THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 88

msycamore said:

Jetrell Fo said:

towne32 said:

And I don't think its strange to also try to learn more about the mysterious history of the film. It's real, of course! And from 1971! But some accounts suggest there may or may not have been yet other versions.

This I totally get. 

Maybe it's me but it seems there are some folks who aren't happy with any answer given, even though it's not the fault of the folks providing what info there is, but more a problem with the history of the myth/urban legend of this film and it's journey.

Who exactly are these folks that aren't happy? Speaking for myself, SilverWook and Poita and whoever scanned this print are fucking heroes. Don't confuse all this version differences debacle with ungratefulness. I have great respect for Poita's knowledge in this matter and I fully trust him on this and I'm sure other do as well, but that doesn't mean we should all stop discussing the false information and revisionism surrounding this film just because this print is now scanned. This is major stuff in my mind that some of us have been discussing in this thread since around 2010. I'm not here to get my tongue brown, I'm genuinely interested in the history of this film.

Besides, I believe most of us who are posting in this thread helped Poita and the dirty silver haired wookiee getting this print, I know I did, albeit in a very small amount. You are wrong if you believe it's a one man show. I thanked everyone many pages back before the scan was done, and I thank everyone again. I think this is awesome, but we're not completely there yet. I will also take the opportunity and thank Antcufaalb for his job on this and his upload, not an easy undertaking.

A big thanks to everyone that helped secure the print. I was unhappy with the scan, so am rescanning it myself, and hope to be able to do a better job of retrieving the colour that is still hiding in the print itself.

I will not have time to do a colour correction, but am hopeful that scanning with my rig will cpature a lot more of the remaining colour, making a colour correction possible from a new scan.

If someone could post the corresponding frames from the existing scan, that would be great as I can see wether it is worthwhile recleaning and scanning the print myself.

These are from a quick test-scan I did this morning.

Full size: http://i.imgur.com/K84aQl3.jpg

Full size: http://i.imgur.com/954mogr.png

These have been quickly resized and the saturation boosted slightly, I haven't attempted a full colour restoration/grade.

I'm hoping that the better scanning equipment and technique is getting better results than the scan done in the US.

It looks a lot less pink, which is my main aim. I couldn't get any kind of colour correction out of the original scan.

Oh wow! That's incredible! What's the wizardry behind this?? (But seriously how did you extract so much more color?)

Mavimao said:

Oh wow! That's incredible! What's the wizardry behind this?? (But seriously how did you extract so much more color?)

 Basically understanding the colour science, having a densitomer and analysing the print to work out what spectra of light to feed it to try and ger the most out of the print.

The old scan was done with a white light source, and although it used a higher resolution Bayer UHD 10bit sensor, with that amount of fade, the magenta is going to overpower everything else and not enough of the other colours will come through. Also, the white light source used is not quite full spectrum, there are notches which result in some colour frequencies being lost. Not much of an issue on a good print, but on a faded one you want every last drop of colour you can find.

I'm using a controlled light source that has two different blues, two different reds and one green, and you can adjust the mix accordingly, to either get full spectrum white light, or anything in between. The sensor is lower resolution, but is 16bit, and has excellent quantum efiiciency with a really good dynamic range. The results aren't perfect, but I think they will be better than the white-light based scan, and hopefully some of you can make them even better by doing a grade.

Also, the film is quite dirty, I am giving it as good a clean as I dare.

The shots above are some of the better ones, others don't fare quite as well, but hopefully the time and shipping expense will be worth it. I'll punch out a low res preview from the test scan. There was some crap caught in the 'gate' and focus isn't perfect, but it was a quick test to see if the rescan is worthwhile.

Having said all that, it may turn out no better than the white-light scan done in the US, sometimes the colour just isn't there to gain.

If people think it is an improvement that is worthwhile, then I will go ahead with doing it.

The difference is amazing.

towne32 said:

Amazing that so much color was pulled out of those.

Also: how does the SEN + Kids scene look? Some of those shots are not represented in any other source of the movie.

 Can you throw me an image of the scene you mean, and I will take a look. As mentioned, some are pretty much monochrome.

Here is a quick preview.

http://tinyurl.com/pedt26o

Keep in mind that this is just a test to see what colour is still in the print. Ignore the compression, lack of sound, framing, gunk in the gate, lack of sleep etc.

oh, the bliss! oh, the bliss!

Anyone that would like to see part of Reel2, just send me a message, it is longer and I think posting a link here might breach the terms of OT.COM.

Small section of SEN as requested.

http://we.tl/NdDjftUDVT

Remember, it always looks better and more saturated when small, a lot more crapulence will show up at full resolution.

To someone who has never seen the feature-length film before, those shots almost look like there is nothing wrong with them.

The reels have the leader and tails, not sure about splices, I think there is one or two, but not many.

Also keep in mind, these are not the 'correct' colours, I pushed the light to capture as much of the colour as is possible from the print, which means the colour is somewhat imbalanced now, but the colour that is in the print is all in there in the files. It will need a correction done on it, but it should be now possible to bring it back somewhat close to how it would have looked when new.

So does your avatar o_O