Lord of the Rings 35mm (FOTR/TTT/ROTK/FOTREXT released) — Page 4

felpotomous said:

remsouille said:

Ok, I think I’m getting around it all. It appears that FOTR and TTT both suffer from varying color and exposure shifts over their different reels.
ROTK is much more uniform, I’m thinking the print was just in better condition overall.

I’m in the process of correcting them the best I can in Resolve. Really broad brushes here, nothing too clinical, mostly just fiddling with the green/magenta balance and I’m only applying grades to whole reels, not on a scene to scene basis.
It’s funny going over those movies like that, one really realizes how funky they went with the grading! You correct one scene that seems too green and then the next one is way too magenta! It’s a fine line to navigate, I even purchased some original 35mm cells from ebay to project them as slides and have a reference, but those were shifted as well. And one can hardly use the home video masters as a reference, the grading is just so different in many places, plus the prints have a lot more contrast, which really emphasizes the grading shifts.

Anyway, here’s where I’am at the moment on FOTR. It’s hard to shoot for 100% accuracy without a proper reference point, so I’m mostly trying to make it feel right, tell me what you think: https://imgur.com/a/hOzQV5K

Awesome! Will you be releasing your grade of the 35mm? Are you working on the extended or theatrical 35mm?

I’m working on the theatrical! Not too interested in the extended versions to be honest, I’ve watched them almost exclusively for the last 20 years, only to realize that my decreasing love for this trilogy was solely due to the extended sequences. Like it’s been said before, for a couple of nice bits, I think you get a lot of stuff that’s just plain bad and undermine the movies a great deal (the pirate scene, the stew scene, the whole army of the dead business,…) The theatricals are just better movies overall IMO, and so says the director!
I would really love to be able to do a release but I’m not sure I have the means of actually sharing the files with the world, so maybe someone can chime in and offer a solution…

I’ve said it before, but I can’t state enough how much these scans are by far the best way to experience these movies! Everything is just so seamless, it’s crazy how much the grain holds it all together! After spending many hours on this grade the last couple of weeks, I put the 4K remaster on my projector last night, and honestly, it is just painful to watch. It really does feel like watching a bad videogame at times.

Thanks to @elendil42 for all the hard work. From what I’ve seen in clips of the scans and some stills as well, absolutely gorgeous. Film really captures the organic, fantastical feel I’ve come to associate so strongly with LotR.

Holy shit this extended edition scan is absolutely amazing.

I can’t imagine ever watching another version of Fellowship. The quality is stupendous, probably because it wasn’t used as much as the theatrical scan.

Many, many thanks. Maybe one day we het TT and ROTK in extended as well, but the most important extended film has now successfully been restored!

Quick update folks, I’ve been busy with other things, but I’m back at trying to grade those the best I can, I think FOTR and TTT are pretty good where they are, there’s one reel in ROTK that’s still giving me a bit of a headache, but the project is not dead. Due to popular demand, I may tackle FOTR EE when I’m done with those…

Okay, I think I did my best for the time being, here are some snaps, let me know what you think:

FOTR: https://imgur.com/a/mJtrZEx
TTT: https://imgur.com/a/o3kVNOd
ROTK: https://imgur.com/a/IL1cl2O

Like I previously mentioned, I only applied grades to whole reels, not on a scene to scene or shot to shot basis. Some reels were pretty hard to match, especially in ROTK, but I think I did pretty good in most cases.
I don’t have a mega account, but if anyone would want to upload these on theirs, I’ld be happy to transfer them via resilio!
Should I maybe start a new thread?

Hello. Can someone please PM me with links to these movies? I am desperate.

Hello! I’ve recently started collecting 35mm scans. It’s been so great seeing some of my favorite classics with that nostalgic feeling of film and I would LOVE to see this trilogy the same way. Could someone let me know where/how to download these? I would greatly appreciate it!

