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2001: A Space Odyssey SEVERE Color Changes in 50th Anniversary Edition! :(

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Guys… This is bad. Really bad. At least with this trailer, the original color timing of 2001: A Space Odyssey has been severely altered. It looks like someone just threw on a super crappy teal/orange LUT! 😦

New trailer: https://youtu.be/oR_e9y-bka0
Color comparison: https://imgur.com/TUf1M38

I really hope it’s only like this in the trailer and NOT in the actual Blu-ray release.

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Man, I usually don’t give a swimming shit about color accuracy but if that’s real it looks horrible and I’ve only even seen the film once so I’m not just used to the old coloring.

I do want to watch it again it was a great film.

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Reminds me of the 70mm print I saw in November. Looks legit.

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DominicCobb said:

Reminds me of the 70mm print I saw in November. Looks legit.

I think bad NTSC masters throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s established a preference for color timing that was never close to the original film.

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MTFBWY…A

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Kubrick personally signed off on the Criterion Laserdisc master though.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

Jay said:

DominicCobb said:

Reminds me of the 70mm print I saw in November. Looks legit.

I think bad NTSC masters throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s established a preference for color timing that was never close to the original film.

Yup.

SilverWook said:

Kubrick personally signed off on the Criterion Laserdisc master though.

Well, who knows.

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In all seriousness though, I think it looks really good. Always seemed a little too stark, bright white for a movie from that era. This looks more natural, and it doesn’t make my eyes hurt.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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Since they say this was a completely photochemical restoration, do you think these colors can partly be explained due to fading? The yellow tones in the second shot bring this to mind.

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SilverWook said:

Kubrick personally signed off on the Criterion Laserdisc master though.

If it was in line with other masters at the time, he may have been fine with it not quite looking like film; the limited color space of NTSC didn’t give colorists a lot of flexibility. And we don’t know how much he cared about getting the color spot-on for home viewing. Maybe he wasn’t as picky about color as he was about framing.

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MTFBWY…A

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Jay said:

SilverWook said:

Kubrick personally signed off on the Criterion Laserdisc master though.

If it was in line with other masters at the time, he may have been fine with it not quite looking like film; the limited color space of NTSC didn’t give colorists a lot of flexibility. And we don’t know how much he cared about getting the color spot-on for home viewing. Maybe he wasn’t as picky about color as he was about framing.

Actually, we might find out very soon. 😉
https://youtu.be/PEZ2r1YGKSA

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Where were you in '77?

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If this was achieved exclusively through photochemical means that negative must have been in perfect shape. Happens all the time in film restoration.

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 (Edited)

If it is in the Blu-ray release, Then i guess someone could do a color correction.

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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Handman said:

Since they say this was a completely photochemical restoration, do you think these colors can partly be explained due to fading? The yellow tones in the second shot bring this to mind.

I’m honestly not convinced that it was all done photochemically (at least in this trailer), even if that’s what they claim. The teal/orange look doesn’t feel natural nor does it look like an actual film stock. Instead, it looks like a crappy OSIRIS LUT that wannabe filmmakers apply to their garbage DSLR footage. It looks AWFUL. The highlights are all brown and poopy. White is supposed to be white, not diarrhea brown. There’s NO way Kubrick would approve of how his movie looks in this trailer.

I honestly just hope that this is something that was done to the trailer to make it seem more like a “modern” sci-fi film, and that it’s not actually this way in the film itself. Fingers crossed…

Also, I am a professional colorist, so maybe I’m just really sensitive to this kind of stuff. To me it just really seems like not much care was put into this edition.

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I do wonder what Kubrick would say about the proliferation of teal in modern film. No one seems to give a damn, cinematographers included.

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I thought the 70mm prints we’re photochemically restored, but I don’t remember hearing any such assurances about the UHD BR release. Anyone have a source on that claim?

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 (Edited)

I don’t think that’s really a teal and orange look, and I do think it looks like film, whether it was done photochemically or not. The richer orange and greens seem very film-esque to me, and look almost exactly how I remember the film when I saw it projected (though yes, of course that isn’t a perfect barometer).

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I saw one of the screenings of the 70mm just last night. After I got back home, I checked my dinky galaxy s8 to see if the 4k restoration trailer from Chris Nolan was anywhere near accurate. I can say without a shadow of doubt, this is the most accurate film transfer I have ever seen. Of course the quality was lacking in terms or digital vs crystal clear (and stuttery) celluloid film. There is no revisionism in terms of white balance, crushed blacks or anything, except for an exceptional clean up job of dust and scratches. The old bluray definitely stinks of revisionism and modern standards of the time. I’m glad we had someone like Chris Nolan overseeing the whole thing. Wish we had someone just like that for the beloved original trilogy… 😒

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I went and saw this last Tuesday and was hoping there was a thread about it already here – the print definitely leans toward the screenshots of the new trailer, so whether they were the original colors or not, that definitely wasn’t just done to give it a more contemporary sci-fi look in the trailer. I don’t know enough to say if it’s correct, but I seem to recall Kubrick having a fondness for pastel colors in the production of the movie, which feels more in line with the top pictures in 44rh1n’s comparison.

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Lust-In-Phaze said:

I went and saw this last Tuesday and was hoping there was a thread about it already here – the print definitely leans toward the screenshots of the new trailer, so whether they were the original colors or not, that definitely wasn’t just done to give it a more contemporary sci-fi look in the trailer. I don’t know enough to say if it’s correct, but I seem to recall Kubrick having a fondness for pastel colors in the production of the movie, which feels more in line with the top pictures in 44rh1n’s comparison.

The prints were struck from an O-neg.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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I got to see 2001 on a new 70mm print very recently, and it was fantastic. I’d honestly call it one of the greatest experiences of my life. There’s just something about those film qualities that you don’t get with digital – the subtle flicker, the glow, the quiet whirring of the projector in the background – it’s been ages since I’ve since a movie like that, and I loved it.

Whether the color timing of the new prints is completely authentic to the original release I couldn’t say, but the colors and contrast did look exceptionally good throughout. It didn’t have any of the blue-tinted walls seen on the Bluray; if anything, the bright whites actually seemed slightly yellowish at times. Nothing about it felt revisionist or overly modern. Nolan and his associates did an exceptionally good job with this, and I’m very grateful for their efforts. If the 4K version looks like the print, then I’d be quite happy with it.

I also loved finally getting to hear the original sound mix. There was some very effective mono surround usage during the Dawn of Man sequence, the dialog panning contributed to the scope of certain scenes, and HAL’s voice often seemed to come from everywhere at once. The radio signal from the second monolith was piercingly loud! I hadn’t been expecting that at all (on the remix it is lower in level), but it was quite effective for the scene. There was a fair amount of low end during the stargate sequence as well, not as much as the remix since it doesn’t use an LFE channel, but it felt appropriate. I heard a small amount of distortion on the loudest peaks occasionally, but nothing to be concerned about.

I never thought I’d get to see 2001 (or any other film) in 70mm, so this was definitely one of those all-time great moments for me. Now I just wish I could see it again the same way.