[FranceBB]

6) Test at the Cinema
Generally they choose a cinema and they send you there to test the encoded file first. There're going to be a few people together with you and you're gonna see how the encoded file is. Don't be scared, if you see a lack of details at the cinema, it's fine, it's the way it is. It doesn't matter whether your entire production was in 4K, maybe downscaled from 6K and super sharp, at the cinema is never gonna look as sharp as on your 50'000 bucks studio monitor... and no, it's not because of the Wavelet transform used to encode the MJEGP2000, it's because it's the effect of the projected video. On the other hand, though, movements like a pan and so on are gonna look very smooth at the cinema, way smoother than on your screen, even if it's a 23.976fps (24p). Why? I can't tell. Honestly, I have no idea why it's smoother, like more fluid once it's projected at the cinema than it is on your monitor, but it's just the way it is. Maybe is because of the thousands of tiny little holes on the projector cloth or perhaps is because of the material the cloth is made or perhaps is because the image is projected and not displayed so the light is passive and not active and someway the persistence of vision (the light on the eye) is different or perhaps because monitors force you to a certain frequency by duplicating the frames and they do it in some bad ways... I don't know. I can definitely tell you that it's smoother at the cinema and that it's not as sharp, it's kinda "soft". As to the technical part, they're gonna let you meet the projectionist and they're gonna "ingest" the DCP you encoded. Some of them prefer a particular kind of drive which is also very expensive, but most of them will be happy with a normal hard drive as long as they can copy the DCP on their video server, it's just that it's gonna be slow as hell. Oh, a side note, the sound is gonna be totally different from how you expected it to be, 'cause you're in a cinema, there are several different speakers and it's empty.


7) Movie Premiere
The movie premiere is probably the best part for most people but not me. An hour or so before the movie they invite all the actors and all the people who worked at the movie (including the technical staff) is gonna be there to have a toast. I gotta say that it's not something I fit well into, 'cause, you know, they are actors, they're very posh and I'm kinda not, like, I'm really a normal person and I think that other encoders and all the technical staff is pretty much like me, like not so posh, so I was a bit uncomfortable. My suggestion is to try to act natural and just don't mess up. I tried to smile at everyone and be calm... but I was definitely nervous, especially 'cause I was like "what if it's gonna stop? What if it gets corrupted? What if they don't like it?" and so on and I was thinking about all the issues I noticed during the whole movie and I was like "are they gonna notice this? are they gonna notice that?" and so on.
After the toast, everybody is gonna head where the movie is gonna be projected and that's it, it starts to play. When it plays you're gonna notice that the audio is different 'cause the room is packed and there are many people in there. One other thing is that people are gonna watch the movie differently, like they're going to smile or laugh at things and you may be thinking "OMG we had to leave a bit more space there for them to laugh, I didn't expect that" and so on and whenever you see something that you consider an issue like something "bad", most of the people are not gonna notice it and won't just say anything. When the movie stops playing, people generally clap and that's gonna be the biggest relieve and the biggest reward, or at least it was for me, as well as seeing my name as encoder during the credits as I was telling StainlessS the other day here on Doom9. :P



Alright, that's pretty much it. I wanted to share my experience in case it's useful to anyone else and also because I'm so happy right now... like I really am and I hope I'm gonna have other chances to work at other productions.