The Evil Dead (1983) 35MM Film Scan DONATIONS NEEDED

Hi all, I’m Rob from the Evil Dead fansite BookOfTheDead.ws. This is a project to fund a 35mm scan of a The Evil Dead (1983) print. See further down as to why it’s worth scanning & preserving over the Blu-Ray version.

Here are the donations people have sent in so far;

$26.06 - zxthehedgehog
$22.97 - TonyAniante
$26.06 - TR2N
$26.06 - morecoffeeman
$51.80 - evildeadfan198
$10.61 - Dek Rollins
$31.20 - Santic
$15.00 - Richard M
$75.00 - Jared K
$15.76 - exile81
$26.06 - SimonM99
$26.06 - The Aluminum Falcon
$15.76 - kubi
$26.44 - Carleton J
$10.61 - Ryan C
$11.00 - Venny

PAID Print Rental - $253.73 ($250 + $3.73 Paypal Fee)
PAID Scanning, 4TB Hard Drive & Postage - $448.76 ($445 + $3.76 Paypal Fee)
Total Actual Scanning Costs - $702.49

Total Donations So Far - $416.45
Less Paypal Donation Fees - $24.99 (6%)
Total Raised - $391.46

I’ve already paid all the costs beyond the donations received, although it would be nice to get enough people interested to reduce that and share the cost more equally. I’m still $311 short on covering my costs.

UPDATE 2 - 03/04/22

Here is a preview of the first 22min reel;

A little bit more on the project, it was scanned in 5K in Raw CinemaDNG format by a US scanner on his Scanstation. The turnaround was only 11 days between him picking up the print from the collector, to my having the 4TB HDD in my hands here in the UK, really quick & highly recommended! He also very kindly ordered the HDD from Amazon.com for me, saving the postage time from the UK to the US.

To the transfer itself; having a RAW CinemaDNG scan, gives a lot more latitude to tweak the various colour & exposure settings, than a scan with ‘baked in’ exposure which might be over or under ideal levels. I was hoping to have one RAW setting for the whole film, but this either gives overexposed opening daylight scenes, or underexposed dark cellar sections, so I’m having to break it down into sections & shots and tweak it more than I thought.

One unexpected issue is processing time. Each 5K frame is 5120x3840px @ 300dpi (28.1mb), with each of the four reels around 31,000 frames a piece (that’s 123,709 frames @ 3.31TB total). I’m running an i7-7700k @ 4.2gHz CPU with 16GB ram & GTX 1060 6GB GPU, and even then it takes around 26 hours encoding time per reel! Rather than working on the 5K file, I’m using mid-way RAW exposure settings, cropping the video down to the final frame size so you can still see the edges, and encoding that to uncompressed AVI 1080p. Then I’m working though tweaking the levels, exposure and colours on that 1080p footage with Red Giant Colourista, which is much faster. Then I can either encode the final file from those AVIs, or apply the same filters to the 5K footage and encode from that. The colours/saturation on this print are very roughly the same as the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray, but I’m generally pushing the white balance more to the blue, and brightening some darker shots up so you can see more detail.

There was also a little light leakage from the sprocket holes on the right of the frame, so any darker shots which are brightened up, have a second copy overlaid, with masking of 90% of the left hand side of the frame, and a gradient of 10% off to the right, with darker blacks to compensate and make the whole picture look even.

Looking at this 35mm transfer’s optical audio and comparing it with the 1985 Japanese Herald Videogram Laserdisc true mono track, and the 2010 Blu-Ray stereo track converted to mono, it appears that the audio on the print is the original mono audio mix printed as dual mono, and has not been remixed or tampered with. Looking at the waveforms, there is very little difference between the laserdisc and 35mm audio, but there are fair differences with the Blu-ray audio. There aren’t really any replacements/alterations but certain sound effects and music start & endings have been blended/faded better in to the mix.

It will probably take a few more weeks to complete as I’m in the middle of another project I need to get finished first, but the project is 90% there. It’s rented, scanned and I have the transfer. It’s just a matter of working through the footage and encoding the final version.

UPDATE 1 - 20/03/22

Okay, so the print has been rented and I’ve got a short 5K test scanned section back.

it’s a mixed bag. I was hoping this would be an untouched print of the film, but it’s not. I’m not sure if people know, but the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray release, and any digital projection you will see anywhere in the world, is a tweaked version. There are a fair list of tweaks version including removal of gate-hairs, lens flairs, blending matte shots, blending jump cuts, etc… Anyway this 35mm print, is that tweaked version, not the original release.

