I didn't say I know the water shouldn't be teal. It would actually be nice to see some original 35mm shots to compare with.

I just know that back in 1981 they didn't do the orange/teal shift on movies. (Though in this one it's more like yellow/teal)

Also if you zoom in on some shots there's highly saturated color noise, which looks exactly like the color noise in Kingdom of the crystal skull. It's almost as if they wanted to match that look.

If anything (based on what I've seen) I'd say this color scheme used to be popular up until about the mid 80s/early 90s and then later on resurfaced.

edit: the plane is a matte? Jesus, I can't even tell.

You know Harmy, seeing that shot makes me think you might be right. :)

And you're right about the plane being a matte! I looked closer now and saw why it looked different. In the DVD they had smoothed out the edges around the plane and added reflections to the water.

Heh, interesting.

Are you reffering to indie or the other project?
(btw sorry yes I did miss it)

Well tbh for the other project I haven't seen enough footage to make a definitive conclusive answer to that. (however based on screenshots, I'd say its just the desert probably)

As far as indie goes, without owning the blu-ray (stil gonna buy it) It does seem the whole movie is more yellow tinted, but that could be because its mostly set in a desert.

Harmy said:

jero32 said:

edit: the plane is a matte? Jesus, I can't even tell.

Just the background. But look how it compares to the BD and the DVD:

That's interesting. The original matte has a more muted contrast just like the BD version.

I might just buy this box after all. But I wonder why they didn't change the colors of TOD and TLC too? It wouldn't have been that hard to at least make them warmer. And to fix the edge enhancement was at least easy with BlindDeHalo in avisynth.

Anyway, as a fun experiment I applied the color timing of ROTLA to some BD screenshots of the other two, using the avisynth plugin Colourlike. Here's comparisons before and after:

Well as I mentioned before, it could be that either they A.) didn't care (somewhat likely) B.) by that time they had moved on to more neutral color palettes in movies (only for the teal/yellow to return years later) This is sort of backed up by the fact that the shots dont look nearly as blue and grimy as raiders on dvd does.

edit: another thing I noticed, note how the temple of doom seems to use backround elements to create color shades more so than say Raiders. For example the shot with the heart pulling ritual has a lot of backround red, and the shot behind the opening title also has some red actually in the backround. They might have relied less on photochemical mood colors and used backround objects instead (Which is my favourite method of doing colors in scenes)

edit2: even more evidence of this in empire strikes back, it had a lot of orange and blue lighting in the carbonite freezing room. This seemed to me to be actual lighting vs photochemical enhancement.

Well, it sure does make the movie feel older. Can't say it's an improvement or bad thing, just...old looking.

Tyrphanax said:

Make up your mind, You_Too! I don't have much seat edge left to sit on!

Haha! I think I've made up my mind now. :)

But I'm very interested in doing some kind of project with at least TOD and TLC in the future.

We really should get some 35mm prints of all the movies just to do a color reference. (and unlike certain other movies we wouldn't have to scan the entire movies, just a few scenes to get an idea of how correct the blu-rays are)

I agree with you guys. I just did that color experiment for fun to see how it looked.

Maybe negative1's team would be interested in restoring these from 35mm prints after they're done with Star Wars? That would be awesome.

I think they're gonna take a nice well deserved indefinite break after they're done (LOTS of work) Also they'd have to hunt down/buy prints etc, not really worth it since the movies are mostly ok even if the colortiming didnt match theathrical presentations.

Stil some reference shots would be nice, were they ever released on 16mm? (on the other hand 16mm might stil not be a good indicator)

edit: found this http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingpowercinema/61371299/

But I don't really feel we can tell anything conclusive from that photo. (it does seem rather yellow though)

edit2: MOAR! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingpowercinema/61371296/in/photostream/ definitely seems a little yellow tinted, but stil don't wanna draw conclusions.

Yeah I think that team deserves a long break after all that hard work. But they sure know how to restore 35mm film, that's why I thought about them.

Maybe somebody could find some color reference frames so we could grade TOD and TLC ourselves using the BDs?

@jero32: We don't even know what backlight was used. Such photos are never a good reference unless photographed properly by a professional.

@You_too

Yes I realise that they're not a good reference, which is why I didn't want to to draw a definite conclusion. Hell even 16mm isn't a good indicator of what the 35mm mightve looked like imo. (Altough if it matches say, the blu-ray chances are the blu-ray is pretty correct).

Anyone have a 16mm raiders of the lost ark (trailer?) that he/she wouldn't mind scanning in (just a few frames)?