I have made a YouTube playlist of LOTR 35mm clips so you guys can see what it looks like here is the link: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl_OlQ5T_zq20QaHEKqbLgRckbPaITu8E&si=0J2vXFFuFj8yNEUc

remsouille said:

Okay, I think I did my best for the time being, here are some snaps, let me know what you think:

FOTR: https://imgur.com/a/mJtrZEx
TTT: https://imgur.com/a/o3kVNOd
ROTK: https://imgur.com/a/IL1cl2O

Like I previously mentioned, I only applied grades to whole reels, not on a scene to scene or shot to shot basis. Some reels were pretty hard to match, especially in ROTK, but I think I did pretty good in most cases.
I don’t have a mega account, but if anyone would want to upload these on theirs, I’ld be happy to transfer them via resilio!
Should I maybe start a new thread?

I think you should start a new thread.

Boobafett2 said:

Holy shit this extended edition scan is absolutely amazing.

I can’t imagine ever watching another version of Fellowship. The quality is stupendous, probably because it wasn’t used as much as the theatrical scan.

Many, many thanks. Maybe one day we het TT and ROTK in extended as well, but the most important extended film has now successfully been restored!

I just came back to OT to take a look what was going on. It’s very interesting to see all these 35mm scans that are being preserved. I’m sad to say that having worked a lot with Fellowship in the past, I know with 100% certainty that this is, sadly, the 2011 master. That’s why the quality is so good. I remember reading somewhere, I think it was on OT, around the release of the first Hobbit movie in late 2012 that “there had been a screening of the new master of Fellowship Extended”. I guess they made some prints for the theaters who hadn’t gone digital at the time.

It also makes me especially sad since I’m pretty sure I read somewhere around the time I saw The Two Towers in the theater that there had been screenings of Fellowship extended, which would of course have been the original master that we got on DVD, grain, dirt and most of all the original colors!

And don’t get me wrong, all your work is very much appreciated! The theatrical versions never got proper releases on blu-ray either, just like Fellowship Extended. But in their case they added additional DNR to them instead of using the DVD masters. I remember around that time there were some HDTV version circulating that didn’t have the DNR but they seem impossible to find these days.

And shame on Peter Jackson forever for the “4K” releases. They’re all upscales, and they even used additional DNR. (The Two Towers had DNR already in the original teasers…) Not to mention all the awful tiny changes here and there and the colors that are all over the place.

How hard is it for multi-million dollar companies to properly treat our favorite movies with proper releases?! When you do a 4K release you’d go back to the negative, have a team of people who clean up any dirt and similar by hand, not run it through a frickin DNR algorithm. Then you make sure you restore the exact original look of each frame. If fans can do that, so can the rich companies but all they care about is quick cash-ins.

I’ve lost all respect for George Lucas, Peter Jackson and James Cameron because of their “re-imagination” or complete indifference about their work, every single release.

Long live the fan restorers!

“I remember around that time there were some HDTV version circulating that didn’t have the DNR but they seem impossible to find these days.”

Not impossible. I believe they’re still avaiable on Usenet and Rutracker.

stretch009 said:

“I remember around that time there were some HDTV version circulating that didn’t have the DNR but they seem impossible to find these days.”

Not impossible. I believe they’re still avaiable on Usenet and Rutracker.

Usenet: Maybe, I’ve never been able to try it since it costs too much for me.
Rutracker: They took them down long ago, sadly.

Either way, I’m a big fan of the extended versions so not a huge loss to me personally, but good if the fans have them for preservation’s sake. Fellowship was done really nicely by both 44rh1n and Dwalin.

imsorrydave2448 said:

You_Too said:

stretch009 said:

“I remember around that time there were some HDTV version circulating that didn’t have the DNR but they seem impossible to find these days.”

Not impossible. I believe they’re still avaiable on Usenet and Rutracker.

Usenet: Maybe, I’ve never been able to try it since it costs too much for me.
Rutracker: They took them down long ago, sadly.

Either way, I’m a big fan of the extended versions so not a huge loss to me personally, but good if the fans have them for preservation’s sake. Fellowship was done really nicely by both 44rh1n and Dwalin.

