The Alternate Prequels 1:38 PM

Hey guys, Dorkman here.

Regular listeners will recall that back when we did our MATRIX: RELOADED commentary, the guys also turned the mics on post-show so I could drunkenly blather out a pseudo-pitch to an alternative storyline -- in essence, the way I would have done the movie had someone asked me. If you missed it, you can listen to it here:

Since the "MATRIX: REWRITTEN" sprang from my dissatisfaction with how the story was handled, it should come as no real surprise that I have gone through the same exercise with the Star Wars prequels. It helps me practice my story-crafting skills as a writer, and gives me a more constructive outlet for my frustration as a fan.

I've spent a lot of time on these internets of ours bewailing what they did wrong, so I want to put my money where my mouth is and share my thoughts on one way I think they could have been done "right."

Whether they are an improvement or not will ultimately be up to the reader, but either way I hope you guys enjoy them. It was fun to do.

STAR WARS: THE ALTERNATE PREQUELS

What the hell is a gigawatt? 4:02 PM

Hey everybody, Teague here.

You may have noticed something is different about the website. If you haven't, you're new, and it's important that you know that this site has always been this freaking awesome and it did not go through a long phase of simply being a Wordpress blog. That did not happen.

Anyway, here we are, with a shiny new site that will presumably be full of problems. If you ever encounter an issue with anything, send an email to downinfrontshow@gmail.com and we'll get it worked out right quick. If you have questions, concerns, or god forbid compliments, the same email can be used for those. We really prefer compliments, so. Try to stick with those.

In the meantime, you'll need to register at the new (hopefully permanent) forum, and we hope that you do. The forum was just starting to really hop on the old site, and hopefully this new one is a bit more user friendly and can operate with a heavier load of intelligent, handsome users like yourself.

You'll also notice that we have a new logo, and corresponding merchandise. We'll be adding merch as we go along, and if you have any ideas (or artwork submissions), downinfrontshow@gmail.com is the place to pipe up.

Hopefully this is a zero-downside transition for you, and in the future it's even easier to get a hold of your favorite god damned commentary podcast through this site.

Last but not least, many thanks to Holden Hill for helping to get this site up and running.

Leave Star Tours alone. 5:45 PM

5/30/11 EDIT: It's been nigh two years since writing this post, and the ride has been completed and is being opened currently. My opinion at this time is less reactionary and disappointed, and more apathetic - and early reports are that the new ride is "just fine," or "amazing," depending on who you ask. I'm not going to boycott it or anything like that, I'm not a "for the sake of it" sort of hill-battler. I'll always treasure the original, and hopefully YouTube bootlegs remain accessible for the forseeable future.

I feel I come on too strong in this post. But rather than deleting it and re-writing history, I simply addend - here, at the beginning - and let you make of my old opinion what you will.

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Hey everybody, Teague here.

Last week, SlashFilm reported that Star Tours was officially being re-imagined. In the spirit of the prequels (and hopefully to the same overwhelmingly positive response from fans), the ridefilm adventure that has been installed at Disneyland since 1987 is to be stricken and rebuilt into a brand new adventure, with a brand new CG destination, as yet undisclosed. As I cannot find any reason think otherwise, I currently operate under the impression that this means the original film and motions will be replaced wholesale with a new experience.

Most will probably continue in their lives unhindered by this news; another repetition-worn rolling of the eyes in George’s direction, maybe, the same shake of the head at the continued fingering of what used to inspire you. The revelation that Star Tours is to be disassembled and replaced with a prequel probably doesn’t affect many of the remaining fans in any specific way.

I am one to whom it does.

The actions of George Lucas spanning the gap between this year and 1997 seem to indicate he is of the opinion that he really, seriously does not owe me anything. (As many have said, we’re the ones who see his movies, and this attitude on his part may be unfounded.) (To say the, you know, complete fucking least.) Arguments so levied, it is still the case: we got the Special Edition releases, and then we got the prequels.

Astounding, the impact of what is contained in such a small sentence. It took you two seconds to process the information that Star Wars was raped right in front of you. Two seconds to review what took an excruciating ten years to experience. We walk away from it with little more than the cold, awkward understanding that this all means more to us than it does to him – and for many, that fire of love and inspiration that came at the hand of Star Wars has shrunk to an ember, and for some, one which has long since burnt out.

I was one for whom it hadn’t. Because I had freaking Star Tours.

