'Raiders of the Lost Ark' - bluray and colour timing changes (Released) — Page 3

Dvdmike, you keep ranting on the fact that the grading in the film does not look like their equivalents in real life. Filmmakers always tweak their colors to evoke a certain mood. Yes, even before the days of DI color grading, this was being done. Look at Michael manns manhunter or Cameron films. 

Perhaps Raiders is warmer and the foliage is brown and not green but that could have been a creative choice!

penguinofgreatness said:

(With the exception of the snake reflection. Why?!)

Like removing fuzzy matte-boxes, it's removing something that would not have been visible to theater-goers during the original run. Darker projection makes a huge difference in what is visible.

timdiggerm said:

penguinofgreatness said:

(With the exception of the snake reflection. Why?!)

Like removing fuzzy matte-boxes, it's removing something that would not have been visible to theater-goers during the original run. Darker projection makes a huge difference in what is visible.

It was visible in the original theatrical run (there was a little geeky chatter about it even then--"hey! guess how they did this shot! you can see the reflection!").  It just wasn't a big deal, and it continued to not be a big deal when it was visible on VHS and Laserdisc.  Yes, I am old and saw this movie lots of times in the theatre.

Modern audiences expect their visual effects to be flawless.  Past audiences merely expected visual effects to be convincing.  We used to see reflections, boom mikes, obvious matte paintings, and even occasionally wires and that was perfectly acceptable to most people at the time.  This really is a cut-and-dry case of changing a movie to fit changing popular aesthetic sensibilities.

CatBus said:

Modern audiences expect their visual effects to be flawless.  Past audiences merely expected visual effects to be convincing.  We used to see reflections, boom mikes, obvious matte paintings, and even occasionally wires and that was perfectly acceptable to most people at the time.

It's still perfectly acceptable now.

People didn't pass-up Prometheus because of this blunder: http://faildesk.net/2012/06/12/prometheus-runs-on-windows-7/

They passed-up Prometheus because it's a bad movie.

Nearly everyone I know only cares about the story. The special effects, colortiming, and other minutia aren't important to them. These things are important to us, but I believe we're the minority.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my 13-year-old sister wouldn't pass-up a movie because of bad press about visible matte outlines or something.

AntcuFaalb said:

It's still perfectly acceptable now.

Okay, overstatement on my part.  They were normal and even expected back then.  They are not normal now.

People didn't pass-up Prometheus because of this blunder: http://faildesk.net/2012/06/12/prometheus-runs-on-windows-7/

That's not a flaw.  That's a subtle editorial statement about how long some corporations will hold out before deploying Windows 8.

Nick66 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

People didn't pass-up Prometheus because of this blunder: http://faildesk.net/2012/06/12/prometheus-runs-on-windows-7/

They passed-up Prometheus because it's a bad movie.

 

Didn't Prometheus make something like 400m?  Sounds to me like a lot of people didn't pass.

I mean, the movie was a disappointment to be sure, but it wasn't that bad.

When you're right, you're right.

"pass-up" was the wrong term to use. I should have said something like: "People formed negative opinions about".

CatBus said:

That's not a flaw.  That's a subtle editorial statement about how long some corporations will hold out before deploying Windows 8.

Ha!

These kind of minor tweaks are definitely done with good intentions and are quite tastefully done, but unfortunately it is these minor and often hard to see tweaks that can make the most damage in terms of the history of the film.

One thing I liked about the reflections in the cobra scene is that you got reminded that this was not a special effect but instead done in camera, beautifully shot.

dvdmike said:

So if Lowry and Laser Pacific both scan the negative and get the same colour temp, what was the new scan colour based on? 

The theatrical prints of Star Wars look very different from what's on the negative.

I imagine it's the same for RotLA.

Also, don't forget that the bulb used during projection can drastically change the colortiming.

The colortiming of the BD might be based on what a theatrical print looked like when projected with a "warm" '70-style bulb.

Ok, I managed to get a friend of mine to send me pics of the tweaks, he thinks I'm a total crazy son of a bitch. ;)

top: original below: tweaked

Boulder - 1st shot:

Boulder - 2nd shot:

see the left of the boulder... two more of the visible rod, taken from the trailer:

Well of the Souls - not the best pics and these are actually much easier to spot in motion as there's lightning (thunder), fire and movements that reveals reflections in these shots, but I marked the most obvious mark in the glass that was removed, if you look close enough you'll see additional scratches and marks that was removed below and to the right of the snake where Fords face earlier passes in the shot.

same mark removed in this shot...

For some reason they seem to be perfectly fine with leaving this shot alone:

For the tweaked Pan American Clipper matte shot, I found this one: http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/comparison.php?cap1=14343&cap2=14327&art=full&image=2&cID=1273&action=1&lossless=#vergleich

See the water reflections and removed matte lines. When the tweaks made are this subtle, I'm pretty sure there might be more of them...

Chewtobacca said:

What's the source of the untweaked shots (apart from the trailer)?

The source for the untweaked shots is the making of featurette included on the 2003 DVD trilogy set, so better than LD but still 4:3 letterboxed and interlaced material, the boulder scene should be in its complete form, not sure about the well of souls bits. The tweaked shots were all from the same DVD set btw.