THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 17

Very interesting! There's a white speck on Duvall's lower lip in both. (Yet a new speck on the manipulator control rod in the foreground.) Possibly a different transfer of the same print?

Does our old friend the mystery white fleck show up in the scene where THX and Hologram guy converse in the room full of blue jars?

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Jaitea. :)

If you look at the label on the blue jar, there is more picture information on the right side of the frame on the PAL disc. On the car in the tunnel shot, there is less. Very strange...

The aspect ratio of THX is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1/2.40:1 if you want to be pedantic. Films always have some amount of cropping applied when transferred to video.

Speaking of aspect ratios, I just noticed that the Italian cut actually have four different aspect ratios!! only the main feature was broadcasted correctly.

Ok, how do you want me to handle this, as I've already said the Italian broadcast have different aspect ratios, the opening titles for example is in letterbox but in wrong aspect and suddenly in the second half of the titles, the image shifts to fullframe but instead of the correct aspect ratio it stretches the image as seen below.

Should I leave it alone or should I just add borders to make the aspect ratio correct 4:3 LB like this?

The problem is, if I do it like this, the black borders will not match the borders of the other resized titles.

And is this even the correct way of doing it when dealing with vertically stretched video? Just using the addborder command in Avisynth? Please help out a happy amatuer!

msycamore said:

Another thing, in the broadcast, the channel logo appears in the corner of the frame five or six times, I don't remember exactly, the first appearence is in the black border so that one is easy to mask out, but the other instances we will have to live with, as it was broadcasted in pan & scan.

You could always try to splice in fullscreen footage from another source to get rid of them, but I don't think the logo is that disturbing. Thoughts?

 

There are several logo-removing filters for VirtualDub that might be worth trying, depending on what is behind it.  I've used them on occasion.

Thanks for the suggestion Puggo, don't know if it will be entirely possible as there's often important picture information behind it, but I think I will take a look at this VirtualDub, anyway. Thanks. :)

erri_wan said:

If I'm not mistaken Lucas said in some audio commentary that 2.35:1 is the only format that preserves the original proportions. I never really investigated on it but I'm supposing that if Laserdisc has a different ratio (for example 1.85:1 or other) then it would necessarily have something cropped. 

It depends entirely on what format the film was shot in, it doesn't have anything with the media it's stored on.

erri_wan said:

myscamore, I've got a little trivia about Italian 4:3 movies for you. Movies altered to fit into letterbox format often kept the ending titles in widescreen. I never understood why. Usually you would see the black orizontal bars coming in at the end of the film. The most noticeable I remember was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because the ending credits roll in without cuts or fades to black so you see these two black bars squeezing the film. Was this procedure done also in other countries or did we only have the pleasure?

In the era of only 4:3 TV's, the only way to preserv the full aspect ratio of widescreen films was to have video transfers in 4:3 letterbox, black borders at the top and bottom of the frame, way back when most films were mostly presented in fullframe or pan&scan, many opening titles and end titles was often presented in letterbox or slightly squished to fit the screen. So what you describe is not something that was unique to Italian audiences, this was the common practice in the earlier video age.

erri_wan said:

msycamore for the question of the four different aspect ratio I would just leave exactly as it is for two reason

First because it's less work for you

Second and most importantly because we want to preserve the Italian version "as is", including the letterboxing choices.

Afterall we (us Europeans) will still have the PAL version in Disc 1 with correct widescreen so in my opinion it's best to leave it the way Italians choose to release it, with all four different aspect ratios. They are editing choices that we should leave untouched if we want to show THX as it was shown to Italians (and maybe other European countries too... if I can find a German or French tape to make sure).

That is my opinion at least. It seems to be the best choice for the project.

 Fully agree, less work and it preserves how it would have been seen in that time and location.

In other news, here is a concept i threw together for a possible cover, its just an idea so things are unfinished, i kept it all black and white to keep the front cover in line with the back cover images

Thoughts?

The Zoetrope logo on the spine is a nice touch. :)

Would "Italian Cut" be a more accurate description though? Some people might think Italian Version is simply a dubbed track.

Here's a idea for the back label text:

"Rescued from a 19?? Italian tv broadcast, this rare alternate cut of THX features an unique prologue, narration, and creative dialog dubbing by the foreign distributor. English subtitles are provided to fit your consumer.

This version also features several seconds of footage not seen in any official video release of the film! And as always, work hard, and prevent accidents!"

Thats a big help! Thanks guys :)

erri_wan said:

msycamore for the question of the four different aspect ratio I would just leave exactly as it is for two reason

First because it's less work for you

Second and most importantly because we want to preserve the Italian version "as is", including the letterboxing choices.

 

Why in the world would you want to preserve a broadcasting error? The TV-master they had was correct that it had the picture in letterbox at the beginning and end, but it was still displayed at the wrong aspect ratio (vertically stretched).

erri_wan said:

Afterall we (us Europeans) will still have the PAL version in Disc 1 with correct widescreen so in my opinion it's best to leave it the way Italians choose to release it, with all four different aspect ratios. They are editing choices that we should leave untouched if we want to show THX as it was shown to Italians (and maybe other European countries too... if I can find a German or French tape to make sure).

That is my opinion at least. It seems to be the best choice for the project.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, or if you understand me, this is still video related flaws. When this film played at Italian cinemas, the picture was beautiful and not stretched vertically, and it didn't have PAL-speedup either. This is not editing choices, or some European standard, it has simply been broadcasted incorrectly, it happens all the time unfortunately.

As seen on your broadcast, letterboxed but wrong aspect:

letterboxed but correct aspect:

The reason I asked about the issue with the opening credits, is because the first half of it is presented in letterbox, still in the wrong aspect ratio though:

Corrected:

but when they decided to suddenly go fullscreen in the later parts of the credits, it became horribly streched in order to not crop out some of the titles, why they decided to do this, is beyond me, when they just could have had the whole credits letterboxed. The switch in aspect ratio comes at a place where the screen is black, so no problems with that. So the question is, do you want me to leave it as is:

or correct it with black borders:

No matter what, it will look jarring, the borders size will suddenly gets bigger. IMO the latter is a better choice but I want to know what you all think about it.

As for what this version should be called, why not call it what it is "Italian TV-broadcast version". The run time on the Italian video boxes indicates that this is the old regular Italian cut, but we're still not entirely sure of this. Also the German TV-broadcast discussed earlier in this thread was much longer and different from this version.

I belive i seem to have missinterpreted you earlier aswell Myscamore, i did not realise the actual "film" parts, outside of the credits were in wrong AR, in that case, at least for the film it self, fixed is better (IMO) and if you do go the rout of fixing the AR, might aswell fix the credits too, makes the presentation more streamlined.

Sorry if this ends up making things confused for you Myscamore, i should have read more carefully earlier.

And "Italian TV-broadcast version" seems to be the best description so far, good call ;)

Sounds like a good fix to me, as it would be more in line with how widescreen movies were usually presented on tv at the time, at least over here.

No problem, Rogue. I don't think I described it that clear earlier anyway.

Again, no need to apologize, erri. These things are confusing sometimes, and as I said, I didn't explain it that well the first time.