There is a torrent of all the HDTV versions on CHDBits. Someone had actually posted the torrent from their a while ago and CHDBits killed the torrent after a few people downloaded it and then they reposted the files to their site. I don’t have access to that tracker, however you can usually find someone on Rutracker who has access to whatever tracker you need something from. Just go and ask.

Could you please explain what this HDTV version is?

imsorrydave2448 said:

Boobafett2 said:

imsorrydave2448 said:

You_Too said:

stretch009 said:

“I remember around that time there were some HDTV version circulating that didn’t have the DNR but they seem impossible to find these days.”

Not impossible. I believe they’re still avaiable on Usenet and Rutracker.

Usenet: Maybe, I’ve never been able to try it since it costs too much for me.
Rutracker: They took them down long ago, sadly.

Either way, I’m a big fan of the extended versions so not a huge loss to me personally, but good if the fans have them for preservation’s sake. Fellowship was done really nicely by both 44rh1n and Dwalin.

There is a torrent of all the HDTV versions on CHDBits. Someone had actually posted the torrent from their a while ago and CHDBits killed the torrent after a few people downloaded it and then they reposted the files to their site. I don’t have access to that tracker, however you can usually find someone on Rutracker who has access to whatever tracker you need something from. Just go and ask.

Could you please explain what this HDTV version is?

A recording of the movies as they played on TV

Forgive my ignorance but what is Rutracker?

There’s a DVD rip on rutracker (5582846); isn’t that the same quality/AR as HDTV?

sixtosounds said:

Hello! I’ve recently started collecting 35mm scans. It’s been so great seeing some of my favorite classics with that nostalgic feeling of film and I would LOVE to see this trilogy the same way. Could someone let me know where/how to download these? I would greatly appreciate it!

Did you make any progress with this? Trying to figure it out myself!

Hi everyone, just a question, what’s the best way to scan a 35mm film reel? Do people do it at home or are all the scans here sent to expert companies? I got my hands on some reels and would like to try to make some scans. Thanks.

GlupShitto said:

sixtosounds said:

Hello! I’ve recently started collecting 35mm scans. It’s been so great seeing some of my favorite classics with that nostalgic feeling of film and I would LOVE to see this trilogy the same way. Could someone let me know where/how to download these? I would greatly appreciate it!

Did you make any progress with this? Trying to figure it out myself!

You have to PM @SnooPac for the files…

You_Too said:
this is, sadly, the 2011 master

I was curious, how can you tell?

You_Too said:
Rutracker: They took them down long ago, sadly.

Correct.

imsorrydave2448 said:
Just go and ask [on rutracker]

I did, no response yet, but I’ll report back if there’s news.

There is a torrent of all the HDTV versions on CHDBits

There’s also a very old and dead torrent of FotR on the Pirate Bay (3521691), with some interesting description + comments.

I did find the WEB-DL 16:9 version of FotR (1d86b159ac49783f9d6aa204aee906bf50a2a118), unfortunately with a watermark “Starz” occasionaly in the bottom right, but it has several shots showing more image than any of the other release out there.

Anyways, would love to hear if anyone has more details about the HDTV version or even the original theatrical 35mm prints (or even better, the full scan of the original camera negative)!

A full scan of the OCN will not be the correct color correct? Meaning we would have to regrade it to match the 35mm print?

blakninja said:

A full scan of the OCN will not be the correct color correct? Meaning we would have to regrade it to match the 35mm print?

You’re right, that’s true! Even though the OCN would give us the picture in full frame (which no one here could recreate), the original color timing would be lost (which however some very talented people here could restore).

I was able to find 720p HDTV rips on Usenet for anyone interested

• The.Lord.Of.The.Rings.The.Fellowship.Of.The.Ring.2001.720p.HDTV.x264-THOR
• The.Lord.Of.The.Rings.The.Two.Towers.2003.NL.720p.HDTV.x264-THOR
• The.Lord.Of.The.Rings.Return.Of.The.King.2003.720p.HDTV.x264-THOR