Cinema Chain Vue's 83 Screens in U.K., Ireland Start Screening Plays Shot Live in 4K

Cinema theater chain Vue International has equipped all of its 83 screens in the U.K. and Ireland with Sony Digital Cinema 4K systems and will now use them to screen plays from London’s National Theatre, shot live and post-produced in 4K, said representatives of Vue, the National Theatre and Sony U.K. at a press preview screening and briefing in London Tuesday. After 4K tests with the stage production of War Horse in February 2014, the first end-to-end 4K production, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, starts playing in Vue theaters across the U.K. this month, the representatives said. The play, by David Hare and based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo’s book on slum life in Mumbai, India, was captured in performance March 12 with six Sony F55 cameras, they said. “Event cinema,” as Vue calls the genre of projecting theater and sports onto the big screen, is now Vue’s fastest-growing business, Kevin Styles, Vue managing director-U.K. and Ireland, said at the briefing. Rufus Norris, the National Theatre’s artistic director, said screened theater had doubled the National Theatre’s audiences since it began the first 2K productions in 2009. Sony representatives said the color space captured with the Sony F55s is far in excess of the BT.709 standard for HDTV. The material is mastered in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) and a 4K digital cinema package created for cinema projection (4096 x 2160) has the addition of horizontal blanking, Sony said. At the screening, we were impressed with the 4K image clarity, and found the experience rewarding and enjoyable, but, of course, very different from attending performances at the National Theatre in person. The use of close-ups and focus-pulling between characters is quite unlike live theater, especially as 4K resolution heightens the defocusing effect, we found.