TServo2049

I am not as upset as some people by the "Director-Decided-to-Put-Back-Scenes-He-Originally-Chose-To-Cut Cut", but I do agree that the theatrical is a tighter, stronger movie, and that the DC's extended second act constantly threatens to stop the film dead in its tracks.

I bought the flipper in a drugstore discount rack just so I could have the TC, so bravo for taking the effort to recreate it in HD.

Any possibility of including an isolated score? It's on the flipper DVD, but according to LDDB it's also on the analog left track of the movie-only CLV Pioneer disc. (It would probably be too much of a chore to edit the tracks from the CD that came with the LD box set to match the film music editing, and an isolated track would have to be partially utilized anyway since some tracks are missing from every single soundtrack release.)

There was a 35mm of the movie up on eBay a few months back, but nobody seemed interested in donating, and then the seller ended the auction early without anybody having bid (which makes me assume that he got a better offer from someone outside of eBay).

I haven't seen a print surface since then. If poita ever gets an offer for Batman, would any of you be willing to donate (providing you can afford to at that time)?

Re: "Hinting of red", from what prints I've seen in person, I'm getting an impression that red was a much less "common" color on 70s/80s film prints. eems that, for example, (white) skin tones trended peach with just a hint of pink, and fire/explosions tended more yellow-orange in bright areas and primary/burnt-orange in dark areas. When there WAS red, it was usually in specifically RED objects, or red gel lighting, and it often looked extremely primary and dense. In 80s prints I've seen projected, these reds would look almost as if the red dye had been "injected" into the film stock, or plate-printed onto it like it were a photo print or magazine. (I've even perceived white "haloes" around primary reds on at least one occasion, akin to the film frames in my early Cinefex back issues.)

For a specific example, I was just watching the modern "teal-orange" transfer of Lethal Weapon on HBO. When Riggs and Murtaugh are in Murtaugh's living room in the dark next to the Christmas tree, with the red lighting, it's full of subtle shades; however, on the original 1987 35mm print I saw last Christmas, it instead looked like the red parts of the scene had been BATHED in red dye. A lot of fine facial details were blotted out by the reds, THAT'S how saturated primary red could be in 80s timing/print stock. I've seen similar characteristics in 35mm prints of Legend, The Running Man, and other films from the era.

Getting off my tangent, if it's like other 80s prints I've seen, I'd think there shouldn't be much red in the oranges, but that stuff like tiny red background lights on the Star Destroyer bridge or in the background of the reactor core scene would probably appear as pronounced fire-engine/blood-red pinpoints.

I believe the DuckTales pilot movie was released on a Japanese LD, but the Rescue Rangers one wasn't. I'd be interested in seeing the latter - the first two series' pilot movies were actually condensed from the 5-part versions (I believe the entirety of Cold Ducks was left out of the movie version of Treasure, for one example.)

(And I wonder, does anybody have original airings of the Rescue Rangers episodes that aren't on DVD? Some episodes were re-edited after the initial airings, and original versions have never surfaced to my knowledge.)

My gut reaction is that this purpoerted e-mail isn't real. Why? Because Fox still has distribution rights to the OT. Disney would not be releasing this, unless they've made some secret rights deal with Fox that none of us are aware of.

Read this Ars Technica article. (Specifically, this is page 2. Page 1 is about the state of the OT elements, but it just draws from a previous AT article which was based on zombie's information.)

It's weird - MGM did a lot of HD transfers which seem to have minimal tinkering (like the many ones that still only show up on MGM HD), but then we get stuff like this, or the teal/orange nightmare of The Great Escape, or Heaven's Gate (though wasn't that one actually due to Michael Cimino pulling a Cameron and mandating a completely anachronistic regrade?)

You would need a print of the original 1973 cut. Every home release is sourced from/based on the 1978 extended cut, which was only ever in Dolby Stereo.

PDB said:

Buster D said:

Is the DTS-MA 2.0 for American Graffiti as close to the original theatrical audio (4-track stereo) as we can get?  I have one of the Pioneer Japan LDs but it's Dolby Surround, so I assume it's mostly the same as the DTS-MA.

