Alien/Aliens Color Regrade (a WIP) — Page 2

Jonno said:

Ok, see what you think of this:

The scan colours were a little off to begin with, so I've adjusted them by eye to match the book. Look at the warmth of the 'grey' ceiling panels - very much in keeping with the LD tones.

 Very interesting. It is by no stretch a perfect match but I am shocked the skin tones (not to mention the highlights) matched as well as they do. I posted that particular pic not only because I was working on it at the time but also since Ripley has a strong red hue, almost purple. I was worried that the LD was too extreme in that instance. That pic seems to match pretty well with the skin tones on the LD.

There are two concerns that pic brings up. Like you said Jonno there is the green tint. The green pulls it back in the direction of the BD and 99 DVD so I'm not sure what I want to do with that. The second is that it is brighter then the BD or LD. Kind of more in line with the 99 DVD. I think I want to keep this regrade dark. When I adjusted for IRE changes on my capture of the LD, it matched the dark of the BD perfectly. I think Alien needs to have some dark shadows. What do you think?

I think I will abandon my regrade timed to the 99 DVD. Everyone seems to like the LD better and all of our circumstantial evidence seems to point to warmer skin tones. Hell, worse case scenario, the LD's warm timing brings out the tan colors in the set. Makes it look more "70s"

Thanks Jonno

hairy_hen said:

Note that since it is an early test version, this explains why it has differences in music and dialog editing than other mixes of the film.

The 70mm mix that actually ended up being presented to the public in 1979, then, would have been a 4.1 track with identical content to the 35mm stereo version.  Such a track can be found on the official Bluray release, as 640 kbps AC3.  The surrounds are mono and the amount of bass is somewhat less than in the test version, but it is more finalized in editing and content than its predecessor.

Taking this into consideration, for the sake of authenticity I would say that any project proclaiming to be Alien in 70mm should include both the laserdisc 5.1 and the Bluray 4.1 versions, and that they should be clearly labelled for what they are.

Editing to add: Furthermore, we can also infer from this that the 4.1 track on the Bluray of Aliens really is that film's 70mm mix, as well.

 Thanks hairy_hen. Yeah I've seen Disclord's posting over at the LDDB before (he also put that info in the notes for the LD). The man knows his stuff backwards and forwards. He is the reason why I know Die Hard on LD was 70mm and the original Terminator 2 DVD was the CDS mix.

I suspect the reason Fox made note of it being a 70mm mix on the LD jacket is because it was different to all previous home video versions. Its easier to say hey this is a 70mm mix then explaining sensurround testing, etc. Like I said earlier they had used 70mm mixes on LDs before without note. The only question is why did they use it instead of the "true" 70mm mix. Frankly I don't care, its a pretty cool track. And we have access to both mixes.

There was a lengthy discussion on the the Alien soundtracks here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Dolby-Digital-41-Surround-Alien-Anthology/topic/13986/

Where msycamore (is he here anymore?) was nice enough to put together the differences (he is referencing Jonno's 2.0 capture):

Personally I'm very fond of the polished 35mm but absolutely love the dynamic range, bass, clarity and some of the more subtle variations heard in this mix. I can tell you that the discrete version is not that huge of a difference from the 2.0 version, some fx are awesome with more clearly defined surrounds (the sound of the chains before Harry Dean Kitty Crap Stanton gets killed for example) but it's still a quite front heavy mix like many mixes were at the time (just the way I like it, too many films nowadays keep the surrounds too busy) 

Some of the more obvious differences in content compared to the 35mm Dolby Stereo mix (will try to make a complete documentation at some point) you'll probably notice right away in this mix if you're familiar with the 35mm:

-Jerry Goldsmith's score on the title sequence and opening is a little bit different, pay attention when we first enter the corridors of the ship, the 35mm is scored right away.

What appears to be a distant horn emanating from Nostromo when we first see the ship is absent.

-Dallas line "Good morning, Mother." is an alternate take.

-Kane's line "Roll 92 degrees port yaw." is absent.

-Lambert has an additional line of dialogue heard when they prepare to land on the planet, "900 meters and dropping." (subtitled on the 20th anniversary DVD)

-From the moment when Nostromo is approaching the planet until they enter the atmosphere, the sound editing is very rough with a few alternate cues heard. (Deep bass from the engines)

-Right before the Space Jockey scene, Kane's lines "Come on down here. Something different down here..." are absent.

-When the crew discusses Brett's death, Ash's response "Kane's son." is absent.

Also, you might have noticed something odd with this track which is noticeable right before they land on the planet, the score in particular sounds like it's played in the wrong pitch/speed for a moment. Perhaps the sound elements used was in bad shape or something? Anyway, not my doing.

