RU.08

Dear beautiful members - we have access to a fabulous 35mm cinematic print of Titanic. How fabulous you ask? Well here is a four minute preview scan of Reel 1, it has not been cleaned:

Note that’s just a preview scan. It was heavily compressed, and the scanner wasn’t correctly calibrated hence why it’s rough at the start. Also, not all reels will be as scratch-free as this one.

Reel 2 preview:

Trailer:

Preview pics from the test scan:

It is rare to find a print in this condition of such a popular film.

A very generous offer was made by someone to pay most of the cost of this scan. Therefore we only need $375 to get this scanned in 4K (not including storage)! As you can see from the preview, we should be able to get a good quality release of this ready well before the 20th anniversary of the film later this year, and we already have the cinema DTS too.

So what are you waiting for? Donate now! Cpalmer2k will handle all donations.

2017 June 30- UPDATE!

Thanks to the very generous donations of OT.com forum members the scan has been fully funded! You are welcome to donate to help towards the other associated costs, and those donations should be directed to me as Cpalmer2k was only handling the scanning funds. And a big big thanks to him for doing so.

Special thanks go to cpalmer2k, alexp120, Jetrell Fo, and Soupdrinker0.

To me they look like dual-mono, but I’m not an expert.

By the way if there’s any Britons here, Alien is playing in 70MM at the Prince Charles Cinema in London on the 1st, 3rd, and 7th of June (details here). If you go please take notes and then tell us how it compares to the Bluray colour grading, contrast, and black levels. 😃

Check out the soundtracks in the photos - they all look like glorious mono… except the first one that looks to be stereo! We might end up with quite a funky soundtrack. 😄

yotsuya said:

I guess I’m confused why you would want to scub out the green tint in this film when it was original to the production and not added for the home video release. All the scenes (and only those scenes) within the Matrix are supposed to be tinted green. None of the scenes outside the Matrix have that green tint. It was an artistic choice the filmmakers made and it is really cool when you can instantly know whether you are in the real world or the matrix by the tint of the image on screen. It is like that for every Matrix installment. It really seems more fan edit than preservation to make such a major change to the movie.

No, it was never in the original film. If you’re going by what the sequels do then why not scrub out all the guns that Neo uses and loves in The Matrix? But, if you prefer the way the BD looks then just watch that. 😃

yotsuya said:

Well, I can’t say that I caught the green when I saw The Matrix in the theater, but when I saw the two sequels in the theater, I very much noticed it. I can’t say that the extent of tint in the blu-ray is accurate, but I would say the DVD is accurate.

The DVD is a traditional Telecine, it’s not accurate to anything.

In my experience and knowledge, distribution prints are not done with the care and accuracy of color that the many talented people on this site tend to have.

Prints are certainly the result of a careful color grading process. It’s true you can find obvious examples where this was overlooked, but you can also find examples where the film score is grossly overlooked as well.

And it is possible that the prints were not done as accurately as they wanted and what you are seeing on the print is actually an error rather than the correct colors.

Without an LUT the scan is not necessarily projection-accurate. This is unfortunately a limitation we have to deal with. The best way to get a proper grading to the print is to project the film and re-grade it, but this is often beyond the abilities of fan-level restorations.

I’m more inclined to believe the scanned print is in error than there was some drastic change in artistic direction between the first and third movies.

Well you’d be wrong there. The scanned print may well be in error, but the sequels had DIs and were digitally regraded to green - the original was not. That’s two very different methods. They may well have intended all the Matrix scenes to look green, but there is only so much you can do with on-set lighting, especially as many Matrix scenes occur outdoors.

Ah well, you can download Resolve for free. I’m STILL waiting for the scanner to send through some previews, lol. Which is annoying because it’s holding up funding, and plus I have the Alien print I want to have scanned too.

It’s been scanned, but you’ll have to be patient until the other scans are completed and the hard drives are sent out. (Nope sorry it wasn’t).

With BATB almost funded, I have the opportunity to scan an Alien print. This fabulous print is faded red, no doubt missing many frames, and was described as being “splicy”! Here are some sample frames:

Once scanned this will passed on to someone for restoration and release. Special thanks go to Williarob for putting me in contact with the collector.

Funding target: 800€
Donations so far: 300€

List of donors:

• Anonymous
• Anonymous
• Anonymous
• Anonymous
• freedomland

If you are interested in helping please contact me by PM.

Hi monkeyjb- guessing from your username you of course couldn’t have appreciated this film in its original run! I was able to see it in 2015 projected from a theatrical print, and I can tell you 100% it looked nothing like the DVD or bluray. 😃

Aladdin looks pretty much correct compared to the theatrical prints. Not perfect, but not different enough that I would worry as much about it as I do BATB. You are more than welcome to have a crack at restoration, it will be scanned in Prores format, but all you would need to do is load a clip in Resolve and export .TIFs.

