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Alien 1979 - 35mm scan opportunity (a WIP) — Page 2

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One of the existing donors sent through a contribution. THANKS! You’re a legend. Anyone else who’s interested in helping please get in contact with me ASAP!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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This is great news, I am in.

Amadeus 35mm-Project WIP. Help needed!!

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Yes, count me in.

Film is not Dead

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A picture of our glorious scan:

Here it is projection-accurate:

And here it is corrected for fade:

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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marvelous, thank you for that. this looks more organic than the blu

Amadeus 35mm-Project WIP. Help needed!!

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I am excited to announce that this project will be utilising two prints. Here is a sample from the other print with some rough colour correction:

And here’s the above screenshot with a very quick regrade to match:

Both prints are very badly faded. But we have quite a bit of latitude with the colour as you see, and the aim is to recover the original colour grading.

I’m not suggesting the above scene is supposed to look blue like the grading above. I don’t know myself yet whether it is supposed to be green or blue. Grading the film accurately without any un-faded film to compare against is nearly impossible - but good news! We have scanned some unfaded footage of Alien too, and it has been graded to projection accurate, so we should be able to fully recover the correct grading of the entire film without having to “guess” whether certain scenes should look “more blue” or “more green”.

All in all a lot of work is going into this project. But right now we need to pay for our scan, so if anyone would like to help with donations please get in contact. We’ll be working out some samples to share with donors soon as well.

Thanks everyone!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I’ve gone over our scan, for the most part it looks good. We need to do some re-scans, but it’s only 1 reel that is problematic. Overall the print is very clean, and also very good condition with little damage. I’ll be sending out some previews to donors shortly.

Thanks all!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Some previews are now available to donors, I think I’ve contacted everyone - but if I haven’t shoot me a message.

Thanks!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I can’t wait to see this. This is my favorite horror film.

YUB NUB!

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Is it still possible to donate to this project? This is something I would love to take a look for sure! If you still need a small donation feel free to let me know.

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I would be willing to donate too, PM me with details

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 (Edited)

Splendid… But unfortunately, I’m still a student, I can not help you for all these projects: '(
Maybe next year, after the end of my studies : '(
But I can advertise in my entourage and on other forums

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Incredible effort!

is there any way for me to donate to this project? Please PM if I can help

thanks!

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SilverWook said:

Then you should have no problem ignoring the thread.

I don’t mind his comment, print-based preservations aren’t to everyone’s taste.

TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

This doesn’t need to happen, especially with the 4K UHD release.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alien-4K-Blu-ray/230308/
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5205&d2=13061&s1=48549&s2=130852&i=2&l=1

The preservation won’t match the quality of the Bluray (let alone the UHD) but it will preserve the theatrical version of the film.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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SilverWook said:

TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

This doesn’t need to happen, especially with the 4K UHD release.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alien-4K-Blu-ray/230308/
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5205&d2=13061&s1=48549&s2=130852&i=2&l=1

Then you should have no problem ignoring the thread.

SW - that was a good one

RU.08 said:

I don’t mind his comment, print-based preservations aren’t to everyone’s taste.

Even so, many of us certainly do appreciate the time, energy, effort and money that has been invested by you and other members of the community on print-based preservations, to enable us to watch and enjoy films as they were originally intended to have been seen and for that, I personally thank you. 😃

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

SilverWook said:

Then you should have no problem ignoring the thread.

I don’t mind his comment, print-based preservations aren’t to everyone’s taste.

TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

This doesn’t need to happen, especially with the 4K UHD release.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alien-4K-Blu-ray/230308/
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5205&d2=13061&s1=48549&s2=130852&i=2&l=1

The preservation won’t match the quality of the Bluray (let alone the UHD) but it will preserve the theatrical version of the film.

Theatrical edition is preserved on the 4K UHD (on a BD100) with insane amounts of detail I’ve never seen before regarding an official home media release, including the Blu-ray disc which is included.
You better not use noise reduction. Film grain is great. Do not colormatch to any release as you’ve mentioned except other film prints. Pointless to try to match with the extremely outdated Laserdiscs and taking it a step up with what you’re doing.
Better be on a high bitrate BD50 with AVC or a MKV encoded with H.265 with a nice filesize. No idea if you’ve mentioned it but would be ideal to include the optical track, if possible, via lossless.

Will make for a great companion fan disc anyway for an older print, i.e. complimentary with the 6-Disc ALIEN Anthology Blu-ray disc release.
Thank you for your effort though.

