Info: Our projects released thread — Page 15

Even though we're all taking a break, the other day I came across some comparisons linked to the article about the restoration of The Neverending Story and I just couldn't resist to take a look. It was comparisons between the source scans vs the final blu-ray.

If I got it right, the yellow tinted scans are from the negative of the international cut, and the pink ones from a dupe positive of the extended german cut.

I color corrected the scans (using mainly black and white points as well as midpoint average RGB and also manually balancing what looked "off") to be able to compare them to the blu-ray images and the result was a bit confusing in many ways. The first thing that you notice is of course that the negative and dupe positive has beautiful detail and grain which they scrubbed away with their waxdoll-DVNR. But then I saw a couple other things.

In the shot of the ivory tower, it looks like somebody took a photoshop brush and just amateurishly drew a brightening light over it, thus altering it digitally.

Then the shots of Morla, where you can see in my corrections that Morla's mouth is just as dark as the shadow under it, but in the blu-ray there's an orange shadow and the whole face looks like it's been painted orange while keeping it separate from the rest of the shot. In the same shots, if you look at Atreyu's arms it almost looks as if they tried to remove the blood.

Then you come to the shot with Atreyu between the yellow Oracle statues, and see that it looks like they used automatic dirt removal which also removed a lot of stuff in the background that is not dirt or grain.

And what's up with the green parts in the sky in the shot with Atreyu riding the horse?

I made a gallery with these pics so you can see this for yourself: http://imgur.com/a/RcurU

They're sorted 3 by 3, first - scan, second - my correction, third - blu-ray release.

Now, what do you guys think?

You_Too said:

Now, what do you guys think?

 I think that out of every shot, your colors look better by far. I remember seeing a matte painting of that ivory tower shot recently, wished i'd saved it but yours looks as close as i remember to those colors so you did a great job imo.

Thanks, but unfortunately we won't get any complete raw scan...

We'll have to do the best we can with the blu-ray, but I found this interesting since apparently they didn't do much of a good job on the blu-ray, at least from what I've seen so far.

If Kingherb or anybody else could find those matte paintings it would be very interesting to see them.

Nice job there You_Too, i'm liking what you've done with those.

Please tell me though that you're working off a blu-ray with grain and detail, not that DNRed blu-ray from the comparison shots. Everything just looks smudged on that blu-ray, how they can release a blu-ray like that is simply beyond me...

@kk650: First of all, we haven't started to work on this one yet. What I did there was tests because I found those scans.

The plan is to work with that DVNR blu-ray at least for the extended cut, because it's the only source there is. (I think maybe there's an old German DVD release of it too but upscaled it won't look good anyway I guess) The idea is to remove the edge enhancement, add back grain either from the negative scans or the other blu-ray releases to give it the film look back.

We're still open for changing the plans for this project though.

3 variations on the ivory tower, taken from this page http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-skys-limit-part-2-more-matte-magic.html

Also check out this site http://www.caroleenjettgreen.com/portfolio/fx/ the artist has uploaded a picture of her painting, you can email her if you like, perhaps she can help answer some questions?

kk650 it was talked of earlier in the forum, and it seems like german/japanese release is the easiest to work with and fix, all the releases have there problems such as bad colors, crushed blacks, print damage/dirt, dnr etc, having compared shots of the German release with the Dutch and U.S it seems to me like the detail is still there in comparison, but it looks artificial because of the dnr, but Team Blu aim to fix that.

Yeah, i've had a careful look between the different editions on capaholic and it really comes down to a faceoff between the german extended blu-ray and the japanese extended blu-ray, which the japanese blu-ray clearly wins with more retained detail, grain and better flesh tones than the german blu-ray. All the others are just totally overcooked or in the case of the dutch blu-ray has unappealing fleshtones and strange colour grading in general.

Yeah, there is definately detail there on the japanese extended blu-ray waiting to be brought out, I can see how you could make this work. Have you done any tests to see how it looks with grain added?

@kk650: I've done some tests, back when the first shots surfaced from the German restoration. I posted some earlier in the thread but they were just lightly adjusted and they will need more adjustment.

Unfortunately there isn't much detail to dig up since I typically dig up detail from within the grain but there is no real grain! The grain that is there might be added artificially since it doesn't look like the grain on the negative scans.

Basically, what will be done with the extended version is this:

1. Blurring away the edge enhancement (fake edge sharpening)
2. Trying to dig up hidden detail
3. Blurring everything slightly to hide the DVNR waxdoll look
4. Adding grain from either the negative scans or other releases

But also considering how this has been altered so much, for the international version we might just adjust the Dutch BD, like digging up detail and color correcting it slightly.

