70 mm film

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Faded vintage 70 mm positive film with 4 magnetic strips containing 6-channel stereo sound

70 mm film (or 65 mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge for still and motion picture
photography, with higher resolution than the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As
used in cameras, the film is 65 mm (2.6 in) wide. For projection, the original 65 mm film is
printed on 70 mm (2.8 in) film. The additional 5 mm are for 4 magnetic strips holding six tracks
of sound. Although later 70 mm prints use digital sound encoding, the vast majority of existing
and surviving 70 mm prints predate this technology. Each frame is five perforations tall, with
an aspect ratio of 2.20:1. The vast majority of cinemas are unable to handle 70 mm film, and
so original 70 mm films are shown using either 35 mm prints in the regular CinemaScope/
Panavisionaspect ratio of 2.35:1, or, in later years, by means of digital projectors at these
venues.
Contents
[hide]

1 History
o

1.1 Fox Grandeur

1.2 Todd-AO

1.3 Panavision and Others

2 Decline
o

2.1 Blow-ups
3 Uses of 70 mm

3.1 Ultra Panavision

3.2 Special effects

3.3 IMAX

3.4 70 mm 3D early use

3.5 IMAX 3D

4 Technical specifications
o

4.1 Standard 65 mm (5/70) (Todd-AO, Super Panavision)

4.2 Ultra Panavision 70 (MGM Camera 65)

4.3 Showscan

4.4 IMAX (15/70)

4.5 IMAX Dome / OMNIMAX

4.6 Omnivision Cinema 180

4.7 Dynavision (8/70)

4.8 Astrovision (10/70)

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

History[edit]
Films formatted with a width of 70 mm have existed since the early days of the motion picture
industry. The first 70 mm format film was most likely footage of theHenley Regatta, which was
projected in 1896 and 1897, but may have been filmed as early as 1894. It required a specially

built projector built by Herman Casler inCanastota, New York and had a ratio similar to full
frame, with an aperture of 2.75 inches (70 mm) by 2 inches (51 mm). There were also several
film formats of various sizes from 50 to 68 mm which were developed from 1884 onwards,
including Cinorama (not to be confused with the entirely distinct "Cinerama" format), started in
1900 by Raoul Grimoin-Sanson. In 1914 the Italian Filoteo Alberini invented a panoramic film
system utilising a 70 mm wide film called Panoramica.[1]

Fox Grandeur[edit]
In 1928, Fox Film Corporation started work on a wide film format using 70 mm film which they
named Grandeur. This was one of a number of wide-film processes developed by some of the
major film studios at about that time. However, due to strong resistance from movie theater
owners, who were in the process of equipping their theaters for sound, none of these systems
became commercially successful. Fox dropped Grandeur in 1930. [2]

Todd-AO[edit]
Producer Mike Todd had been one of the founders of Cinerama, a wide-screen movie process
that was launched in 1952. Cinerama employed three 35 mm film projectors running in
synchronism to project a wide (2.6:1) image onto a deeply curved screen. Although the results
were impressive, the system was expensive, cumbersome and had some serious
shortcomings due to the need to match up three separate projected images. Todd left the
company to develop a system of his own which, he hoped, would be as impressive as
Cinerama, yet be simpler and cheaper and avoid the problems associated with three-strip
projection; in his own words, he wanted "Cinerama out of one hole".
In collaboration with the American Optical company, Todd developed a system which was to be
called "Todd-AO". This uses a single 70 mm wide film and was introduced with the
film Oklahoma! in October 1955. The 70 mm film is perforated at the same pitch (0.187 inch,
4.75mm) as standard 35 mm film. With a five-perforation pull-down, the Todd-AO system
provides a frame dimension of 1.912 inch (48.56mm) by 0.816 inch (20.73mm) giving an
aspect ratio of 2.2:1.
The original version of Todd-AO used a frame rate of 30 per second, 25% faster than the 24
frames per second that was (and is) the standard; this was changed after the second film
Around the World in 80 Days - because of the need to produce (24 frame/sec) 35 mm
reduction prints from the Todd-AO 65mm negative. The Todd-AO format was originally
intended to use a deeply curved Cinerama-type screen but this failed to survive beyond the
first few films.[3] However, in the 1960s and 70s, such films as The Sound of Music (which had
been filmed in Todd-AO) and Patton (which had been filmed in a copycat process known as
Dimension 150) were shown in some Cinerama cinemas, which allowed for deeply curved
screens.[4]
Todd-AO adopted a similar multi-channel magnetic sound system to the one developed
for Cinemascope two years earlier, recorded on "stripes" of magnetic oxide deposited on the
film. However Todd-AO has six channels instead of the four of Cinemascope and due to the
wider stripes and faster film speed provides superior audio quality. Five of these six channels
are fed to five speakers spaced behind the screen, and the sixth is fed to surround speakers
around the walls of the auditorium.