As far back as I can remember, Disneyland has been a part of my life. My first memory is one of Disneyland, getting popcorn next to the outdoor cafeteria in Tomorrowland. (In that plaza at the foot of Space Mountain, next to where Captain E.O. used to be and Honey I Shrunk the Audience now is.) (Unfortunately.) The same day I rode Star Tours, and fell completely in love.

I ran all the way down the ramp, past the vacation posters depicting Tatooine and Dagobah, through the Star Wars store you have to walk through after exiting the ride – completely oblivious to the tall, shiny helmeted black suit man and the little green guy with giant ears – and back outside, in front of the ride, to see if I could see the next ship taking off and going out to space. I always just missed it, my five year old brain reasoned, and I’d try to run back outside faster the next time. It was the reason to go to Disneyland.

My mom later told me that they had made a whole movie out of Star Tours. My five year old brain reasoned, again, this time that I could pop in the movie and watch it from the plush rocking chair in our living room, and just rock the chair around to simulate the movements of the ship. Alas, it was not Star Tours the movie; it was Star Wars.

Insert the story of everyone’s childhood here. Everyone who saw Star Wars at a young age was completely changed by it, and I came to it through Star Tours.

The ride itself may be the single most impressive optical compositing accomplishment of all time. As with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ it is to this day the most complicated example of its kind, due to a staggeringly complex use of old methods right before the dawn of a new technological era. Over four minutes of continuous, unbroken optical compositing, playing out a wild, first-person dogfight in the Star Wars universe. A seamless experience, every moment visually tied together to form a cohesive stream of events built entirely from the ground up.

Maneuvering through a hangar filled with ships, out into space, leaping into lightspeed and coming back out again, blasting past a moon and into a field of icy comets, one of which you actually tunnel through for several seconds, out the other side into the waiting tractor beam of a Star Destroyer, only to escape into the chaos of space battle, exchanging fire with the massive swarm of spaceships, being chased low across the expansive surface of the Death Star and around into a trench, over and under trusswork, delivering a fatal blow to the battle station before leaping back into lightspeed and nearly crashing upon re-entry to yet another hangar, complete with a live, tracked comp of a flustered technician staring you in the face.

They really did this. In one shot. With models.

Something that has lasted all these years, still unfucked by George Lucas. I’ve almost completely circumvented the feeling of an important connection to your childhood being taken from you in the Special Edition/prequel mess, because…as many changes as he could ever make to the original films, as many horrible sequels he could ever make to lessen their impact, it wouldn’t change Star Tours. For me, Star Tours is what’s really special about Star Wars.

I got a chance to experience the ride for the first time since I was very young a couple of months ago. Not only did it completely hold up for me – an adult, a visual effects artist, a discerning patron of many ridefilm projects in the years since first experiencing Star Tours – it was still a spectacle changing the lives of children, blissfully unaware as I was that they were simply watching an incredible work of art, not actually flying out into the galaxy. If you think I’m being overly wistful, I am, but consider this: a little boy behind me, as much a Calvin as I was at his age, experiencing Star Tours for the first time, actually said “this is SO much better than going to Endor!” upon being detoured into battle.

Yeah.

When it’s gone, it’ll really be gone. In retrospect, I wish I had predicated my entire life on the existence of the original trilogy – at least you can still watch those and try to forget the Special Edition releases and prequels exist. I’m never going to get to experience Star Tours again, and not because the park decided the space it occupies would be better used as a restaurant…but because, as we’ve all learned; Lucas can’t just keep his dick out of the things we love.

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Teague Chrystie is a visual FX artist in Hollywood, California. Follow his Twitter, or email him at teague.chrystie@gmail.com.

IMAX Digital: Just the Facts 4:29 PM

Here at Down in Front, we know an awful lot about movies. We spend most of our free time talking about them, and all of our equitable time making them. Big, fancy real ones. Some days, we just sit around and know things about frame formats. It’s actually a hobby for us.

So when alarmist, uninformed people on sites like Digg start talking about what is and is not IMAX, and what qualifies their opinions, we tend to react as we’re used to around alarmist, uninformed people (we call them ‘producers’), and that’s with utmost patience and respect, veiling extreme weariness.

