Idea & Info Wanted: Spider-Man (2002) - Open-matte Film Restoration

This thread isn’t a project initiation thread, just an enquiry.

Back in December last year, I saw the Spider-Man (2002) movie’s open-matte film reel being sold on eBay (can’t quite remember the price).

It’s gone now, of course, but I saved an image that was there on the eBay listing:

The listing’s name was “35MM FEATURE FILM: SPIDER-MAN (2002)” and I even still have a link to it from my browser history (but there’s nothing to see anymore): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/35MM-FEATURE-FILM-SPIDER-MAN-2002-/302821956345

But yeah, I didn’t buy it, though I wish I could have. I was wondering, though, did anyone here happen to pick it up? Or was anyone aware of this particular sale and has any idea whether a fan restoration of it could be taking place?

Or, also, has a different open-matte 35mm film reel of Spider-Man (2002) been purchased by a community member here with the intention of a HD open-matte fanres release?

It’d be nice to see the film this way.

I also saw this, I think it was the entire movie, wasn’t it?

Either way, yeah, it could be bought and scanned for a nice Open Matte preservation. Was also playing with the idea, think I might have even pitched it to a few people, but there wasn’t much interest. Actually, none.

trillary dump said:

I’d love to see it in open matte 35mm! I did find an open matte HDTV capture on some Russian site which is my favorite way to watch Spider-Man 2

I assume 16:9 open-matte? I’ve seen those Russian HDTV caps but yeah 16:9. Would be very cool to see 4:3 HD too, since it’s only available in SD atm via fullscreen edition DVDs.

Are those fullscreen edition DVDs ‘open matte’?

While Spider-Man 2 was filmed in Super 35, a lot of the VFX shots were hard-matted to a scope ratio. In the HDTV version, those scenes are pan and scanned to 16:9. Other scenes are open matte though.

stretch009 said:

Are those fullscreen edition DVDs ‘open matte’?

In the specifics shots I compared, it was open-matte. but considering what Papai2013 explains, I guess some/most VFX shots are cropped w/ pan & scan.

While the 35mm prints of Spider-Man 2 and 3 should have a larger image than the widescreen home video counterparts, they won’t contain the full camera image as Spider-Man 1 does. This is because Spider-Man 1 was a flat print which used the full 4-perf height from the negative, while SM-2 and 3 were printed anamorphic.

So this Spider-Man 2 35mm film reel is on there… Anybody have any experience with this seller? It’s so suspicious: https://www.ebay.com/itm/35mm-Feature-Film-SPIDER-MAN-2-2004-Just-in-time-for-Halloween/293255286475

Enigmo said:

So this Spider-Man 2 35mm film reel is on there… Anybody have any experience with this seller? It’s so suspicious: https://www.ebay.com/itm/35mm-Feature-Film-SPIDER-MAN-2-2004-Just-in-time-for-Halloween/293255286475

Overpriced as hell. That seller has a questionable reputation from what I heard. You might get lucky and get a good print from him, or you may get a shit print.

Incidentally, I do have a Spider Man print now, a German one. Don’t have any money to have it scanned right now though.

TomArrow said:

Enigmo said:

So this Spider-Man 2 35mm film reel is on there… Anybody have any experience with this seller? It’s so suspicious: https://www.ebay.com/itm/35mm-Feature-Film-SPIDER-MAN-2-2004-Just-in-time-for-Halloween/293255286475

Overpriced as hell. That seller has a questionable reputation from what I heard. You might get lucky and get a good print from him, or you may get a shit print.

Incidentally, I do have a Spider Man print now, a German one. Don’t have any money to have it scanned right now though.

That’s amazing to hear. Spider-Man 1? What’s the aspect ratio?

You should definitely start a thread for it on this forum and request some donations to help get it scanned.

I assume it’s open matte, but I have no way to check.

Will maybe make a thread about it someday, first I wanna get the open projects all done. Don’t wanna lose track.

If you do scan it, could you go for 4K and high dynamic range?

Enigmo said:

If you do scan it, could you go for 4K and high dynamic range?

Sadly, no. Maybe someday in the future but currently I have no realistic way of doing that.

Yeah not now I mean whenever you are able to get it scanned. Is it a matter of money that you say you can’t? Or do you use your own scanning tools which aren’t able to do this?

I personally just wish more 35mm scans weren’t so clipped/faded in the darks and highlights. Defeats the concept of preservation

Well, it is and it isn’t. If I had tens of thousands available, I could just pay a professional company to do an HDR scan of course. But someday I might have a way to do it cheaper. The current scans are done by people who do it as a hobby basically (not myself) and those don’t have HDR setups.

Most scans I’ve seen aren’t clipped, assuming you mean highlights. Some don’t have the best color grading though. As for the darks … talking about typical theatrical prints, HDR would do one thing and that’s reduce the noise in the dark areas. However it would not necessarily reveal a lot more detail or anything. Especially after an H264 encode, the difference is probably negligible. I’ve done HDR experiments and the difference is visible, but it’s not necessarily a “day a night” scenario.

Generally theatrical prints tend to have rather strong contrast and flatten out in the darks and bright areas. Scan quality does matter to a degree, you might lose dark detail with an extremely bad camera, but the cameras used for these projects tend to have a signal to noise ratio of about 70 dB or around 12 stops of dynamic range, which is generally speaking good enough to have an enjoyable scan.

If you’re into having all the details in the highlights and dark areas down to the last pixel, you’re probably better off watching Blu Rays that were scanned from the original camera negative, as the information is still present in that. More so than in the theatrical print anyway.

I see. Do you guys do log scans?

Log is just a transfer function. We do linear 12 bit scans, saving the straight sensor data. There’s no point in converting that to log for saving really, unless we wanted to save a backup in some 10 or 8 bit format.

I wondered if that guy on Ebay was legit as well. I saw he had a full print of Crystal Skull for sale.

I’m sure if it was any of the first 3 Indiana Jones films it would have sold and quickly.

JadedSkywalker said:

I wondered if that guy on Ebay was legit as well. I saw he had a full print of Crystal Skull for sale.

The spider-man 2 reel? He just added some pics. They’re hard to tell anything from, but if the pics are legit then it’s a matted film print and I personally don’t care for it

Enigmo said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I wondered if that guy on Ebay was legit as well. I saw he had a full print of Crystal Skull for sale.

The spider-man 2 reel? He just added some pics. They’re hard to tell anything from, but if the pics are legit then it’s a matted film print and I personally don’t care for it

According to imdb, Spiderman 2 prints are anamorphic, so there’s no Open Matte to be had there anyway.

Yeah I’m not sure how it works but those pics seem to have the same framing as the Blu-ray while the 16:9 and 4:3 versions of the movie have a bit more on top and bottom (but left and right is cropped too)