TServo2049

Speaking of crummy-sounding Dolby Stereo mixes, a suggestion: how about a rip of the 1993 Disney LD of The Muppet Movie to sync with the new Blu-ray?

Like Superman, TMM has a rather tinny, low-dynamic-range Dolby mix (the music-and-effects track heard on the foreign dubs actually had higher fidelity!), and it makes very little use of surrounds. There was one good use of them I know of - the movie starts in standard lo-fi center-channel mono, then when the movie within a movie starts, the sound field suddenly expands to full 4.0 as the music swells, and the rainbow and title appear. (I know I said the Dolby mix sounded lo-fi, but it's still definitely a wider dynamic range than Academy mono, evident as you first hear bells in the right channel as the rainbow sweeps into frame.)

The original mix was on the original DVD in 192kHz Dolby Digital, but I think it's still worth preserving lossless.

Mavimao said:

Space Kaijuu said:

Ah, Jurassic Park and its weird combo of open-matte and hard-matted scenes.

It was actually common practice for films to have their special effects shots hard-matted. Less area to work with = less work to do.

That's not why. It's because VFX were usually done in VistaVision, with a wider AR. For the final negative, they were reduced to hard-matted 4-perf.

From what I can tell, the 8mm mix was done specifically for the digests. Judging by the shared differences from the standard mix, it was probably done around the same time as this 16mm mono mix and/or the "Story of" LP mix. (Though each of them has unique differences - as I said in another thread, Lucas and/or Ben Burtt seem to have been very mercurial when it came to ADR takes; every time they did another mix, at least one line was a different reading, or a completely different line altogether - they were still changing their minds when remixing the SEs!)

Moth3r said:

The unusual and notable thing about the Ghostbusters TV version is that for those six scenes, Ivan Reitman actually shot alternative takes for television with the original actors.

It actually wasn't that unusual in the 80s (though still notable).

For example, Harold Ramis shot TV takes for Caddyshack (ex., Rodney Dangerfield saying "Hey everybody, let's take a shower!") and National Lampoon's Vacation (ex., the pimp saying "Man, who do I look like, Christopher Columbo?").

I really do think the TV takes should be included, especially because of how rare they are now - starting some time in the 90s, basic-cable airings of the movie would have the original versions reinstated (I remember "This man has no dick" when Comedy Central would show it)

Here's the guy's description of the alleged cut scene from "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair":

One of the most interesting pieces of dialogue, between Batman and Velma was actually edited out, both on the currently playing version, and the DVD! Something about counterfeiting "undermin[ing] the national economy", and that "for the same of world stability, we must capture this criminal here and now".
It is hard to determine where exactly this sequence was. The editing was very good. It was when they first followed the hooded man into the toy warehouse. IIRC, Batman opens the hatch, and then goes up alone, and then brings the others. I try to listen to the background music to tell where something was cut out. It was probably during the next blackout (or "batout") after which they begin following him in the warehouse.

Of course, this could just be an incorrect memory of his. I could buy that 1-2 minutes were cut, because the episodes as shown on TV are short enough to show *with ads* and still run a 7-minute filler cartoon afterward. About 10 years ago, I mentioned this on ToonZone and someone said they had a 16mm print, with ads, and it ran 55 minutes - still shorter, but not AS short. The extra time was originally filled by CBS' "In the News".

Unfortunately, the cover of the Kids Klassics tape says "The Caped Crusader Caper", so this episode likely never had had a video release before the 2000s VHS/DVD. (But if his claim is true, it could also contain extra scenes.)

Anybody got any USA Cartoon Express airings? They may have answers.

I've heard from a Scooby fan that the modern-day masters are edited for time. Supposedly 1-2 minutes are missing from even the DVD releases. I've only read his descriptions of the missing scenes from the first Batman appearance.

Could these scenes possibly be intact on old Worldvision/Goodtimes VHS releases? I know that there was a crappy LP mode release of at least that first Batman episode...

OK, news on this:

I bought the reel. Yes, I said reel, not reels. It was a single reel from a consignment seller, with no canister. He said the leader said "Hour 2" and "Unit 2", which I assume means it's the last half of the film. I have the reel now, but I haven't had time to unpack it or inspect it.

The second half is where all the good stuff/special effects happen, so I'm not terribly upset to only have that part of the movie.

I run a Facebook group on practical/optical VFX, and one of the members tipped me off to a transfer place in L.A. - for an HD scan, it'd be $275 an hour (the reel is about an hour). I spent $100 getting the reel and a canister for it, and I'd really like to know if anyone would be willing to chip in some of the $275 to get this reel transferred right (rather than just a one-light SD telecine).

