True - however, a lot of people (most of the population, in fact) saw 2001 in the 35mm version, so regardless of grain structure (which, while being the same size in 65mm film, appears smaller due to the larger size of the image) the 35mm in my opinion represents a different experience - much like the SW 35mm vs 70mm experience.
Don’t listen to his lies! 😉
What do you mean by “lies”? Did anything I say was a lie. A cropped 35mm is not the correct way to see the film which was shot in a taller 70mm ratio. The Blu Ray is sourced from the 70mm. I get that you like film grain, I do too. But 70mm prints are not chock full of grain like 35mm prints. they are very clean and the grain structure is super fine. resulting is a crisper image. Kubrick did not shoot in 35mm and then crop to 70.
Did you misunderstand what 😉 meant? I definitely realize and understand everything you have stated (except for the implication that the print shouldn’t be restored and released just because it’s cropped; if this implication wasn’t the intent of that post, I apologize for misunderstanding that).
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.
Colson said:
(2) A hypothetical transfer of this print with all detail and color intact, but without the grainIs that even possible?
I think what he was getting at was similar to what I was saying I might try - a SW Legacy type restoration basically scrubbing (though that isn’t the right word) the print grain out, leaving just the original 65mm grain structure intact.
Don’t have much to contribute except support.
I’ll try to donate in a couple of months when I have some more moola.
I saw this in 70mm at the Prince Charles cinema in London. The remarkable thing about film that I hadn’t noticed before is that it highlights detail you want and disguises detail you don’t. On the blu-ray, in the Dawn of Man prologue, you can clearly see paint roller strokes or cleaning marks on the back projection screen behind the savanna sets. It’s distracting and annoying and you think why would such a perfectionist and pedant as Stanley Kubrick put up with that when it’s so obvious? I was looking out for those marks on the 70mm print (because I’m a nerd) and they just plain don’t show up. The film print just ignores them. The print’s sharp as a knife alright, but only in areas of intense bunched up detail or bright highlights. Same kinda thing with Star Wars, the green screen and effects mattes just blend better in the release prints when compared to the blu rays.
In many ways scanning in high def from the camera negative is not a restoration of an old film in any way. It’s a preservation for sure, but it’s getting back to a raw material that wouldn’t ever have been seen. Kubrick didn’t pick up on those marks, because even on 70mm they weren’t a problem. That’s why these scans of release prints look so good, the generational grain binds the images together to give you an intense feeling of ‘story’ rather than ‘photography’, that’s why we like em so much 😉
I first noticed the patchwork background of the front projection screen when viewing the film in 70mm, I haven’t seen the blu-ray, but I notice it every time in the cinema.
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Poita, how many times did you see 2001 in theaters? I know you were one of the lucky ones to see SW projected more than once in '77… (we young’uns envy you!)
I can think of 8 specific viewings over the years, but it would likely be 12 or so times.
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Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!
Man… what I wouldn’t give!!
I’m old.
So it will just cost you your youth.
Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
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Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!
Excellent project! For the best possible quality, I’m interested in preserving the audio and regrading the BD color. That’s unless your prints have the trims!
poita said:
I first noticed the patchwork background of the front projection screen when viewing the film in 70mm, I haven’t seen the blu-ray, but I notice it every time in the cinema.
Here you go (a click-thru the website to the full 1920x1080 image):
Top Wall Papers website - 2001: A Space Odyssey - Dawn Of Man (1080p)
American Cinematographer: Front Projection for 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Herb A. Lightman wrote:
The surfacing material used for the giant screen was a special 3M fabric coated with very tiny mirrored beads of glass. … This special lenticular 3M material comes in rolls and an effort was made to surface the screen by mounting it in 100-foot strips. However, because of a slight variation in reflectivity between rolls, seams were frequently visible under projected light. An attempt to match strips exactly proved unsuccessful, so the material was finally torn into small, jagged, irregular shapes which were mounted in a “camouflage” mosaic, shape on top of shape, so that there was no longer any visible variation in reflectivity.
Would this suggest that the contrast of the prints was not high enough for the brightness to further obscure those pieces, as they saw it?
I know things take time to develop, but any new word on the film’s progress? I know I ought to sit down calmly and take a stress pill, but … 😃
I am also eager for news on this project. 😄
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.
The preparations are still being made for scanning. The first print has some VS during the first half of the reel, so that is being dealt with (camphor at the moment). Will continue to post updates as they happen, but please feel free to post in the thread if I forget to update in a while… 😃
So, got some updates - first step will be scanning the soundtrack, as that takes priority. Our main hope now is that the curl of R1 will be relaxed enough that we can get those edge tracks scanned OK… I believe the plan is to do the audio relatively soon, and the image later (as they are done on a different machine). I will have to pay for the audio scan coming up, and our HDD donor had to back out, so any help on either front would be much appreciated.
So i really like this film, but i am a bit confused on this project (and the fact that most of the discussion is about film grain didn’t help). You state that the primary purpose of the preservation is the 4-track audio. Is there any real point to scanning the film then, not just the audio? especially considering its state? i have it on dvd. just curious.
i have it on dvd.