I was hoping that even if this ‘early 2000s’ print was related to that Blu-Ray release, then it would be the original print which they would have scanned and digitized before adding the tweaks before outputting the final digital tweaked version. I wasn’t even aware that the tweaked version existed as a physical print. You can see in this screenshot, Rob Tapert has been digitally removed from the background. So they must have scanned an original print, tweaked it, and transferred that back to 35mm film for some reason. This is that revised version.

When I did my restoration edit for my 2021 Book Of The Dead fanmade Blu-Ray release, I used that 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray as a base and there was 8m 17s of footage out of the 85m 33s I replaced using upscaled standard definition untampered versions, so that gives an idea of how much footage has been altered;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Now I did say the scan was a mixed bag. The colours are really pretty decent (they should be as good as the retail Blu-Ray once tweaked). As you can also see from the above screenshot, the Blu-Ray frame is cropped down from the full 35mm frame. I’ve only checked a few shots which vary according to anything which might need cropping out, but in this 35mm scan there will be more frame visible on every side.

I was hoping for a completely untampered print, and this tampered version is not ideal, but around 90% of the film itself is identical to the theatrical version, and I have my 1080p Blu-Ray restoration ready to go, so all I would need to do is replace the Blu-Ray base I was using, with this 35mm scan, and I can very easily output the untampered theatrical version in 1080p. If in the future, another 35mm print was to be located, then that could fill in the tampered-gaps.

ORIGINAL POST - 06/12/21

A few years back, I undertook a project to scan all three Evil Dead trilogy 35mm trailers out of my own pocket, which you can ready more on here;

https://bookofthedead.ws/website/features_evil_dead_trilogy_35mm_trailers.html

From that, I can (roughly) compare the full 35mm frame, to the cropping of the current best releases. You can see the results here;

2015 2K 35mm trailer transfer (Blue) -Vs- 1999 US R1 Elite SE DVD trailer (Green) -Vs- 2010 US AB LE Open Matte movie (Red)

I also own a few strips of out-take 16mm film from the shoot. This strip & overlaid frame are part of the same shot. It was scanned using a negative scanner so the quality isn’t amazing, but it gives an idea of how much picture was cropped on the Blu-Ray from the original framing

Original 16mm film (Blue) -Vs- 2010 US AB LE Open Matte movie (Red)

Asides the frame cropping, there are also a long list of Blu-Ray/UltraHD tweaks to ‘fix’ the rough low-budget edges of the movie, including crew-members, lens flares & hairs digitally removed, handheld shots steadied, smoothing jump cuts & matte shots, recolouring various elements such as the sky, and more. If you see a digital projection of this anywhere, you’re more than likely watching this ‘restored’ version. If you want to read up on that, it’s all covered here;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Even if the quality of the 35mm print is poor, at least it’s a start, and could serve as a repair print for a second future scan. I know the ED1 35mm trailer I had scanned was red from start to finish, but I managed to get something half decent out of it, which took around a week or so of work. Conversely the ED2 scan needed very little work, and that was printed only four years later. I guess it also comes down to stock & storage too. This is a photo from the ED1 trailer reel I was scanning/working from;

The raw 2k scan;

And this is the final 1080p colour corrected scan;

This is an awesome preservation opportunity, and seems to be well organized with a concrete plan for scanning. Glad to have pledged to it. As the original post mentions, the current HD/4K master has some baked-in tweaks. So it would be very important to scan this.

Plus, The Evil Dead totally seems like a cool movie to preserve in 35mm!

Can wait for this plus Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness rescanned!

Okay, so the print has been rented and I’ve got a short 5K test scanned section back.

it’s a mixed bag. I was hoping this would be an untouched print of the film, but it’s not. I’m not sure if people know, but the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray release, and any digital projection you will see anywhere in the world, is a tweaked version. There are a fair list of tweaks version including removal of gate-hairs, lens flairs, blending matte shots, blending jump cuts, etc… Anyway this 35mm print, is that tweaked version, not the original release.

