This illustration is taken from a poor quality VHS tape. The Inferno workstation transforms the letterbox image to create a simulation of the Cinerama screen. These "Smilebox" clips inter-cut into the documentary in 2001, several Cinerama fans excitedlyĬommented on how much it looked like real Cinerama. On a state-of-the-art graphics workstation called an "Inferno." Greg and the engineersĬame up with the affectionate name for this process, "Smilebox". This was done with a special group of settings If it were on a 146 degree Cinerama screen. Three Cinerama films are combined to form a "letterbox" image.Įngineers wanted to simulate the Cinerama screen by curving and bending the image as Using two D-1ĭecks and a modified Kaleidoscope, the images were combined and blended together intoĪ letterbox image that matched the Cinerama aspect ratio (2.59:1). Once control of all three images was in the digitalĭomain the color between panels was corrected from the faded negatives. Special effectsĮxpert and Cinerama buff Greg Kimble labored for several weeks with the top engineersĪt Pacific Ocean Post and Digital Magic in Los Angeles to perfect a technique to do this.īy using a Rank Ursa Gold Telecine with custom modifications, each panel was Telecine from the original 3 panel - 6 perforation camera negatives had to be developed. Showing Cinerama film clips in this documentary was a challenging task. Greg Kimble and David Strohmaier monitor the assembly, in digital video, of a complete Cinerama image made from three individual films. SmileBox portions from HTHere’s a little rundown on the SmileBox process.Įvery and every film that was ever presented in real of “fake” Cinerama (the single strip 70mm simulation in which widescreen films were projected onto a super-curved Cinerama screen, including It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Grand Prix and 2001: A Space Odyssey) should be issued on special SmileBox DVDs and Blu-rays.The Cinerama Adventure - "Smilebox" Process Cinerama and the Cinerama logo are registered trademarks of Cinerama, Inc. Here’s a reaction to the Smilebox Blu-ray version by Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny. The process was imperfect and so what? The old Cinerama technicians did the best they could with what they had to work with, and their work should be left alone and respected for what it was.Īnd why not offer an alternate version of all Cinerama films, genuine and fake, in the SmileBox process? And why did WHV decide to offer a SmileBox version of How The West Was Won only on Blu-ray and not on DVD? This is hugely unfair to Luddities like myself who are still watching 36″ Sony flatscreens. On top of which the right, center and left images were never perfectly aligned, and I say roll with that also. Clean up the dirt and sharpen the image, fine, but erasing the seams is the same kind of vandalism as the colorization of black-and-white films. This is how present-day audiences should see How The West Was Won also. Audiences in 1963 had to cope with these faint visual divides, and they paid through the nose to see Cinerama movies all through the ’50s and early ’60s. They were what they were, Cinerama was what it was, and the process shouldn’t be “upgraded” on Blu-ray and DVD to the point that it doesn’t resemble what it originally loked like. The old Cinerama seams are not something to avoid but to savor. (Within the last couple of years I’ve seen This is Cinerama! and How The West was Won shown in the original three-projector process at the Cinerama Dome.) It’s basically a digital reconstitution that erases what watching Cinerama films was really like. But it’s an improvement only in the most bland cosmetic sense. And most DVD/Blu-ray reviewers are calling it a vast improvement over the way How The West Was Won looked on previously released discs, which had the vertical seams showing and the imperfect blending of the three frames plain as hell.
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