Fang Zei

double post

I’m probably reading way too much into this, but I was over at blu-ray.com just now and noticed the “best deals” at the top of the page has the complete saga set listed for $58.49. That’s the lowest I can remember any retailer selling it for in quite a long time, maybe ever.

We’re less than three weeks away from this celebration panel. If an announcement is imminent, maybe they’re trying to clear out inventory before people stop buying it altogether and start saving their money for the new set?

Handman said:

I remember these films most fondly with the 2002 sets, when I went to watch the '09 Wrath of Khan Blu-ray, something was seriously off-putting about it, it wasn’t what I remembered enjoying so much. I expect the others would recieve the same reaction.

I remember reading several different people’s comments saying that the '09 color-timing was actually closer to what they remembered seeing on the 35mm prints. The '09 is probably still too blue but the '02 also looks too red. 2016 is the goldilocks edition.

Yeah, re-rendering at a higher res (or for 3D) is a tricky proposition if too much time has passed.

For the 3D conversion of Jurassic Park I don’t even know if they had the finished cg shots from '93 in their purely digital form (before they were filmed back out to celluloid), nevermind the models. I think they might have had to scan shots back in from the o-neg just like the rest of the movie. The same goes for the '97 cg shots in the SE if the Lowry master is any indication. There definitely seemed to be some filmic anomalies even on the '04 dvd. Maybe it’s even more obvious on the blu-ray but I wouldn’t know. The shot that always sticks out in my memory is when the asp swats the floating droid to the ground before luke’s landspeeder zooms into frame. Even at dvd resolution I noticed some slight wobble where there should’ve been utter stillness for those first few seconds of the shot. Unless of course the wobble was intentional on the animator’s part so that it would look like it was actually photographed…

…I’m overthinking it now, aren’t I?

Sorry, got distracted when someone called me and then totally forgot to paste the link. My bad.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews45/star_trek_motion_picture_trilogy_blu-ray.htm

If you click to see the full-sized screencaps you’ll understand what we’re talking about, moviefreakedmind.

It baffled me to see so many review sites giving Voyage Home’s picture quality a passing grade. But when you know you’re reviewing something as popular as Trek and know how many amazon clicks you’re going to get, it must become that must easier to just exaggerate the truth a little.

But I will never understand how a site like avsforum that prides itself on objectivity ranks this as a silver and gives the theatrical Fellowship of the Ring a copper (below bronze).

chyron8472 said:

Of the Shatner movies, I only have 2, 3 and 4 on DVD. I bought them in a set called “Star Trek: The Motion Picture Trilogy”.

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Picture-Trilogy-Domestic/dp/B001TH16CY

I don’t know anything about where they were sourced.

That came out same time as the blu-ray debut in '09. Khan’s transfer is likely from the '09 restoration. The Search for More Money and The One With The Whales were probably from the new (ha!) “hd” (ha!) masters, but I have no way of knowing for sure without seeing screenshots.

Here is a comparison between the old two-disc releases of Khan and SFS and their blu-ray counterparts ('09 blu-ray for Khan). Annoyingly, they did not provide dvd screengrabs for Voyage Home. I’d very much like to know what it looked like after seeing it in 35mm. The blu-ray’s colors are way off from what I saw on that print.

ETA: SwissArmyTin beat me to it!

pittrek said:

Fang Zei said:

pittrek said:

Fang Zei said:

Handman said:

The old Blu-ray was very blue, they corrected it somewhat. Plus, it was the safest option for the 50th, seeing as how it’s the most beloved film of the series.

The old blu-ray also shows some of the same contrast-boosting issues as the other five. I remember seeing a screenshot comparison of the shot where the Reliant and Enterprise first approach each other and the 2016 re-restoration is much more natural looking. The first six were released all at once back in '09, which probably means the same person/people were responsible for the final tweaks on all of them before the discs were pressed. There’s even a bit of dnr on that first WoK bd, it’s just nowhere near as bad as on the others thanks to the restoration.

Sorry for my voice / accent : https://youtu.be/vPfiYtBo0Wk?t=7m19s

Thank you for sharing, I subscribed as well!

