Elvis Ripley Dot Com {b}

May 31, 2008 • 9:28 pm 0

May is for Movies

I watch quite a few movies. I try to keep the momentum of movie watching going and probably watch 5 a week, sometimes a little more and sometimes a lot more. Over the last month I have watched these movies. I may have missed a couple but this is most of them.

  • Juno
  • Conspiracy Theory
  • National Treasure: Book of Secrets
  • Blades of Glory
  • The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing
  • Speed Racer
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • Iron Man
  • Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
  • Hitman
  • Hulk
  • Charlie Wilson’s War
  • The Orphanage
  • Stargate: The Ark of Truth
  • Zathura
  • Youth Without Youth
  • Spider-Man
  • I’m Not There
  • Cloverfield
  • Sunshine
  • Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society
  • Elizabeth: The Golden Age
  • The Golden Compass
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig: Vol. 7 (7-Disc Series)
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig: Vol. 6 (7-Disc Series)
  • No Country for Old Men
  • Night Watch
  • Commando
  • There Will Be Blood
  • Michael Clayton
  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
  • Hidalgo
  • Battlestar Galactica: Razor
  • Shoot ‘Em Up

    From all those movies I have rated them all 4 stars or higher except Commando which I didn’t like very much. It wasn’t the movie I remembered it being but it also wasn’t that great.

    I am starting to think that I really love movies and have an amazing living room made just for movie watching. It is more of a room made for sitting and playing board games if the family could afford them during the depression but a movie theater has been crammed in and that works too.

    As I have been thinking about building a house and planning out the perfect layout for what I would want to have I have also been looking at theaters and editing suites to plan out a theater of my own. This would be a working space with a couple rows of seats or maybe a couch or two then in the back an editing setup with a computer and all the video and audio equipment.

    I have been checking out the best setups possible, really great places and a lower key big theater that I don’t have pictures of.

    I also looked at the small rooms that editors have set up for themselves in a move called The Cutting Edge and then looking at things like these Red interviews. Most of those interviews are shot in the Plaster City theater linked as the lower key big theater. I am pretty excited about it all and I am pretty excited about making movies on a bigger scale instead of tiny rooms like I make them now. It would be great if this could come together for the finishing of the Bikerfox movie because it needs a lot of finishing. Big time

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    • April 25, 2008 • 7:16 pm 111

    New Projector Paint Mix Creates a Great Experience

    I just moved so there is a new list of projector posts coming. Check this link to see them all.

    Link to All Projector Posts


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    I decided to try a new screen paint mix for my living room wall. Before I had painted a screen area in the middle of my yellow wall. I have been thinking and preparing for my next projector like always. The big difference between each generation of projector is the brightness of black. Every generation it gets a little bit blacker. My Optoma HD70 is a lot blacker than my Optoma H27 was and the next projector will be even blacker. There is a level where the blacks are black enough and you can start to enjoy truly black blacks as far as your eyes are able to perceive. Knowing that I decided to paint the whole wall to create an interesting projection effect which I will demonstrate below.

    Also during this repaint I decided to change the mix a little bit. Before I just used Behr Silver Screen which is a normal favorite. This time I used a mixture of around 70% Behr Silver Screen and 30% Behr White Opal Pearlescent. The pearl paint adds an amazing shimmer to the image. It looks brighter with richer colors but it also looks like a plasma television. It has this glow to it like the light is coming from behind the wall. If you get close to the wall you can see all the micro reflectors doing their stuff but when you get back around 6 feet that disappears and it just looks great. I could probably go higher and might at some point. I will probably go paint, projector, paint, projector, back and forth. And now the examples.

    Here is an example of normal HD footage. This is the maximum size of the projected image so there wouldn’t be any light grey blacks around it.

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    Now here a commercial. It is a standard definition commercial that is also letterboxed so on a widescreen display it shows up as a little image. With black blacks you don’t feel like you are watching a tiny image in the middle of a large screen because the surrounding black pixels are darker than you are able to perceive so the image is small but you don’t feel like it isn’t filling up the space. It just is the space.

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    These final images are much better than a commercial. Below are movies shown in their very wide aspect ratio. Once the blacks get black enough you start to see just the wide image like watching a movie in a theater instead of seeing dark grey bars at the top and bottom. This lack of grey bars make the wide movies seem larger instead of smaller which they actually are compared to HDTV sources.

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    This new paint mixture buys a little bit of time but during dark scenes the blacks are visible painting the dark grey bars above and below widescreen movies. The increased contrast of whatever my next projector will be in addition to the iris that is in most that brings the black levels down so only the minimum amount of light ever leaves the projector for ever frame shown so you never get the waste light visible in the room.

    The set with even more pictures is on flickr if you would like to see the out-takes.

    The paints used are Behr White Opal Pearlescent No. 751 and Silver Screen 770E-2 that is also called Silverscreen 770E-2

    Here is an image of the screen surface up close with a flash to get an idea of the color and reflectivity. It is very neutral.

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    Filed under: loose , , ,

    August 20, 2007 • 8:46 pm 0

    New Projector Setup – Optoma HD70

    I am painting my wall right now with a couple coats of primer and then if that looks thick and smooth enough I am going to add on Behr Silver Screen paint (770E-2). It gets good reviews for a screen surface so I should like it. We will see.

    This is a link to the new projector setup photo set where I will be adding pictures of my painting and the progress as it gets finished and as the projector goes up and I will add another post that is more complete when I get to a more final stage in the process. The stages are 1 choose a target size and prepare an area larger, I went with 3 inches on each side extra so I would have some room, 2 sand and primer the surface to smooth it out and get rid of the yellow, 3 paint plenty of grey on the area, 4 mount the projector and figure out the best size for the room and the projector, the larger the image the dimmer it will be but the blacker the blacks so a balance must be reached and 5 paint a black border around my final screen size to enhance contrast and improve the cinematic feel.

    Stages of Projector Setup

    Stage 1 _8214256

    Stage 2 _8214258

    Stage 3 Going Grey 2 Coats Grey - Dry

    4 Coats Grey - Just Right

    You can see this image big to check out the surface detail. There are some little marks but it is very smooth overall. This picture below was taken when there were still a couple coats left for the wall.

    Screen Surface after 2 Coats

    Stage 4 So it took an extra day because Optoma changed the size of the screw holes. Lowes and Home Depot didn't have the screws I needed. Lowes had the area for the screws but the what I ended up with at home for sure weren't the right fit. Ace Hardware really came through. That place is nice. So after one awesome night of using the projector on the coffee table projecting an image about the size of my last setup, 92″. Because the projector was brighter than I imagined and because of the changes of the screen surface I think I could go really big. I might go ahead and fill up my whole painted space or I might go with my original estimate of around 110″ being the correct size. This image below is 107″, or pretty close to that. If it gets bigger my couch starts to be in the way and I already had to take the globe, chains and light bulb out of my ceiling fan. It hangs down just a little too low but any light fixture should work, probably just no fans.

    If you click on this image it will link to the larger size.
    King Kong and Elvis

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    Side Light

    And this is an example of why I was hesitant to paint my walls. I don't think that some spackle or mud or whatever would be able to get it totally smooth. I sanded it to get the intense peaks out but this is some serious plaster warpage. My experience with the previous screen assures me that these won't really be noticeable unless the bathroom door is left open which happens sometimes.
    Update: You can't see any of this stuff. It looks great.



    Update: It is still all awesome.


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