Oh, and thanks Kingherb for the ivory tower shots, but the third one is the only that seems to match the film and it's just a DVD upscale.

I don't think the extended version is salvageable. It's been completely grain raped. 

Should there be a non grain raped release of the theatrical release then that is what needs to be worked with. In my view the extended is too far gone to fix. You cannot un-erase grain raping. The detail has been removed permanently. 

I know some here find my views on these matters harsh, but I'm just being realistic. Work on what you can help. Not what is beyond help. This is way beyond help. It's been murdered.

@Matt_Stevens: In a way I agree with you, but we gotta do what we can to make it more watchable since it's the only version we have of the German extended cut in HD.

By the way, on CinePostproduction's site I found the guy who was in charge over this restoration: http://www.cinepostproduction.com/?cat=19&member=669#tab2

Maybe somebody fluent in German (in case he's not fluent in english) could contact him and just ask why they applied the heavy DVNR, and if there's any way to get our hands on their restoration minus that horrible addition, or their raw negative scans. :)

Well it seems a lot of you are really passionate about this film, well so are we, so all that said in the end we will decide what we will do, and what we can do to make things as good as we can, we have all our sources now in hand, US, German, Dutch, and now the Japanese Set, we always post screens and samples, so in the end if you are not satisfied with what we do well then just don't grab it lol, as much as we try our hardest to please everyone there will be times we just will not, I totally have faith that we will make this work, I mean we made the HDX version of Conan blend right in to the BD perfectly, and believe me it was not like this before we did it lol.

Thanks You_Too for posting all this info, and thanks to Kingherb for the pics and the nice zip file you sent me yesterday, we appreciate any and all help.

Are there any fans of the movie Legend? if so can someone tell me what are the exact differences between the 3 cuts? I am tossing around an idea and I would love to know what the exact differences are between the 3 cuts, which are Director's, US Theatrical, and I am not sure what the other version is called lol, but I have it on my UK BD.

Thanks

Thanks for all that nice info Star, but is there anything telling\showing the exact differences between the 3 cuts? I know there is a 4th cut but that was a TV cut and really would not be very helpful, because from what little I know, there are some scenes on the European cut that is different then the DC and US, all 3 have little things here and there lol.

I have not done a movie edit in a very long time but this is a title I would really like to try and do at some point, hell I am not even sure it can be done but I want to at least try at some point, I want to include all footage in 1 film but I do not want the intro that shows Lord Darkness right away(can't remember which version shows him right from the start) this gives away to much to early lol, and don't laugh but I would like to try and use the Tangerine Dream score throughout the entire film, I have all score CD's to help where needed, but again not even sure it can be done smoothly, all this talk about The Neverending Story brought my thoughts back to this title, I use to play The Neverending Story, Legend and Labyrinth for my now oldest Son a ton back in the day and these kind of grew on me over the years and I still like all 3 of them very much.

Thanks

*edit, does anyone know if Leonenut is still a member here or even active on the Community? I helped him get his edits out into the wild back in the day.

MrBrown said:

Here is a comparison between the Theatrical Cut and the Director's Cut.

Thanks MrB but I need the European in there to lol, the DC would be the base and then I could just add in what is missing from the US and European to that, maybe this won't work, but like I said all this Neverending Story talk got me thinking about this film again. 

StarThoughts said:

It's the American release that shows Darkness right away, spoiling his more dramatic entry later on in the film.

There was an old issue of Video Watchdog (No. 29) that had an article “Reconstructing Legend,” which broke down the differences between the American and European cuts of the film using the existing laserdisc editions, which was very informative. Obviously this doesn't take the Director's Cut into account, but given that most web resources will, this might be your best guide to the divergences between the original theatrical versions.

It may be VERY difficult to match footage up from the variant versions of the film as each are different transfers with different color timings from different eras (the DC looks pretty raggy by today's standards), but I'd be interested to see what you can do with it.

Could anything be done with the sound? The DC sounds a bit flat.

Can this Video Watchdog #29 be downloaded anywhere? as for the sound I would love to get the Tangerine Dream score to work, I like the other score as well but I grew up with and am more used to the Tangerine Dream score and just prefer it more.

AntcuFaalb said:

Here you go, my friend: http://www.figmentfly.com/published/legendarticle.html

That's from the original author, so it's the fully uncut version of the article; i.e., no magazine editing.

He also has shot-by-shot breakdowns for each cut!

Enjoy!

Thanks a ton for this link, does anyone know how to make a pdf file of this with image if possible for offline viewing?