No, they don't understand film. They have never understood film. They share the studios' irrational aversion to catalog titles from decades ago looking "old."

"You were right all along, it's overrated" is heard in the background when 3PO sees the other protocol droid. Actually, I think it's the same reading as in the regular mixes, they just dial the line back later so we actually HEAR "it's overrated."

Hey,

Here’s an idea, which I’m going to post here and maybe on AMPS too.

The Day Time Ended is a cheesy semi-cult sci-fi movie from 1979, produced by schlockmeister Charles Band, with effects by stop motion legend David Allen. The film has never been available on video in its original 2.35:1 format, only in pan and scan (even the DVD releases just recycle the old P&S transfer). I’ve always wanted to see it in its OAR. Luckily, I found a 16mm print on eBay, and when I asked, the seller told me it indeed looked squeezed, meaning it’s scope widescreen.

If I win the print, would anyone be up for transferring it?

The Puggo Edition mix seems to have been assembled especially for that 8mm digest. The Luke/Han intercom exchange has different ADR takes of both Hamill and Ford's lines (Han says "I'm coming back" instead of "I'm going back").

Lucas and Burtt seemed to be indecisive about which ADR takes to use; every film has at least one version where some line is a different reading (alternate takes of Aunt Beru/"What good'll it do us if he gets himself killed"/"Hang on back there"/Blast it, Wedge" in the mono mix of SW, "till I get the shelter up" in the ESB SE, Wedge's "one more pass" on the ESB story album), different lines ("You were lucky to get out of there" in the ESB SE, "It's all right, I can see a lot better" in ROTJ SE), or a line that was recorded but unused gets added (3PO's "we've stopped" in ANH:SE, the aforementioned "There's nowhere to go" in the ESB 16mm and SE, and Lando's "and you know what? It's overrated" in the 8mm and I think the story LP of ESB)

It even extended to Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Jock's line "Oh, that's just my pet snake Reggie" sounds almost British in most versions, but in one of the DVD extras (and supposedly some 16mm prints, of the type Puggo's been transferring for the SW trilogy) the accent is clearly American.

(Which gives me an idea: Raiders of the Lost Pug...)

Yeah, it was the Castro. I believe the LPPs of The Blues Brothers and Close Encounters (20th anniversary) I saw at the Paramount looked kind of yellow-greenish in the whites. I believe that there was also a yellow-green bias to the trailers I saw before Rear Window at the New Beverly in L.A. I also seem to recall a tinge like that to the 70MM LPP of Ghostbusters I saw at the Egyptian. They all had different color timing but whites were always a yellow-green off-white.

So maybe in this age of neutral-temperature digital projection, we've all forgotten how projected LPP looks.

It makes me wonder how many other films originally had color timing completely different from every release we've ever seen.

As I pointed out before, I've seen a cam-rip of a Derann print of The Neverending Story which has an almost teal/orange balance, similar to the reviled U.S. Blu-ray (though obviously looking better due to being photochemical and not digitally manipulated).

Also, that ED2 color estimate may not look right on some monitors, I may make a new approximation on a different monitor some time. The point is, there was a lot of blue and green, virtually no sign of oranges, purples or magentas, very little red apart from the blood, Ash looked a dulled yellow-bronze, and the medieval coda was green-tinged and almost totally monochromatic.

Part of it could possibly be chalked up to crummy lab work, but I don't think that's the whole reason.

Actually, the colors in this publicity still look quite similar to what I saw last night (though not as photochemically accentuated). In a way, it almost looked like 2-strip Technicolor/Cinecolor.

This one really intrigues me - Evil Dead II. I just saw a screening of an original 35mm print, and noticed something interesting - except for blood or red/orange light effects or specifically red elements of the frame, the color spectrum seemed to be restricted to between yellow and blue. Skin tones looked yellow-greenish, dark stuff was blue or greenish-blue, and the whole thing had a green/yellow-green cast. I recall a shot of the fireplace where the flames looked almost pure yellow. (Even the end credits looked a bit greenish.)

This is what the Lionsgate Blu-ray looks like:

And this is an approximation of what the print I saw looked like:

I know LPP has a yellow-green bias, but I've never come across any version of ED2 with such a narrow color spectrum. The closest, strangely enough, seems to be the reviled Divimax DVD release (which has horrible DNR, but colors closest to the print I saw - though still not the same):

Was something wrong with the print I saw? Was something wrong with the projector setup? (There were several trailers before it, which all had a similar yellow-green cast, though still a broader color spectrum). I thought that LPP prints don't fade, and the blacks on this print looked absolutely solid. Is that yellow-green-cyan-blue palette how ED2 originally looked?

crissrudd4554 said:

In Willy Wonka when Charlie and Grandpa sing the Godlen Ticket song the mother interupts at the end. I have the 1994 VHS and she says 'Wait! Stop!'. All versions I've seen from the 1996 VHS onward she just says 'Stop!'.

