Vistamorph®
An alternative large negative format to 65mm origination

Loch Katerine in Scotland. The boat is the Sir Walter Scott steamship. Vistamorph 70mm frame.

There exists today a substantial market for large format cinema. These cinemas sell the thrill and experience of a big show where films entertain and educate the audience for 40 minutes with short films and over 2 hours with commercial feature films. The large format IMAX® system has its films originated on 15-perf 70mm horizontal film. These films are printed at great cost and synced up with a powerful surround sound system. The concept is to convey a sense of realism to the audience, as if they are physically involved in the film through the use of scale and power. This idea stems from Cinerama, a system launched on the cinema industry in 1952, where the panoramic film was shown on a curved screen 90ft wide and 30ft high. Accompanied with 7-channel stereo sound, Cinerama made such an impact in the industry that all wide screen film systems were developed as a consequence of the very great public response to the Cinerama experience. Even wide screen TV is now common in homes.

The Vistamorph film system was developed by Vistatech Ltd. As a response to the rising costs of large format film production and presentation in the late 1990’s. It was envisaged that it could fill the role that Cinerama once had in commercial cinema and offer a much lower cost alternative to 15/70 formats as a medium. Vistamorph is a process that can produce spectacular wide screen films and emulates Cinerama in scale. One of the many benefits of Vistamorph is that it utilises existing motion picture technology to produce films at a reasonable cost in comparison to 15/70 films. Vistamorph has a presentation ratio of 3: 1 to 1 or greater and is originated on 35mm motion picture negative stock. It incorporates a x2 anamorphic optical compression along the horizontal axis of the film stock and is shot in a VistaVision format camera. A range of primes lenses can be coupled to the Vistamorph anamorphic attachment lens for originating wide and medium fields of view.
 

Vistamorph requires at this stage a three-phase development.