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'So Fine' - Preservation Project (Released)

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I’m just tossing it out for now (especially since I’ve yet to finish my current project), but…

So Fine (1981) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083099/
(from RottenTomatoes.com):
A naive academician is suddenly thrown into the crazy and often violent world of the New York garment industry when his father’s business becomes heavily indebted to a loan shark. In order to raise much needed funds, he creates a new fashion craze - see-through jeans.

It stars Ryan O’Neal, Jack Warden, Richard Keal (Jaws from Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me), Mariangela Melato, and Fred Gwynne. And the sharp-eyed will also catch Tony Sirico of the Sopranos (Paulie Walnuts) playing a goon.

I have been a big fan of this movie and as far as I know it has only seen release as an OOP VHS.
I’m going to make a DVD transfer of this because if anything were to happen to that tape I would be very very upset.

I’m going to TRY to convert it back to 24 fps, but I suck at that so if it all fails I’ll do some minor color and brightness type tweaks if needed.
Beyond that, not much. I’d love to get my hands on the deleted scenes that appeared in the rare TV broadcasts of this movie but I have no source for it.

Anyway, that’s coming up next from me.

http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/SoFineCover.jpg

Edit: Finished and released.

For further info, PM me.

Dr. M

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This was just on a few months ago on one of the movie channels
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The sanitized tv cut I once saw of this was bad, as the "cheeky" plot points were snipped out. Leaving the first time viewer no doubt confused as to why those jeans were such a big deal.
The LDDB does list a widescreen version pressed in 1998.

Where were you in '77?

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Wow, had no idea it was on laserdisc. That's going to be hard to track down.

Dr. M

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Has anyone seen hide or hair of a this on Laserdisc (any format) or PAL VHS?
I'm really getting ready to start this up.

Dr. M

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I saw one at a place in Redwood City for sale a while back But I went back to Redwood City twice since then and I can not find the store. The guy was clearing out LDs cheap. The Store was on the East side of El Camino but I just can't remember exactly where it was. It is making me crazy.
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Originally posted by: Doctor M
Did you try a phone book?


I live 50 miles from there and I didn't have one, I also can't remember the name of the place. I'll give it another go this week.
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I appreciate it, but don't go out of your way on my account really.

Dr. M

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Well today I took my wife down to Sunnyvale to get some Olson Cherries and I decided drive back up El Camino and Low and Behold there it was, "Videosope". It wasn't in Redwood City as I thought, it was in Mountain View. I now have in my Hot Hands "So Fine" wide screen edition Laserdisc. My wife is happy too , she picked up "The leading Man" with Jon Bo Jovi and Thandi Newton.

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So watcha gonna do with that disc now that you have it?
Are you thinking of doing the capture yourself?

Dr. M

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Basic Capture done. PM me with your email address.
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Jack Warden 9/18/1920 - 7/19/2006

So Fine may not be considered his finest movie, but some of us appreciated his work.

Dr. M

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Originally posted by: Doctor M
Jack Warden 9/18/1920 - 7/19/2006

So Fine may not be considered his finest movie, but some of us appreciated his work.


My Favorite was N.Y.P.D. (no, not NYPD Blue). I loved the way that show opened with the camera mounted on the roof of the patrol car Bubble Gum Ball Light roatating away as the car raced down the streets of New York. It was gritty, shot on location with the feel of a 1960's news "Film at 11" type broadcast. The sound of the show when they were out on the street, you could hear everything ,kids down the street playing, people walking, car horns. Jack Warden was the hardnose experienced detective Mike Haines and Frank Converse as the younger less experienced Detective, Johnny Corso. The only show of recent vintage that came close was "Homicide" I think that show's style was a direct copy of N.Y.P.D.

Quote from TV.com which I'm sure got this from some other uncredited source.
"This series paints a tough, realistic portrait of the work of the New York City Police Department. Filmed on location, N.Y.P.D. utilizes the highly mobile hand-held camera and stream-of-consciousness narrative."


Watched "Run Silent Run Deep" tonight with the wife. A younger Jack gave a fine performance as Kraut Mueller.


Jack Warden R.I.P. you will be missed.

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Laserdisc capture performed by Suntech (thanks) and sent to me in high quality (about 8000kbps cbr) mpg with 256kbps mpeg layer 2 audio.