Panavision and Others[edit]

Other companies, in particular Panavision, developed their own systems which are technically
compatible with Todd-AO. Panavision also had a system (Ultra Panavision 70) which employed
an anamorphic lens to stretch the image to 2.76:1, the widest aspect ratio ever used in
commercial cinema.

Decline[edit]
Due to the costs of 70 mm film and the expensive projection system and screen required to
use the stock, distribution for films using the stock was limited, although this did not always hurt
profits. Most 70 mm films were also re-released on 35mm film for a wider distribution after the
initial debut of the film. South Pacific (1958),Lawrence of Arabia (1962), My Fair Lady (1964),
and The Sound of Music (1965) are well-known films widely shown in 70 mm format with a
general release in 35 mm format.

Blow-ups[edit]
During the 1970s, use of 65 mm stock for original photography declined markedly. However
70 mm "blow-ups" of films made in 35 mm were sometimes made for prestige showings.
[5]
These included such films as Camelot (1967), Oliver! (1968), Cromwell (1970), and Fiddler
on the Roof (1971). These enlargements did not have the sharpness and smoothness of
65 mm origination, but these larger prints allowed for a brighter image on very big screens and
were more stable when projected. In addition 70 mm prints also had better sound quality than
was possible from 35 mm. However these "blow-ups" rarely used the full six channels of the
Todd-AO system and instead used the four-track mixes made for 35 mm prints, the additional
half-left and half-right speakers of the Todd-AO layout being fed with a simple mix of the
signals intended for the adjacent speakers (known as a "spread") or simply left blank.
[6]
However, if a 70mm film was shown in a Cinerama theatre, the Cinerama sound system was
used. From 1976 onwards many 70 mm prints used Dolby noise reduction on the magnetic
tracks but Dolby disapproved of the "spread" and instead re-allocated the 6 available tracks to
provide for left, center and right screen channels, left and right surround channels plus a "lowfrequency enhancement" channel to give more body to low-frequency bass. [7] This layout came
to be known as "5.1" (the "point one" is the low-frequency enhancement channel) and was
subsequently adopted for digital sound systems used with 35 mm.
In the 1980s the use of these "blow-ups" increased with large numbers of 70 mm prints being
made of some blockbusters of the period such as the 125 70 mm prints made of The Empire
Strikes Back (1980).[8] However the early 1990s saw the advent of digital sound systems (Dolby
Digital, DTS and SDDS) for 35 mm prints which meant that 35 mm could finally match 70 mm
for sound quality but at a far lower cost. Coupled with the rise of the multiplex cinema, which
meant that audiences were increasingly seeing films on relatively small screens rather than the
giant screens of the old "Picture Palaces", this meant that the expensive 70 mm format went
out of favour again. The DTS digital sound-on-disc system was adapted for use with 70 mm
film, thus saving the significant costs of magnetic striping, but this has not been enough to stop
the decline, and 70 mm prints were rarely made.
In late 20th century,the use of 65 mm negative film has also been drastically reduced, in part
due to the high cost of 65 mm raw stock and processing. Some films from this period shot
entirely on 65 mm stock are Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Ron Fricke's Baraka (1992),
and its sequel Samsara (2011) and Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012). Other films
used 65 mm cameras sparingly, for selected scenes or special effects. Films with limited
65 mm footage include Terrence Malick's The New World (2005) and Christopher Nolan's latest
four movies, The Dark Knight (featured 28 minutes of IMAX footage), Inception,[9] The Dark
Knight Rises (over an hour in IMAX) and Interstellar.
For home theater, VHS and DVD did not offer enough resolution to carry the full image quality
captured by 70 mm film, and VHS and DVD video transfers were usually prepared from 35 mm
reduction elements. The high-definition Blu-ray format, in contrast, can potentially reveal the
quality advantage of 70 mm productions. Although telecine machines for 70 mm scanning are
uncommon, high-resolution transfers from high-quality full-gauge elements can reveal
impressive technical quality.