I was hoping that even if this ‘early 2000s’ print was related to that Blu-Ray release, then it would be the original print which they would have scanned and digitized before adding the tweaks before outputting the final digital tweaked version. I wasn’t even aware that the tweaked version existed as a physical print. You can see in this screenshot, Rob Tapert has been digitally removed from the background. So they must have scanned an original print, tweaked it, and transferred that back to 35mm film for some reason. This is that revised version.

When I did my restoration edit for my 2021 Book Of The Dead fanmade Blu-Ray release, I used that 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray as a base and there was 8m 17s of footage out of the 85m 33s I replaced using upscaled standard definition untampered versions, so that gives an idea of how much footage has been altered;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Now I did say the scan was a mixed bag. The colours are really pretty decent (they should be as good as the retail Blu-Ray once tweaked). As you can also see from the above screenshot, the Blu-Ray frame is cropped down from the full 35mm frame. I’ve only checked a few shots which vary according to anything which might need cropping out, but in this 35mm scan there will be more frame visible on every side.

I was hoping for a completely untampered print, and this tampered version is not ideal, but around 90% of the film itself is identical to the theatrical version, and I have my 1080p Blu-Ray restoration ready to go, so all I would need to do is replace the Blu-Ray base I was using, with this 35mm scan, and I can very easily output the untampered theatrical version in 1080p. If in the future, another 35mm print was to be located, then that could fill in the tampered-gaps.

RU.08 said:

I was hoping that even if this ‘early 2000s’ print was related to that Blu-Ray release, then it would be the original print which they would have scanned and digitized before adding the tweaks before outputting the final digital tweaked version. I wasn’t even aware that the tweaked version existed as a physical print. You can see in this screenshot, Rob Tapert has been digitally removed from the background. So they must have scanned an original print, tweaked it, and transferred that back to 35mm film for some reason. This is that revised version.

In the early 00’s they definitely would not have digitised the whole film for film-out. The difference between digital and photochemical should be fairly obvious as well making those scenes easy to identify which may assist you in the future if you ever scan another print.

I’d guess it’s 2010 or 2011 actually because it’s the same as the BD master. Would that make it more likely for it to be a film out?

The Aluminum Falcon said:

I’d guess it’s 2010 or 2011 actually because it’s the same as the BD master. Would that make it more likely for it to be a film out?

The US blu-Ray was released on August 31, 2010, so it would have been at least some months before that.

There was a theatrical revival back in 2009. This print is likely from that run which would have been the restoration at that time. Why it doesn’t have a cyan soundtrack I don’t know.

https://www.filmbuffonline.com/FBOLNewsreel/wordpress/2009/12/01/first-batch-of-evil-dead-midnight-screening-dates/

Sent my donation!

UPDATE 2 - 03/04/22

Here is a preview of the first 22min reel;

A little bit more on the project, it was scanned in 5K in Raw CinemaDNG format by a US scanner on his Scanstation. The turnaround was only 11 days between him picking up the print from the collector, to my having the 4TB HDD in my hands here in the UK, really quick & highly recommended! He also very kindly ordered the HDD from Amazon.com for me, saving the postage time from the UK to the US.

To the transfer itself; having a RAW CinemaDNG scan, gives a lot more latitude to tweak the various colour & exposure settings, than a scan with ‘baked in’ exposure which might be over or under ideal levels. I was hoping to have one RAW setting for the whole film, but this either gives overexposed opening daylight scenes, or underexposed dark cellar sections, so I’m having to break it down into sections & shots and tweak it more than I thought.

One unexpected issue is processing time. Each 5K frame is 5120x3840px @ 300dpi (28.1mb), with each of the four reels around 31,000 frames a piece (that’s 123,709 frames @ 3.31TB total). I’m running an i7-7700k @ 4.2gHz CPU with 16GB ram & GTX 1060 6GB GPU, and even then it takes around 26 hours encoding time per reel! Rather than working on the 5K file, I’m using mid-way RAW exposure settings, cropping the video down to the final frame size so you can still see the edges, and encoding that to uncompressed AVI 1080p. Then I’m working though tweaking the levels, exposure and colours on that 1080p footage with Red Giant Colourista, which is much faster. Then I can either encode the final file from those AVIs, or apply the same filters to the 5K footage and encode from that. The colours/saturation on this print are very roughly the same as the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray, but I’m generally pushing the white balance more to the blue, and brightening some darker shots up so you can see more detail.

There was also a little light leakage from the sprocket holes on the right of the frame, so any darker shots which are brightened up, have a second copy overlaid, with masking of 90% of the left hand side of the frame, and a gradient of 10% off to the right, with darker blacks to compensate and make the whole picture look even.