I have zero idea how this is going to be released and in what form it will take, either BD or MKV. The form might dictate how many soundtracks I can shove on. The plan, which will change, is:

Pan and Scan LD PCM 2.0 Mix - Hopefully close to the original Dolby Stereo

Widescreen LD 70mm AC-3 5.1 DD Mix - The test 70m track

1999 DVD 5.1 AC-3 DD Mix - This is really a 4.1 mix (mono surrounds) so it was rumored at the time it came out to be the refined 70mm track. 

Beyond that I can add if space:

Quad DVD AC-3 5.1 DD Mix - This is the first true 5.1 track on DVD. It has stereo surrounds.

BD 4.1 - I strongly suspect this is the same track as the 1999 DVD but won't know till I pull them both to compare. If it is different I will include it over the 99.

Thanks for the input hairy_hen

PS. All this talk of 70mm tracks, makes me wish I could get a hold of the Alien 3 test 70mm track they talk about on the docs. Apparently they put a ton of infrasonic sound in the mix. They had to tone it down for the finally release.

The 5.1 / 4.1 from the 1999 DVD is a weak upmix of the Dolby Digital 4.0 (see the comments I linked to in post 17). Its only real worth is to completists, I can't imagine anyone preferring it over the others.

If hairy_hen is correct, and the 4.1 from the BD is in fact the true theatrical 70mm, it's much more important to include; it's a pretty robust track if memory serves.

I'll see about getting some more reference pics from the book up later.

Jonno said:

The 5.1 / 4.1 from the 1999 DVD is a weak upmix of the Dolby Digital 4.0 (see the comments I linked to in post 17). Its only real worth is to completists, I can't imagine anyone preferring it over the others.

If hairy_hen is correct, and the 4.1 from the BD is in fact the true theatrical 70mm, it's much more important to include; it's a pretty robust track if memory serves.

I'll see about getting some more reference pics from the book up later.

 Then I'll go with the BD's 4.1

Thanks looking forward to more pics. Also I noticed in the Behind The Scenes Doc that the Ash scene did have a tint while filming:

I'm wondering if that's right or if it was meant to be filtered out.

bigrob said:

FYI the R6 DVD contains a 1536kpbs DTS-ES 6.1 (matrixed) audio mix. Could that be possibly an inclusion

so excited for this project. Might even have to fish out my BD cover I designed for Jonno's disc he sent me and forward it to your guys

 I assume that is gray market disc. Do you have a copy bigrob?

I'd love to see the cover, again I don't know if I'm doing a Blu-ray yet...

And speaking of soundtracks, Buster D was nice enough to give me the PCM 2.0 Dolby Stereo Soundtrack for the extended version of Aliens

Ok, here are some more pics. That laserdisc colouring is looking more and more like the real deal.

(Only a partial frame for Brett, unfortunately - the book does occasionally crop shots).

Andrea's BD grab of the Ash scene, regraded with a simple 'match colour' in Photoshop (and a bit of levels work):

It's surprising just how different the look is between these versions. I too wonder what happened - a corrected mistake, or second thoughts over a stylistic decision?

Jonno said:

Ok, here are some more pics. That laserdisc colouring is looking more and more like the real deal.

(Only a partial frame for Brett, unfortunately - the book does occasionally crop shots).

 I'll be damned. I'm very surprised to see see those two shots (Mother and Ash) match up as well as they do. It would of bet my life that neither was accurate. Hell those two shots are why I was leaning to reject the LD.

In a vacuum, the LD alone can't be trusted, neither can the book but together...the evidence piles up. I think I may grade to the LD, and then create three versions, one pure LD, one a bit bright and one a bit greener and brighter. See which one plays best. The LD timing combined with the unique soundtracks will hopefully make this project a great alternative to the Blu-ray.

Thanks Jonno, that was very helpful.

Which tools are you using, PDB? Do you have something with an automated matching function, or are you doing it more by eye/histogram?

bigrob said:

PDB said:

bigrob said:

FYI the R6 DVD contains a 1536kpbs DTS-ES 6.1 (matrixed) audio mix. Could that be possibly an inclusion

so excited for this project. Might even have to fish out my BD cover I designed for Jonno's disc he sent me and forward it to your guys

 I assume that is gray market disc. Do you have a copy bigrob?

I'd love to see the cover, again I don't know if I'm doing a Blu-ray yet...

And speaking of soundtracks, Buster D was nice enough to give me the PCM 2.0 Dolby Stereo Soundtrack for the extended version of Aliens

 I down't own it yet as it's pretty low on my to buy list at the moment

but it can be purchased for $9 from

http://www.buyoyo.com/buyoyo/eng/ProductDisplay.do?prrfnbr=7296990&prtype=0

 

I got a couple of these Excel Media discs (True Lies & Abyss - official releases btw, not bootlegs) and the bitrate is reportedly maxed out on them as they are film only releases

 Thanks bigrob, I don't think I'm going to use that anyway. I appreciate the info but I think I'm going to stick with the 3 original theatrical soundtracks (LD 5.1, BD 4.1, LD 2.0)

Jonno said:

Which tools are you using, PDB? Do you have something with an automated matching function, or are you doing it more by eye/histogram?

