RU.08

Thanks to Colson for your generous donation!

MaximRecoil said:

Not quite everyone. The GOUT is fine for displaying on a standard CRT TV. Anamorphic has no benefit in such a case.

Can you think of any other 2.35:1 DVD releases from 2006 that were non-anamorphic? I can’t. I reckon he wanted it to have a short viable life. It doesn’t matter really since most modern players can crop and zoom a non-anamorphic disc. Anyway, had they actually transferred the films fresh for that release they may have made them even worse - at least the GOUT is a fairly accurate release of the films.

Williarob said:

If you ever Google “Roddy McDowall FBI” you’ll find out just how illegal it was (and no doubt still is, at least in strictly legal terms) to be caught with prints in your house. The 35mm prints will always belong to the studios.

Strictly speaking they become the council’s property from the moment they touch the dumpster. Hence the bandsaw.

JayArgonaut said:

Hopefully it’s not the UK release because that was censored and remains so to this day.

Yeah the BBFC were batshit crazy. Even Attack of the Clones was censored!

A couple of people have asked me for better preview pictures. They will be coming in a couple of weeks. As I mentioned above though, I’ve spent almost half the money raised so far just to ship the print.

A few relatively cheap Disney prints came up for sale that I had to pass on. To make it even more explicit, I can’t even afford to bid on this movie at the moment though I would dearly love to!

If you love this movie and you would like to help please get in contact with me.

As you know I’ll have a hard drive with the scanner waiting until I get BATB funded, so it can always be put on there. It should be less than 20GB at 4K Prores - that’s easily manageable to upload for anyone that wants the raw scan.

Beber said:

The ending credits show the “Digital dts sound in selected theaters” logo. Movies tend to be remixed for home theater purposes, so it’s cool to have the true original sound as an option if we can get it.

OK fair enough. As the scan is funded now, that just leaves the trailer. Total is $25 to scan in the US or $35 in EU. That’s a great price - the usual rate for trailer scanning with the EU guy is $50, plus the 35 to send it there = $85 total. He’ll scan it at no extra cost as thxita is having the film scanned at the same time.

@Beber- Did it even have DTS? I know it had SDDS. Digital audio isn’t too important anyway since the Bluray will have better quality audio than cinema DTS. You’ll have the optical audio though if you want to listen to that.

Hopefully if thxita gets more than needed for this he can get the trailer scanned too!

thxita said:

I’m sure the transfer itself was great (from negative that’s for sure), before they erased details with DNR, increased the brightness in every single dark spot and recolored 😛

But it’s an older transfer, so the DNR could have been applied directly at the time of scanning on a telecine rather than done later. The brightness is actually pretty good on the transfer, but that’s about the only thing they got right. They’ve clearly fucked the colour grading, and everything else.

There’s a trailer on eBay by the way, pretty cheap. If anyone’s interested in obtaining it and having it scanned send me a message and I’ll make it happen. You’re looking at about $25 for purchase AND scanning of it delivered in a 2K Prores file (about 2GB) electronically.

The print looks to be in great condition.

But according to this review the HD-DVD has an “excellent video transfer”!? LOL. The Bluray’s not much better either.

thxita said:

There’s a tight deadline on this print because it has to be returned to its owner. If the money isn’t raised by the end of the month we loose the opportunity to have it scanned!

Where are all the OT philanthropists? The time to donate is now!

More generous donations have been received from Melatius and dahmage. Many thanks to both of you!

One of our newer members has PM’d me asking how BATB looks on film compared with the WIP version found on the Diamond Bluray (see pictures). It’s a great question, so I thought I’d post a reply to it on the forum.

It’s been two years since I personally have seen BATB projected on film, and I’m unlikely to see it again in that way any time soon. BATB is quite a dark film, especially when compared to Aladdin and Lion King which are have very bright and lively colours.

The WIP version if memory serves me correctly is too dark. And it has other issues, like Belle’s hair resolving to black instead of brown in the first photo. There is detail lost in the dark areas beyond what I expect would be lost on the print itself (ie the shadows look crushed). For all we know though, the WIP version might look different to final release. It was an earlier version, and they may have used cheaper film for the interpositive or something that affected the final look of the picture. Or maybe they were using it as an experiment with their digital film-out process ahead of doing the final film.

I should have some great previews of the print soon, once we get it to the scanner, and that should settle the question of how the movie looks. What I can say with confidence is that it that no home release to date looks right - some are better than others - but none present the actual look of the picture on film.

Donation received from dbear. Many thanks!

To bring you guys up to speed, I’m having the print shipped to the scanner. We should then be able to get some good quality sample images. It costs about €130 just to ship the print there. I’m in desperate need of a bit more pledged money to get it scanned. Any help would be appreciated.

I made a mirror, it’s a much faster download:

https://valeyard.net/2017/03/drdres-color-matching-tool-v1-2.php

Not specialised cleaning, no. But the scanner will clean it prior to scanning for free. Other scanners charge a few hundred dollars for cleaning alone for the same service.

I can almost afford to have this scanned now, but I’m about €400 short. If anyone can help me make up the €400 it would be very much appreciated!

Sweet, did you have it scanned at 4K?

Some issues:

1336 - bright blob on letters e and b in "Rebellion"
7766 - blob to left of Han’s head.
7786 - dark blob on left of frame.
7792 - dirt to left of Han’s head.

I’ve seen several 35mm prints projected in the last couple of years Mav, as I live closeby to a cinema that screens them quite regularly. The most recent 35mm print I saw was Thunderdome and it didn’t look grainy at all for the most part (some comp shots did). It is my understanding, and I could be wrong, that most film grain is in the camera negative because it has to be fast-exposure film - i.e. shot at 24fps or faster if you want slow motion. Later generations of film, including prints, used longer exposures and more sensitive dyes with finer grain fidelity.

I am genuinely surprised there is such a difference between Star Wars and Empire

poita said:

That is a 38 layer comp vs a three layer comp, plus the empire scene is considerably darker. If you want to compare like with like, look at a well lit interior shot from both films. IB prints have almost no grain, whereas the Kodak stock is considerably grainier.

38 layers? Why?

Sure, as you and I agree SW is much less grainy.

“Like with Like”:

SW
ESB

“Leia with Leia”:

SW
ESB

My question is, is this really how it looked in 1980 or has 36+ years of age on the film stock accentuated the grain?

Right, but my understanding is that most grain is in the camera negative because it had to be shot at 24fps (or up to 120fps for slow motion), whereas later generations were duped using more sensitive film?

Like with like:

Star Wars
Empire Strikes Back

For the benefit of the forum, I understand poita’s Empire scans were done using state of the art equipment that introduces virtually no “scanner noise”. The “blue-yellow” grain in particular is far higher than is visible on Star Wars. I’m curious as to whether it really represents how the Kodak stock looked in 1980 or whether the grain has accentuated itself over time?

But Star Wars has way less grain than that! Did they use a particularly grainy film in the camera negative?

It’s looking very grainy, especially when compared to IB tech scans of Star Wars. I guess it could be in large part due to the blue-cast? Did the print really have that much grain in it when projected in 1980?

Guys we can’t distribute the scan that someone else did and doesn’t want distributed. The 16mm scan is excellent and I would suggest viewing that until we can get our hands on a 35mm print and arrange our own scan.