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THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 90

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 (Edited)

ZkinandBonez said:

poita said:

For anyone that would like to see some more of the 16mm THX:

https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/3ba0ed5b4898a4bd62093b1adcd05c6c20150830045451/d8fcd8d75941a69340e149c1e80f13fe20150830045451/3d87ac

Wow, this is actually the first time I've seen the entire film in its unaltered state. It's held up incredibly well.
(And is surprisingly view-able without any sound.)

Also what version of the film is this?
I haven't visited this thread in a couple of months, and last time I checked the scene where SEN talks with the children was partially in black-and-white.
This version also didn't have the Things to Come / Buck Rogers scene at the beginning. Wasn't one of these in the theatrical release?  

(Again, I'm sorry if this has already been discussed/explained, but I'm not quite up to speed with the progress of this project.)

 This is the entire THX1138 1971 version, as it was when originally released in Cinemas. It is a 16mm print, that is faded very heavily to red. This file is an attempt to rescan the print with a different technique to recover whatever colour still remains on the print. It will need cleanup, colour correction, stabilisation, sound sync etc. It is the only record so far of how the film was originally presented to audiences in 1971. I have also viewed a 1971 35mm Tech-IB and it is the same as far as content goes, so this is how the film was in 1971.

I think this is the first time since then that we can see that version of the film.

The posted file is silent, and has timecode burned in, if referencing scenes for discussion then mentioning the time-code or posting an image with the time-code included will make it easier for anyone to find the particular scene in question.

The Buck Rogers sequence is also on this print, I left it off to keep the filesize down, but it is complete, and the entire print does have sound, just not the preview file. For anyone wishing to do a complete restoration, the entire thing is captured in 2K, raw 16bpp format, so drop me a line if you are going to tackle it, but it is multiple terrabytes in size.

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RU.08 said:

I'll leave your imagination to tell you how I got it into the centre of the pallet

 

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poita said:

... viewed a 1971 35mm Tech-IB ...

Whoa! That Tech-IB is supposed to be really stable stock, right? I hope you were able to get representative snapshot samples for it's accurate color. That would be an awesome target to shoot for in this restoration. I would be so in-line to work on it! ... (if I can get my present situation sorted out, that is).  :)

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For what it's worth, for anyone interested, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting what appears to be the 1971 Version on next Monday - September 1st. On their site under the TCMdb listing they have the run time at 86 minutes as opposed to Mr. Lucas' super duper version at 88 minutes. I am looking forward to it since I have not seen the original in years. And perusing this thread makes me want to check out the Italian version too. For all of George's later tinkering with his films, he was a genius in many ways back in the '70s.

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Thanks for the heads up, and welcome to the boards. You mean Sept. 8th of course. ;)

IIRC, the last two times TCM ran THX, it was the 2004 version. Can anyone record it, just in case?

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

SilverWook said:

Thanks for the heads up, and welcome to the boards. You mean Sept. 8th of course. ;)

IIRC, the last two times TCM ran THX, it was the 2004 version. Can anyone record it, just in case?

  Yes not the 1st, my mistake, but actually the 7th since it starts at 11pm Monday night for me. Thanks for the welcome. I've lurked for a bit but when I saw this was coming on I thought I would decloak, so to speak.

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Poita, clear out your inbox, again! ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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Have done so..

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Asaki said:

 

Not even - he dropped everything! LOL

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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If someone is near Syracuse, perhaps they could schedule an appointment to check out the Judith Crist review and notes for the theatrical 1971 release of THX?

It is in Box 6 of the collection.

http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/c/crist_j.htm

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Firstly, hello everyone.

Wow poita, SilverWook, you've no idea how happy I was watching the 16mm scan. For years (and years), I've been hoping to someday see a really good version of the original cut. Years too of keeping an eye on this thread, all the ups and downs ... and it might really be happening.

Like everybody else, I have toyed with the idea of trying to clean up the old Laserdisc rips, and dirtying up the DVD or Bluray, and hopefully meeting somewhere in the middle, but your 16mm print opens up a whole new avenue.

I am not sure what else is going on behind the scenes or in your PM mailboxes, and I am very strictly an amateur at this sort of thing, but in the absence of any potential full restoration project, could I raise the suggestion of us taking the lovely crisp luminance from your scan and combining it with the chroma from the disc sources.

Obviously a lot of semi-automatable work to scale, translate and stabilize the scans to match precisely the picture geometry of the bluray ... it wouldn't be quick, but I feel it might just be this side of do-able. (And we can then lean on the eye's poor sense of color resolution to cover any rough edges).

Just for a rough sketch, here's the luminance from the scan, with 50% chroma from the LD, and 50% chroma from the Bluray

Obviously the chroma would be 100% Laserdisc whenever the Bluray heads off into CGI.

