Originally posted by: Johnboy3434
I think losing a little detail is worth it if it means seeing absolutely nothing but the action on the film (unless, of course, the grain is part of the movie's "style"). That's what was so fantastic about the PT, RotS in particular: That mother was clean as a whistle. It looked like there was literally nothing between you and the actors. Normally you need cheap red and blue glasses to do that. So yes, grain is, and will forever remain, my enemy.

I'd say thats whats so shit about the PT: the image looks so artificial. The clarity and grainless image of HD is considered undesirable and aesthetically unpleasing by most cinematographers, and I think the absolutely piss-poor cinematography of the PT is mostly due to HD; TPM looks okay a lot of the time, theres a softness and a graineyness to it, it has an organic feel--its only in the all-digital scenes like the Gungan battle that it gets that fake, video gamey artificial look, and unfortunately AOTC and ROTS had that feeling 100% of the time. People have been sucked into the whole "clarity" thing, but bright colors and clean images do not make an artistic image IMO. Its interesting that we are witnessing the beginning of an aesthetic shift in your average person due to digital technology, but IMO its a false aesthetic, its born out of the perception that clarity and saturation=quality, one born out a confluence of video games and CGI, the development of digital cameras, and the corporate propaganda of companies trying to sell people HD technology.

But anyway as far as removing grain goes, its absolutely possible to take out all the grain without losing any detail. For proof see the OT DVDs. Back in the early 1990s we had really primitive technology so when we removed grain we were erasing part of the image--this was counterbalanced by smearing the image to cover the holes, so you had a "cleaner" image but one that wasn't as sharp. Thats basically what DVNR is. But its not like that today. Those were just filters overlayed over the image. Today we have sophisticated computer algorithims that analyse and reconstruct the image to remove grain. Its true that its artificial in some sense--you are erasing the original image, you can't erase grain without erasing the image because the grain is the image. But modern remasters aren't pot-marked by white holes, otherwise what would be the point of erasing grain, you would just end up with exact same effect only white instead of black--you need to fill in the holes with what should be there. Computer algorithms do this by analysing the pixels next to where the grain dot is and basically creating the image that should be where the hole is. So in that sense, yes, its artificial in that its computer simulated, but its virtually perfect, a perfect reconstruction of what the image would be like if it were photographed without grain. The first experiments done with this were too perfect--Lowry's first project was Citizen Kane, and not only did they erase dirt, but they erased the grain of the emulsion itself, and it ended up looking like video, it was too clear. They've since changed the algorithm so that it leaves the grain of the negative but targets dirt and such--but IMO the OT DVD's are slightly too clear looking, possibly under direction of Lucas who wanted them to match the PT (ie the new, HD-emulating, shit-tastic color-timing).

Grain on the negative should never be removed. Its the image. One should not remove grain for the same reason one should not remove flares, wires, and other limitations of the technology the film was made with, its the whole colorizing-B&W-films argument.