Original 24 frames reconstructed, 80%ish of noise from interference patterens and (edge enhancement?)/chroma artifacts removed.
Cropped and resized to anamorphic.
Black level lowered 7 points so black is black, white level brightened 20 points.

Both avisynth and virtualdubmod are being used to frameserve (I prefer different filters from each one).
Currently encoding at 500min/5130avg/8200max kbps in 4 passes with CCE 2.70 (q level one pass vbr estimate is 14, I can hit 1 if I don't use PCM audio but I will not go mpa -> wav -> DD).

Audio restoration so far is minor.
Since the audio is mono, both channels were combined and then re-split to average out any cable noise in the recording process and to equalize left/right volumes.
I'd like to remove tape hiss, but there are some really nice high frequencies in the movie that are lost in the process.
So far lead in and lead out hiss to the film is muted as well as some abruptness and popping at the side change.
More may come, but I want the video finished first.

Barring any posts on this thread from anyone besides me and Suntech, I'm not going to post any more project updates.
I feel like I'm just talking to myself.

Dr. M

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Heh heh, or not.
7 hours 40 minutes to encode 4 passes.
Ok, take the screenies below with a grain of salt. In motion clips always look different than stills.

Some of the shots I chose because the chroma artifacts are reduced, but a few frames earlier artifacts might still exist because the filter is temporal and hasn't turned on yet. By and large this IS representative of the final version.
Of course the final film is anamorphic, but both shots have been resized (and deinterlaced) equivalently for comparison.

Things to look for: rainbows around edges, interference patterns on small textures, black levels, white levels.
I still chose not to use a dot crawl filter to clean up the credits because the rest of the film's detail takes a hit. There's also color bleeding that I've yet to find a method of removing.
Top is the original raw mpg capture just resized, bottom is final re-encoded dvd video.
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf1.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf2.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf3.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf4.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf5.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf6.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf7.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf8.jpg
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/temp/sf9.jpg
Makes you wonder if I can improve a movie this old this much, why the heck can't George Lucas?

Dr. M

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I feel bad whenever someone creates a thread and hardly anybody responds.

I've read through this one and looked at the comparisons you've just posted. I have to say well done. No more rainbows or weird artifacts. Nice work.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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I'm just posting whether anyone responds or not.
I know there are always some lurkers who don't comment and I know that what I explain now may prove interesting to someone down the road who finds this thread by chance.

Dr. M

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I like your point of view. It is the only way for me to properly handle this site. And I see plenty of ambitious newcomers arrive, hungry for responses which they don't get and... gone with the wind. As a matter of fact, no should make fanedits to get noticed, but because he or she likes to.

Nothing about fanediting is easy.

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Dr M,
is this going to be released any where,myspleen,demonoid?
thanks,looks very interesting,after reading the description of the movie,i remember watching this also,but i didnt recognise the title LOL
DJ
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Looking at the cast of this movie I wouldn't mind giving it a go if you upload it somewhere.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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I'll have to sleep on it. I really wasn't planning a general release of this.
If there was real demand by fans of the film I would have done a PiF system, but...
Again, I'll have to think on it.


Next up?
Who knows, maybe I'll finally work on that L.A. Story extended cut I've talked about now that I've learned more on restoration.
My dad request I add back a particularly funny scene deleted from Keeping the Faith (Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman & Ben Stiller movie).
Of course a GitS2 NTSC conversion taunts me. The U.K.'s english dubbed audio was recorded at PAL speeds (since there was no NTSC release planned with english). A slow down to 24 fps requires a pitch shift, or the video would have to be resized to NTSC with a 25 to 30 pulldown. None of which makes me happy (it seems unnecessary since there's a perfectly nice NTSC video on the U.S. DVD). I want to find a way to use the U.S. video but speed it up to 25 fps and add a 30 frame pulldown without re-encoding. I've not figured a way to do that yet (or if it's even possible).
Other options? I'd love a completely extended and uncut version of Eurotrip (another guilty pleasure film).
And of course there's VR5...

Maybe nothing and I'll be able to sleep at night without editing in my head and have space on my hard drives again.

Dr. M

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I'd be interested in a copy of this, even just to PIF.

Don't Make Me Destroy You!
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You gonna put this up anywhere DrM ? I always enjoy watching 80's kitsch, and you seem to have put a lot of work into this