Has been a quite week on Red Alder Hill guess we are resting from the holidays. There was a brief snow storm, in this pix you see the start of the snow fall but not much more than a light dusting ever stuck to the ground.
I finally got that batch of ‘ESD -extra special doogal’ out of secondary and into bottles.
It was hopped with Tattnanger for bittering and flavor then some Willamette at the end for aroma. The cold weather stalled the primary so it took an extra week to complete. Should be drinkable in a week so I’ll report back. Have a ingredients for a a dark ale / porter that is getting cooked next, maybe even this weekend.
Went to Avatar, again, New Years eve and this time in 3D … actually IMAX 3D. Was even better than the first time we saw it. Went again too see what a difference 3D could make. The image was quite a bit sharper with the attention to detail in that film this made a difference in the viewing experience. I wouldn’t have believed it without seeing.
Seems that the original movie was shot in an aspect ration of 1.78:1 (16:9) and on HDCAM video … this is significant on a couple of points. The first, most ‘features’ are shot in 2.35:1 (21:9) and your local theater’s screen is scaled to that aspect ratio. Cameron shot and posted Avatar electronically and then moved it to film for distribution. Because he had all these wide screens to fill the non-imax prints were blown-up and cropped at the top and bottom to fit the 2.35 aspect ratio. The IMAX version we saw was 70mm, 1.78 (16:9) and full frame. The second point is that 16:9 has becoming the aspect ratio of our television sets. HD video is sized to this 16:9 frame so one has to wonder why, given 300 million dollars, Cameron would choose to work in an aspect ration and on a formate that isn’t common to current theater screens … we really are seeing a new cinema in a new year …