The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Original Theatrical Reconstruction (In progress) — Page 2

Actually, I’ll stick to the 4K footage. Don’t worry. I’ll still include the open matte scan as a bonus.

This is some awesome work Sambarker04, i’m still in awe at the Toy Story reconstruction, i’m thrilled you will include the open matte scan as a bonus, i love the open matte format.

jakeandelwooduk said:

This is some awesome work Sambarker04, i’m still in awe at the Toy Story reconstruction, i’m thrilled you will include the open matte scan as a bonus, i love the open matte format.

Thanks. ☺️

I can’t speak to how the movie looks on other 35mm prints, but Thunderbean’s open matte scan has only eight (yes, I counted) open matte shots in it. Hardly worth including the entire scan, even as a “bonus.” You’re better off either switching from the hard matte scenes to open matte in one transfer, or just compiling all of the open matte scenes together in one video, so people can at least see those scenes in the taller frame.

Here are those scenes:

Could the 4K and open matte be combined to make the ‘best’ possible version available?

MoviesGamesMusic said:

Could the 4K and open matte be combined to make the ‘best’ possible version available?

Not really. Thunderbean converted the framerate from the scanned 24fps to 23.976fps, and the color in the print is way too saturated and brightness limited to compare it to the 4K.

Ah well, the fact it will be included as a bonus is more than I expected.

UPDATE (18/10/2025): So I realised that the Dolby Stereo mix is a bit muffled when compared to the DTS track, and I can theorise that this is how Disney used to master audio digitally on their LDs back then, though the LD was released just a few months after their first THX LD with Aladdin, so it’s possible that THX was too late to find out what Disney was doing. So to fix this problem, I went ahead and equalised it using the raw optical audio from Thunderbean’s 35mm scan as a reference so you can get crystal clear sound, especially since I recall people claiming Aladdin’s 35mm audio is better than the LaserDisc, and apparently the same thing can be said for Nightmare, since the 35mm audio is way clearer than the LD. Also, as an added bonus, it will also include a Dolby Headphone track of the 1997 mix, since I feel like it, since I already did it with Toy Story.