And I’m still waiting for some high-res preview images! I’m a little surprised it’s taking so long given that Face/Off has been scanned and can’t move anywhere until this scan gets done (sorry face/off fans lol).

TheHutt said:

They were filmed without sound recording on set, as the films were later entirely dubbed in each of the languages they were released in. For the longer Italian version, the Italian dub was recorded in Italy. For the (shorter) US version, the English dub was recorded in the USA. During filming, every actor spoke his native language.

Even if they had recorded audio on set they would still have needed to re-dub everything in post.

Actually it’s true that DTS is a pretty poor compression format for audio. But what do you expect - it was introduced in 1993. Cinema DTS is 882 kbps. Will AC-3 640 kbps sound better? Probably, but it’s a pretty old compression format too.

If you’re not on MySpleen you can also find it on Bloodsuckerz.

Many thanks to TonyWDA for his generous donation!

Keep it up guys, you have no idea how many prints I need to have scanned. Here is yet another miscellaneous print patiently waiting for me to try and organise scanning:

I can’t believe people actually let me clutter up their houses with my crap. 😄

Much thanks to Doombot for his generous donation!

Yeah, the bluray colour timing on the Matrix is completely revised, not unlike BATB actually - but not as extreme as BATB. You should keep in mind though that the Matrix trailer like pretty much all trailers you see is just a plain raw scan with no corrections done, and may not be wholly reflective of how it would look projected.

It’s on the pirate bay.

Ah and the part I left out was quality control. When prints are struck and sent to cinemas they obviously have to adhere to a strict quality control so that all the customers that see the show have a consistent experience. This isn’t a universal truth through, for instance patrons in the UK saw Star Wars on IB Technicolor, while those in the US saw it on Kodak Eastman prints. But within the UK or the US the distributor would want all patrons to have as consistent a show as possible. There’s no guarantee of quality control with 16mm unless it was made for broadcast or another specific purpose where it would be important.

I hope that made sense. 😃

Film prints don’t have a very high resolution. A 35mm fine grain negative might have a resolution of 3-3.5K, but prints have a resolution lower than 2K. 16mm has just 1/4 of that resolution, so less than 1K, and then add to that the duplication process is an unknown too. Who struck the print and why? Was it duplicated and then reduced from a 35mm print for example. A print duplicated from another print instead of struck from an interneg has an even lower resolution, poorer dynamic range, etc. Also, 16mm prints often look quite different to their 35mm counterparts, so you can’t know that your print is representative of the colour timing, brightness and contrast of the theatrical experience. And after all that, unless you’re paying for some substandard conversion done with a camcorder and a dvd-recorder, scanning costs the same as scanning a 35mm print anyway.

I’m glad you like it. I can’t take too much credit for it, the scanner sourced it bought it and scanned it, and all I did was nag him for it and then upload it!

If you want to see a whole bunch more 35mm trailers check out my page here:

https://valeyard.net/2017/03/we-just-love-trailers.php

I started indexing all the trailers I could find online there. Include each and everything that Williarob has uploaded (that took a while!)

On the topic of BATB, it has been sent to the scanner, so now I’m just waiting for it to be received and samples to be sent… unfortunately I still don’t have a BATB trailer but I am following up leads. Also known as nagging the collectors that told me that they might have a trailer. 😃

I know others have their own opinions, but I would personally not bother with 16mm unless it’s something that you’re unlikely to find on 35mm. The Russian guy sells a lot of prints, and he’s a good seller. Bare in mind that all titles and credits will be in Russian on those prints, but some are certainly worth picking up if anyone’s interested in the titles.

2.3GB.

For the first time since 1999, you can now enjoy The Matrix trailer in full 1080p high definition:

https://vimeo.com/212361397
https://valeyard.net/2017/04/the-matrix-trailer-in-hd-for-the-first-time.php

2K Prores file is available for anyone interested.

cpalmer2k said:

Honestly I missed that part. I deleted my most recent registration and re-did it. How much is the print listed there for?

Hey I sent you a private message, did you read it? You click the speach-bubble at the top-right of the page next to your avatar (or here).

You can give poita donations any time through his paypal.me link, I’m sure he’d appreciate it he always has ongoing costs related to this stuff!

Thanks go Wazzles for his generous donation. At this rate, we might be able to get the film scanned by the end of the month! Hopefully we’ll have some good preview images soon, once the film finds its way to the scanner and he has time to get some for us…

If you think that’s generous… both RooBee & TServo2049 donated to that project and then to mine! Of course most of my donors have donated to other people’s projects before (as have I), but to see these guys do it within just a few days of donating to the other project is very generous indeed.