Boston Light & Sound Works On Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Quentin Tarantino's "new" film, "The Hateful Eight" is a three-hour epic shot "on" film.
That's not the way things are done in these digital times.
To get things right, the production crew called on Boston Light & Sound. Co-founder Chapin Cutler says viewers watching the "film" version will see the difference.
"The resolution of the images are greater than what the 4K resolution is of digital cinema right now," he says.
And you'll hear the difference, too.
"They will certainly get the same surround sound because digital just basically copied what film was already doing," Cutler says.
Oh, and there will be an intermission.
"There'll be a nice break in the middle for people to get up and do what people do when they get up for 10 minutes," Cutler said.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Jeff Brown reports
The movie was shot on vintage Ultra Panavision 70-millimeter cameras. In select theaters, it will be shown with the corresponding projectors; the kind of stuff that made "Ben Hur." And that meant a lot of work for Boston Light & Sound.
"We have had to scrounge the country in order to find the equipment because it hasn't been manufactured for about 15 years," Cutler says.
And that's not all.
"We had to redesign parts in order to be able to re-manufacture these things back to better than their original condition," he says.
The 20-person staff needed help, so Cutler brough in 30 more specialists but it was worth it.
"Reproducing it in the same method and same medium as intended by the artist is always a joy," he says.
But not everyone will get to see the "vintage" version.
"There are about 40,000 screens in the United States," Cutler said. "This will play in 70-millimeter in only 100 of those."
And three of them are in Greater Boston, including Somerville and Coolidge Corner.
Doing a conversion and playing it back digitally, it will lose something and it will look very different.
Either way, "The Hateful Eight" opens on Christmas Day.
