logo Sign In

TITANIC 35mm Preservation! (a WIP)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Dear beautiful members - we have access to a fabulous 35mm cinematic print of Titanic. How fabulous you ask? Well here is a four minute preview scan of Reel 1, it has not been cleaned:

Note that’s just a preview scan. It was heavily compressed, and the scanner wasn’t correctly calibrated hence why it’s rough at the start. Also, not all reels will be as scratch-free as this one.

Reel 2 preview:

Trailer:

Preview pics from the test scan:





























It is rare to find a print in this condition of such a popular film.

A very generous offer was made by someone to pay most of the cost of this scan. Therefore we only need $375 to get this scanned in 4K (not including storage)! As you can see from the preview, we should be able to get a good quality release of this ready well before the 20th anniversary of the film later this year, and we already have the cinema DTS too.

So what are you waiting for? Donate now! Cpalmer2k will handle all donations.

2017 June 30- UPDATE!

Thanks to the very generous donations of OT.com forum members the scan has been fully funded! You are welcome to donate to help towards the other associated costs, and those donations should be directed to me as Cpalmer2k was only handling the scanning funds. And a big big thanks to him for doing so.

Special thanks go to cpalmer2k, alexp120, Jetrell Fo, and Soupdrinker0.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

I can’t really tell based on the picture of the reel, looking at the Paramount logo, so I’ll just ask: is this print open matte or anamorphic?

Author
Time

@Beber the print is scope. But it was filmed on Super 35 because Cameron is wasteful!!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time
 (Edited)

I know it was shot in Super 35, that’s why I’m asking what the status of the print is. So, no chance to have an open matte release out of it when it will be scanned. That would have been a cool addition.
Do we already know if there are missing frames ? Maybe at reel changes? I’m willing to help but I would be disappointed if there were “holes” in the movie like in the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scan.

Author
Time

Beber said:

I know it was shot in Super 35, that’s why I’m asking what the status of the print is. So, no chance to have an open matte release out of it when it will be scanned. That would have been a cool addition.

Yeah that’s right, all prints of Titanic are scope. And Terminator 2 which was also a Cameron film shot on Super 35. The only way to get an open-matte release is to scan the lab material. 😃

Do we already know if there are missing frames ? Maybe at reel changes? I’m willing to help but I would be disappointed if there were “holes” in the movie like in the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scan.

Raiders was a damaged print, and they will need to scan a second print to patch everything up! We don’t have that problem with Titanic - if we do find missing frames we can replace them with the pre-2012 HDTV source, but I’m confident there won’t be very many in this print. There certainly won’t be missing sections like there are with Raiders.

I should point out that even the “Silver Screen Edition” of Star Wars has some Bluray frames in it, but you would never known because they’re inserted seamlessly. I should stress the point though that the SSE was a scan of a duplicated print in unknown condition, whereas this print is in great condition. If you’re interested I can send you the full reel by PM and you can check if there are any missing frames.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

It opens with the Paramount logo, rather than the Fox one. Is this a US release?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time

JayArgonaut said:

It opens with the Paramount logo, rather than the Fox one. Is this a US release?

Most certainly. That was my conlusion as well. In Europe (France for myself), it’s a 20th Century Fox movie.

Author
Time

😃 Thanks and ditto. (the UK)

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time

JayArgonaut said:

It opens with the Paramount logo, rather than the Fox one. Is this a US release?

Yes that’s right, and as you can see from the photo I posted the logo is an original part of the print. For older prints they used to lop off the logos and reuse them, however that’s impossible with a print like this because it’s DTS timecoded, and the DTS system requires a print ID at the start or it won’t play.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

Will this new project further delay the completion of the “Face/Off” one?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

No, this is being scanned in the US.

By the way, Face Off isn’t being “delayed” by anything. Although I can see how it might look that way. It was put on my hard drives because I have hard drives with the European scanner for BATB and Alien. For some reason there are delays with those mostly due to the scanner being very busy and unlike Face/Off the prints don’t need to be promptly returned.

Scanning Face/Off was only possible because (as I understand it) the print owner loaned the print for free, paid for half the scan, and no one had to spend an extra €200+ to buy a hard drive and ship it to the US. 😃 You could ask Thxita for more info, but that’s everything I know about Face/Off! I don’t know how he found out that there was a print owner that wanted his print scanned… that’s quite unusual I wish there were more collectors like that out there who want to “partner” with us haha!

I hope that clears up any confusion - we always knew we had to scan BATB & Alien. 😃

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08, I am willing to contribute to this thing of beauty. I have one request though (not demand!) that the full vertical height and horizontal width be preserved while scanning. I have seen images of many Titanic release print film cell strips that were being sold loose on ebay and elsewhere. What I noticed is that when I extract the full height of those cells and crop out the rounded edges at the sides, I get an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1 (around that) not 2.39:1. The 2.39:1 is achieved by further cropping the extra height.

I have seen this in the case of the Empire Strikes Back anamorphic print as well. The original cells had more image at top & bottom than the final cropped version released.

Because Titanic was also released in 70mm with the 2.20:1 aspect ratio, I would request that at least one release of this print be made with the full height of the frame kept intact, so that someone interested can create a 70mm version out of it and the existing open-matte materials.

Print looks beautiful so far!

Author
Time

Papai2013 said:

RU.08, I am willing to contribute to this thing of beauty. I have one request though (not demand!) that the full vertical height and horizontal width be preserved while scanning. I have seen images of many Titanic release print film cell strips that were being sold loose on ebay and elsewhere. What I noticed is that when I extract the full height of those cells and crop out the rounded edges at the sides, I get an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1 (around that) not 2.39:1. The 2.39:1 is achieved by further cropping the extra height.