JayArgonaut said:

SilverWook said:

TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

This doesn’t need to happen, especially with the 4K UHD release.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Alien-4K-Blu-ray/230308/
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5205&d2=13061&s1=48549&s2=130852&i=2&l=1

Then you should have no problem ignoring the thread.

RU.08 said:

I don’t mind his comment, print-based preservations aren’t to everyone’s taste.

Even so, many of us certainly do appreciate the time, energy, effort and money that has been invested by you and other members of the community on print-based preservations, to enable us to watch and enjoy films as they were originally intended to have been seen and for that, I personally thank you. 😃

Do you not have access to watch 4K UHD physical releases? Theatrical Edition on the UHD is solely 4K (which I heavily prefer) and the “Director’s” Cut is thankfully only a 2K upscale. So yes, the former is 100% is as originally intended, regardless of all fan preservations. The audio is amazingly lossless:

4K (Theatrical Cut):
English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English DTS-HD Master Audio 4.1
English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo

Caveat, this is just a companion piece, it’s not a be-all, end-all the only way to watch this film. Just another way to, IMO.

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TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

You better not use noise reduction. Film grain is great. Do not colormatch to any release as you’ve mentioned except other film prints. Pointless to try to match with the extremely outdated Laserdiscs and taking it a step up with what you’re doing.

I think you’re misunderstanding quite a lot about film scanning. I’ve seen both scans we have so far, from two different prints scanned on two different machines, and both of them have quite a bit of scanner noise in them. I’m getting one reel re-scanned professionally on equipment that is virtually noise-free, once we have that we’ll know exactly how much to reduce the noise by.

As for colour grading, it’s a lot more involved then that. We have a few minutes from a (virtually) un-faded print, but both of the prints we scanned were red. The un-faded scan, even though it isn’t much, is our reference for the rest of the film and we have a pretty good idea about how the film should look.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:

You better not use noise reduction. Film grain is great. Do not colormatch to any release as you’ve mentioned except other film prints. Pointless to try to match with the extremely outdated Laserdiscs and taking it a step up with what you’re doing.

I think you’re misunderstanding quite a lot about film scanning. I’ve seen both scans we have so far, from two different prints scanned on two different machines, and both of them have quite a bit of scanner noise in them. I’m getting one reel re-scanned professionally on equipment that is virtually noise-free, once we have that we’ll know exactly how much to reduce the noise by.

As for colour grading, it’s a lot more involved then that. We have a few minutes from a (virtually) un-faded print, but both of the prints we scanned were red. The un-faded scan, even though it isn’t much, is our reference for the rest of the film and we have a pretty good idea about how the film should look.

Alrighty then. You’re going to retain the silver halide crystals then and reduce the scanner noise?

EDIT: I’m a shitearse.

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TiddySprinklesPimpBillion said:
Theatrical Edition on the UHD is solely 4K (which I heavily prefer) and the “Director’s” Cut is thankfully only a 2K upscale. So yes, the former is 100% is as originally intended,

What does this mean? The 4K disc is a modern rendition of the film intended for digital displays, with colour grading informed by the director’s current, 21st century sensibilities.

It is not possible that that is what was originally intended, 40 years ago. Ridley Scott and his crew weren’t shaking their heads, bemoaning the limitations of 35mm photography and reproduction - they understood their medium and made the best film they could WITHIN those limitations.

4K offers tremendous opportunities for clarity, detail, depth and stability, but if you want genuine ‘intent’, you need a film print.

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Well for the theatrical experience anyway. The “detail” in prints is 1-2K not anywhere near 4K (although they have much richer dynamic range than digital) and most prints have little shadow/highlight detail, the exception being dye-transfer prints that retain the same detail level into the shadows/highlights. Blurays and 2K/4K restorations are often sharpened way beyond the sharpness of prints as well. This is not a limitation of prints - films like Alien were shot in anamorphic and transferred using contact-printing so there is little to no loss of sharpness between the negative and the final prints.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Indeed. 4K transfers should be technically superior, in terms of detail retention and consistency of performance, every time.

But that’s not what films shot in the 1970s were designed for - even TV and home video would have been a distant afterthought. It was all about rendering the best possible image on those theatrical prints, and all the creative decisions in the filmmaking process had that firmly set as their end goal.

4K (and, to be fair, Blu-ray) are fantastic at wringing visual information out of archival film materials - it’s among their chief selling points - but they’re aimed at achieving a much different purpose than the one those materials were created for. Hence my concern about claims of ‘original intent’, which is always a dicey issue with this technology.