

It wasn't until television started stealing viewers away from Hollywood in the 1950s and '60s that the industry recognized the benefit in bringing 70mm to the mainstream. But people have been shooting in 70mm for almost as long as there have been movies. There's just so much more going on in these 70mm prints than even on your Blu-ray." Is 70mm new?īetween Blu-ray and HD, IMAX and 3D, it might seem like 70mm is the newest kid on the block.

However, the restoration scan of the 70mm film resolution Lawrence of Arabia was scanned at about 8,000 pixels, "and the negative had even more information than that. He also points out that most theaters project films at a resolution of about 2,000 pixels, which is comparable to Blu-ray. The wider, sharper image allows viewers to see "details in these films that you have just never, ever seen before," as McLaren puts it. Essentially, the difference between 35mm and 70mm is similar to the difference between DVD and Blu-ray, if switching from DVD to Blu-ray also made your television bigger. "From an audience standpoint, it's a much crisper, brighter, and ideally more uniform and stable image," said McLaren. Even popcorn flicks such as Spielberg's Ready Player One (2018) have been getting in on the act.īut what is 70mm? To dig a little deeper, we explored the past and present of 70mm with the help of Douglas McLaren, the projectionist at Chicago's Music Box Theatre.ħ0mm is a film format with frames that are larger in size and wider in aspect ratio than the standard 35mm film.

Interstellar in particular was so hotly anticipated that Paramount and Warner Brothers even went out of their way to promote theaters where it was screening in 70mm-the way Nolan had intended it to be seen. The format has been used in movies ranging from Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014) to Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017). Over the last few years a crop of high-profile directors have been spearheading the revival of 70mm film.
