Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers have teamed up to launch a technology that will make the experience of watching movies at home more like what they intended.
In partnership with the UHD Alliance, leading directors including Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins, Ryan Coogler, Rian Johnson and Paul Thomas Anderson revealed the new “Filmmaker Mode” for upcoming TVs from LG, Panasonic and Vizio that removes technical features that have frustrated the industry.
There has been a growing concern among the creators’ community over features such as motion smoothing, a setting used to adapt movies to smaller screens and reduce blur in fast-moving scenes. It is often referred to as the “soap opera effect” due to the way it makes the actors and backgrounds appear fake or set-like.
“Modern televisions have extraordinary technical capabilities, and it is important that we harness these new technologies to ensure that the home viewer sees our work presented as closely as possible to our original creative intentions,” said Nolan.
“Through collaboration with TV manufacturers, Filmmaker Mode consolidates input from filmmakers into simple principles for respecting frame rate, aspect ratio, color and contrast and encoding in the actual media so that televisions can read it and can display it appropriately.”
Michael Zink, chairman of the UHD Alliance said the initiative highlighted the importance of home viewing.
Johnson, director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, said the Filmmaker Mode provides “a single button that lines up the settings so it works for the benefit of the movie and not against it”. He said, “If you love movies, Filmmaker Mode will make your movies not look like poo-poo.”
Scorsese said more people view classic flicks in the comfort of their home rather than in theatres. “I started The Film Foundation in 1990 with the goal to preserve film and protect the filmmaker’s original vision so that the audience can experience these films as they were intended to be seen,” he said.
“Most people today are watching these classic films at home rather than in movie theaters, making Filmmaker Mode of particular importance when presenting these films which have specifications unique to being shot on film.”