"Apollo 13" movie now formatted for IMAX showing- How can you do this?

[astro]

Question for the film technology mavens-

Re this story Apollo 13’ hits the bigger screen
Super-sized space saga represents a giant leap for IMAX

I thought IMAX format had to have very high resolution special cameras and a giant sized film stock to get the clarity needed for the big IMAX screen. How can you do this by simply blowing up 35 or 70mm film?

see How IMAX works for technical IMAX details.

Most films that you see in a theater come in a 35-millimeter format. The frame is 35 millimeters wide, and nearly square. But movie screens are not square – they are very wide for their height. So the wide image is compressed into the 35-millimeter frame and expanded by the projector to fill the screen.

Some theater films come in a 70-millimeter format. This format provides roughly double the resolution, and the frame is naturally the width of the screen so there is no compression.

IMAX film is called the 15/70 film format. Each frame is 70 millimeters high and 15 perforations wide. In other words, the film size is about 10 times bigger than standard 35-millimeter film. This film size gives an IMAX movie incredible clarity, even on the huge screens in IMAX theaters.

Is it all just digital processing where they are faking the additional required resolution by interpolating it, or does 70mm film stock have hidden depths of resolution that the standard Multiplex projector+screen combos do not take advantage of?

[astro]

Never mind I googled some more and came up with this.

Houston, we have lift-off": Dell and IMAX Blast Off on Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience
Dell PowerEdge Servers with Red Hat Linux Help Make Movies Larger Than Life for IMAX Theaters

LINUX WORLD 2002 SAN FRANCISCO–August 13, 2002–DellTM PowerEdgeTM servers running Red Hat® Linux® will play an important role in IMAX’s first-ever digital re-mastering of Universal Pictures’ and Imagine Entertainment’s Apollo 13, scheduled to hit IMAXtheaters this Fall.

IMAX’s new patent-pending technology, IMAX® DMRTM (Digital Re-mastering), uses the processing power of Dell PowerEdge servers to re-purpose individual frames of 35mm film into IMAX films are projected on screens eight-stories high and 120-feet wide with high caliber sound and image quality. Apollo 13 is the first theatrical live-action film to be digitally re-mastered for The IMAX Experience.

The IMAX DMR technology resides at IMAX’s Toronto data center which processes several hundred gigabytes of data daily and is one of the largest rendering farms in Canada. IMAX uses dozens of Dell PowerEdge 2550 servers running Red Hat Linux for its DMR process, as well as an additional cluster of Dell PowerEdge 2550 servers for testing. IMAX chose Dell PowerEdge servers running Red Hat Linux for its IMAX DMR process because of the easy-to-use industry-standard platform, outstanding price and performance, and superior Dell support.

It’s all just digital re-mastering.

[KGS]

My God, the launch scene must be infuckingcredible in IMAX.

Unfortunately, that’s only five minutes of film. I’m not sure how the other 2h20m will be improved – the zero-G effects were indeed impressive, but no more so when you blow them up to the size of a small skyscraper, at least I would think. Not to mention, an 80-foot Bill Paxton wracked with feverish chills from a bladder infection is NOT something I’m eager to watch!!

[Baldwin]

The most impressive thing about the Zero-G effects is that they weren’t effects, but actual weightlessness. The actors and crew logged more hours in NASA’s Zero-G training plane than actual astronauts. One of my favorite movies, but most of the scenes are actually interior (one of the ironies of space travel being that you travel through limitless space in a tin can without much elbow room), so I don’t really see the point of IMAXing it.

[TheeGrumpy]

IIRC from Ebert & Ebert, the IMAX version is about 20 minutes shorter. I suppose they deleted many non-spectacular scenes from the pre-launch, fretting around the TV, and so forth.

[CyberPundit]

BTW one movie that would be incredible on IMAX would be LOTR. Anyone possibility of that ? It would be great if they could release it at the time of the second part.

[MovieMogul]

In order to show LOTR, they’d have to cut an hour from the film, since (like TheeGrumpy said) you have the fit the film under two hours to accomodate the current IMAX projection system. It’s also quite an expensive procedure, so only big movies with big set-pieces are going to see this transfer process.

[Fern_Forest]

The movies that have come to IMAX previously and recently that I know of are Beauty and the Beast which is leaving. The Lion King is coming soon. And after Apollo 13 Star Wars II comes next.
The bext launch sequence I’ve ever seen on film was this 1987 Space Shuttle bit for the Omni theater in Fort Worth, TX. You could really feel the sound in your chest, it was incredible. I wish Omni had taken off rather then IMAX. OMNI is a semi-spherical screen format.