Dragon Tattoo, What am I looking at?

[George Butterfield]

I really enjoyed watching 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", but what was I looking at?
I asked the ticket seller on the way out he said it was 2K digital?
Is that what is showing in most theatres ... is it BluRay projected from a 2K projector or some 2K format or 4K through a 2K projector?
I'll go back for more info .... does anyone know?

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

I was curious too. The look was universally soft in the theater I was at, not in a really bad way, but not the way Red stuff usually looks for me... more the way Zodiac looked.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Most probably it was a 2K DCP projected through a 2K projector.

 

[Brian F Kobylarz]

It depends entirely on the theater. To start the discussion, there are over a thousand theatres with 4K projectors.

Where the equipment exists, GWTDT is the first to maintain a 4K pipeline 100% from camera all the way to projection.
The film was shot on RED One MX at 4.5K and EPIC at 5K. Believe I read somewhere it was an 80/20 split - shooting took place over 167 days with the EPIC used once it was available.
Light Iron posted using a Quantel Pablo 4K.
4K DCP digital masters were sent to theatres that had the right file servers (and projectors of course).
Some theatres that had not upgraded from 2K to 4K servers were sent a 2K DCP.

Others, I have no idea. There are still some threatres projecting film - can anyone else fill in this gap?

In any case, if you can, ask the theatre 3 questions: Projector (BARCO or SONY), Server (often Doremi) and DCP file format.
Past that, calibration, focus, and other similar factors can each play a role in how it looks.

 

[Greg M]

Digital Cinemas use a Digital Cinema Server to plays files called DCP's. DCP's are either 2K or 4K. The DCP's are delivered to the theater on a hard drive in a special caddy, these are then loaded on the server to be sent to the various projectors.
They don't play theatrical releases from BluRay