Interesting enough, IMDB says it was a 4-track but it predates Dolby Stereo and was too much of a low budget to get a 70mm release. That means only European audiences heard the 4 track on 35mm mag prints. In the US it would of been stereo optical (no matrix). 

I was under the impression that stereo optical didn't even exist prior to Dolby. I would be more willing to bet that the original 1973 release was strictly mono - especially because Walter Murch himself has stated point-blank that "American Graffiti was in mono. Apocalypse Now was my first stereo film. All of the films I'd worked on up until that point were mono."

IMDB probably says it was 4-track stereo because the 1978 re-release was remixed in Dolby Stereo. IMDB also claims Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was both mono and 4-track stereo, when in reality it was only ever in mono until it was remixed for the the 1996 re-release.

With few exceptions, most 70s films prior to Star Wars were in mono. I believe that Phantom of the Paradise and Nashville were indeed in 4-track stereo, but IMDB also claims that The Man Who Fell to Earth was in 4-track, yet I can find no evidence that it was ever anything but mono. And while they also say that The Rocky Horror Picture Show had 4-track mag stereo, I have no idea if that's true either.

To be honest, I take any IMDB claims of pre-Star Wars 70s films being in stereo with a grain of salt. Unless there is concrete evidence that a film was exhibited in stereo, I will assume that it was never mixed in anything but mono.

Prior to their bankruptcy, MGM struck a ton of HD masters of catalog titles for TV/on-demand purposes. They were showing up on MGM HD in the States, and the various MGM Channels overseas, 2-3 years before they ever got a physical release. (For example, the HD remaster of the Lifeforce director's cut premiered on MGM HD in 2010, but the Shout BD only came out last year.)

Many of these films are still unreleased on BD, but the ones that have gotten releases seem, by and large, to be derived from the HD masters that MGM already has on hand. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

AMC Theaters participated in a 25th anniversary event in October 2010 - I believe I have a special poster that was either given out or sold. How do we know that wasn't the DCP? It certainly wasn't film - the only other possibility would have been Blu-ray.

The version shown there had the "squeezed" end credits - does this alleged DCP version?

As unbelievable as it may seem, I am 99.99999999% certain that the adult voices WERE the original tracks that the characters were animated to. AFAIK, I was the first person to notice this; before I did, nobody else online had ever brought it up.

Look at the one with the stocking cap who says "Forget it, you're one of us now!" in the original released mix. Then look at the remix, where he says "Forget it, you're junk, you're trash!" I watched the two versions side by side...and the adult voice in the remix was the one which matched the mouth movements.

My assumption is that there was a decision during post-production to redub the voices with actual kids (and change a couple lines), or that the adult voices were a temp track never intended to actually be heard in the final mix. (I also have a feeling that they were Bluth crew members - which would explain why their acting is on par with that of the laserdisc games.) I even wonder if the off-screen "Pitiful!" heard in the '86 mix was an ad-lib by the child actor.

The 5.1 remix was assembled using the original dialogue stems (including lines that were recorded, but dropped from the theatrical mix), and so it would seem that these adult voices were the ones on the stems. As timdiggerm has suggested, maybe the child voices couldn't be found, but I think it's more likely that the people who put together the remix didn't know the voices were changed for the final mix (or worse, didn't care).

Well, when HDNet Movies ran it, it had the original mix. There's also at least one MKV out there with the 2.0 mix - I know of an English+Hindi one.

I'd also prefer the laserdisc.

I like this project. The 5.1 mix SUCKS.

HDTV broadcasts have had the original Dolby Stereo mix, but it wasn't bit-perfect PCM like the laserdisc.

Great screenshots! As I said, 1.) video transfer framing is not a science, and 2.) the exposed frame has a lot of "breathing room" to accomodate different ratios and framings. (Back in the 70s-80s, if you saw the same film at two different theaters, it's very likely the visible picture area would be different even if the ratio was the same.)

