towne32 said:
You’re entitled to your opinion of course. But this suggests to me that you’re not familiar with the work involved in cleaning up 35mm film, or the state of the raw scans.
Well considering I work in Hollywood in Post Production, I think I am familiar. I started my career in New York with Merchant Ivory and have worked with Carl Reiner, John Landis, Joe Dante, and Oliver Stone to name a few. I started on films cut on Steenbecks and KEMs before learning the Avid. The last film I worked on for Disney had 900 VFX shots. But there were no “scans” since it was shot on the Arri Alexa. My friend worked on Episode II and I visited him on the ranch. I passed by George on my way to meet him in the cutting room.
The funny thing is that I am horrible at color timing. Directors have complained about lighting being different or color shifts that I do not see. So for me to notice the change in contrast and softness when Harmy cut to the 35mm LPP even when I am not looking for it - means that it was pretty glaring.
And I will go off on a tangent that will probably fan more flames. But I sat in on a UCLA class with Robert Harris (who restored Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Rear Window, and Vertigo). He spoke of the “ethics” of film restoration. He spoke of if you find an error that was not intended - do you fix it? In some cases you do. He spoke of an animation error in I think Bambi where a baby deer disappears for a few frames. They decided it was not helping the film. It was not intended. It was probably there because of a lack of time or money. So they fixed it. But when they had to re-record the foley tracks for Vertigo, he made sure to try to replicate the original sounds as much as possible. It was not their place to try to improve on what was originally there and now totally degraded.
I understand Harmy’s desire to restore the films to their original state “warts and all.” I will not debate that decision. He is doing the work. So that is his decision to make. But something should be remembered. I saw Star Wars at the Loews Astor Plaza in 70mm with Baby Boom Surround Sound. My experience and memory of how it looked is going to be different than someone who saw it in 35mm in a shoe box sized multiplex in mono.
There have been debates on hold out mattes in the Despecialized edition. Whether they are visible depends on a lot of things that are out of anyone’s control. A difference of 1º in the temperature of the bath at the lab can affect the density of a print. Was it the first print in the bath (when it was clean) or the last one when it was dirty? Is the screen Matte White or Reflective Silver? And of course, is it a release print, a 70mm blow up, or an EK print (struck directly from the original neg, without going through the IP process)? And of course how bright is the bulb at the theater? Spielberg said in and interview in 1990 that they have to make some prints thinner to compensate for for dim bulbs at crappy theaters.
And in video these same variables exist. Was it transferred from the cut neg or an IP? Was it transferred at 4K or 2K or HD? Was it transferred for CRT monitors and 601 color space or for modern HDTVs which are RGB and much brighter? Back in the eighties and nineties, they used to strike a Lo-Con print just for the transfer to video because CRT video added a lot of contrast. And of course, in video the end user is also the “projectionist.” In the editing room there is a joke that the projectionist gets the final cut. Most people don’t have their monitor’s calibrated. Where they have the contrast and brightness set will decide if they see garbage mattes.
Mileage may vary depending on how you first experienced a film.
