2K, 4K, hey!
photo by Adam Gerik
In my dorky college years (I never left them), I ran movie projectors in the hot hallways of several Wichita, Kan. theaters. Not only was the job a great reason to see every single movie released those two summers (who remembers the classic 2004 flick White Chicks?), it also gave me a few shekels and immense freedom from working some bland temp job in a downtown office building. F’ suits! I spent alternating hours dreaming of Natalie Portman and Jennifer Connelly and occasionally performing sophomore(ic?) math (area of a trapezoid! The Pythagorean theorem!) along with picking my nose. A great respect was formed for the flickering xenon bulbs in the big hot beasts, a reminder that just one exploding, as they sometimes do, could maim you beyond recognition. I learned every single idiosyncrasy of those machines (and learned how to avoid the dreaded brain wrap from hell.)
But that’s all water under the bridge, stuff for the history books. We’re in a digital projector age, with most large multiplexes dumping their rugged film projectors for fancy DLP equipment. That in itself isn’t bad (although it is yet another craft soon buried and pissed on, just like projectionists close brethren, the blacksmiths) and most theatergoers will notice a substantial improvement in quality. This is NOT because these projectors necessarily have better resolution; in fact, they don’t at all. A properly focused and maintained film projector from 50 years ago will still beat the living hell out of any new Texas Instruments or Christie computerized behemoth. But what theater spends money hiring proper projectionists?
The problem is still the medium the material is shot in; the few professional, cinema-grade HD cameras cost 6 figures and only have half the resolution of typical 35mm celluloid. Granted, most movies shot on traditional film are color graded in a computer, which necessitates film scanning and then printing (thus making it “digital.”)
Enter the RED One. It’s hard to call it anything but revolutionary. 4K resolution, a large image sensor for that lovely shallow depth of field cinematographers crave and a price tag that threatens to Hiroshima the shit out of anything else out there. All for $17 Gs and available now. Wired Magazine goes into more detail, but christ, if Peter Jackson loves it, who won’t?
