Indy Blu-rays announced — Page 8

jero32 said:

Are you reffering to indie or the other project?
(btw sorry yes I did miss it)

Well tbh for the other project I haven't seen enough footage to make a definitive conclusive answer to that. (however based on screenshots, I'd say its just the desert probably)

As far as indie goes, without owning the blu-ray (stil gonna buy it) It does seem the whole movie is more yellow tinted, but that could be because its mostly set in a desert.

Thanks, and yes I was referring to Raiders.

Harmy said:

The only thing I found is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZQW0bUbQMw

That's the trailer I immediately thought of after seeing the 35mm restored print. It looked as if they tried to match that which was always brilliantly saturated. Of course, is this how the film originally looked? We have no idea. To my eyes the new version didn't feel right, and some of the work done was visible.

So both the color timing and the soundmix are still unknowns as to original theatrical presentation.

The biggest thing is how in the heck did Douglas Slocombe shoot without a light meter? ;)

Thanks for the tweak comparison you_too, it makes for an interesting what-if, but on TOD it doesn't match the cinematography style and undermines it a bit. I have always loved the use of darkness and shadow in that film that at least visually differentiates the film from the others.

Well, this LPP print seems to show that the BD colors of Raiders are very much accurate:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190808893255

Also, wouldn't they use teal and orange nowadays rather than yellow? :-P

Yeah, I think often people got used to the DVD, VHS and LD color timing over the years, when in fact it was wrong for various reasons. You only need to look at Star Wars to know that true. So it's quite possible that the color timing of Alien BD could be correct, or it may not but you can't categorically state that it's wrong until you have a proof other than older home video releases and your memory.

Moved the discussion from: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/team-negative1-star-wars-1977-35mm-theatrical-version-release-details-and-updates/topic/14590/page/23/

You_Too said:

And for some reason I can't find a single image comparison of this snake reflection everybody keeps talking about. Can't be something big?

It's something you notice in motion and not so much on a still, it is gone when Indy falls into the Well of the Souls. When Marion falls and faces the cobra, the reflection is still there. Not the end of the world, I only wish they'd make up their mind about it.

There's no question about it in my mind that Raiders should be warm and that the DVD transfer is off but to me those beautiful LPP pics just reaffirms that there was a broader spectrum of colors in the film compared to what is present in the BD.

From what I recall of the pit reflection, it's tough to miss but it's there for so short a time it's really an inconsequential loss -- like the wires on the plane in Goldfinger. Just my two cents.

msycamore said:

There's no question about it in my mind that Raiders should be warm and that the DVD transfer is off but to me those beautiful LPP pics just reaffirms that there was a broader spectrum of colors in the film compared to what is present in the BD.

msycamore, did you actually compare the BD to those images? Well, I did and I can tell you that aside from the print pictures being even more yellow/green tinted, the BD sure shows a broader spectrum of colors than these pictures - and sure, they don't seem to be exactly professionally scanned, so the print itself could be better but you'd be pushing it pretty hard to be judging the BD to have narrower spectrum of colors than this print just from those pics.

bkev said:

From what I recall of the pit reflection, it's tough to miss but it's there for so short a time it's really an inconsequential loss -- like the wires on the plane in Goldfinger. Just my two cents.

Very much agree, but it's also for that same reason the elimination is such a weird thing to do. The thing is, everyone who sees or have seen Raiders knows that Harrison isn't facing the cobra without safety precautions, before the DVD transfer this reflection was seldom mentioned by fans seeing the film, well known but seldom mentioned, then when this inconsequential thing gets erased it draws an enormous attention to itself to the point where people studying the scene because there was an alteration made. So ultimately the removal gets more known than the original flaw was in the first place.

Harmy said:

msycamore, did you actually compare the BD to those images?

Yes, I did. I own the BD myself and I think it's a very fine release and not nearly as bad as some early screencaps or internet-alarms made me believe, but IMO they tried bringing back the warm hues again with a varied succesful result.

Harmy said:

Well, I did and I can tell you that aside from the print pictures being even more yellow/green tinted, the BD sure shows a broader spectrum of colors than these pictures - and sure, they don't seem to be exactly professionally scanned, so the print itself could be better but you'd be pushing it pretty hard to be judging the BD to have narrower spectrum of colors than this print just from those pics.