I'm not sure if the Blu-rays have one framing across an entire reel, or if they do frame each individual shot (which sounds like hard work).

And if you want to see what a the full exposed frame of a pre-digital animated film can look like, track down the "Reconstructed" version of Transformers: The Movie that's on one of the UK DVD releases...

Thanks for the explanation! Even looking at the redone Episode IV crawl on VHS as a kid, I do remember noticing that the letters looked like they were "moving" when they were in the distance. Now I understand why.

A question that someone else asked, but I'll restate it: Why is the "a" in the word "that" in "that can save her people" wonky? It looks like it's broken into two halves which are shifted away from each other. The letter "d" in custodian almost seems like it's similarly broken - the vertical bar looks a little too high? And I feel like I can "draw" an imaginary straight line between the two breaks...

Since you worked so long on this, I don't feel comfortable assuming that this was a mistake on your part, so are those the actual letterforms at that position in the crawl? Why would they be "broken up" like that?

Doctor M said:

Sure, you'd expect some cropping.  But my point is that the anamorphic and wide releases of Jungle Book actually have more left/right information than the 4x3 releases.

If the 4x3 version is all the animation fit to be seen, the widescreen should ONLY be less on the top and bottom.

Not necessarily. If you are framing at a particular AR, if you show more on the sides then you have to show more on the top and bottom. So a 4x3 transfer were to show as much on the sides as the widescreen ones, it would necessitate opening up the image that much more on the top and bottom, potentially revealing stuff we weren't intended to see (refer to the misframed Fox and the Hound Blu-ray screenshot, and the Great Mouse Detective framegrab from that recent 35mm auction).

And remember that in general, one framing has to be chosen for the entire transfer, or at least each reel, so if they are paying attention to the cel cutoffs and such, they would pick a framing that hides them in every shot. If one shot has an abrupt cel end at a certain frame height, the entire transfer has to be framed to cut off before that height, and so an equal amount of picture has to be sacrificed on the sides.

On the other hand, since a widescreen transfer mattes more on the top and bottom, they can afford to show more on the sides without revealing frame cheats on the top or bottom. This is all ideal circumstances, of course - if the technicians frame it too tight, we can get something like the 2002 Great Mouse Detective transfer where its 1.66:1 ratio cropped more on the sides than it opened up on the top and bottom.

We've seen plenty of transfers which are the "correct" AR but still a bit too tight (the Blu-ray of Alien, every transfer of Jurassic Park in the last 10+ years). And we've seen ones which are not properly centered as well (that Fox and the Hound Blu-ray, the original pressings of the Back to the Future Part II DVD where the entire transfer was framed too high). Transfer framing seems to be more of an art than a science.

A transfer showing all possible information without ever showing any of the garbage on the edges in any scene wouldn't necessarily be 4x3. It would probably end up being some oddball ratio (since there is usually more "garbage" on the top and bottom than on the sides). And if each individual shot were framed to show the maximum information without revealing flaws and cheats, the ratio would likely change from scene to scene.

As I said, pre-CAPS animated features were clearly shot with a lot of "breathing room" so they could be presented matted anywhere from 1.66:1-1.85:1. The 4x3 releases may be slightly cropped because showing the extra side information visible in the widescreen transfers would also reveal unwanted vertical info, like cels that end within the frame - "floating torsos", etc.

Jungle Book wasn't theatrically exhibited in 4:3, so both ratios are valid. But I do like the idea of showing as much of the exposed frame as possible - there are a few 90s animated films (not Disney) where the widescreen and 4:3 versions each show unique picture info, indicating that they were shot at something like 1.66:1, and there is part of the frame that's never been seen in any transfers.

But that's probably not going to happen any time soon...

Sorry for starting this by addressing -1. I was addressing the Team as a whole too. I guess I'll ask none if he has any leader info or anything.

The paper rings around the reels are something different, they will identify the studio, sometimes the lab, sometimes other info. If the prints had them intact, and the team has any pictures of them, they might hold a clue as to the origin and purpose of the print. I've already said why I don't think it was for TV broadcast.