Wait… so, because you have a low resolution copy off the film, your saying that the print shouldn’t be preserved? Am I understanding that correctly? Also, ‘its state’ didn’t seem that bad, as far as I knew. some VS going on a portion of one reel (on one of two prints) doesn’t exactly tell me that it’s useless to preserve. If I misunderstood your post, you have my apologies.
EDIT: Re-reading this post, I felt it may come off as a little hostile, so I just want to say that I wasn’t trying to attack you or anything, I just didn’t understand why you were curious about this.
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.
So i really like this film, but i am a bit confused on this project (and the fact that most of the discussion is about film grain didn’t help). You state that the primary purpose of the preservation is the 4-track audio. Is there any real point to scanning the film then, not just the audio? especially considering its state? i have it on dvd. just curious.
The point of this scan is two-fold: (1) To retrieve the 4-track audio, which is otherwise MIA for this movie, and (2) to have a better-than-the-Blu-Ray copy of the film, because the Blu-Ray is less-than-great.
“You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you?” - Juror 8
“Silence, Earthling! My name is Darth Vader. I am an extra-terrestrial from the planet Vulcan!” - Calvin “Marty” Klein
Thanks guys. i guess from the description of the state of the film (bad fading) i wasn’t sure if getting a better than dvd or bluray image quality was an actual goal of the project, i guess it is?
My reasons for asking are mainly because i am wondering if i feel like supporting this project or not. Not judging, just trying to decide how much i personally care.
dahmage said:
Is there any real point to scanning the film then, not just the audio? especially considering its state? i have it on dvd.
Absolutely! Check-out the other thread Cinerama 70mm 2001 preservation. Is it possible?. It’s only 14 pages and packed with info. Unfortunately, some early pictures are missing, from when Imageshack reorganized and wiped away all posters previous uploads. We moved on to other upload sites, so there’s still lots of demonstrable images after a few pages.
The DVDs and Blu-ray are consumer releases and part of the problem:
Spaced Ranger said:
Then definitely check out DVDBeaver’s “DVD Review 2001: A Space Odyssey” … Every home-consumer release (Blu-ray, too) as been all over the quality-map! …
However, the MGM 1998 DVD … comes out looking color-closest to Criterion Collection’s “Kubrick’s Blessing” laserdisc releases (thanks to PDB & althor1138 for their captures). …
Generally, old film is superior (even faded). And the scanning at 4K can bring out detail the Blu-ray just doesn’t have. I hope the Kubrick estate scanned Stanley's personal copy of 2001 before they snipped it apart for inclusion of strips in the Taschen, premium, $1000 book-set.
They did that?! That’s… that’s just rude.
Ol’ George has the GOUT, I see.
To answer the earlier question (though it has been answered by other posters - thanks guys!) is yes, we will be using the image data pulled from the film. By combining the two prints, we should have a great source from which to work. Although the print is faded, there is plenty of color information there which can be extracted from a new tool by the user “Dr. Dre” and I have no doubt that not only will this be as close to the color references as Stanley Kubrick intended. Additionally, the effects will blend better, due to the generational loss inherent in film. Although SK filmed 2001 with 65mm “in camera” effects, there were some things which simply blended better in the 35mm and 70mm prints (the Dawn of Man backdrop, for example). Believe me - a donation to this project would be well worth it… Not only will we hear (for the first time in nearly half a century) the original audio mix, but we will also see the colors and image the way Kubrick himself intended.
Nobody wants to miss that. I’ll put in a tenner when I can.
Ol’ George has the GOUT, I see.
poita said:
I first noticed the patchwork background of the front projection screen when viewing the film in 70mm, I haven’t seen the blu-ray, but I notice it every time in the cinema.Here you go (a click-thru the website to the full 1920x1080 image):
Top Wall Papers website - 2001: A Space Odyssey - Dawn Of Man (1080p)American Cinematographer: Front Projection for 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Herb A. Lightman wrote:
The surfacing material used for the giant screen was a special 3M fabric coated with very tiny mirrored beads of glass. … This special lenticular 3M material comes in rolls and an effort was made to surface the screen by mounting it in 100-foot strips. However, because of a slight variation in reflectivity between rolls, seams were frequently visible under projected light. An attempt to match strips exactly proved unsuccessful, so the material was finally torn into small, jagged, irregular shapes which were mounted in a “camouflage” mosaic, shape on top of shape, so that there was no longer any visible variation in reflectivity.
Would this suggest that the contrast of the prints was not high enough for the brightness to further obscure those pieces, as they saw it?
I saw 2001 in the summer of '68 in Cinerama during its original theatrical run. I remember seeing the seams and to my eye the print had plenty of contrast. It was one of the most memorable events in my life. I had just turned 16 and had just received my Adult Drivers License after two years of a learners permit. It was my first date with who became my first steady girlfriend. So the memory is engraved in my brain.
Though if I may ask - would it be feasible to regrade the BD footage with the colours of this print? Seeing as that came off 70mm?
Ol’ George has the GOUT, I see.