There were two types of digital cinema cameras with a 65 mm sensor, the Phantom 65 and
the Arri Alexa 65. Otti International's Phil Kroll developed the world's first 65/70 mm telecine
transfer system. This camera has been used in Hollywood to digitally master 70 and 65 mm
films.
Since 2010's most of the movie theaters across world have converted to digital projection
systems largely eliminating 70mm film projectors.[10] 70mm has retained a niche market of
amateurs and enthusiasts.

Uses of 70 mm[edit]
Ultra Panavision[edit]
An anamorphic squeeze combined with 65 mm film allowed for extremely wide aspect ratios to
be used while still preserving quality. This was used in the 1959 filmBen-Hur, which was filmed
with the MGM Camera 65 process at an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest prints ever
made. It required the use of a 1.25x anamorphic lens to horizontally compress the image, and
a corresponding lens on the projector to uncompress it.

Special effects[edit]
Limited use of 65 mm film was revived in the late 1970s for some of the visual effects
sequences in films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, mainly because the larger negative
did a better job than 35 mm negative of minimizing visible film grain during optical compositing.
Since the 1990s, a handful of films (such as Spider-Man 2) have used it for this purpose, but
the usage of digital intermediate for compositing has largely negated these issues. Digital
intermediate offers other benefits such as lower cost and a greater range of available lenses
and accessories to ensure a consistent look to the footage.

IMAX[edit]
Main article: IMAX
A horizontal variant of 70 mm, with an even bigger picture area, is used for the highperformance IMAX format which uses a frame that is 15 perforations wide on 70 mm film. The
Dynavision and Astrovision systems each use slightly less film per frame and vertical
pulldown to save print costs while being able to project onto an IMAX screen. Both were rare,
with Astrovision largely used in Japanese planetariums. In 2014 movie Interstellar, a significant
amount was shot in the IMAX format. Other scenes were shot in either 35 mm or in the
standard 'vertical' 5-perf 65 mm format. IMAX introduced digital camera and projection system
in early 2000's and most IMAX venues have migrated to digital setup.[11]

70 mm 3D early use[edit]
The first commercial introduction of 70 mm single projector 3D was the 1967 release of Con la
muerte a la espalda, a Spanish/French/Italian co-production which used a process called Hi-Fi
Stereo 70, itself based on a simplified, earlier developed soviet process called Stereo-70. This
process captured two anamorphic images, one for each eye, side by side on 65 mm film. A
special lens on a 70 mm projector added polarization and merged the two images on the
screen. The 1971 re-release ofWarner Bros.' House of Wax used the side-by-side StereoVision
format and was distributed in both anamorphically squeezed 35 mm and deluxe nonanamorphic 70 mm form. The system was developed by Allan Silliphant and Chris Condon of
StereoVision International Inc., which handled all technical and marketing aspects on a fiveyear special-royalty basis with Warner Bros. The big screen 3D image was both bright and
clear, with all the former sync and brightness problems of traditional dual 35 mm 3D eliminated.
Still, it took many years more before IMAX began to test the water for big-screen 3D, and sold
the concept to Hollywood executives.

IMAX 3D[edit]
Hollywood has released films shot on 35 mm as IMAX blow-up versions. Many 3D films were
shown in the 70 mm IMAX format. The Polar Express in IMAX 3D 70 mm earned 14 times as
much, per screen, as the simultaneous 2D 35 mm release of that film in the fall of 2004.
In 2011 IMAX introduced a 3D Digital camera based on two Phantom 65 cores. The camera
has been used for documentaries as well as Hollywood films, the first being the 2014 release
of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Technical specifications[edit]
Standard 65 mm (5/70) (Todd-AO, Super Panavision)[edit]

spherical lenses

5 perforations/frame

42 frames/meter (12.8 frame/ft)

34.29 meters/minute (112.5 ft/minute)

vertical pulldown

24 frames/second

camera aperture: 52.48 by 23.01 mm (2.066 by 0.906 in)

projection aperture: 48.56 by 20.73 mm (1.912 by 0.816 in)

