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Post #1396200

Author
Dek Rollins
Parent topic
Info: The films of Sergio Leone - The best available versions...
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1396200/action/topic#1396200
Date created
23-Dec-2020, 9:16 PM

Mike O said:

Isn’t Techniscope sort of like 16mm? Could you squeeze HDR out of that?

The size of the film has literally nothing to do with whether or not HDR can be “squeezed” out of it. Techniscope is a two perf system that effectively halves the amount of film used, since you’re taking standard 35mm film and recording a widescreen frame to take up only two perforations rather than four. So as far as the negative is concerned, I’d say it’s comparable to any film shot on standard 35mm and matted to 1.85:1. Though the Techniscope process might ultimately produce a lower quality image than standard 35mm normally would, I’m not sure. As for you’re 16mm comparison, note that The Evil Dead, shot on 16mm, received an HDR presentation with Dolby Vision compatibility in its 4K release.

The point I’m trying to make is that there’s just as much usable color information in GBU’s Techniscope negative as any other color film negative. HDR is just a digital system that delivers a higher digital dynamic range than previous formats do. It’s up to whoever is creating the HDR grade how much the dynamic range is expanded.

None of that even matters though, since I’ve read Kino’s actual explanation for the lack of HDR and that isn’t it. Apparently the 2014 restoration was finished as a 4K SDR master (I’m still unsure if this means it’s 10-bit SDR or 8-bit SDR), and when Kino considered releasing the film in 4K HDR, they claim the prospective cost of creating a new HDR master was too expensive so they decided against it.