Blade Runner Workprint question

Im sure this has been covered before, if not here probably on another forum

Anyway, so I was watching this and and the documentary and whatnot and they state that this was taken from the last surviving workprint of this movie, which is debatable Im sure and Im pretty sure the print was a 70mm print but I cant remember if that was stated or not.....they also state that since it was the last print that the quality was depreciated but still in acceptable limits.

Ok, so I start to watch it and I got the feel that the quality is spot on VERY good but the thing that everyone talks about are these bars on the screen which run horizontal not vertical.

To me....this is CLEARLY not a problem with the print but instead with the way it was transfered. I also think it has something to do with it being a 70mm print source, because the films AR is around 2.18 but when these horizontal bars are taken into account it appears the AR would have been around 2.35, which would have been the AR of the 35mm print.

So what Im getting at is that they transferred this print like a 35mm and then corrected for this after the fact and thus the bars appear. Because I dont see any other way these bars can appear throughout the actual 70mm print, if anything it would have been vertical.

Does anyone know anything or heard anything about this?

DarkGryphon2048 said:

I have the HDDVD of the 5-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition on my shelf. There's a commentary by the person who wrote that Blade Runner book I also have. Hell, I could even ask Charlie de Lauzirika too.

Just a FYI I was watching the DVD not the HDDVD but I would be interested if it has the same flaws as the DVD (I bet it does)
I didnt listen to the commentary track for the reason it was the guy who wrote the book but not worked on the film or did the transfer, but maybe i should?
If you can find out any info or ask anyone about it, Id loved to know the reason for these bars, because I really dont think it was the print, I think it was the transfer

Thanks

I have the Blu-ray set, but my disk 5 (The Work Print) is just a normal DVD, not a Blu-ray disk.  This was an error with a few sets. Hope it will make my set worth more money to collectors in the long run. For now, it's just annoying that I will have to buy another set just to get all 5 disks in Blu-ray format.

Having purchased the regular DVD version, I have no disc five. Still really irritates me. For us old fashioned DVD guys, we only get five discs if we decided to dish out $80 + dollars for the brief case version. Yet BD and HD guys get all five discs in the basic version.

I have the HDDVD of the 5-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition on my shelf. There's a commentary by the person who wrote that Blade Runner book I also have

Whoa! The work print has a commentary by Philip K. Dick? I had no idea! That is freakin awesome! No I wish even more that they hadn't decided to short non HD adopters by excluding the workprint.

Just looked it up, it is a commentary by Paul Sammon. Knew it didn't sound right having a commentary by PKD, which would have been by far the most valuable bit of extra feature on any of those discs. You are right, he did die before the film was released. He was never a fan of his movies being adapted to film, but pretty much the only way he ever made any money was by selling rights to his stories to film companies. I seem to remember reading that he watch a rough cut of the film (or parts of the film) before he died, and was actually impressed by it.

For any BR fans who haven't read PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I highly recommend you do so. It is quite a bit different from BR, but it is really cool to see where many of the ideas that appear in the film come from. It also adds a lot of light to the whole "Is Dekard a replicant?" issue. It was a very important aspect of the book's story, I like that they added at least a vague hint of that plot line to the film, even though its vagueness seems to piss a lot of people off, which is why Ridley Scott made it less vague by coming out and saying he is definitively a replicant, and why the unicorn was added, both of which pissed people off even more.

That was part of my disbelief on the matter. My imagination was spinning with thoughts of PKD having recorded some comments to the rough version he had seen. That would have been brilliant, though PKD was never very good at speaking, and had gotten increasingly eccentric in his later years. Would have only been a bunch of paranoid ramblings anyway... still would have been pretty cool though.

So has anyone found any information on the original question?

CompMovieGuy said:

Ok, so I start to watch it and I got the feel that the quality is spot on VERY good but the thing that everyone talks about are these bars on the screen which run horizontal not vertical.

I'm a tiny bit confused about the black bars you're talking about. Are these the typical black bars we always see (with a 2:35 AR being matted to a 1:78 AR), or am I missing something? (I think screen caps would be helpful with this question).

No Im not talking about the typical black bars, here are some sample pics, the bars that appear are above the lower black bar and below the upper black bar....and if you take into account those bars (which look translucent)
the film AR would be somewhere around 2.35 I bet (35mm) instead of 2.18 (70mm)

Whoa! I've really got to go back and take a look at my DVD disc 5! I never really went through the WP fully, but now will do so. Those bars are really notriceable. And yes, I did buy the briefcase near the Tannhauser gate.

Its a flaw with all the DVDs so if you havent noticed this, go back and take a look, they are there

But my original question in the first post still remains...

