Info: Observation on cinematographic composition and atmospheric diffusion (aka one of the reasons why the '04 transfer looks so bad)

Surfing the net the other day, I came across this document on the subject of cinematography.

The author uses paintings to illustrate some of the principles of composition. One of the paintings is this one by Gustave Caillebotte, showing a Paris street on a  rainy day:

Chris Chomyn said:

Notice how the rain and fog which constitute atmospheric diffusion, soften the details and mute the shadows into shades of gray.

Compare with this shot of the entrance to the Hoth base from Empire:

The problem is clear - the “cave” entrance is not a shade of grey, it’s almost pure black. It shouldn’t be. If you can imagine standing at that location, a distance away taking a photograph, the wind kicking up fresh snow, there is no way that shadow would appear as pure black. The '04 shot just looks worng.

The '93 transfer, notwithstanding its horrible DVNR, at least gets this right:

Chris Chomyn also said:

The natural diffusing quality of this light helps to reduce the saturation in all the colors, creating a very subtle palette.

Now, here is a shot from the Tantive battle in Star Wars:

Look at the red, yellow and blue lights in the background. Mike Verta is more qualified than me to explain this one:

Mike Verta said:

There’s just simply no way that photographically, these lights would register this way through all that atmosphere. They’d look the way they do on the DE LD. But they’re subtly ruining the frame for me: my eyes read them as impossible, and out of character with the photography.

For reference, here is the same frame from the GOUT/DC LD transfer:

In a nutshell.

The 04's are naturally impossible. The image is compromised because it is being manipulated into a state that no longer resembles the composure and composition of what was originally exposed by the shooting cameras. 70's film stocks weren't the greatest in the world, but at least they weren't this mess.

George does not understand this. A computer with a scanned film transfer does not equal a playtoy.

Nothing New he has changed deliberately used film stock on his other films by upping the contrast and using dvnr for a more video look.

While not as Bad as the job on the 2004 star wars the blu rays for thx 1138 and American graffiti are an abomination because they look nothing like the documentary feel of grainy techniscope.

Assuming that the image on the upcoming BD releases has the same problems, how would you go about fixing this?

The colour adjustments applied by Adywan and Harmy on their theatrical reconstruction attempts has failed to address this particular issue (sorry guys).

Referring to the first shot with the crushed balcks, you cannot simply raise the black level, as this produces some ugly grey artefacts (this was one of the problems with OCPmovie's Classic Edition V2). Although this effect could possibly be reduced by applying a dither, or error diffusion, to the dark areas of the image.

As for the second image with the unnatural colour boosting, I don't think there is an easy way to fix this using any overall image adjustment.

It needs a new scan plain and simple. I think that some of these defects came from the original 1080 scan because the 97SE was used, and the SE wasn't anywhere near that dark or boosted-in fact many complained that it was lighter and softer than the originals.

Most every scan done nowadays is done at 2K. Major films are given a 4K scan and Warner does 8K for some of their ultra titles (North by Northwest, Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind) For a film of such importance, simply reusing a 1080p scan that was designed primarily to be adjusted for a SD release is inexcusable. The compression on the Blu-ray release will be better but they're still trying to polish a turd. You really need that higher quality source material because in almost any case the released version will have some compression and transfer issues.

The whole 2004 master needs to be burned. It's literally the worst and most botched master I've ever seen. No levels are right, everything got boosted and nothing looks like the original film. It says something that it is preferable to watch DVNR ridden interlaced video rather than this mess.

And if LFL says one more time that it's too expensive to scan film....it would have cost them less money to simply start from scratch with a new scan! Is Star Wars forever stuck at 1080p now? What happens after Blu-ray? Its not as if the crew of the SE 2.0 actually did their computer work at any higher resolution. So I wonder how those great 3D versions will look on a screen  in only 1080p.