You_Too said:
PDB said:
Buster D said:
James Cameron recently did a Reddit AMA, but it doesn't look like anyone bothered to ask him about Terminator and Abyss getting a blanket teal tint. I'd kind of like to hear his justification for it, although I suspect the answer might not be very satisfying (if he even would be willing to answer).
I'm sure he would give the standard, unsatisfying its my film/its the way its suppose to look anyway.
Unfortunately I'm sure he'd say that too.
Anyway, just to clear things up: It's not a plain blanket tint. When they do these restorations they go back to scanning and cleaning up the original negative, and by doing that they lose the color timing done to the theatrical/home video prints. They get higher resolution and all the original detail, but as far as I know they have to redo the color timing from scratch. (Basically it would be like taking the Japanese Abyss broadcast and making it look like the DVD shot by shot) This takes more than putting a blanket tint on it, believe me. It's probably a lot about hue/saturation/luminance control.
That's where the idea of creating a new color timing comes in. James Cameron likes doing it so he keeps doing it to all his re-releases now. Terminator 1 got more teal added to it than Aliens and Titanic though, as well as a slight green tint on top of it all. (Aliens and Titanic also has more green in the whites than red and blue, but also slightly more red than blue, just like T1 except it's not as heavy)
Now the interesting thing is that The Abyss is, judging by the latest screenshots, exactly like Aliens and Titanic, which is not as heavily overdone as T1, but still the exact same thing with the whites, most green, less red, even less blue.
The original look of all these films is without a doubt close to what we see in theatrical trailers or the old home video releases, that is Cameron focusing on a clean blue for the cold-looking scenes, teal only being slightly visible here and there as part of the natural color balance, not something over-forced.
And the good news is that Aliens, Titanic and The Abyss will be easy to correct, though the digital changes won't be fixable. (Like added stars in the sky in Titanic or removed camera crew being visible etc.) And of course, the changes in brightness in some scenes will still be there but it would look closer to the original look.
And I don't usually do this but I have to say it: Stamper, quit defending Cameron or present technical proof for your claims. There's so much technical proof of what has been done here that one could easily make a wall of text from it.
Goods points, You_Too. We had that discussion about the changes in colors for the Road Warrior Blu-ray. They scanned the negative which was cool/blue but the original release prints where warm/yellow exactly the same as the old DVD and LD. The release prints where chemically processed to be more yellow to give that desert feel. The cinematographer planned it that way and took great lengths to achieve that look. When WB went back to the negative, they simply scanned it and release it without trying to reproduce the original release print's look.
I wonder if you are right and this is similar. If when they scanned The Abyss' negative, they lost (or it didn't contain) the original release print's color timing. Cameron re-colored it but instead of his 90's era steel/royal blue look (that Abyss, T2 and True Lies have), he moved to that more modern aqua/teal look that he is now fond of. At the end of the day Cameron is changing all his films to fit his current tastes and not what they looked like at the time of their releases.
I've actually seen a archival 35mm print of The Abyss at the AFI in Silver Spring, Maryland (USA) circa early 2000s. I do clearly remember it had the Cameron steel, blue look (not the teal/aqua). I can tell you that both HD masters don't look like that print (the JPN HD is way, way wrong). The closest to that look is the DVD. Makes me wonder what the LD looked like.
Speaking of laserdiscs and Cameron. Aliens is interesting. I have been capturing my old LDs lately. Trying to make backups in case my player finally bites it. When I watched my capture of Aliens (letterbox/theatrical), I expected it to look like the DVD. Nope. The DVD has a little more muted look in its colors. The LD is warmer and has more saturated colors. I actually kind of like the LD's colors better then the DVD's. Suffice to say the BD, DVD and that LD all look different.