305 m (1000 feet), about 9 minutes at 24 frame/s = 4.5 kg (10 pounds) in can

aspect ratio: 2.2:1

Ultra Panavision 70 (MGM Camera 65)[edit]

Main article: Ultra Panavision 70
Same as Standard 65mm except

Shot with special anamorphic adapter in front of lens

1.25x squeeze factor, projected aspect ratio 2.76:1

Showscan[edit]
Main article: Showscan
Same as Standard 65 mm except

60 frames per second

IMAX (15/70)[edit]

spherical lenses

70mm film, 15 perforations per frame

horizontal rolling loop movement, from right to left (viewed from emulsion side)

24 frames per second

camera aperture: 70.41 mm 52.63 mm (2.772 in 2.072 in)

projection aperture: at least 2 mm (0.079 in) less than camera aperture on the vertical
axis and at least 0.41 mm (0.016 in) less on the horizontal axis

aspect ratio: 1.43:1

DMR aspect ratio: 1.89:1, 2.39:1

IMAX Dome / OMNIMAX[edit]

Same as IMAX except

fisheye lenses

lens optically centered 9.4 mm (0.37 in) above film horizontal center line

projected elliptically on a dome screen, 20 below and 110 above perfectly centered
viewers

Omnivision Cinema 180[edit]

same as standard 65/70 except:

photographed and projected with special fisheye lenses matched to large 180 degree
dome screen

Theatres upgraded from 70 mm 6track analog sound to DTS digital sound in 1995.

Omnivision started in Sarasota, Florida. Theatres were designed to compete with Omnimax but
with much lower startup and operating costs. Most theatres were built in fabric domed
structures designed by Siemens Corporation. The last known OmniVision theatres to exist in
USA are The Alaska Experience Theatre in Anchorage, Alaska, built in 1981 (closed in 2007,
reopened in 2008), and the Hawaii Experience Theatre in Lahaina, Hawaii (closed in
2004). Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire has a "Vertigo Theatre" that is a Cinema
180.
One of the few producers of 70 mm films for Cinema 180 was the German company Cinevision
(today AKPservices GmbH, Paderborn).

Dynavision (8/70)[edit]

fisheye or spherical lenses, depending on if projecting for a dome or not

vertical pulldown

24 or 30 frames per second

camera aperture: 52.83 by 37.59 mm (2.080 by 1.480 in)

Astrovision (10/70)[edit]

vertical pulldown

normally printed from an Omnimax negative

projected onto a dome

almost exclusively in use only by Japanese planetariums

the only 70 mm format without sound, hence the only one with perforations next to the
edges

See also[edit]

70 mm Grandeur film

Cine 160

Cinerama

Dolby Stereo 70 mm Six Track

Super Panavision 70

Super Technirama 70

Todd-AO

Ultra Panavision 70

List of film formats

List of early wide-gauge films

List of 70 mm films

References[edit]
1.

Jump up^ "Preserving Wide Film History" Grant Lobban, Journal of the BKSTS Vol 67
No.4 April 1985

2.

Jump up^ "Preserving Wide Film History" Grant Lobban, Journal of the BKSTS Vol 67
No.4 (April 1985)

3.

Jump up^ "In the Splendour of 70 mm Part 1" Grant Lobban, Journal of the BKSTS
Vol68 No.12 December 1986

4.

Jump up^ http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4784

5.

Jump up^ "In the Splendour of 70 mm Part 2" Grant Lobban Journal of the BKSTS
Vol69 No.1 Jan 1987

6.

Jump up^ "Mixing Dolby Stereo Film Sound" Larry Blake Recording Engineer/Producer
Vol12 No.1 Feb 1981

7.

Jump up^ The CP200 A Comprehensive Cinema Theater Audio Processor David
Robinson Journal of the SMPTE Sept 1981

8.

Jump up^ "Mixing Dolby Stereo Film Sound" Larry Blake Recording Engineer/Producer
Vol12 No.1 Feb 1981

9.

Jump up^ Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas Interview Inception They Talk 3D,
What Kind of Cameras They Used, Pre-Viz, WB, and a Lot More!

10.

Jump up^ Digital Cinema Conversion Nears End Game

11.

Jump up^ Film Loses More Ground As Imax Switches Flagship Theaters to Digital

External links[edit]

The American WideScreen Museum

in70mm.com The 70 mm Newsletter Devoted to 70 mm films new and old

The History of the Todd-AO Projector

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