Mavimao

captainsolo said:

Why is there a need to mix stuff in 7.1 when it was never intended for it? I'm still not really a fan because I've always felt there should be a rear center plus on old roadshow epics like Spartacus the surround was mono only and at the time would have been largely limited at best. I can understand losing the two front channels because there's no modern equivalent way to play them back. what always gets lost though is all the directional dialogue effects and panning which is ridiculous. And of course nutty me would wish they'd include the mono mix just for comparisons sake.

 I get what you're saying, but I'm sure there are people who have speakers attached to their walls and they can't move them to the center for a few feature films. 

The best way (compromise) is to emulate it the best they can to the modern speaker setup, much like Hairy-Hen's 5.1 mix of Star Wars. Obviously we can't have two discrete bass channels, but his is the best we're going to get for a while...

Wow a Steenbeck! I edited a couple of my student films on one of those. Great machines - especially after using hand cranks :D . I can still hear all the little sounds it makes.

BTW: how accurate are the colors on your machine? I remember ours being yellow tinted and a bit out of focus. 

In the thread I linked to Robert Harris said that they timed the restoration to an original IB film print. 

TServo2049 said:

Grain. Beautiful, beautiful grain. How I've missed you so.

It looks more and more like 4K is driving a stake into the heart of the waxy DNR trend. This is as revelatory as Lawrence of Arabia. (Off-topic, I still don't understand why the HD master of the original Harris restoration of LoA, the one that was used for every DVD release and HDTV broadcast, looked so cloudy and diffused. I swear I heard that the theatrical re-release prints were sharper.)

 I think for LoA and Spartacus, the original restorations were photochemical in nature and faded elements are impossible to recover through those means. They had to go up the ladder and use elements that were further away from the negative. 

With digital restorations, you have much more power and so they were able to use the original negatives for a much sharper picture. 

Robert Harris started a thread on the home theater forum talking about his involvement in the latest restoration of Spartacus.

They went back to the original (but faded) 8-perf 35mm elements and the techniques used to get the color back were interesting. According to him:

The original negatives are scanned, and the yellow dye layer is dropped, leaving the magenta and cyan, which are also both faded to varying degrees, but can be massaged into place.

To be a bit simplistic, the Y master record, which has different gamma and sizing than the Oneg is then scanned, maneuvered into position, and mated with the two extant dye layers.

There are different means of registering, but it must be… Perfect.

One further piece of information that I can offer.  Spartacus is an extremely complex restoration, for which Universal pulled out all the stops.

Different shots / sequences in the film are derived from a mix of:

A.  OCN + Y

B.  Y + C + M

C.  C + M + M (at a different gamma) to substitute for a missing Y

All of this must then be conformed to work together very seamlessly."

All of the information is really interesting, you should take a look and get ready to pick your jaws up off the floor when you see the comparaison with the older bluray:

http://screenshotcom…mparison/138930
http://screenshotcom…mparison/138929
http://screenshotcom…mparison/138932
http://screenshotcom…mparison/138933
http://screenshotcom…mparison/138934

beyourowndensity said:

Right. I've followed advice from a private message I got and made an account with MySpleen (the only plaze they knew where you could get DVD5 copies), I made a new post asking about the DVD5 versions and how that website worked and also said that I wasn't planning on doing a hit-and-run with the movies...but my post has been archived in a no longer running forum full of people asking about the Harmys. Someone did try to explain it to me how torrenting and seeding worked if I DID get an invite and thus the movies, but it looks like it was a colossal waste of time. I don't have a clue where I'm going to find them. I'm starting to feel like giving up, honestly.

 PM sent. 

Great preview! Thank you! It really has that gritty 35mm look to it. 

Oh wow! That's incredible! What's the wizardry behind this?? (But seriously how did you extract so much more color?)

FrankT said:

Would a 35mm source garner more favourable results? Or would it be around the same?

 It depends on the condition of the print. It would probably result in a somewhat better shot, but Mike is working with several prints and combining them to extract as much detail as possible.

towne32 said:

Harmy's is actually a 35mm Death Star with GOUT x-wings, I believe. Which would explain the difference in quality compared to Mike's work.

