Oh wow, I can't wait for that. Do you have a lead on an LPP of Raiders, like the one that was on eBay a couple years back?
This would be great to get, no doubt about it...
dvdmike said:
Mavimao said:
When he means low fade, he's not talking about the technicolor IB process. He's talking about regular Kodak color filmstock - but with more stable color chemistry that was introduced in the early 80s.
yes, but I was under the impression it was more expensive
No, LPP was not expensive. From what I've seen at revival screenings, on eBay, etc., it seems that the vast majority of positive printing had switched over to LPP and other low-fade stocks by 1983. 1984 at the absolute latest. I saw an original WarGames trailer a while back that had a yellow tint (not sure whether the tint was there from the beginning), but no actual fading.
I've seen an original 70mm of Star Trek II from 1982 that had gone nearly completely red, and an original 70mm of Ghostbusters from 1984 that had its color fully intact.
The switch to low-fade was very quick; every print of Jedi that has surfaced in the wild has retained its color. The only footage of Jedi I have seen that was faded were those film cells, and compositing tests that a former ILM employee was selling on eBay (printed on 1982 Kodak 65mm stock).
Super 35 doesn't bother me. 2.35:1 is still the "definitive" ratio for all those films, they were shot protected for 2.35 and that's what everyone saw in theaters. Sure, we got a few films with altered ratios (the old transfers of Star Trek VI, the first DVD of Austin Powers, the HDTV transfers of The Abyss and True Lies, the 3D version of Titanic) but the vast majority of films were/are usually kept in 2.35.
I prefer Panavision, but I was never on the whole Super 35 hatewagon. Most of it usually seemed to be tied into the whole war to get home consumers to accept letterbox, and this idea that filmmakers who used Super 35 were pandering to those philistines who didn't like the black bars.
Oh, so the Spanish LPP print (the top one) *did* have a physical splice after the Star Destroyer flyover?
I definitely see a tape splice mark on the middle print. Is there an actual splice there on that print, too? (If the splice were printed in from the internegative, it would be white, not black.) I would have assumed that an 80s LPP print with the 1981 intro would have had it to begin with, not have it physically edited on at the print stage...
Also, looking at that 3-way comparison, you say the LPP is in the middle? The middle looks like a different print, it has the 1981 flyover (notice the middle and bottom clips reveal Tatooine out of sync with the music). And just looking at the lasers and explosions, and the milder camera shake when R2 and 3PO are introduced (just the on-set shaking without the optical enhancement), I can tell that the bottom clip is the Special Edition.
I also was not aware that the 1981 composite was framed at a narrower aperture than the 1977. It seems that by the early 80s, ILM was printing all/most of its composite shots to Panavision at that narrower aperture, with the right edge of the frame unexposed. If you watch a print of Return of the Jedi uncropped, almost every effects shot has that black space on the right side.
ilovewaterslides said:
The colors on the last shots of your LPP remind me of my '89 French Laserdisc:
http://i1.someimage.com/jKsSaZb.jpg
Maybe because the print is slightly faded.
I wouldn't be surprised if the LPP print came off of the same source element as the '89 French LD transfer. From what I understand, this LPP was a Spanish (Latin American dub) mono print. It has the 1977 flyover composite at the start instead of the 1981 recomposite, and the image density/contrast change after the flyover suggests it came from a different element than the rest of the print (though from what I also understand, there was no physical splice on the print itself, meaning the join would have been made at a previous generation?)
Judging by the various foreign video releases prior to the THX remasters, the foreign-language crawls were never redone with "Episode IV" (on film), so I am assuming that any 1980s prints with foreign crawls would still have had that language's 1977 crawl element spliced on, complete with the old flyover. The LPP print had a faded, Dolby Stereo English crawl spliced on at the head, and my personal theory is that the LPP originally had the "La Guerra De Las Galaxias" title and Spanish crawl.
As for the rest of the print, while it's LPP and not faded itself, it seems to come from a source element that had mild color fading issues reminiscent of the '89 French LD, and the composites that were redone during the original run (the temple establishing shot, the X-Wing takeoff) match up with the '89 LD as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if the LPP was indeed sourced from the same, slightly fading element (with Spanish crawl+'77 flyover spliced on at the internegative stage?).
And actually, I also wonder if the same element, with some additional video color balance correction, wasn't also the source for the Technidisc LD, and then the Definitive Collection/GOUT masters...
I've never used reddit, but I am making an exception for AMPS. Honestly, it'd be a shame if the move killed the group just because nobody was willing to use reddit. There hasn't been any activity on the AMPS subreddit in almost a day. Come on people...
By the old color, do you mean the Grinch being a sort of olive color instead of bright green? From what I gather, that may not have been accurate - I have heard that the old home video transfers were sourced from a fading interpositive.
Here's a clip from a 1983 CBS airing, pre-home video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoUhnGNuxJ0
But yeah, mono replacement sucks.
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Well fuck, I guess the 16:9 HDTV version of Galaxy Quest was just a crop job.
I guess we'll have to get a 35mm print to know whether the theatrical prints were also cropped, or opened.
