'Raiders of the Lost Ark' - bluray and colour timing changes (Released) — Page 6

dvdmike said:

AntcuFaalb said:

stretch009 said:

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

What does this mean?  Please be kind.

I think he's referring to the red Nazi flags looking orange on the BD.

It was changed to gold to match Kingdom, it is not the 1980's timing at all

Is that including the impact that an 80s projection bulb would have on the colortiming?

The logic that the movie was modified to resemble Skull is flawed, as that movie was timed to match raiders in the first place. This isn't a retroactive claim -- they made it back when the film was first released. If it were a false justification, you'd expect a comment like that to come in hindsight only (ie, right after the Blus came out.) Also, both You_Too and Harmy have publicly praised the Raiders timing (though you'll have to read through for a bit, You_Too takes his time with the verdict.)  Given their extensive work on Star Wars, a film from around the same time, I'm inclined to agree with them. Granted, they still have problems with it, but they prefer it to the DVDs.

AntcuFaalb said:

dvdmike said:

AntcuFaalb said:

stretch009 said:

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

What does this mean?  Please be kind.

I think he's referring to the red Nazi flags looking orange on the BD.

It was changed to gold to match Kingdom, it is not the 1980's timing at all

Is that including the impact that an 80s projection bulb would have on the colortiming?

At least the orange painted flags were preserved.  They are the about the same orangish red on the BD as on the 35mm prints.  Lacking a reference, can't say for certain about the cloth flags, but it would seem odd for someone to change those while leaving most everything else untouched (or at least leaving all of the frames we have 35mm references for untouched).  Not that stranger things haven't happened, with the sleeves of a certain cantina patron...

dvdmike said:

CatBus said:

AntcuFaalb said:

dvdmike said:

AntcuFaalb said:

stretch009 said:

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

What does this mean?  Please be kind.

I think he's referring to the red Nazi flags looking orange on the BD.

It was changed to gold to match Kingdom, it is not the 1980's timing at all

Is that including the impact that an 80s projection bulb would have on the colortiming?

At least the orange painted flags were preserved.  They are the about the same orangish red on the BD as on the 35mm prints.  Lacking a reference, can't say for certain about the cloth flags, but it would seem odd for someone to change those while leaving most everything else untouched (or at least leaving all of the frames we have 35mm references for untouched).  Not that stranger things haven't happened, with the sleeves of a certain cantina patron...

In one of the threads I found a 35mm still with the flags at the ark scene, they were red on set and when I saw it 35mm, also grass was green in the opening 

Was this 35mm still being projected with a gold-colored projection bulb (like in the theater) or was it just a raw scan?

As previously mentioned, it's as likely that Skull was timed to match the original color timing of Raiders.

A still from the set says nothing about the colouring of the film print.  I was initially open to the idea that the gold colouring might have been incorrect but thus far I haven't seen anything as convincing as those 35mm stills that strongly reflect the timing of the BD.

I'll always determine my preference on the basis of the best evidence available, and right now the evidence points to the fact that the BD (while perhaps not perfect in every scene) is the closest Raiders has been to it's original theatrical timing.

It was significantly less odd to me after I saw it looked pretty much exactly like the original 35mm film references.  Also the fact that the stated goal of KOTCS was to look like ROTLA, if taken at face value, makes it pretty much the opposite of odd.

Bulb-matching is a real thing.  If you just scan the film on your typical neutral-to-cool flatbed scanner, it may look great--even more lifelike--but not like it looked in the theatres during its original run.  Lots of older films have taken on a much more golden hue and muted palette after they went through the trouble of bulb matching.  The Godfather films on BD, for example, look practically sepia throughout with the strong yellow cast, but that restoration was overseen by Robert Harris--and much as I like to armchair general things, I trust his judgment (on his own work, at least) that this is just "how it looked"--even if scans of those exact same sources using a neutral light source results in something that looks more like the DVD releases or television cuts, or even how that exact same film looked projected using a later-vintage bulb in the nineties.

EDIT: This does bring up a film purity question, though. If the films from this era were all projected with a heavily biased light source, which is the accurate color?  Is the film in the can or the film on the screen definitive?  I think a fairly strong case could be made that WOWOW may represent the colors of the film "in the can", which nobody actually saw until much later, while the Blu-ray represents the colors of the film "on the screen" which only looked that way due to the very yellow bulbs in common use at the time.  IMO neither colors would be "wrong" or "not original", although only the yellowish ones could be fairly called "theatrical".

dvdmike said:

Harris is amazing with photo chemical but useless with Digital, the man loved the Dracula BD

I've found him to be needlessly lenient toward other peoples' work in general, chemical or digital.  But I haven't seen an instance of him failing to see that his own work is revisionist (which is why I specified I trusted his judgment "on his own work, at least").

rockin said:

Anyone watched these trailers of ROTLA:

The colour timing from each of these looks more like the old DVD and japanese HDTV versions.

That's consistent with the idea that if the film were scanned using a neutral light source (i.e. for TV or home video) it would look more like WOWOW, and if projected using a typical period bulb, it would look more like the Blu-ray.

CatBus said:

EDIT: This does bring up a film purity question, though. If the films from this era were all projected with a heavily biased light source, which is the accurate color?  Is the film in the can or the film on the screen definitive?  I think a fairly strong case could be made that WOWOW may represent the colors of the film "in the can", which nobody actually saw until much later, while the Blu-ray represents the colors of the film "on the screen" which only looked that way due to the very yellow bulbs in common use at the time.  IMO neither colors would be "wrong" or "not original", although only the yellowish ones could be fairly called "theatrical".

This is quite easy actually, the original colors are those the director and the DP would have seen when viewing the dailies and doing the color-timing and since  they would have used the same warm bulb, which was the standard back then, it is quite clear they would have seen the warmer colors.

From a slightly philosophical point of view, there are no fixed colors on a film print - the colors will always depend on what kind of light you'll shine through the film, just like real-life colors are different depending on the lighting conditions and possibly also the beholder.

So the only thing you can use as a guide as to what the colors on the film "actually are" is what was the standard color of the light that was being shined through it when the people responsible for deciding the look of the film were viewing it at the time.

Harmy said:

This is quite easy actually, the original colors are those the director and the DP would have seen when viewing the dailies and doing the color-timing and since  they would have used the same warm bulb, which was the standard back then, it is quite clear they would have seen the warmer colors.

Ha! I was wondering if we could pull you kicking and screaming back to this thread!  But seriously, I agree.  But I think there is some intangible value to the colors viewed with neutral lighting (because it may more accurately represent the colors that existed in the set, but were washed away by the biased projector bulb), I'm just not sure what exactly to name that quality.

Well, what is neutral light? Daylight? If it's a set, it's probably being lit by artificial light, so the real colors on the set would have also depended on the way the set was lit. And I'm not even talking about filters on the lens. I understand what you're saying of course, I'm just saying it's not as simple as that.

Not really, if a print was projected with a "neutral" bulb, then one would see more or less what is on an IP when projected with a "neutral" bulb.

Yes, but an IP is not a simple reversal of the negative, it would already have color-timing applied to it, so what is on an IP of a film timed in the early 80s when projected with a neutral bulb would be wrong, because the IP was timed with a warmer bulb in mind, so if the person who did the color-timing wanted something to be white, they would have timed it so that it was white with a warm bulb, so with a colder bulb, it would look blueish.

What I was trying to say was, that you wouldn't get the colors that are on the IP, but only the colors that appear to be on it when you shine a "neutral" light through it.

Chewtobacca said:

I agree.

Seems we agree on everything! Out of curiosity, do you happen to have the other half of my amulet?