 Ah you're correct. My memory was playing games with me. 

Despecialized uses a 16mm source for elements in that shot so the level of detail is not the same. 

I recently bought the Sony Gold wireless headset for a couple reasons: one, to keep my wife happy if I'm ever playing video games on the TV and two, get the closest thing to surround sound I'll ever have in the tiny apartment where I currently live. My first test for the virtual surround sound was your 70mm recreation. It's always fascinated me and I've always wanted to experience it, but I don't know anyone with the proper equipment. 

While they're not the best way to hear a surround mix, I was nonetheless floored by what I heard. The bass especially was eye-opening. When the Falcon leaves the Death Star and the TIE fighters are approaching, there's a CRRR..CRRR that I'd never heard before and it was particularly tense!

So sorry to be late to the party, but I wanted to say how great your work is. 

Wow! Blast from the past! Lots former regulars I remember who aren't around anymore. 

darth_ender said:

I believe some additional scenes were included since the DVD release of Star Trek VI, and I don't think the theatrical version is available anymore.

 The Bluray editions of all the films are the theatrical versions. The first time for several on home video!

Neglify said:

LexX said:

GL's other movies, THX-1138 and American Graffiti. Also many Disney movies, like The Lion King.

What was changed in American Graffiti? I'm too stoned to Google. 

 If my memory serves me correctly, the biggest change is the opening shot with the diner. They digitally erased the buildings behind it and put in a new sunset. The rest is unchanged apart from some DNR. 

pittrek said:

The sound mix on Alien 3 SE sucks, it even uses on set audio for several scenes, but as a movie it's much better than the theatrical version.

But to the original question - I know only about the Star Wars movies. Which is even more frustrating.

 The sound was fixed for the Bluray edition. They even had the original actors come in and re record their lines  

Kepling said:

I remember back in the 90's as a teenager loving the 1st two Alien movies but hating the 3rd. I haven't taken the time to watch the SE of Alien 3 yet but I have heard that the SE fixes almost every problem that movie had. The main point here is that no matter how bad the original cut of Alien 3 was, you can still get both versions, it was never "lost."

 If you ever get the chance, watch the SE cut of Alien3. It's a much better film because of it. It goes from being a bland, awkwardly paced and unscary monster movie to a surreal, arty science-fiction take on death and religion and the monster is wisely relegated to a MacGuffin. The film finally finds a distinct voice rather than feeling like a retread of the past films. 

It's not perfect. Nothing on God's Earth could improve the line "To them, we're just...CRUD", and it would have been great for them to improve the compositing on some of the more iffy SFX. But it's really amazing how much editing can make or break a film. 

Supermartyoh said:

Very interesting.... I knew all about Psycho's odd matting choices.

I remember reading somewhere that 2 Fast 2 Furious, while shot in Super 35 like its predecessor to make 4:3 full screen versions and crop appropriately to 2.35:1, had the SFX scenes done within the full 1.66:1 (I think) aperture, but everything else was hard matted to scope. What do you think of that?

Looks like i'll be checking the 4:3 DVDs along with the SE widescreens then.

 I'm a bit confused by what you're saying... Hard matte to 2.35? If they did shoot super35, and crop non sfx shots to 2.35, the resulting prints sent to movie theaters would be in anamorphic. Not hard matte. 

Sfx shots in 1.66 is a compromise between 4:3 and 2.35 and... Money/time! It's unheard of to make open matte sfx shots. Cropping a square format to 2.35 results in a lot of wasted pixels and any computer generated effect would have to increase their resolution by a large factor to account for this crop to insure that a cropped and blown up sfx will not look like crap. With 1.66, you either crop a little from the top and bottom (scope) or a little from the sides ("fulllscreen") and still maintain optimum quality. 

EDIT: after some light searching, it appears that 2Fast2Furious shot their FX shots with VistaVision. In a nutshell, it's shooting 35mm like a still camera (film is advanced horizontally and each frame is 8 sprockets wide), so you have twice the negative space as Super35. Although the real negative size has a 1.5:1 aspect ratio, this is usually cropped to 1.66 or 1.85. That would explain the discrepancy. 

captainsolo said:

Welcome to the wonderful world of open-matte.