I could be wrong. I don't really know if what I am talking about is actually genuinely practical and realistic on full length movie timescales (although I'd love to have a shot at it, or help out), or how frowned upon this mix and match idea is, but I get the feeling that working the geometry and scaling problem  perhaps might give better final results, more easily, than wrestling the print's color-correction problem.

... obviously there would be some rudimentary software assistance required to help with the scalings, but hopefully it'd be shouldering the brunt of the workload, whether that be reel-by-reel or scene-by-scene ... then leaving limited manual tweaks for all the problem frames.

Here comes the point of this post --->

Would it be possible to ask you for a few random 2k frames just to get an idea how this suggestion would work (or come apart) in real life and at higher resolutions than the sample?

(In saying all that ... you know what, I really, really loved the look of the distressed color in the 16mm print version. Genuinely! Watched it with the audio manually synced, it really worked for me. The bleak and radioactive tones, the broken-down dystopian hues, and the 'feeling unwell' color balance, it was great. To me, it suited the tone of the film far better than the too-clean BluRay.

Hey, maybe the 16mm should be left as-is and just call that the new release.)

Anyway, aside from all that, I just wanted to thank you for your time, efforts and skill thus far (and those that helped behind the scenes to bring us here, and all the other contributors in the last 90 pages). It really is genuinely appreciated. Cheers.

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If someone is near Syracuse, perhaps they could schedule an appointment to check out th Judith Crist 1971 review and notes from the HX1138 theatrical release?

http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/c/crist_j.htm

It is in Box 6 of the collection.

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Man... :( I grew up near Syracuse. I live over the other end of the state now, near Buffalo. x.x

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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poita said:

If someone is near Syracuse ... check out the Judith Crist 1971 review and notes from the THX1138 theatrical release?

Some may say, "make the cross-country(s) trip"; I say, "let your fingers do the walking"! (I just love those prophetic, old TV commercials.) ..

10 sci-fi oddities from Google's new digital time machine

Over half way down that webpage is Judith Crist's THX 1138 review portion from her column of the March 29, 1971, New York Magazine ..

                                                 

     
No wonder poor ol' Mr. Lucas is so glum about his first film. He keeps trying to fix something that isn't broken just to please the unfeeling critics. Cheer up, GeorgeWe viewers like it just the way it was made ... the 1st time!

Of course, if you want to see that review (on page 61) in the entire column (pages 60-62), finger-walk over to Google books ..

Google books - New York Magazine - March 29, 1971 - Page 61

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I despise critics who give away the plot. And what a bitchy review! Pun not intended.

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Where were you in '77?

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I had read the rather nasty review, I am hoping that in the papers at Syracuse there might be extra notes on the film.

Re using the chroma from other sources, that can work, it is mainly an alignment issue that is a hassle, but can be overcome, and the results can be very good. The lower resolution of the LD chroma isn't as big a problem as you might think, our eyes aren't very sensitive to colour resolution, and you can scale the chroma before applying it.

I want to stress again that the colours on the scan are not the correct colours. I rescanned it to maximise the colour response of each colour layer of film, so it is horrendously unbalanced, but it should have enough colour recovered to make a colour correction possible. It is certainly easier to do it from this scan than from the original more pink scan.

The colourbars and greyscale bars are quite handy in the control room shots to know if the colour is still present.

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rooksby said:


Here comes the point of this post --->

Would it be possible to ask you for a few random 2k frames just to get an idea how this suggestion would work (or come apart) in real life and at higher resolutions than the sample?

Anyway, aside from all that, I just wanted to thank you for your time, efforts and skill thus far (and those that helped behind the scenes to bring us here, and all the other contributors in the last 90 pages). It really is genuinely appreciated. Cheers.

 Sure, no problem.

I'll post a short 2K segment, it would make more sense to work with a moving sequence than stills.

For aligning the various sources, check out Elastix (http://elastix.isi.uu.nl) or NiftyReg (http://sourceforge.net/projects/niftyreg/)

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Three.

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Ouch!

It could have played the second half of a double feature you know. Of course, most people would have been fogging up their windows by that time. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

Thanks for the heads up, and welcome to the boards. You mean Sept. 8th of course. ;)

IIRC, the last two times TCM ran THX, it was the 2004 version. Can anyone record it, just in case?

 I recorded this broadcast, and afterward quickly shuttled through the first few minutes until I saw the CGI robot factory :(

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 (Edited)

Sadly, not too much of a surprise. TCM should at least put a disclaimer on that thing if it's the only version they can run.

Thanks for taking one for the team, camroncamera. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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That was disappointing. I soon as I saw that newer WB logo... 

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Well, the old video releases had the newer logo too, so you can't rely on that. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

The intro was weird, the TCM host introduces the movie as being part of a Telluride film festival retrospective (because that festival is going on now and Lucas did show the new version there in 2004). They give the usual production history/plot summary but never actually say the movie was changed, just that it's from 1971. It's extra creepy coming from the normally film history-conscious TCM.