Did the 2002 dvd recieve a different color-timing from the original dvd release a couple years earlier? I seem to recall reading a review that mentioned it. It would be interesting to see that initial dvd compared against the 2016 release as well.

Thanks guys 😃 I unfortunately don’t have that DVD (yet). Are you talking about this DVD ? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Star-Trek-2-The-Wrath-Of-Khan-DVD-William-Shatner-Leonard-Nimoy-DeForest-Kel-/381512058926?hash=item58d3e4082e:g:51gAAOSwjVVVkUyN It claims to be from 2000…

Yup, that’s it!

I can still remember seeing it listed under “in stores this Tuesday!” in the best buy circular that came with the weekend Washington Post.

I eventually got a used copy years later at a record store - after I’d collected most if not all of the two-disc releases - just so I could have the theatrical version.

Lord Haseo said:

What are the specific points of contention that JJ and Kathleen had?

Maybe someone with more knowledge of this can speak to it, but there were rumors swirling during pre-production that JJ was going to leave the project because he and LFL weren’t seeing eye to eye.

moviefreakedmind said:

Fang Zei said:

SwissArmyTin said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Sometimes they delete the files and it has to be recreated from scratch. I believe that this is Deep Space Nine’s problem right now.

IIRC someone from the effects team stated most if not all the files still existed, even put out a few sample renders which were beautiful.

That’s good to know. The effects work on that show was very well done. I feel like DS9’s vfx were more quality over quantity whereas a show like Babylon 5 had to take the opposite approach.

I think that those effects have been deleted or lost since those samples were made.

I wonder how effectively the existing effects shots could be upscaled, if it would be too jarring intercut with hd re-scans of the live-action footage.

The cgi for Firefly was only 480p IIRC. I wonder how it looks on blu-ray, haven’t rewatched any of that show since my friend let me borrow the dvd more than a decade ago.

I don’t know what this says about me, but I feel like TFA - while a little too fast-paced - consistently entertained me throughout its running time whereas Rogue One didn’t pick up for me at all until they reached Eadu. Like I said back in December the projection truly sucked at the theater I saw it at (first and last time I’ll ever go there) so maybe that had something to do with it. I’ll definitely rewatch it eventually, but not any time soon.

As for the corporation vs auteur debate, Rogue One is pretty much the definition of “art by committee” whereas TFA is a J.J. Abrams film through and through. It probably sounds naive of me to say that, especially when we know there was a tug of war between Abrams and Kennedy over the script and the trajectory of the franchise, but it certainly seems like the director’s vision (such as it is) won out on TFA while Rogue One ended up co-directed by Tony Gilroy.

SwissArmyTin said:

The collector’s edition DVD of The Undiscovered Country had a few changes from the previous VHS director’s cut, mainly just this very, very cheesy ‘flashback’ effect during Spock’s mind meld interrogation of Valeris, showing clips of the people he listed off.

Still have all the collector’s edition DVDs of the TOS films, and they mostly look great. They all have a warm color palette, which is alright I suppose. I don’t own any of the TNG films from that series, but I do have the first run First Contact DVD, and christ I hope they used a better transfer for the Collector’s Edition DVD. DNR’d to death and back, and there’s something else I can’t put my finger on, but it just looks so, so wrong.

Yeah now I’m thinking it was a new transfer on the '05 dvd. I seem to recall a review mentioning it and I don’t recall seeing the issues you’re describing.

SwissArmyTin said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Sometimes they delete the files and it has to be recreated from scratch. I believe that this is Deep Space Nine’s problem right now.

IIRC someone from the effects team stated most if not all the files still existed, even put out a few sample renders which were beautiful.

That’s good to know. The effects work on that show was very well done. I feel like DS9’s vfx were more quality over quantity whereas a show like Babylon 5 had to take the opposite approach.

BobaJett said:

Fang Zei said:

Slight correction: you’re mixing up the vertical resolution of 2k with the horizontal of hd. Scope is 2048x856 for 2k cinema and 1920:817 for hdtv.

For 35mm film, traditional 2x anamorphic cinemascope is something like 1880x1550 for 2k.

