Hi Ian. My brother and father are IMAX filmmakers. Dad was actually one of the guys who started IMAX, and made the first 3D IMAX, and the first 48 fps IMAX. The world is changing 1,2,3. With all the $300 million dollar CGI Marvel marvels popping out of Hollywood en masse, I think it's taken a bit of the shine off the IMAX world. Which may be why they want to run this film of mine, which is certainly more content than form -- and as you say, a good story ...
The original IMAX projection system is humungous, and awesome to see (I'm talking about the actual projectors). I think they've switched over to proprietary 4K digital projectors (but two of them ... so twice the luminosity). I'm certainly going to do my proper research before making a final master. We did do a test of the film in 4K ... but I couldn't be there. The projectionist said it 'held up'. I think I'll ask for some time in the theatre with the film and projectionist and a notebook, and do a shot-by-shot check. And then an 'adjusted' colour-grade to accomodate that particular room.
I'm working with an Apple Studio monitor in the cutting room, which I think is 5K. And I've found the Apple monitors give a really good idea of how things will show up in the theatre (depending on the power of the theatre projector(s)). I've coloured-graded a couple of IMAX films using just the retina screen on my laptop, and Final Cut, and they're out there in the theatres and look just fine. Crazy as that sounds.
And digibudll, I use Topaz all the time for up-scaling stills I pull from films shot with HD and even 4K. Does a pretty good job. An exceptional job on faces. But I haven't mastered the Video AI of Topaz ... takes soooooooo long to process a shot. I've used Neat Video a lot in the past, in FCPX, to clean up noise. It is quite exceptional, and very fast by comparison. And it's IN FCPX as a plug-in, so no exporting and recovering. I suspect Topaz will eventually go that way, a plug-in for the edit apps.
Thank you guys ... a grand day to you today ... B
