Presented In 70mm
Dear Gary: In reading Michael Coate and William Kallay’s article “Presented In 70 mm,” published in The Ultimate Widescreen DVD Movie Guide™, I noted a small omission regarding special film formats. They mentioned the “new” 48 fps film formats being developed. In l986, Douglas Trumbull (director Silent Running, Brainstorm) developed the Showscan process, a 48 fps format. Except for the exhibition film released at the World Expo Vancouver in 1986 (starring Fairuza Balk), I do not believe any other productions were made. I remember the film as widescreen, but I do not know the actual film stock size. The picture quality was fantastic. Thank you for the great work.
Touran De Anda
Staff Writer and Research Editor Michael Coate Comments:
A few points of clarification: Douglas Trumbull’s Showscan process was developed prior to 1986, and it actually ran at 60 frames per second, rather than 48. While it hasn’t been used to make a complete feature film, Showscan has been used for years now for special venue and ride films. The process may have had changes made during an evolutionary phase, but in its “final” form, Showscan utilized 65mm film during photography and 70mm prints during projection, and ran at 60 fps. The aspect ratio was 2.20:1-ish. The sound could be magnetic interlock or a composite print format. I believe at one time or another, the experimental VistaSonic process (utilized on a limited number of prints of Dragonslayer) was intended to be Showscan’s audio format. By now it’s likely digital. I appreciate readers scrutinizing our work; the possibility of omitting information certainly exists (particularly in masive articles such as “Presented In 70mm” which, in actuality, was designed to be a “greatest hits”-type introduction to the list that followed it). I suppose we could have mentioned Showscan as another option to shooting and projecting in the traditional 35mm/4-perf/24fps process, but the context of that portion of our article really was focusing on “current” options. By the time we wrote “Presented In 70mm,” Showscan had been in existence for over 15 years and never took off as a viable process for feature film production or exhibition. Sadly, it was relegated to special venue-only status. At the time of writing, MaxiVision, Super Dimension 70 and dye transfer (and DLP) were really the only “new” processes contending for any share-of-the-marketplace (and dye transfer and DLP seem to be the only ones being used, and even then, their use is limited). By the way, I think the Showscan film with Fairuza Balk that you saw may have been called Discovery...sound familiar? A few others were made prior, including Big Ball and New Magic.
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