 Many of the 50's films presented in both Academy and a matted presentation are hard to determine their intended look.

 And Kubrick films!

FrankT said:

Interesting. Seems an awful waste, but I get what you're saying.

 Well, it's just how things evolved while trying to keep everything compatible. 

Nowadays, films don't need to be shot like this since everything is scanned and put into a computer. Filmmakers can shoot using a 3-perf pulldown, which gives them a large, native 1.85 aspect ratio AND 25% film savings. Some can also use 2-perf pulldown for a near 2.35 aspect ratio and 50% film savings. Here's a visual:

Recently, some have shot films using 1.3x anamorphic lenses on Super35mm film (example A from above) giving them the entire 4-perf film area, but with a wide 1.78 aspect ratio.

So example A: this is how silent films were shot (and which later became revived in the 80s with the Super35mm format.)

Example B is the same aspect ratio more or less as the silent film frame (1.33), but shrank to allow the optical film track in between the left sprockets and the image. This is how films were shot and projected from 1929 until about the 50s.

Example C: the frame from example B is cropped on the top and bottom to allow cheap and easy widescreen (1.66 and 1.85). This method became popular starting in the 50s. 

HOWEVER: note that films would not necessarily be cropped in camera. Many films were shot using the methods in example B but the cinematographer would make sure to frame his or her shot so it would be cropped properly when distributed in the move theater. This "soft matte" would often be opened up on home video to allow a 1.33 image on old square televisions. 

This explains why there are widescreen and 'fullscreen' versions of your film. 

Finally, example D is how some early sound films were shot. They merely cut off part of the image on the left to make room for the sound track and thus was born the short-lived 1.19 aspect ratio. They quickly moved to 1.33 by cutting off the top and bottom a bit (see example B), however, this was later revived in the 50s and 60s for cinemascope. Using a 2x anamorphic squeeze lens, you get... a 2.39 aspect ratio. 

Any film shot in 1.66 or 1.85 with 4-perferations is just a crop of the 1.33 academy frame. You'd be surprised at how much film is wasted doing things this way, but it was the quickest and cheapest way to get a widescreen image retrofitted into as many cinemas as possible during the 50s. 

Here's a visual example: 

Good luck, Poita and get well soon!

For the "Guerre des Etoiles" cover, there are a few more name changes that were only found in Episode 4:

Luke Skywalker -> Luc Courleciel

Chewbacca -> Chiktabba (Chico)

Papai2013 said:

Mavimao said:

The missing horizontal information is marginal as far as I can see and it is necessary to crop it just a little because the edges are never pixel accurate in film. This isn't digital. The information on the extreme edges are subtly changing/weaving because of the mechanical action of the film camera. 

You can stabilize the full film frame in relation to the sprocket holes, but the image inside will weave instead! That's why you need to crop just a bit of the filmed image area to keep the image steady. Don't worry, because the cinematographer knew it would be cropped even worse in theaters and made sure there was nothing important on the far edges. 

The vertical information is interesting in an educational setting, but you will see boom mikes, c-stands, missing ceilings etc. An interesting version to be sure, but not "superior". 

 It would still be interesting all the same. Also the Laserdisc release done by Andrea contains more width but does not change or weave except in the CG sequences where there are some in-frame panning. And I would not mind seeing boom mikes and other production props. It does not need to be "superior". This release should happen at least this once because this would be the ultimate for a lot of fans and this one as well. This opportunity won't come again.

Plus, a scan of the full-frame exists. There is no need to spend more money on a fresh scan. Just the image needs to be stabilised and released in "full". That's it. It'd be the ultimate JP release.

P.S: How do I upload images from my PC here?

 I agree that a full-frame release would be awesome! You don't need to worry about getting anything right once. The scans are available to anyone who wants them. There are already a couple of people working on their own versions. If you'd like to create your own, you need only ask.