Premiere Pro Editing – Scaling, Resizing, Zooming and Resolution Loss of Footage Clips

[Devinda Fernando]

Well, its a small island (Sri Lanka), and its a population of about 20 Million people. Around the country there are about 140-150 Film halls, and each one is part of 4 different main Circuits. Each hall usuallholds about 300-500 people. 3 of them are private and 1 is Government run… take a wild guess as to which one is the worst of them all? If you produce a film you would go with one of the main circuits which have about 30-70 theater halls attached. Most films go with about 35 theaters and run for about 50-100 days. For each Theater you want to screen in you have to produce a 35mm set of reels. That cost is one of most expensive costs of your overheads. Up until as recent as 5 years ago all Films here were shot on 35 mm cameras like the Arriflex 3,4, or 5. Then the Negative was developed in India and copies produced there, and then shipped back for screening. Now everything is shot on Digital – mostly Red cameras and then shipped to India for Reverse Tele-cine… and the then the reels sent back for screening. Though there is a guy here who does reverse Tele-Cine here on the island but he does not have a Tele-Cine machine… would you beleive he actually screens the digital footage onto a White projector wall, and re-records it on an Arriflex 35mm camera…then develops the negative and runs off the copies with that.

[Richard Herd]

Wow that’s crazy!

So if you show up with your film, they will screen it, no questions asked?

And really, there is a serious opportunity for you or someone to move to the DCI. https://www.dcimovies.com/

[Devinda Fernando]

Ha! There is usually a 6-12 month waiting list depending on the circuit. You have to pass the National Film corporation’s utterly arbitrary and capricious Censor board… No swearing, or nudity, or homosexuality… unless its in a historical context…(whatever the hell that means???) And obviously no overt political attacks against the government… Also the previous govt didn’t allow the display of Alcohol or Cigarettes, but all the previous films from 1940s to 1970s had this since they were a lot more lax on the issue… The equivalent of America’s Pre-code era.
However, being that this is a Socialist Dicta… errr, ooops, I mean Socialist ‘Democracy’, ruled by the same group of Political Elite Families since Independence from the British in 1948… If you falter at the Govt level you can easily use Political influence and circumvent the system and even jump the waiting list line. If you have no political influence you can also bribe your way into it. This is not even a secret, in fact sometimes if you didn’t bribe your way, and your film ended up sucking badly, you will be accused of bribery anyway…
There is no rule* that the film has to be in Sinhala (the Majority Language) but if its in English or Tamil you can’t hope to recover your money since no one will go to see it. (Tamils are only 3 Million of the 20 Million) and while everyone here can speak English to some degree, the movie-going audience does not go to see English language films.
(* The Govt circuit only screens Sinhala or Tamil Films)

[Devinda Fernando]

Ha! There is usually a 6-12 month waiting list depending on the circuit. You have to pass the National Film corporation’s utterly arbitrary and capricious Censor board… No swearing, or nudity, or homosexuality… unless its in a historical context…(whatever the hell that means???) And obviously no overt political attacks against the government… Also the previous govt didn’t allow the display of Alcohol or Cigarettes, but all the previous films from 1940s to 1970s had this since they were a lot more lax on the issue… The equivalent of America’s Pre-code era.
However, being that this is a Socialist Dicta… errr, ooops, I mean Socialist ‘Democracy’, ruled by the same group of Political Elite Families since Independence from the British in 1948… If you falter at the Govt level you can easily use Political influence and circumvent the system and even jump the waiting list line. If you have no political influence you can also bribe your way into it. This is not even a secret, in fact sometimes if you didn’t bribe your way, and your film ended up sucking badly, you will be accused of bribery anyway…
There is no rule* that the film has to be in Sinhala (the Majority Language) but if its in English or Tamil you can’t hope to recover your money since no one will go to see it. (Tamils are only 3 Million of the 20 Million) and while everyone here can speak English to some degree, the movie-going audience does not go to see English language films.
(* The Govt circuit only screens Sinhala or Tamil Films)

*** And really, there is a serious opportunity for you or someone to move to the DCI. https://www.dcimovies.com/**

I have been in talks with some business investors about Digital projectors and new movie halls, but they all think too small… their mentality is that the Film industry sucks, and in order to make money they should make smaller theaters – so instead of 300 seats to scale it down to 100 seats and equip them with digital Projectors. What they fail to realize is that the industry sucks because it has too much Govt intrusion, and restrictions, AND the movies that are being made SUCK BALLS… they are cringeworthy and utterly awful… and that’s why no one goes to see them. So the first step in making the industry profitable and thriving is to create good content.
Most people (Producers) who make films here do it as some sort of Vanity project, where they get to sleep with a local famous Actress by bankrolling their next film. Some do it to launder money, you can get up to 35 Million Rupees tax free profits, No Questions Asked… which makes it a great Money laundering vessel for smugglers, drug dealers, and even government employees who get a lot of money in bribes.
The other major flaw in the system is that each theater only screens one Film at a time… and when you give your film for screening you sign a contract with the Circuit to run your film for a minimum of 50 days. So if your film ends up sucking balls, with in the first week theaters can be half empty and they play the projectors to empty film halls for upto a month sometimes. Very rarely do they yank the film from the halls so its just a huge waste of time and money for everyone. I have been banging my head on the table to get people who want to build theatres to make them larger.. or at the very least make them with multiple halls within a location, so that if one film fails then at least they can screen another at the same time and hopefully draw audiences that way… but sadly, like I said before… people think really small here, and don’t want to invest the additional capital to ‘Do it Right’ the first time.

[Richard Herd]

WOW! That is fascinating. Thanks for sharing 🙂

How do they handle the audio problem? Obviously if someone dirty transfers a movie the sync will suffer as well as the picture quality.

[Devinda Fernando]

I’m not familiar with the methodology for the audio. But the theaters are such low quality here that everyone is used to it. Half of them don’t even have AC, and the projectors are really old in the village areas so picture quality is not the utmost concern. In fact as of 2009 when the war ended, 40% of all the TVs in the country were still Black and White, – that has probably changed a lot but I don’t know the new figures, being that this is the fastest developing country in Asia in the past 5 years.