With the 70mm roadshow release officially clocking in at 187 minutes (including a 12-minute intermission) for Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight, you’ll certainly want to travel to the closet theater playing the special event. As we await the official list (we know it’s coming to 96 theaters in the United States, 4 in Canada, and select locations elsewhere around the world), today we have an excellent featurette to show off the process.
“Ultra Panavision also produces subtle aesthetic effects, unusual even to viewers familiar with 70 millimeter,” NY Times reports. “The lens “for lack of a better word is a softer lens,” Mr. Sasaki said. During a screening of test footage for the film, he pointed out the impressionistic qualities of the focus and explained how the image catered to our eyes’ natural depth cues.”
As the eight-minute featurette explains, it was quite an undertaking to refurbish new cameras, shoot the project, and then wrangle the projectors. Featuring Tarantino, cast, and crew discussing the history of 70mm and why Panavision jumped on board, check it out below.
In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Demian Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…
The Hateful Eight opens in theaters December 25th, 2015 in a special 70mm road show release, and nationwide on January 8th, 2016.