I have seen this in the case of the Empire Strikes Back anamorphic print as well. The original cells had more image at top & bottom than the final cropped version released.

Because Titanic was also released in 70mm with the 2.20:1 aspect ratio, I would request that at least one release of this print be made with the full height of the frame kept intact, so that someone interested can create a 70mm version out of it and the existing open-matte materials.

Print looks beautiful so far!

I’d like to second that request, because that sounds awesome.

“You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you?” - Juror 8
“Silence, Earthling! My name is Darth Vader. I am an extra-terrestrial from the planet Vulcan!” - Calvin “Marty” Klein

Author
Time

That is awesome for a raw scan of a print. I can’t say that the changes to this film bother me as they do for some films. I appreciate the removal of the out of place elements and the correction of the sky. Not sure why they changed the sky in the flying scene. I’d have to watch it and see if I like the new version or not. But as I don’t have this film on blu-ray and my copy is the original version on DVD, I would be very interested in seeing the final product.

Author
Time

Papai2013 said:

I have seen images of many Titanic release print film cell strips that were being sold loose on ebay and elsewhere. What I noticed is that when I extract the full height of those cells and crop out the rounded edges at the sides, I get an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1 (around that) not 2.39:1. The 2.39:1 is achieved by further cropping the extra height.

The anamorphic “squeeze” is 2:1. Here’s a cell off the internet:

And here it is cropped and resized:

As you can see it is 2.35:1, not 2.2:1. It’s not possible to reconstruct the 70mm version from 35mm, you’ll need to get a 70mm print for us to scan for that. When cropped it comes to 2.39:1 as so:

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Okay, now that I’ve seen the full 14 minutes and 52 seconds, I have a couple observations about cropping. Granted, this is a test scan and not the final rendering.
The test scan is 1920x804, so 2.39:1. I believe the film was shown in 2.35:1, so this might be a bit overcropped. However, I noticed that on the bottom, a couple times, there is a whitish border line that might indicate that a 2.20:1 open matte version would be ugly. So maybe the final 2.35:1 cropping could be a little more cropped on the bottom and a little less on the top to compensate. See this picture below: (I have no idea how to post a picture on that forum!)

https://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/945496Titanicreel1fulltestscanmkvsnapshot050820170519183111.jpg

Also, it might be overcropped on the left side and not enough on the right side, cause we sometimes see some black border on the right, and the title card is not well centered in the frame:

https://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/965532Titanicreel1fulltestscanmkvsnapshot064420170519183158.jpg

https://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/564237Titanicreel1fulltestscanmkvsnapshot143920170519183129.jpg

https://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/853061Titanicreel1fulltestscanmkvsnapshot011520170519183145.jpg

All in all, that project looks promising, so count me in. I’ll give my contribution.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

Papai2013 said:

I have seen images of many Titanic release print film cell strips that were being sold loose on ebay and elsewhere. What I noticed is that when I extract the full height of those cells and crop out the rounded edges at the sides, I get an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1 (around that) not 2.39:1. The 2.39:1 is achieved by further cropping the extra height.

The anamorphic “squeeze” is 2:1. Here’s a cell off the internet:

And here it is cropped and resized:

As you can see it is 2.35:1, not 2.2:1. It’s not possible to reconstruct the 70mm version from 35mm, you’ll need to get a 70mm print for us to scan for that. When cropped it comes to 2.39:1 as so:

If you crop the rounded edges out, without cropping the top & bottom, you’ll get around 2.20:1. I was talking about preserving the full height. It can be done. In the 2.39:1, you have cropped the top & bottom out, as visible from the lines.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

That is awesome for a raw scan of a print. I can’t say that the changes to this film bother me as they do for some films. I appreciate the removal of the out of place elements and the correction of the sky. Not sure why they changed the sky in the flying scene. I’d have to watch it and see if I like the new version or not. But as I don’t have this film on blu-ray and my copy is the original version on DVD, I would be very interested in seeing the final product.

The Bluray is obscenely revisionist. Have a look at the Title card:

35mm (optical compositing):

2005 DVD:

Bluray (“glorious” digital compositing):

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

Those are very thin lines and can be edited out later. My point was having a base full height version first, so that when someone wishes to construct a 2.20:1 version, they could re-adjust the framing by including the full height (minus the white edges you mentioned) and cropping out the sides.

Author
Time

Papai2013 said:

If you crop the rounded edges out, without cropping the top & bottom, you’ll get around 2.20:1. I was talking about preserving the full height. It can be done. In the 2.39:1, you have cropped the top & bottom out, as visible from the lines.

Oh right. The issue with doing it that way is as Beber mentioned it introduces problems. That part of the frame is allowed to have abnormalities in it, and usually does. Anyway, the preview you see has been cropped but I don’t have the uncropped version.

And even if you did it that way, it won’t be anything like 70mm cropping as that’d done completely separately to a different master print than the 35mm. It’s probable that the 70mm version has more picture on all four sides.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08,
It would have been nice to see the full print.
You guys could do a stabilized GRINDHOUSE release before the proper version, without cropping any picture out, can you not?
Kindly do ask the person who has the uncropped scan.

Also, I think the shape of the faces in the print appear slightly squished vertically. Stretching the final 2.39:1 image back to 2.35:1 might make the faces look normal.

Author
Time

RU.08 said:

The Bluray is obscenely revisionist.

Obscenely? Let’s remember you’re on a Star Wars board. That is the bar for “obscene revisionism.” This is nothing in comparison.