I settled on using Adobe Premiere, Speedgrade and Davinci Resolve Lite. I use Adobe Premiere to break down the entire movie into individual shots. Even a movie from the 70s has thousands of shots and its super time consuming. From there I was using speedgrade but I found Davinci Resolve Lite 10 (haven't tried 11 yet) which is free and only has a few limitation over the full version (no 4k). Resolve has curves which speed grade lacks. Its great software if you can run it.

I'm actually grading the entire thing shot by shot and then going back over to fine tune. End of story there is no automatic software that works 100%, at some point you have to do some manual work.

Here is a test comparison clip (132 MB). This is not the final color regrade to the LD but close. The Blu-ray's colors are on the top and the regrade is on the bottom. There is no sound and please ignore geometry issues with the aspect ratio. Let me know what everyone thinks:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/uxpmxx

StarThoughts said:

I for one think that, while still running a little red, your grading makes the film look a whole lot more 1979 than the Blu-ray does. The airlock interior and the Nostromo exterior in the clip are prime examples of scenes that look a lot more natural in your version. And while the fleshtones are still a bit warm, they look more alive than the relatively sterile appearance of the Blu-ray.

I didn't think of the Blu-ray timing as disastrous, but I noticed right away when I got it that it was very different from how I'm used to seeing the film (CAV box set, then 1999 DVD — I have the Quadrillogy as well, but didn't watch it as often), and I prefer where you're going with this.

Which soundtrack do you intend to use as the default?

 Thanks for watching StarThoughts. Believe it or not that level of red matches the LD capture pretty well but I think you might be right. I will try to dial the red back a little and see how that looks. That also might be a bad example since Ripley has a red cast on her in that scene.

I've never been super upset about the Alien BD either (Aliens is a different story) but I know its not authentic to the time it was made. The color timing on the BD is done to make the movie appear more "modern". I'm trying to get as close to an original print as possible and that means a 70s look. The LD has that look. Nothing wrong with a film looking of its time. I just want to make a great alternative to the BD.

I thought for the soundtracks:

1. LD 5.1 70mm (Default)

2. BD 4.1 70mm 

3. LD 2.0 Dolby Stereo

A great start, PDB. I have yet to do my own laserdisc capture to compare with (I have the 1992 collector's edition here, which should serve well enough) but here are a few preliminary observations (based on more scrutiny of the book's frame blowups):

Planet exteriors: if anything, the 'new' colouring seems more accurate - judging from the book, this stuff was shot with a very cool blue filter (towards turquoise). I wouldn't change those.

Ash's bubble: should be very neutral: not blue, but not purple either. Just dial it back until the grey panels lose all the blue colouration.

Ripley: I can see why this shot was so problematic! The trick will be to take out the teal and rosy up the skin tones without giving the whole shot a pink/purple cast. The shadows (particularly her hair) should remain black, rather than reddish-black. Hopefully there aren't too many challenging shots like this.

Dallas and Lambert in the airlock, Ash in the airlock bay: look terrific. Perhaps just look at that Ash profile again, which is way too hot at the moment.

Of course my reference has its own limitations, so you should judge what you're happiest with. But good progress overall!

I hope you don't mind my giving this a shot, PDB, but that Ripley shot was bothering me and I thought I might have a go at diagnosing the problem.

I hauled out Premiere's channel mixer (a filter that's probably been there since version 1!) to see if I could deal with the red a bit, and the results are surprisingly effective.

Here are the settings I used; a boost of the red channel, and restoration of some greens back to reds and blues:

I'm sure there are tools that can achieve this with a great deal more finesse (a visual histogram would solve a lot of guesswork) but it's good to see that the colour information can be recovered.

Edit: forgot to mention, I also tweaked the levels to bring them more in line with the contrasty look of the 35mm. I guess that's another personal taste thing - I can see why some would prefer to keep as much detail as possible, but it's another area where the BD (having been scanned from the o-neg if I'm not mistaken) differs from the original look.

StarThoughts said:

PDB said:

Nothing wrong with a film looking of its time. 

Films should look (and sound) of their time.

I don't know how PDB feels about it (this being his thread and all), but I'm finding those gifs a complete waste of space. Please get rid so we can use this thread for some actual contributions.

I must say that I find the colour grading of the laserdisc and those 35mm shots pretty unusual to say the least, especially the fleshtones, looks like a completely different film to the Alien i've seen.

Definately Very interested in checking this out when you release this though PDB, it'll be like watching Alien again for the very first time. :)