Info & Info Wanted: 'The Abyss' — Page 3

The additional footage for the extended version of the movie was mastered for the laserdisc release.  From what I understand, Fox didn't want to go back and remaster the footage again for DVD, so they used the LD transfer.  I haven't seen any details released on the Blu Ray but if they intend to include the extra footage for the Special Edition, they will have to do a new master. 

I recall the original DVD being released fairly early on with a relatively cheap price tag, as well, so I'm not surprised that the quality isn't the best that it could be.

Yes, there's an HDTV open matte full HD master airing on channels. I don't get why it hasn't appeared online yet. But then, the True Lies open matter HD master is not online either, even thought it airs from time to time. (I own one recording of that one).

The new HD master is like 4 years old. Van Ling reported it on many forums.

And no one is awaiting an open matte Blu-ray.

Harmy said:

Well, I doubt we can expect an open matte BD release.

Titanic did get one, and it's also James Cameron's film. Though I don't know the details behind the decision to release both versions of Titanic.

Was it open matte or pan-and-scan?  Generally, 2.35:1 films were shot on 70mm or Cinemascope 35mm anamorphic frames.  Open matte films are generally shot at 3:4 and matted to 1.66:1 or 1.85:1.  I know there were a few exceptions, but they weren't common because matting a 4:3 35mm frame down to 2.35:1 ends up looking like crap.  Given the budget Titanic had, I have a hard time believing they wouldn't have shot it on 70mm.

I would suspect they were pan-and-scan rather than open matte.  Open matte means the film was shot at 4:3 ratio and the top and bottom were cropped in the theater to give the wider 1.66:1 or 1.85:1 ratio.  When the video is presented in open matte, you get more picture information at the top and bottom of the frame than what was shown in the theater.

Pan-and-scan means that the film was shot in the wider aspect ratio (usually 2.35:1 or hard-matted 1.85:1) and then the sides are cropped off to make it fit a 4:3 display.  Information is lost from the sides of the original and often the area that's shown is panned or scanned to make sure that the section of the film with the most visual elements or action is visible.

Ah, that would explain the movies I've seen where the widescreen version had more picture information on the sides but the full-frame version had more information at the top and bottom. 

I remember all the problems with the Titanic film print from working at a theater that had it when I worked there.  For some reason, they used a really cheap film stock that wasn't intended for the longer movies.  As the movie got closer to the end the film would start to buckle in on itself and eventually get tangled in the "brain" unit on the projector until the film broke and the movie got interrupted.  We had to have someone stand at the film platter and physically push the film back into place as it unwound for the last 45-60 minutes of the movie.  It was such a pain.

We had the film tangle and break about halfway through the credits once and all these old ladies came out complaining that they didn't get to hear the end of that Celine Dion song and demanding a refund.

Just a stupid question - I can't find any of the 1080i versions online, could somebody point me to the correct direction ?

skyjedi2005 said:

The D-theater of i am not sure if it was Alien or Aliens.  Had more frame information at the sides the original theatrical colors and no extra cgi tinkering.

I just got done watching the D-Theater version of Alien.  It was awesome.

:)

I got to watch Aliens in 70mm for a special screening.  From everything I read, that one along with the original Terminator film were hard-matted.  The 70mm print looked so much better than the Laserdisc release that was, at the time, the only way to get the extended version of the film but it had black matte bars along the edges since there wasn't enough picture information to take up the full 70mm film frame.

pittrek said:

Just a stupid question - I can't find any of the 1080i versions online, could somebody point me to the correct direction ?

Very good question, I'd say.  Rutracker.org seems to be one of the best places for such HD files.  I'd go there if I were you.

What would be great is a restoration of the 1.96:1 LD rip of the theatrical cut and mix (original LD release before the SE)

Space Kaijuu said:

I got to watch Aliens in 70mm for a special screening.  From everything I read, that one along with the original Terminator film were hard-matted.  The 70mm print looked so much better than the Laserdisc release that was, at the time, the only way to get the extended version of the film but it had black matte bars along the edges since there wasn't enough picture information to take up the full 70mm film frame.

Yes, I do recall reading that both films were hard-matted. I've seen an original trailer for The Terminator projected open-matte, and I remember black bars on the top and bottom with fuzzy edges - I'm assuming that means the matting was done in-camera. (But amusingly, the animated lightning effects seem to have been shot using the entire Academy-ratio frame, because they extended out into the black areas, past the live action!)

Even more bizarre are the films that were shot partially open matte and partially hard matte.  That must have made things difficult for the whoever was in charge of creating a pan-scan version.

I thought I would chip in and let you know I have the US 2 disc special edition and the UK 2 disc special edition. the US version has a nice booklet with it.

If it's any help...

I think there is a rare 3 disc edition also that has dvd rom content on it. It's a US gate fold digi pack release.

The UK disc is cut

I have a feeling reframing varying randomly in some scenes will make it impractical.