Well, you should of course be cautious judging screencaps like that but I'd say you would be pushing it equally as hard then by saying the BD colors seems very much accurate based on those same pics. Should those pics be something you bring up as a sort of yardstick or not?

When I mentioned a broader spectrum of colors I'm talking pre-digital grading, every shot in the BD transfer contains the same shades of colors independant of scene, which ultimately makes it hit or miss depending on what scene you're looking at. It's not like those who are spotting this stuff a mile away believe the colors; teal or orange was invented just a few years ago, it's in the way they are used, often in the way physically impossible with lab-processing.

Raiders was shot mostly on location quick and dirty, to get that consistent timing back in '81 would have demanded an enormous level of accuracy and pre-planning from the cinematographer, set designer and costume designer etc.

I love those LPP pics because of the simple fact that you can see the bronze/golden brown and yellow hues which I very much associate with certain parts of Raiders, in the BD those parts are more headed towards a dull orange/yellow.

And this is of course all my simple opinion, I don't claim to be an authority on what is "accurate" or not, I just tellin it the way I see it. All in all I'm happy with how it turned out, especially with the reverted alterations but I don't see it as the flawless transfer either. I'm also aware of "is there any new release this guy accept?" which is why this is small potatoes, but Raiders is Raiders so it would be unusual if its BD debut wasn't surrounded by controversy. It's one of the most loved films out there after all.

Yeah, I see what you mean. What I really meant before was that these pictures show that the BD is much closer to being accurate to the original colours than the DVD was, contrary to what many people said. You can't of course say how accurate it is exactly, because those pics aren't completely trustworthy.

Harmy said:

Yeah, I see what you mean. What I really meant before was that these pictures show that the BD is much closer to being accurate to the original colours than the DVD was, contrary to what many people said. You can't of course say how accurate it is exactly, because those pics aren't completely trustworthy.

Ah, ok sorry if my response came off as blunt. I agree, and that is also the case with the mid 90's LD IIRC, too cold IMO. What would be equally fantastic is an LPP print of Empire showing up. Nice to know these prints are out there and being taken care of.

Yeah :-)

So, are Indy 2 and 3 confirmed to be the same master as the DVD and HDTV? I've read somewhere that they come from a new 4K scan as well, only they didn't get the same level of restoration as ROTLA but that info could of course be wrong.

And actually the possibility of the ROTLA print being a new one didn't even occur to me. Did they make 35mm prints from the new master? I thought it was just IMAX and digital?

Anyway, I think jero32 got it right - going from the negative, they'd have to do a new colour timing and trust me, I know that digitally emulating photochemical colour timing is very hard, so they probably did the timing based on some non-fade source but it looks a bit different due to it being done digitally. From what I know about the way such restoration process normally works, it's more than likely that that is the case for most BDs. Unlike on LD and DVD masters, where they usually probably just tried to compensate for whatever fading there was on the film source they used.

jero32 said:

edit2: even more evidence of this in empire strikes back, it had a lot of orange and blue lighting in the carbonite freezing room. This seemed to me to be actual lighting vs photochemical enhancement.

captainsolo said:

The biggest thing is how in the heck did Douglas Slocombe shoot without a light meter? ;)
 

Is the WowWow broadcast still available for Raiders?  At least Doom and Crusade were unaltered on the BD.

The HD broadcast i saw recently for raiders was pretty bad but it was the lowry same as the DVD's.

I personally want a blu ray like the WowWow broadcast. I mean color wise, the 4k restore would be perfect if they did not play digitally with the colors.

Otherwise an IP or later generation source should have been used, using the ocn meant having to newly color time the movie and we all know how well that has worked with star wars and james bond.

The color on the Lowry HD broadcast was wrong but this version looked very low res because of the extreme use of DVNR that was present.

Lowry seems to love to DNR they hell out of everything they touch.

As far as i know Raiders never had a IB technicolor print, but the blu ray and its blown out colors seems to be like they wanted a faux Technicolor IB raiders. And went a bit too far.