I thought 2k was 2048x1080. 16x9 HDTV is 1920x1080 and a scope film brings that down to 1920x860ish. If BD would come with an anamorphic scope disc (1920x1080), then you project with an anamorphic lense, youd have a 1920x1080 image which is better than the afor mentioned 1920x860ish image. Granted, to the average joe, theyre probably not gonna notice the difference. But for most folks here, the goal is to get as close as possible to the cinema experience in the home. The thing I dont understand is that 2k and 1080p are nearly the same, but considered different.

You’re still mixing up the vertical of 2k with the horizontal of hdtv.

You are correct that 2048x1080 is 2k resolution, which is 1.89:1. HDTV is 1.78:1 (or 16:9), and is 1920x1080.

For movies framed in 2.35:1, the resolution is 2048x856 in 2k and 1920x817 in hdtv. Fitting the full width of the image into a slightly narrow frame (1.78:1 instead of 1.89:1) necessitates lowering the resolution slightly along both axes.

captainsolo said:

When I finish TOS I plan to dive right into the film series but I made sure to track down all six lds first. I had gotten the bds bundled with TOS and popped some in to see for myself…oh dear…

From my research notes it appears the initial DVDs were ports of the ld masters: some with 5.1 remixes of the 2.0 and the sequels were non anamorphic. The SE reissues cleaned all of these up and some may have 70mm derived 5.1 tracks but this is unconfirmed. Also the contrast may have been tweaked on some but without seeing for myself I can’t say for sure.
Anybody have both DVD runs?

As I remember it, the initial dvd releases of Final Frontier, TUC and Generations weren’t anamorphic but Wrath of Khan (theatrical), SFS and Voyage Home were. Then Paramount released the two-disc collector’s editions one at a time (I collected all of them before eventually selling them off in anticipation of the oh so disappointing blu-rays) starting with the TMP director’s edition. The MPAA actually changed the rating from G to PG simply because of the new sound mix, if you could believe it.

The DE of Khan followed shortly after. For SFS and Voyage Home they simply reused the existing transfers, this time putting them on dual-layered discs with a higher bitrate. Final Frontier, TUC and Generations were obviously remastered. Final Frontier looked very natural from what I remember, there was even some dirt and dust in certain shots but I certainly didn’t mind. TUC looked great, like it was from a brand new hd transfer, nice Super 35 grain and everything. Then there was Generations, which looked “overly crisp” as one review put it, but still much better than before thanks to its new anamorphic transfer.

First Contact had come out in '98 and was anamorphic from the get-go. I’m not sure if the collector’s dvd reused the existing transfer or not. Same goes for Insurrection and Nemesis.

Anyway, a little long-winded but I hope that helps!

pittrek said:

Fang Zei said:

Handman said:

The old Blu-ray was very blue, they corrected it somewhat. Plus, it was the safest option for the 50th, seeing as how it’s the most beloved film of the series.

The old blu-ray also shows some of the same contrast-boosting issues as the other five. I remember seeing a screenshot comparison of the shot where the Reliant and Enterprise first approach each other and the 2016 re-restoration is much more natural looking. The first six were released all at once back in '09, which probably means the same person/people were responsible for the final tweaks on all of them before the discs were pressed. There’s even a bit of dnr on that first WoK bd, it’s just nowhere near as bad as on the others thanks to the restoration.

Sorry for my voice / accent : https://youtu.be/vPfiYtBo0Wk?t=7m19s

Thank you for sharing, I subscribed as well!

Did the 2002 dvd recieve a different color-timing from the original dvd release a couple years earlier? I seem to recall reading a review that mentioned it. It would be interesting to see that initial dvd compared against the 2016 release as well.

Handman said:

The old Blu-ray was very blue, they corrected it somewhat. Plus, it was the safest option for the 50th, seeing as how it’s the most beloved film of the series.

The old blu-ray also shows some of the same contrast-boosting issues as the other five. I remember seeing a screenshot comparison of the shot where the Reliant and Enterprise first approach each other and the 2016 re-restoration is much more natural looking. The first six were released all at once back in '09, which probably means the same person/people were responsible for the final tweaks on all of them before the discs were pressed. There’s even a bit of dnr on that first WoK bd, it’s just nowhere near as bad as on the others thanks to the restoration.

