James Cameron uses DVNR on Aliens Blu Ray transfer.

Sorry but unless it is just the extended cut that is effected i will boycott the boxed set.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=68820

Here is a quote that basically made me cringe with horror i think he is pulling a Lucas.  Revisionist nonsense.  The film is what you shot with the tech you has at the time not what you wish you had.

"It's spectacular. We went in and completely de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed, color-corrected every frame, and it looks amazing. It looks better that it looked in the theaters originally. Because it was shot on a high-speed negative that was a new negative that didn't pan out too well and got replaced the following year. So it's pretty grainy. We got rid of all the grain. It's sharper and clearer and more beautiful than it's ever looked. And we did that to the long version, to the 'director's cut' or the extended play."

Basically is comes down to, is the theatrical cut preserved as it was originally released.  Because if they just did this on the extended cut i don't care, but if they are seamless branched meaning both are ruined then i do.

Anyway i care more about how Alien is handled and hope it gets the same treatment as Blade Runner, i hate the directors cut though.

I also don't care what they do for the 3rd or forth film since i would not watch those.

Basically what i want is Alien and Aliens restored from the original negative with the grain intact as shot, but not the dupe grain produced when making a release print.

I have the Aliens 720p HDTV capture and man, is it grainy. It is grainy to the point of being annoying and distracting, actually I must say, that to me a sensibly applied modern DVNR would be preferable to that mess, but I doubt that that version was scanned from the o-neg.

Chewtobacca said:

ImperialFighter said:

Too many directors are fouling up their originals with all this colour-grading nonsense.  It looks like I'll be sticking with more and more DVD originals at this rate... 

I agree with you, and there was one hell of an argument when I and others brought this up at Blu-ray.com.  For many there, directors can do no wrong...

I confess that I do actually like the new color timing for Alien.  I watched both color timings back-to-back recently and to my surprise I found I preferred the new one.  It seems more filmic, but less real world to me, so it depends on what you want.

I am in two minds about the new color timing of Bladerunner.  At times it is closer to the workprint than the other cuts, but at other times it is too blue, and I find myself sick of the blue by the end of the film.  When directors recolor-time they never seem to know when enough of one tint is enough.  At least the other cuts have their original color timing on the five-disc set though.

All new transfers of Ridley Scott films seem recolor-timed, including the new master of Gladiator on the Anniversary Edition Blu-ray.  At times the colors look amazing, but generally the new palette is too warm for my taste.  The new master does not have all the DNR of the original though.

As far as Aliens go, both cuts will be on the same disc, so that implies that they will be seamlessly branched.  I think it is a safe bet that they will both use the same color timing, and I am virtually certain it will be different.  Apparently Alien and Aliens are undergoing the Lowry Digital restoration process, but the other two films in the quadrilogy are not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5y6sd17y9k

ImperialFighter said:  It looks like I'll be sticking with more and more DVD originals at this rate... 

I am increasingly doing the same.  It might be disappointing, but at least it saves you money!

Lowry and restoration in the same sentence is kind of funny, considering they either apply too much dvnr, or fuck colors up on almost all their DVD's.  I wonder why the Indiana Jones set turned out ok.

The fact they are being involved when they are the ones who botched the star trek blu rays, means i guess i will stick with the DVD's.

ImperialFighter said:

Too many directors are fouling up their originals with all this colour-grading nonsense.  It looks like I'll be sticking with more and more DVD originals at this rate... 

I think the reason behind this is that many modern homevideo releases goes back to the original negative when producing the new transfers and instead of bringing in the original DP again to do the colortiming, the producer of the sets do it themselves or sometimes the Director of the film, very disturbing. 

Chewtobacca said:

I am in two minds about the new color timing of Bladerunner.  At times it is closer to the workprint than the other cuts, but at other times it is too blue, and I find myself sick of the blue by the end of the film.  When directors recolor-time they never seem to know when enough of one tint is enough.  At least the other cuts have their original color timing on the five-disc set though.

