The feature story on the cover of the September 2017 issue of Canadian Cinematographer magazine is about the work of Java Post Production's good friend and colleague, director of photography Mark Dobrescu, CSC.

A local Saskatchewan talent, Mark has worked on a lot of Java Post projects, and this article focuses on his work on three Minds Eye Entertainment sci-fi thriller feature films that use the ultra-wide, three-screen Barco Escape 270-degree panoramic cinema format: The Recall starring Wesley Snipes, The Humanity Bureau starring Nicolas Cage, and Distorted starring John Cusack and Christina Ricci.

Java Post Production is pleased to be doing post-production work on all of these feature films.

Mark (right) and director Mauro Borrelli on location for The Recall, starring Wesley Snipes. Behind Mark are three 6K RED DRAGON cameras configured for the 270-degree field of view Barco Escape format. According to the Canadian Cinematographer article, Mark has now been the Director of Photographer on three-quarters of the Barco Escape feature films worldwide.

Above you see Mark and Mauro in the Java Post Production offices, working on the colour grading for The Recall.

Our Java Post colourist, Jack Tunnicliffe, at the colour grading controls. In the photo above, Jack is working on the centre screen shot of the three-screen format.

Above: a movie theatre with the three-screen Barco Escape configuration.

The term "aspect ratio" refers to the relationship between an image's width and it's height. For example, most home HD televisions have an aspect ratio of 16:9, meaning that for every 16 units (inches, centimeters, whatever) they are wide, they are also 9 units (inches, centimeters, whatever) high. 16:9 also translates into 1.77:1 or 1.78:1, which is the shooting aspect ratio of your average TV show or TV movie. For comparison, many feature films are shot with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1.

However, the aspect ratio of the ultra-wide Barco Escape format is 7.17:1. To put that in pixel size comparison terms, your home HD movie is 1080 pixels high and 1920 pixels wide. A Barco Escape format feature film is 864 pixels high and a whopping 6144 pixels wide. That is w-i-d-e screen.