“The bottom line assessment by me and others in the know is that a good IMAX Film presentation beats a new IMAX Digital presentation, which in turn beats a standard 35mm equivalent digital presentation.” – anonymous source, very close to this issue

Historically, “IMAX” has simply referred to the branding of 70 mm (65 mm) film or analogous digital files, not the screens. True enough, IMAX Corporation has made some compromises with the new IMAX Digital system. They’ve reduced the screen-width to 55′, and depending on the aspect ratio of the film, reduced the height as well. For many folks, the impressive size of the screen is a major factor in their understanding of IMAX, and naturally most mainstream theater chains don’t have the behemoth IMAX screens still found in many special theaters. (It’s worth noting that it’s hard to decieve someone into thinking that a visibly small projection theater could contain a traditional IMAX screen. Just saying.)

The IMAX Digital system is based on the use of two projectors, overlaying two instances of slightly different information, resulting in a percieved resolution of far higher than the 2k resolution of either projector. Both projectors display 2k images scaled down from the same 4k file – however, they do not display the same pixels. Each uses a different 2k subset of the original 4k image’s pixels, offset by less than one pixel-width as measured on the screen, resulting in a boost of crispness, brightness, and – yes – resolution. Inherently lossy as it is, this is not the same as watching a 4k projection. It is, however, effectively much higher resolution than 2k – and every other film playing in the multiplex.

When you start qualifying what you are and are not getting when you pay for your ticket to subjectivity like screen size – even when the film is being presented at a much higher quality, often with a much more expansive sound system – you’re walking the edge of a slippery slope. Why not qualify your ticket price based on number of individual scratches on the film? Why not find the percentile of overall image lost to the several inches of projection that wash onto the curtain above and below the screen?

Of course, at the end of the day, what your extra five dollars is worth is completely subjective. If the only thing worth five dollars is a larger screen to watch the movie on – and sure, I understand – then yes, you’re out five bucks. However, your money is certainly not being arbitrarily eaten up due to a branding scheme. IMAX Digital facilitates a quantifiably better film watching experience.

“Been following this today, along with the original comedian who started this firestorm. I tend to agree with him. I don’t care about resolution honestly, it’s the perception of size that matters. If a screen is so big my field of vision has to work to take it all in, to me that’s IMAX. I was in the bathroom before I saw Trek last weekend and I overheard 2 guys who had just come out of the IMAX showing (this was a Regal theater with the 55′ wide “fake IMAX” screen) how hugely disappointed they were and that they too felt ripped off. Doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is technically correct, it’s a function of perception.

People will stop buying tickets to the “fake IMAX” theaters and the system will fail because people will have the sensation of being ripped off.”

I certainly understand the disappointment you can feel when you expect one thing and get another (you need look no further than our Phantom Menace commentary to see proof of that), but it’s only in situations where what you expect is congruent with reality that will I accept disappointment as an argument. I hate to belabor the point, but seriously: IMAX screens are huge. Walking into a small theater expecting a huge screen is perhaps acceptable as a folly of misplaced attention, but that’s not the theater’s fault.

Of all the things I take issue with in this argument, it’s the expression “ripped off” that confounds me the most. Even if you bought a ticket online with no way to see that there was clearly no giant screen at your theater, at any point up to the beginning of the screening – from the parking process up until finding a seat – you could have exchanged your ticket for free, so by no account are you held to your original confusion, and even so: you actually experienced the movie in far higher definition, with a better sound system, than you would have anywhere else. And yet, they owe you something?

In terms of branding, it may be misleading (as previously “IMAX” seemed to be an all-inclusive term that brought together several improvements in traditional film presentation quality, and now it’s a term that still does that minus one), but you didn’t pay for a ticket to an IMAX presentation of the movie, you paid for a ticket to the IMAX Digital presentation of the movie. A new term gets a new definition; that’s why they don’t use the old term.

I’m confused as to why people don’t see this as a good thing: it’s not trying to be the same experience as watching a movie on a screen the size of a building, it’s a new technology like any other technology we didn’t ask for (for instance, 3D releases) that allows us to watch some movies with extra clarity. That’s all. I’m sorry you were confused, but it’s not beneficial to be angry at HD movies because you didn’t know what you were paying for the first time you saw one.

Or, in the words of my grandmother, don’t punch the hooker because she didn’t come with coke.

Thanks to the anonymous source quoted above for his additional help in preparing this article.

Teague Chrystie is a visual FX artist in Hollywood, California. Follow him on Twitter, email him at teague.chrystie@gmail.com.