August 2026

Trivia

VistaVision was largely abandoned after the 1950s and early 1960s as film stocks improved but the format has made a surprising comeback. In 2025, One Battle After Another became the first VistaVision film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, more than 70 years after Paramount introduced the format.

The Cinema Format That Disappeared and Came Back

The move from 35mm prints to digital cinema wasn't only about better technology. When the studios developed the Digital Cinema Initiatives standards, JPEG 2000 became part of the technical foundation for digital cinema and the industry estimated that replacing physical prints with digital distribution could save studios hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The Digital-cinema Revolution Was Partly About Saving Money

On August 20, 1916, Petro Vlahos was born, the engineer whose work transformed blue-screen compositing. His Ultimatte technology went far beyond simply “removing the blue”: it helped solve notoriously difficult problems such as hair, motion blur, shadows and semi-transparent objects. He eventually received three Oscars and an Emmy for his contributions to motion-picture technology.

The Cinema Engineer Who Changed Visual Effects