Aniston can't be the voice for what the hell ever, then Jennifer shouldn't get the job. She shouldn't get to rent her voice out to AI so someone else can not work. Like I just have a problem with the whole concept of it all. At the same time though this is it this is where we're at imagine nowadays you can cut a film because you used to if you were an actor you'd have to go back into the studio and do like 20 grunts for the foley because they didn't catch it when you were being chased by what the hell ever in the like when you were out and shooting the dude the dude holding up the microphone he's got a sandwich in his other hand and he's like, He's just looking around, and his microphone wasn't in the right spot. So now you're in the post going, oh, my foot. Like, this is what you do. And then, like, 30 feet of that, right? So now you don't have to do that. AI will fill it in for you. Like, I think in that regard, that's an amazing step forward for stupid crap you'd have to do in post. But at the same time, you know, you're right. Here it comes. Are you guys ready for it? Yeah. Yeah. This is, like, an existential question. You know, if you can conjure a perfect digital extra and digital extras exist today, like not only do they exist today, they've existed for like, what, almost 20 years. But, you know, resurrect an actor. What happens to the to the craft? You know, it becomes about effectively creating background actors that don't try to steal scenes and putting in all your films. I mean, that becomes the true, the true art of the craft is, could you pull that off and everybody would believe it? Wouldn't that be like, I wonder, because, you know, animators have been doing, you know, little Easter eggs and animation forever, for as long as there's been animation. So, I mean, digital Easter eggs, digital animation that has to exist as well. Yeah, that'd be fun, actually. You put all your friends in as digital, you know, extras. Right, right, Billy. Like, oh, my God, that's me. Then invite them all to the party because they were all in the film, except nobody was. And it doesn't matter because you've got to spend down all the money. It's deja vu. Early cinema used painted backdrops and miniatures. We just traded glass for GPUs. That's exactly what we did. Yeah, yeah. The art keeps chasing realism while inventing new illusions. Maybe the next revolution isn't higher resolution. It's emotional authenticity. Probably. History loves a reboot. If I've learned anything, it's that. All right. So from academy frame to AI, it's all the same pursuit, catching light in a way that moves people. And maybe that's the real magic, not the medium, but the feeling. No, no, I won't say that. The real magic is the fact that we started in the 1930s on optical sound. And then we find some way to like news multitrack and we're like, yeah, yeah, magnetic's the way to go. And they're like, no, no, it's digital. So let's go back to optical. What? Like, that's the story. That's the real magic. I can't believe we had to go backwards to go forwards. There it is. And the film stock stayed the same. The film stock stayed the same. Like, what? Yes. Yes. What? I know. I know. Like, that's, yeah. Yeah, I hope you guys loved it as much as we did. From optical soundtracks to virtual stages, the tools keep changing, but the goal never does, to make light and sound feel alive. Every format has been chasing the same thing, immersion. And somehow the more perfect we get, the more we miss the scratches and flicker that made movies feel human. That's nostalgia in a nutshell. It's not just the picture. It's how it makes you fit sitting in the dark. All right, folks. Thanks for listening to the Nostalgic Nerds podcast. And if you got your own film format memories or projection boost stories, I swear to God, if any of you are listening and Houston-run films, Jane, call me. I'd love to hear about it. And drop us a line at the SnoutingNerdsPodcast at gmail.com. All right. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, like, share, slap, all that stuff. Tell your fellow nerds. Until next time. Stay nerdy, folks.