Looking at this 35mm transfer’s optical audio and comparing it with the 1985 Japanese Herald Videogram Laserdisc true mono track, and the 2010 Blu-Ray stereo track converted to mono, it appears that the audio on the print is the original mono audio mix printed as dual mono, and has not been remixed or tampered with. Looking at the waveforms, there is very little difference between the laserdisc and 35mm audio, but there are fair differences with the Blu-ray audio. There aren’t really any replacements/alterations but certain sound effects and music start & endings have been blended/faded better in to the mix.

It will probably take a few more weeks to complete as I’m in the middle of another project I need to get finished first, but the project is 90% there. It’s rented, scanned and I have the transfer. It’s just a matter of working through the footage and encoding the final version.

You want to preserve THE ONLY 100% PURE and 100% PRISTINE EXISTING versions of The Evil Dead (1981) ???

There are The THX APPROVED and CERTIFIED Widescreen and Full-Frame DEFINITIVE versions included EXCLUSIVELY in The ULTIMATE Edition DVD.

THE ULTIMATE PRINT.
THE SUPREME TRANSFER.

You will NEVER get ANYTHING BETTER than that, because NOTHING BETTER EXISTS.

(stop your lies, goodbye, scammers)

The_Evil_Dead_1_Fan said:

You want to preserve THE ONLY 100% PURE and 100% PRISTINE EXISTING versions of The Evil Dead (1981) ???

There are The THX APPROVED and CERTIFIED Widescreen and Full-Frame DEFINITIVE versions included EXCLUSIVELY in The ULTIMATE Edition DVD.

THE ULTIMATE PRINT.
THE SUPREME TRANSFER.

You will NEVER get ANYTHING BETTER than that, because NOTHING BETTER EXISTS.

(stop your lies, goodbye, scammers)

ok

The_Evil_Dead_1_Fan said:

You want to preserve THE ONLY 100% PURE and 100% PRISTINE EXISTING versions of The Evil Dead (1981) ???

There are The THX APPROVED and CERTIFIED Widescreen and Full-Frame DEFINITIVE versions included EXCLUSIVELY in The ULTIMATE Edition DVD.

THE ULTIMATE PRINT.
THE SUPREME TRANSFER.

You will NEVER get ANYTHING BETTER than that, because NOTHING BETTER EXISTS.

(stop your lies, goodbye, scammers)

You do realize that prints of Evil Dead BEFORE edits were done exist right? Also who said anyone was scamming? Stop acting like a crazy person

Venny said:

The_Evil_Dead_1_Fan said:

You want to preserve THE ONLY 100% PURE and 100% PRISTINE EXISTING versions of The Evil Dead (1981) ???

There are The THX APPROVED and CERTIFIED Widescreen and Full-Frame DEFINITIVE versions included EXCLUSIVELY in The ULTIMATE Edition DVD.

THE ULTIMATE PRINT.
THE SUPREME TRANSFER.

You will NEVER get ANYTHING BETTER than that, because NOTHING BETTER EXISTS.

(stop your lies, goodbye, scammers)

You do realize that prints of Evil Dead BEFORE edits were done exist right? Also who said anyone was scamming? Stop acting like a crazy person

But, they’re already a crazy person.
I have that Ultimate Edition DVD set, even have the 4K release too, and it’d be damn awesome to see a 35mm scan, in 4K of course! Because it’s the raw cinema version, and before all the zany edits. Better than a preservation of one of the Laserdiscs, IMO. UNLESS if a Laserdisc has exclusive bonus features or alternately interesting color timing.

The_Evil_Dead_1_Fan said:

You want to preserve THE ONLY 100% PURE and 100% PRISTINE EXISTING versions of The Evil Dead (1981) ???

There are The THX APPROVED and CERTIFIED Widescreen and Full-Frame DEFINITIVE versions included EXCLUSIVELY in The ULTIMATE Edition DVD.

THE ULTIMATE PRINT.
THE SUPREME TRANSFER.

You will NEVER get ANYTHING BETTER than that, because NOTHING BETTER EXISTS.

(stop your lies, goodbye, scammers)

Hey, chucklenut. Why don’t you check the original DVD release, followed by all the Blu-Ray stuff, and THEN come back here and tell us what you find? We’ll be waiting patiently.