All the technical reasons aside (and all the good information above), the
aesthetic answer to the question "But how does that look good in theaters ...why would they shoot in just 1080p?" is simply that often times 1080 is "good enough."
True, the Genesis is technically "only" an HD camera... but it's a darn good one, and many bigshot DPs say its latitude and colorspace puts higher-res cameras like the RED to shame. A number of times I've watched a film in a theatre, only to be surprised by the "Panavision Genesis" bug at the end of the credit roll. Often I had no idea it wasn't real film. Roger Deakins just shot "True Grit" on 35mm, but when he went back to do some pickup shots he shot those with the Arri ALEXA (which is 2.88K, higher than 1080 but lower than RED) and it cut together with the real film just fine (and he also said that "Grit" was probably the last feature he would shoot on real 35mm film).
The only way to get really
really high resolution (actually much
much higher than 4K) is with a project that is shot on film, edited on film, and projected on film. That
rarely happens anymore. Virtually
all feature films now go though a DI (digital intermediary) stage where all the post production and editing takes place.
Sometimes 4K DIs are used, but the majority of films are edited using a 2K DI. Simply because it looks "good enough," and the visual (not the technical) difference in the 2K and 4K DI is minimal, if visible at all.
On top of that, if you're watching a film in a theatre that has digital projection (as more and more are now), well
some of those theatres are equipped with 4K projectors, but the majority of them are 2K projectors. And some are 1080 projectors.
So, for all the banter about 4K, 5K, and beyond... and people almost religiously clamoring for higher and higher resolutions, the simple (and some would say sad) fact is that in many cases it just doesn't make all that much difference... visually.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