I disagree, the archival cuts included in the Blade Runner set sports a different colortiming than the original one that sometimes looks even worse than the Final Cut.

Warbler said:

I never realized the Star Trek blu rays got botched. I don't have any of the star trek movies on blu ray yet.

Chewtobacca said:

As to Blade Runner, mysycamore, are you comparing the archival versions to the 1997 DVD?  On reflection, I can see that their colors are different from that release, so I suppose I was wrong about them having the original color timings, but I cannot see where they are worse than the Final Cut.  The 2006 DVD release colors look different from the original release too. 

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews24/bladerunner.htm

I like the look of the 2006 DVD actually.

Here's what Charles de Lauzirika said, (one of the producers of the set)

"As for the color differences, it all really boils down to the fact that Ridley Scott personally supervised and approved the color timing in the Final Cut to his liking -- something he was never able to properly do in the past -- while the other cuts are presented as close to their previously-established look as possible. Ridley worked directly with colorists Jill Bogdanowicz and Stephen Nakamura at Technicolor for the Final Cut, while Skip Kimball (a vet of many Ridley Scott transfers) handled the archival versions at Modern VideoFilm. The Workprint was in such bad shape that it went through two passes, first at FotoKem and then again with Skip at Modern."

It's a fantastic set but it's sad they didn't get the archival versions exactly right in how they're supposed to look, here is some of the worst examples.

'97 transfer

'06 transfer

'97 transfer

'06 transfer

I don't say that the shitty '97 transfer is correct either, it isn't (too red for example) but these caps show clearly that something isn't right. I don't have any examples to demonstrate the final cut unfortunately, but in some scenes it's closer to the original photography than the '06/archival versions imo.

Well, from what I rememeber mr. Scott saying somewhere, it is all the same transfer, only the digital colour correction was done separately for the FC.

Also, if I remember correctly, the DC was not shown theatrically (at least not widely) so actually the 1997 DVD (which is the same master as the original LD, which along with the VHS was the original presentation of the Director's Cut, which Ridley Scott had very little to do with) is a precise reference for this particular version of the film.

So broken down, each version had different colouring, so it couldn't be achived through seemless branching to have the right colours for every version. Can anyone here remember what Blade Runner looked like colour-wise on it's initial release and tell us which version is the closest? Because for all I know the 06 or 07 transfers may actually have colours closer to the original release of the film than the possibly crewed up LD DC transfer...

TV's Frink said:

Excellent advice from that highdefdigest post:

I have obviously not yet seen the ‘Aliens’ Blu-ray for myself. I will reserve judgment on its quality until I have the real thing in my hands.

Bah!

Chewtobacca said:

Harmy, I am not suggesting that each archival version should have different colors.  I am suggesting that Bladerunner had an original color timing.  I do not think the 1997 DC DVD was trying to establish a different look for that particular version: I think it just transferred the film, with the DC changes, but ended up with too red a color palette.  In short, I think there is an original color timing, reproduced with varying degress of success on the various releases, and a new color timing for the FC, nothing in between.

 

That is the question, isn't it? Take for instance the 2004 SE of ESB. Would it still be the actuall 2004 SE if it wasn't blue all over?

There were also fixes in the FC that were not on the archival releases, so it is not the same transfer.

I don't remember where he said it (maybe on the FC docs or comentary) but he said that the old non enhanced FX shots didn't look as good as the rest of the film because they didn't go through the cleaup the rest of the print did for the FC.

Sure, mate, let's agree to disagree ;-)

Well, that would definitely prove you right and as you, unlike me, can provide a quote of your information source, I'm gonna have to bow my head and back up on this one :-)

EDIT: Although he could still mean just the parts that were different in those versions, which would make a lot of sense given the use of seamless branching...

Chewtobacca said:

I need to learn about the process by which studios make transfers and masters really.  I think I understand the basics, but I need to lean more. 

I did some research on the subject and found this article, it may not give you any new technical information but it is very interesting nonetheless:

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2008/01/blade-runner-how-great-hd-made