[Frameworks] Advice with screening format for festival. Help!

[David Tetzlaff]

> The video projector they have is an HD projector however the quality did not match what you would find in high end commercial theaters so the 2K transfer looked like crap compared to the print. You can have a 2k transfer done on your film but if the digital projector being used to present the work is low end then its going to look as best as that projector can look.

Right. It's all about the projector, NOT the scan. That a projector is 'HD' tells you nothing. You can get an HD projector for $750. A GOOD projector for a small venue will run over $10,000. And forget resolution. A 3 chip DLP at 720P will totally kick butt on a 1080P LCD. 

> My opinion is if you want the look of film then you need to project film...

This just is not true. People are constantly condemning or characterizing digital technology categorically based on bad experiences with some specific hardware. However, the capabilities and qualities of the hardware, especially projectors, varies very widely. A digital scan of a 16mm film shown on a good video projector will look more like a 16mm projection of a clean print than it will look like a projection of the same scan on a routine 'business/classroom' class video projector. And no, we're not talking about the digital cinema projectors used in commercials theaters, which are ungodly expensive, and art/indie venues are not going to have. We're talking about the kinds of projectors any serious motion picture art venue should be able to afford to buy or rent, and should be using if they're inviting the public to view work in digital format.

> because really they are two completely different processes in projecting a moving image

Different processes, yes, but the proof is in the image that results, and good video projection of a film scan looks very good, and very filmic. I have seen revealing side-by-side comparisons. The similarities outweigh the differences, and in general, the video actually looks BETTER due to the inevitable wear on the film print. 

No video projector reproduces the subtle flicker of film projection, or the subtle movements in registration that occur as any film moves through the gate. These are relatively small things, and one might consider them flaws, or the special little imperfections that make the film medium truly magical, or simply irrelevant. I would guess that for over 99% of anyone who is ever likely to view Dana's film, they would fall into the later category.

New-generation Hollywood movies look cold, flat and dead on screen because the images are either captured digitally or created inside a computer in the first place, and then heavily processed digitally in ways that make everything look like a comic book -- NOT because they are projected digitally...