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Post #1213717

Author
poita
Parent topic
Info: Star Wars - What is wrong and what is right... Goodbye Magenta
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1213717/action/topic#1213717
Date created
1-Jun-2018, 2:06 PM

Ronster said:

Ah ok interesting… So although a print may have all the detail it might not have the correct exposure?

Hence why a laserdisc has more detail than a print because of being over exposed? or blown in bright part…

So like what I am questioning here about although prints may have more detail over all… They may miss out on certain details depending on how it is handled during exposure?

No, it is not that the print has the ‘wrong’ exposre, the print has the exposure desired by the Director.

The negative will have a lot more shadow and highlight detail than the print.
The print colour and exposure is intentionally different to the negative, this is what grading is - the job of the colourist and the director to decide how the colour and exposure etc. should look on the final print.
So a decision might be made on a particular shot to crush the blacks a bit to set a particular mood, or indeed to hide unwanted detail in the shadows. The director might decide to blow out the highlights to make a scene look more bleak, or an explosion to look more intense etc.

When doing a telecine for home video, often the Director isn’t there for the process, but even if they are, the telecine operator has relatively little control over the exposure and colour choices, as it was adjusted as the film was running.
Also, for home video, decisions were often made, because of the limited colour space of NTSC to wind the highlights back, so a telecine transfer is always going to be a different beast to the release prints.

It isn’t that the film printwasn’t correctly exposed, it was a conscious choice to achieve a particular look, and a different look was often chosen for home video, where the viewer used to be watching on a 12" to 27" 4:3 CRT screen, possibly in black and white, and probably with the living room lights turned on. This makes for a very different decision making process for how the images should look, compared to a dark cinema with a very large screen.