Poll: Monaural vs Stereo for Low Budget Feature films

[zak forrest]

No offence zack, but the op needs to be practical. If Mr. Kubrick was here today, he'd have an Epic and line up in the queue like the rest of us.
Cheers.

Mr. Black: the link I provided had information regarding converting Kubrick's mono mixes to stereo for "futurizing" the releases on home video formats etc.. Completely relevant information for Patrick to absorb. If he decided to go with mono, he could stereo-ize it later, Leon Vitali style, using info from that interview as well as everything else in this thread. A must read for anyone considering mono vs. stereo, you can read about Kubrick's reasoning and process behind the issue.

As for Kubrick and the Epic, what makes you so sure ? Eyes Wide Shut was shot using an ancient Cooke zoom, Arri Variable Primes, and Zeiss Superspeeds. Tarantino still shoots on film..

If there's one person on this earth that never "lined up with the rest of us," as you say, in regards to producing a feature film, it's Stanley Kubrick.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Mr. Black: the link I provided had information regarding converting Kubrick's mono mixes to stereo for "futurizing" the releases on home video formats etc.. Completely relevant information for Patrick to absorb. If he decided to go with mono, he could stereo-ize it later, Leon Vitali style, using info from that interview as well as everything else in this thread. A must read for anyone considering mono vs. stereo, you can read about Kubrick's reasoning and process behind the issue.

As for Kubrick and the Epic, what makes you so sure ? Eyes Wide Shut was shot using an ancient Cooke zoom, Arri Variable Primes, and Zeiss Superspeeds. Tarantino still shoots on film..

If there's one person on this earth that never "lined up with the rest of us," as you say, in regards to producing a feature film, it's Stanley Kubrick.

I am a Kubrick fanatic, I am kicking myself that I didn't go to the Kubrick exhibition they have down in Hollywood.
If I was doing my poll over again, I think I'd have the poll this way (which would I think more to want kubricks point was, especially in the notes on that article you posted where Kubrick took the best take, even if it had technical flaws).

So my "Kubrickian" poll would be, Which movie would you prefer:
1) great story and excellent sounding mono ?
2) great story and confusing sounding stereo ?
3) great story and crappy surround sound ?
4) ok story and excellent surround sound?

I am positive that Kubrick would have picked "1". So to me if i am trading good quality mono for medium quality stereo ... i should go with mono.

No offence zack, but the op needs to be practical. If Mr. Kubrick was here today, he'd have an Epic and line up in the queue like the rest of us.
Cheers.

On the practical side, and I agree with you on this, if Kubrick could make sure the theater experience of Dolby 7.1 was excellent any where in the world, he would have picked 7.1 over mono. Issue he had, and he was fanatical on quality control, is that he had problems in his day guaranteeing the quality of the theater experience for stereo. I personally hate 90% of my surround sound experience, because it just blasts my ears due to poor theater quality control and I think marketing "hype" where people think loud is great(the worst part of my theater experience is when they blast that Dolby "tone" commercial at the front of the movie).

Right now what I think I'm trying to do is see if I can get the same quality stereo as i get as my mono(or at least have my stereo at the same quality that I can do my mono). I think the mono vs stereo theater quality control problems are mostly corrected now, I am not sure about international distribution though?

 

[Allan Black]

Well I agree, Stanley Kubrick was a genius, groundbreaker, perfectionist and award winner. Born 1928, he fought with almost everybody during his reign.
Today you shouldn't do that, at any level. Being practical, 'stereo' is the way only to go, then you might avoid getting into a time consuming, money swallowing, potentially confusing bottomless hole, later in production.
Cheers.