And scope isn't totally dead, as long as there are directors who shoot on film. Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams are still shooting in Panavision. I loved seeing that stretched-out lens flaring in the 35mm portions of Interstellar. (And it's going to be great seeing Episode VII in true scope.)
Actually, the original mix was Dolby Stereo. Mono came up while discussing the isolated score on the Pioneer CLV disc, and the tradeoff between the LD version not being compressed, but being analog mono (one channel of the analog track), and the original DVD being digital and stereo, but 192kbps.
At this point, I think the stereo trumps the compression. The music was mixed in stereo, so a definitive presentation should have an isolated track in stereo too.
It doesn't hurt that every 35mm release print of ROTJ was on low-fade stock. (The only faded anything I've seen of ROTJ are the 70mm collectible film cell - and I'm still not sure if they came off a faded print, or the print was struck off a faded 70mm internegative.)
I wonder if 1.78 HDTV airings of Galaxy Quest have the beginning of the film framed the same as in theaters. The film was Super 35, and I *assume* the 1.85 was achieved more through opening up vertically than cropping horizontally. So would the 1.78 version seen on channels like AMC be opened up, too?
Army was probably theatrically exhibited in 1.85:1 in most theaters - like with RoboCop, the director's "preferred" AR would not have been what moviegoers saw.
I'd buy that corrected pic from Last Crusade as being the theatrical scheme. Even though the sky isn't blue like the home transfers. (Was it washed out by the photographer's light source? Or is everything we know wrong again?)
I'm with Capt. Solo, I'd love to see all three captured from 35mm someday.
I really do like that 8mm color quality. I feel like it could be scanned and corrected to lessen the red shift, and we could get a better idea of the color.
Very interesting stuff. There are other Blu-ray transfers out there that similarly seem to be bad attempts to recreate the original theatrical timing, laced with characteristics of modern grading and thus coming off to many as being purely revisionist.
For example, the maligned U.S. Blu-ray transfer of The Neverending Story with its gold tint and teal/orange tendencies is not without precedent. There used to be a camera recording of part of a Derann digest print online, and the excerpted scenes had similar timing to the BD (though with a better color spectrum, and much better contrast than the darkened blowout/crush mess of the U.S BD). I think they may have tried to match a print, but failed miserably/let their modern digital grading tendencies get the better of them.
But back to Raiders, I can't wait to see your pics, litemakr. The more film evidence, the better...
Star Trek VI was shot in Super-35. I'm not sure if it was 3-perf, or 4-perf (a la James Cameron). Does anybody have a 4:3 copy handy to check how much vertical space is added?
I know that prior to the Blu-ray transfer, there was a 2:1 theatrical cut transfer that ran on HDTV.
At least it was opened up, unlike Vittorio Storaro going senile and cropping his own 2.35:1 compositions to fit his later preferred Univisium ratio. Thank Heaven Apocalypse Now finally got a 2.35 release (though he still was able to force Criterion to use 1.9:1 for The Last Emperor).
I'd love to see what's on that.
We need to keep on the lookout for low-fade prints of Raiders. 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, whatever.
litemakr, you have a recording of the mono mix? I'm surprused to hear of it being used in theaters, I thought all 35mm prints were Dolby by 1981.
Does it have the alternate Jock voice heard at 1:00 in this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmLDNk8MbLs
Waaaay back in the 90s, Treadwell (I think) mentioned hearing a different Jock voice on a 16mm print. When that DVD featurette came out, I assumed this voice is what he was talking about.
I know that 16mm prints of Empire had the rarer mono mix, so I'd believe a mono mix of Raiders being on 16mm prints of that...but on theatrical prints? That I've never heard...
The Rudolph LD is almost certainly the 1965 edit with "Fame and Fortune."
The original Sony DVD does have the "hybrid" 1998 restoration. I'm not sure if any of the restored footage was left out of subsequent home releases. What I do know is that the more recent TV airings took some of the restored scenes back out, as well as changing the Rudolph/Hermey duet to a bizarre Frankenstein version with the original song audio put to the "Fame and Fortune" visuals.
Also, the original end credits are missing from all official releases, to my knowledge. The original ending didn't actually show Santa pick up the Misfit Toys and deliver them - that was another 1965 addition, due to viewers sending letters to GE wanting to know what happened to them . (Most of the deleted footage that was reinstated in '98 was, I believe, cut back in 1965 to make room for the new ending.)
At least one black and white 16mm print of the true original 1964 version exists in private hands, and the clips of the original opening/closing/GE commercials are all on a YouTube, but a color version of the original ending apparently doesn't exist. The original negative has all the stuff that was added back in for the restoration...except for the original ending.
I wonder why it's flickery in the first place? Did the print flicker when projected?
Maybe it was a lab problem? When I saw Interstellar in 70mm IMAX, the picture would occasionally flash, as if a single frame was overexposed...
Wishful thinking, I presume. I've never heard of a 70mm print of Empire out there. And if a print of the opening-day cut were to surface, odds are that it would be severely faded.
(The collectible film cells came from a print that wasn't faded, or at least not *as* faded, but it also wasn't the "opening day" version - I've seen at least one on eBay that clearly showed the Falcon's dish in frame when Luke falls off the weathervane.)