Meyer mentioned overseeing (or at least signing off on) an hdr pass of the new 4k master. Maybe Paramount will finally do fresh scans of the other five once the wheels get moving on Khan’s UHD release. Who knows when that will be, though. With Meyer’s involvement with Discovery I was thinking it might be around the time it premieres (whenever that finally ends up being). Or maybe they’ll wait until the next movie, but that project’s status seems very up in the air after Beyond’s middling box office performance.

Handman said:

Wazzles said:

Fang Zei said:
Do we know what res the cg in TFA and RO was rendered at?

According to the IMDB pages, the DIs are in 4K. That doesn’t really tell us anything about the CG though.

moviefreakedmind said:

CGI is almost always rendered at 2k and upscaled to 4k.

Yet we heard TFA had more vfx shots than TPM. Unless they were done at 4k, what was the point of a 4k DI?

IMDB’s user-generated info can be wrong sometimes.

Indeed, people need to stop fretting about “the cgi is only 2k.”

With few exceptions, that’s still how it’s done today even when the movie is finished as a 4k DI. It’s simply more money than the studios are willing to spend to render it in 4k, especially when it’s a very vfx-heavy movie.

Going forward, 4k rendering will probably become more the norm as technology improves and costs come down.

Do we know what res the cg in TFA and RO was rendered at?

SwissArmyTin said:

Fang Zei said:

Search for Spock and Final Frontier both looked passably decent, if just barely. But there was still an unwanted amount of dnr and contrast-boosting going on.

There’s a 35mm scan of III floating around, and while it’s in dire need of a little cleanup and color correction, it’s miles better than the official bluray. For one, it’s much darker, which really helps set the mood better than that over-lit eyesore of a bluray. Heck, even the Genesis surface was much more convincing in places. The scan also included the laserdisc audio mix, which is crisper and more lively than the dull and flat mix used for the bluray.

Bwahhhh??? First I’m hearing of this. I wish someone would also scan a print of Voyage Home, it was beautiful!

I do recall reading of sound effects heard on the SFS laserdisc that are absent from the dvd and blu-ray mixes.

doubleofive said:

Fang Zei said:

doubleofive said:

I wish the movie itself was in that expanded ratio. I wonder if they cropped it to 2.39:1.

Anyway, I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that 2.4:1 is a standard AR while 2.61:1 isn’t. Probably also to match with the other Star Wars movies.

But why bother to use the lenses used on Ben-Hur if you’re just going to crop it in the end? What was gained?

You’re still capturing a wider image than the sensor would have with a spherical lens while still using almost the entire available sensor area (1.9 of the available 2.1). This way you’re getting 2.4:1 instead of 2.1:1. Come to think of it, 2.1:1 also isn’t a standard AR. If they’d gone spherical it would’ve been cropped at the top and bottom to 2.35:1 like The Revenant, but I’m guessing Edwards still wanted a certain look for this first standalone movie of the franchise.

We kept hearing about how this was going to be a war movie, and the Ultra Panavisions call to mind films like Khartoum and Battle of the Bulge.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Do you have any reason to suggest they might for Solo? Or are you just throwing that out there?

Just throwing it out there.

I noticed the clapperboard from that “first day of production” photo had 6k written in as the camera resolution. This probably means they’re using Red Dragon and framing it at 2.35:1 just like many movies have over the last several years (Gone Girl was the first movie to be shot this way, I think). This would still be notable as the first time a Star Wars movie was shot Super 35 style, aka spherical lenses with a roughly 35mm width frame (the red dragon’s is slightly wider) but framed at 2.35:1.

What John Landis’ story says to me is that George doesn’t mind the idea of the original versions being out there.

It’s not his money being spent anymore and that was pretty much the only reason we got the GOUT instead of an hd remaster like they did for the '04 set.

Now he has no reason to care.

As for the 2020 thing, well, it’s not like they’re going to stop re-releasing these movies on home media. They eventually got around to the digital platforms in 2015, throwing in some exclusive bonus features as an incentive.