ChainsawAsh said:

I don't know where that could have been introduced.  It's possible that it was taken from a print that had been projected, and somehow the aperture gate or an extra-hot bulb damaged the film

This had crossed my mind but I really dont think this is it since this workprint wouldnt have got too many plays in a theater for one, and two I havent seen anything like this first hand when working with film, if it gets too hot it burns, pretty simple...remember plates on 35mm projectors are not the same as the 70mm ones, cause the 35mm have to deal with both flat and scope

 I'd say it's more likely a flaw in the 70mm blow-up process (the workprint was blown up to 70mm by accident and shown in the early nineties - I believe they meant to do a blow-up of the theatrical cut, but something got mixed up and they ended up with the workprint) than anything else

Are you positive about this? I was under the impression that the print used was an original early 80s 70mm workprint and not a restrike of an older print revived. From what I remember, the workprints were owned by theaters and in the 90s they started to show them again, select nights, WB caught wind of this and made the D cut of the movie

It could also be due to the film scanner used to transfer the print to digital, but based on the rest of the set's level of quality I doubt this to be the case.

Remember tho, the rest of the movies scanned were 35mm, while the WP was 70mm....this is what raised my suspicions that someone screwed the pooch and didnt notice it til it was too late and tried to correct for it as best they could.....see the documentary on the WP disc 5 and you will see what I mean

I've only seen this video problem when working with 3/4" U-Matic Video Format back in the 80's.  Could this BR workprint have come from an old 3/4" U-Matic master that was saved of the 70mm film print? That is the same exact noise problem we would see all the time when I worked for a video transfer service in NYC in 84'.

From Brendan Fankboner's original workprint companion

As you can see, this version is the most "radically different" edition of Blade Runner, as compared to other cuts. Other differences are that, after 1982, the only version to exist of this print is a 70 millimeter blow-up, in six-track Dolby Stereo. The blow-up process clips six percent off of the edges, as compared to 35 millimeter anamorphic prints. However, the six-track sound mix separates the bass and music from the dialogue and sound effects, to hold their own independence within the sound mix. Vangelis’ music has an aural, enveloping quality to it in this print, despite the rough qualities of the mix. In 1990 and 1991, some Landmark theaters in the Los Angeles area played this version as an anamorphic, 35 millimeter reduction print from the 70 millimeter blow-up. The print was reported to be of poor quality: grainy, non-color-corrected, and with "wobbly", hastily cut-in end credits (which also showed up in the " Director’s Cut"). A new, final credit was added to the 35 millimeter reduction: This version copyright 1991 The Blade Runner Partnership. The 70 millimeter blow-up resurfaced, briefly, and by mistake, at the Landmark Egyptian theater in Seattle during late January of 1999. It has also been reported as surfacing, again, in the Los Angeles area, in 1999. Let’s hope that the next time this rougher, but yet exciting, cut of Blade Runner makes it’s appearance, it is as an official video release!

Source at: http://media.bladezone.com/contents/film/workprint/

FanFiltration said:

From Brendan Fankboner's original workprint companion

Other differences are that, after 1982, the only version to exist of this print is a 70 millimeter blow-up, in six-track Dolby Stereo. In 1990 and 1991, some Landmark theaters in the Los Angeles area played this version as an anamorphic, 35 millimeter reduction print from the 70 millimeter blow-up. The print was reported to be of poor quality: grainy, non-color-corrected, and with "wobbly", hastily cut-in end credits (which also showed up in the " Director’s Cut"). A new, final credit was added to the 35 millimeter reduction:

 

Source at: http://media.bladezone.com/contents/film/workprint/

OK, so it was a 1982 print, and it did start to surface and they decided to make a D cut of the movie. Heres the question to this new finding....
Are they trying to say that the 70mm print was played as a 35mm print in the theatres? And if thats the case, how did they accomplish this? Because seeing a 70mm print when you normally see 35mm prints, you would say to yourself.....somethings a miss here

I don't see the shadow bars on these shots, but they are not the best....

These are from a review of the HD & BR sets.

From: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews34/blade_runner_HD_Blu-ray.htm

Noise evident

Disc 5 - is the "Workprint"  IN HD (1080 - VC-1 encode) is a kind of initial test-run treatise. It has a 45 second intro by Scott and a full commentary by Paul M. Sammon (author of   Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner").

It represents a rare version of the film considered by some to be the most radically different of all the Blade Runner cuts. It includes an altered opening scene, no Deckard narration until the final scenes, no "unicorn" sequence, no Deckard/Rachel "happy ending," altered lines between Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his creator Tyrell (Joe Turkell), alternate music and much more. It looks weak and as reported by Scott's intro is the lesser of the 4 versions available in this package, although it has had some 'restoration'.

NOTE: It has only 34 chapters (instead of 36) and is about 2.25:1 aspect ratio (where the others are 2.4).