If anyone here went to go see the 3D release of The Phantom Menace, please tell me what the master and color grading looked like. Did it look like the 2011 Blu-ray, or this new Disney+ version?
I didn’t see the 3d release. But skimming through the movies the Prequels are just upscaled Blu-ray. I.e. nasty teal shift in Aotc.
I seriously would like to understand why people who do 4K HDR remasters have such a love for adding unappealing teal filters to their older films. Especially when it’s not the accurate color grading the movie had when released.
It’s not a “teal filter” but rather a fairly standard Kodak print emulation, which happens to have some more analogue teal-like blues that make their way into the midtones and shadows.
It’s an interesting debate, because early digital releases of films were often scanned from the negative and then given a digital grade back when digital grading was very primitive. So they have a very digital look. (The OT 2004/2011 SE is a perfect example of this). So for years, we’ve gotten used to how old movies shot on film look after they’ve been colored for SDR screens.
But lately, studios and colorists have started to take a different approach: rather than going with a purely digital grade on top of the scanned negative, they now will oftentimes seek to emulate how the films would have looked in a theatrical setting, with an actual print.
I’m not sure where my opinion rests on the matter. But it’s not just someone saying “hey let’s just make this teal for no reason.” It’s an actual discussion that happens as to whether or not they should run with just a correction applied to the negative, or if they should emulate a print stock. There’s a great argument to be made for both methods.
In this case, I quite like it. The prequels now look a lot more like how they appeared in theaters, and the new look really brings down the harsh digital aesthetic. I personally dig it.
I’ve hated the alteration of colors for various other 4K HDR versions, though. I guess it just depends on the film for me.