Even with the blue cast, I'm skeptical about that theory. I just cannot see a Latin American TV station doing an in-camera pan-and-scan job on a 35mm print. I doubt that the majority of them even had 35mm film-to-tape equipment - from what I can gather, they would receive film material on 16mm well into the 80s.

If they were running from film and not from video, I'm almost positive that Central and South American stations would have received flat 16mm prints (the kind that used to be shown on airlines - the ITV broadcast seems to have been a flat print, judging by the presence of jump cuts in place of pans). And since Star Wars was not running on TV until the 80s, they may well have just received a copy of the official video transfer on tape, but with the Spanish dub.

-1, did you take pictures of the leaders when you still had the print? Did the prints still have those paper rings with the distributor, reel number, etc. on them?

Why it looks yellow: From what I've seen, LPP print stock generally has a yellow or yellow-green bias. In fact, sometimes projected LPP looks a little similar to modern teal/orange-pushed transfers, except with a wider color gamut (e.g., blues are actually blue, and Caucasian cast members don't look like Jersey Shore rejects).

People criticize some of Warner's transfers, but the Lethal Weapon remaster actually bears a resemblance to an original release print I saw back in December.

I wish the whole print came from the same source as the crawl/flyover. I wonder why it looks like that? My theory is that since LPP was introduced in 1982, and the English crawl on the print is spliced in from a separate, non-LPP Kodak, English-language, Dolby Stereo copy (possibly by a previous collector?), the unaltered print may have had the Spanish-language crawl edited onto a separate Episode IV print. (The foreign crawls were never refilmed with the episode number, so until the video-generated crawls in the 90s, they were still in their original 1977 state.)

Since this is the Latin American dub, maybe this print was for Spanish-language theaters in the U.S. - perhaps since there would have been comparatively fewer prints, Fox found it easier to just print the Spanish crawl separately and splice it onto English prints? (Have you ever checked the leaders of reels 2-6 for clues as to the origin of the print?)

Nobody loves Beastmaster 2. :LOL:

But seriously...is there even an HD version of that?

I liked the presence of gate weave, even though it may be a bit overdone as NeverarGreat said.

I am no fan of the prequel trilogy, and all the other problems are still in evidence, but I will say that with your treatment, whenever the camera was on Ewan McGregor it was almost as if I was watching the OT.

Apologies if I'm waxing poetic, but those shots of Obi-Wan make me feel like I'm peering through a crack in the space-time continuum into a parallel universe, and seeing a faint glimpse of what the prequels should have been...

As to "cropped" - the eBay picture is obviously not the entire frame.

Look at the bottom of that screengrab - you can see the frame line, and a sliver of the next frame under it. It seems that the full frame was exposed, including outside the area that was intended to be shown.

My point was that for a lot of pre-digital animation, showing the full exposed frame is not a good idea.

With TGMD, it's clear that the 2002 transfer cuts off picture on all four sides. But even in a theater, picture might be cropped on the sides depending on the aperture plate, or even the dimensions/curvature of the theater screen itself - the SMPTE projector safe area accounts for this.

A lot of people tend to treat OAR as if it's some kind of immutable law of nature, when it isn't anything of the sort.

Another 35mm print of The Great Mouse Detective showed up on eBay. This one is incomplete, but it's interesting because...well, look at the sample frame.

In recent years, there has been a degree of snobbery about how certain animated titles should have been open-matte (Transformers: The Movie, The Secret of NIMH, etc. - more amusing if you remember that a few years prior people were complaining that the original DVDs were full-frame!)

But this is proof that for animation releases, 4:3 does not always mean open-matte. If it were truly open-matte, you would see stuff like this (and in fact, some 4:3 releases do have this problem, can't remember which ones though). The films were composed and protected for widescreen (even if some of them look unnaturally tight at that ratio - not Disney, but An American Tail is a great example. It's sometimes too cramped at 1.85, but quite often too loose at 1.33...)