[deronmoped]

Watched Kill Bill two tonight.


Has a awesome part in it where the image goes completely black for maybe a minute. If you saw it the way I did, it makes for a super creepy feeling.


There were other parts of the movie where the surrounding portions, or the top of the image was black, even thought this was a 2.35 movie on a 1.85 screen, having a totally blacked out theater made it so you could not tell where the image ended and the theater began.


This is a totally cool effect.


Imagine watching a image with a frame around it, now take that frame away, all of a sudden it feels like you are sitting around that camp fire with them.


These are some of the reasons for owning a CRT and something that we all should strive for, a black theater, and I mean everthing that is in your field of view black, with "NO" reflections coming off those black surfaces!


Deron.

 

[TheFerret]

Only problem with this in that at some point wall color means nothing as the sheen (surface relief) becomes a reflective component and you still can see the light reflecting off of the adjacent boundary.


I realized this some months ago when I started using a 7" CRT in a rather small room. While the room is 12' wide and the screen 80" wide the reflection using the darkest blue-purple (and I mean dark!) did nothing because the adjacent boundaries were too close. The same goes for the ceiling, too, in terms of paint/reflection and I used flat paint.


While the screen wall is painted flat-black and the carpet jet black, the amount of light striking those surfaces is easy to see and its entering my eyes even if I am not looking directly at those surfaces (its on the peripheral portion of my vision).


I think some have gone the extra yard and installed black velvet to assist in minimizing the reflection they are seeing on their otherwise black-painted surfaces. Heck, I even painted the doors, trim, etc, too.

 

[Brian Hampton]

With my setup... black is black. I can't see my hand wave before my face when there is no picture information. Some say this makes the very low end of the greyscale inaccurate and that may be true.


I can remember 2 times recently when I was at the movies and the screen went black. Once in daredevil and once in spiderman 2 and both times I noticed that , at least in these theaters, black wasn't very dark.


I love the quality of CRT and hope to always have a working CRT FP to use but it could be argued that the ability to get that type of black level is not "film like."


(And yes,.. it could be that I just went to crappy theaters. Esp in the case of spiderman2 where there were cobwebs visable on the screen that weren't part of the movie.)


-Brian

 

[TheFerret]

Brian, what if those theaters did not have calibrated equipment and as a result had a high BL even when the material was really black?

 

[Brian Hampton]

Ferret,


I did mention the theaters could have been at fault. I hardly ever go to the movie theaters anymore. In the case of daredevil,.. I got a ticket for Harry Potter out of a 12 pack of coke and then convinced the theater to let me use it for daredevil. I paid $1 and it was a wymsical thing not like I tried to find the theater with the best presentation. Now that I've moved from Bay Area California to New Hampshire... There's 2 theaters here and neither is very good (though one is much better then the other.)


-Brian

 

[Pancakes_R_Evil]

Concord, NH has two theaters- and one of them is HORRENDOUS.

 

[Curt Palme]

I get complete blacks as well whenever I want.


However they are called black...outs, when I consume too much alcohol while watching a movie.





Curt

 

[TheFerret]

Curt, does the alcohol help with PQ in terms of contrast, too?

 

[Curt Palme]

No, the drugs help that.


Esp. the acid with the coloration of the image.





Curt

 

[Art Sonneborn]

Not only is this cool but it is just central to total engagement to me at least.


I watched a Sherlock Holmes film last weekend and there were several instances where everything went black( one scene where the lights in the room were shut off as a ruse) or was in a woods where it is intended to be very close.

The film cast away has sections of opaque film which were added between lightening strikes and the room and screen appear blacked out.

 

[deronmoped]

TheFerret


Well you have just not tried hard enough to get rid of the reflections. While it is true flat black paint will have reflections, you can still get rid of them using other methods.


I will let you in on four of ways I did it.


1. Curtains. Curtains at the side and at the top of the screen positioned in a way so they make it impossible to see the side walls or ceiling near the screen. This also has the effect of throwing a shadow that comes out towards you that blacks out even more of the ceiling and walls. It is a simple trick, looks great and works great even if you do not have black walls.


2. Black velvet. The right black velvet will remove any reflections that you can not control any other way. I use it over my black carpet, on the side walls, back walls (the walls behind me so no reflections make it back to the screen for better CR) and the ceiling. As for the right black velvet you have to get samples, some will look darkest with the light hitting it straight on and some will look darkest with the light hitting it at a angle. This is no small effect! Throw some black velvet over your black carpet and you will be blown away on what it does for the overall effect!


3. High gain screen. This is another plus (there are so many for a high gain screen I could never understand why more people do not use them) for a high gain screen, it is not wasting alot of light, lighting up areas that you do not want lighted up.


4. Having your PJ set up so it goes black, some PJ's set for proper gray scale will not do this as good as others. The way I have my 10PG up it does it super good.


Deron.

 

[darinp2]

Quote:

Originally posted by Art Sonneborn The film cast away has sections of opaque film which were added between lightening strikes and the room and screen appear blacked out.

Have you changed the calibration since I was there? I could see the screen during the 5 second or so blackout with "Cast Away", but not the shorter blackouts. Still impressive though.


--Darin

 

[siropa]

Darin,


I wondered that as well during Art's demo, but I think the back door was cracked open just a tad during those scenes if I remember right.

 

[6500Kelvin]

This is one of the things I love about a CRT but very few other people see the appeal. In fact most people will say - "I don't want it dark - then I can't see around the room". The big downside of any projector is that they can't have all the lights on and the windows open when watching a movie.


A couple of scenes that I just love are:


near the beginning of Planet of the Apes when the power of the space ship goes out - I can't see the hand in front of my face - let alone the screen in front of me.


near the end of "Contact" where Jody Foster is at the end of the worm hole and it's perfectly black.


Any scene that has stars in it. This is an area where the black screen with brilliant stars looks so much better than a gray screen with kinda-white stars (with DLP or LCD). It's like the difference in real life of looking at the stars from a city vs looking at them in the country. It just doesn't compare!

 

[stefuel]

VanHelsing provides for some really interesting dark scenes. And while we are on the subject of blacks, Kate sure looks good in that getup.


Chip