Blog-a-thon: Your 65/70 mm Experience – September 26-30th, 2024

by John Charet

Question – how many of you dear readers of mine are familiar with 70 mm Film gauge?
Give up? I will try to explain this motion picture format as simply as I can. Think of standard 35 mm film. Now times that number by two. In this case, our answer comes to 70 mm. The negative is basically 3.5 times as large as 35 mm film (read here). Admittedly, on camera, the format is 65 mm, but when it comes to projection, it is printed on 70 mm film (read here). As for Digital cinema, that is a different topic for another time. But If any of you want to talk about that sometime, feel free to leave me a comment 🙂

What is this blog-a-thon all about?
To any blogger who would like to participate in this, I would like you to write a blog entry about a great film you saw in 65/70 mm. The film can be old or new. If you would like, you can also write about the theater/theatre you saw it at (i.e. a historic landmark among other examples).

For Participants
If any of my fellow bloggers would like to participate, please leave a reply in the comment section and I will add you to the participant list. Also, the deadline for participation is Tuesday, October 1st. That is right, I will add you on the last day of the blog-a-thon as a participant 🙂

17 thoughts on “Blog-a-thon: Your 65/70 mm Experience – September 26-30th, 2024”

  1. Living in London for most of my life, I was lucky to be able to go to some huge cinemas to see 70MM films. The one that impressed me the most, and I still love it, was ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Seeing it on video or on TV later was no comparison. (I won’t participate in the blogathon, as I am not blogging as much as I used to)

    Best wishes, Pete.

  2. my first experience with 70mm was It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963 at the Martin cinerama in Seattle, where I saw all the cinerama pictures of the time but am not sure if the triple projected cinerama movies were shot in 70mm. In Seattle there was a big stink when close encounters of the third kind had its first run projected in 35mm, and a suburban theatre installed 70 mm projectors in order to show it properly, which gave that second run theatre enough status to get first run bookings. At one point in Seattle cinema history, this theatre , The Crest,was the last one still in operation. Since then, many other cinemas have reopened.

  3. Interesting story Bill 🙂 You probably already knew that 2001: A Space Odyssey was shot in Cinerama as well 🙂 So, will you be doing a blog entry on your 70mm experience with It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World? If so, when do you think the blog entry will be done by? That would be an interesting blog entry 🙂

  4. I saw 2001 at the cinerama on the curved screen but it was not filmed in Cinerama. I saw How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm in three-strip Cinerama, but the process was discontinued after that. 2001 was simply 70mm projected onto the curved screen. As I was only 11 when I saw the cinerama films, I dont think I have anything worth saying about those experiences.

  7. i reviewed the end credits and the exact words are Presented by MGM in Cinerama, using the cinerama trademark logo, signifying it was to be premiered in cinerama theatres on the curved screen but was filmed not the three camera cinerama process. At the very end is the credit Filmed in Super Panavision.

  9. Sadly I have only seen The Hateful Eight in the cinema John, and I just discovered this post now, so I don’t have time to write an entry due to other commitments also tbh I wasn’t aware of any of those film techniques used. I did see some of the films made this way on the wee screen – and I am sure they looked fantastic at the cinema, looking forward to reading your entries.

  14. I think the distinction being made in the 2001 credits is that it was being presented in Cinerama, but was filmed in Panavision…In other words, the 70 mm prints were to be shown on the curved screen. I would like to see if the end credits were changed for the 35mm prints, In Seattle, many of Kubricks later films premiered at the Cinerama…I saw Barry Lyndon and The Shining there, both of which were shot in 35 mm..and Barry Lyndon was projected in 1.66.

Leave a comment