I honestly don’t see them releasing these movies at all on 4k UHD until enough people have adopted the tech. It’s what they did for dvd and bd and digital. Although one unknown factor in all of this is whether or not Disney wants TFA and RO on UHD without the fans who’ve upgraded being able to experience I-VI that way as well. I’m reminded of how fans were stuck watching the OT on vhs as TPM and then AotC were released on dvd, and then still for a couple years after until 2004 less than a year before RotS came out.

Maybe they’ll pull something similar and wait until 2018 or early 2019 to release the OT on UHD as part of the marketing push for Episode IX, although I suspect Fox wouldn’t want any featurettes referencing the Disney movies.

So who knows when it comes to the OT on 4k.

The OOT on blu-ray is a different story, though. I could see them releasing that in the meantime.

doubleofive said:

I wish the movie itself was in that expanded ratio. I wonder if they cropped it to 2.39:1.

I did the math and the Alexa 65’s native AR is 2.1:1. The sensor is just slightly larger and also shaped slightly different from an actual 65mm film frame, which is 2.2:1. So with the Ultra Panavision lenses you get 2.61:1 instead of 2.76:1 like you would with 65mm film.

So, cropping from 2.61 to 2.40 isn’t losing much of the picture, which is probably why they framed it that way. Although, it’s funny to think that La La Land was framed at 2.55:1 theatrically and 2.61:1 for Rogue One would’ve only been a hair wider.

It’s also worth noting that if you crop the sensor to 1.9:1, the default cinema AR, you actually get 2.4:1 with the Ultra Panavision’s 1.25x squeeze. We’re already seeing that same area of the sensor used with spherical lenses to shoot in “digital Imax” such as with the airport scene in Captain America: Civil War and the entirety of Avengers 3 and 4.

Anyway, I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that 2.4:1 is a standard AR while 2.61:1 isn’t. Probably also to match with the other Star Wars movies.

I’m curious how Han Solo is going to look. It would be fun if they surprised us with the first 1.85:1 Star Wars movie.

adywan said:

Did anyone else notice just how much smaller the Lucasfilm logo and “a long time ago…” text was at the beginning of Rogue One compared to the saga films?

I seem to recall someone mentioning noticing this back in December.

The movie was shot on a 65mm-sized digital camera, and - just to make it even bigger - with the same vintage 1.25x anamorphic lenses used on Hateful Eight.

Maybe Edwards knowingly shrunk the logo and title card intentionally in order to help convey and set up the “bigness” of the cinematography.

adywan said:

Fang Zei said:

This “surprise announcement” (very vague) will either be the unaltered versions hitting blu-ray at long last or have nothing at all to do with a re-release of the movies.

But, as i have said before, there has been nothing even mentioned about a “surprise announcement” happening at Celebration. It’s just something that has been twisted from the official announcement of the panel.

The only two official things said about the 40th panel that mentions anything about “surprises” :

Official Star Wars site:
…this marquee Celebration event will undoubtedly include many not-to-be-missed surprises.

Andi Gutierrez on the Star Wars Show:
Celebration is the place for surprises, make sure you attend this event. That’s all we are going to say.

NOTHING about any announcement being one of the “surprises”.

Then forget the “announcement” part. Maybe that was just me making a freudian slip. But my original point still stands. If whatever the “surprises” are have nothing to do with the OOT, they won’t have anything to do with the SE either.

One of the conventions - it was either 2010 or 2011 - had a panel about the then yet to be released blu-ray where they showed off the deleted scene from RotJ of Luke building his lightsaber. It got a fairly big reaction from the crowd if I remember the camera phone footage correctly.

I could see them closing the panel with a sizzle-reel trailer on a 4k projector prominently featuring shots/moments from the unaltered version that were the most notoriously changed for the SE (Han shooting first, Mos Eisley, Battle of Yavin, Lapti Nek, etc), complete with the “original” color-timing, or at least as close as anyone can tell. Hell, even if they said it’s a work in progress and it’s not hitting until next year, seeing restored footage from high quality elements could still be a big crowd-pleaser.