The 1996 restoration was when the film's soundtrack was remixed to stereo/5.1 - before then, the film was only ever in mono. The 1994 VHS was the last one to have the original mono mix.

The 1991 laserdisc (with the original poster art) has the mono mix in digital PCM.

It really confuses me when older movies have alterations in their mono tracks. It happened with The Wizard of Oz, it happened with Frankenstein, it happened with Dracula. I think it's because due to the age of these films, the mono tracks are now restorations/reassemblies, not just direct transfers of an original mono element.

WB owns all rights to the Salkind Superman films now.

The footage certainly exists, some of it was used for the extended cut of STM and the Donner cut of SII. And the deleted scenes on the Donner cut DVD seem to indicate that WB has, at the very least, a widescreen 35mm IP of the TV cut of SII - the scenes have the soundtrack from the TV cut. (At least some of these TV cuts were assembled in widescreen and then pan-and-scanned later; the deleted scenes on the Blazing Saddles DVD are also widescreen, but have the mono TV-cut soundtrack with the profanity edited out.)

On the other hand, the deleted scenes for SIII come from the pan-and-scan TV broadcast master, so who knows if they still have those?

I know that MTV VP Les Garland had a friend in Tulsa tape the first day. Maybe that guy turned around and bootlegged his recording.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the actual topic of this thread...

SilverWook said:

Early stereo VCR's had an audio input setting to facilitate FM simulcast recordings. I could get MTV's stereo audio if I ran the cable into my stereo's tuner back then.

I find it interesting that the circulating bootlegs of MTV's first day are in stereo.

People talk about how only a few thousand people watched MTV's premiere, so it's amazing that at least one of them not only recorded it for posterity, but cared enough to tape it in stereo.

Makes sense, CBS didn't start broadcasting in stereo until 1987, and in the days before actual stereo TV transmission, the only way to have stereo TV was through an FM simulcast.

I am absolutely sure, this was documented in he late 90s/early 2000s. For example, the IMDB trivia (which has been there for years):

The Region-1 DVD actually contains two different versions of the film. The fullscreen version is the theatrical version, the widescreen version has one brief shot replaced. It is a small scene near the end at 1:14:06 just before Batman fights the Joker in the Clocktower. In the fullscreen version Vicki Vale gets a disgusted look when she kisses the Jokers jacket and pulls a lint out of her mouth, however in the widescreen version she really seems to like it.

In 2001, someone else on another forum said this:

on the DVD version, this shot is replaced with her still kissing the jacket, but she no longer looks disgusted, nor does she pull out the lint. In fact, she kinda looks "into it," for lack of a better word.

From Home Theater Forum in 2004:

on the widescreen side of the Batman DVD, the scene at the end where Vicki Vale is kissing the Joker's jacket and pulls lint off of her tongue, is changed slightly. I think it shows more kissing and she doesn't pause to remove the lint. The correct theatrical footage is on the pan 'n scan side.

And the widescreen version on the 1997 DVD was anamorphic, so unless it was an upscale, it wouldn't have been the LD master.

And from where comes this presupposition that all WB launch titles were from LD masters? I'd buy the fullscreen sides being dumped from LD, or maybe those notorious full-frame-only releases like Caddyshack, Vacation, Fierce Creatures, et. al., but I thought the anamorphic releases were supposed to be demo discs for the format, wouldn't they have thus been new masters made specifically for anamorphic?

I also can't find any mention of the "no lint" version showing up on any widescreen LD. But it most definitely was on the original widescreen DVD.

And back in 2005 someone on a forum said they had just seen a 70mm print with the same "no lint" version - I don't think they'd be making it up or misremembering. So this could have been a situation where the 70mm version was different due to the film being changed after the supposedly-locked "final" cut was sent out to the lab for blowup, much like the first cut of ESB with fewer establishing shots of the Rebel fleet, or "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" with no Roman numeral "II". And when the DVD master was done, WB could have accidentally pulled an IP that reflected the 70mm blowup cut.

The original widescreen DVD transfer of Batman is also interesting because for some unknown reason, it has an alternate take of the scene where Vicki is kissing the Joker's jacket. She doesn't pull a piece of lint out of her mouth (still wondering if that was improvised by Basinger).

Poor choice of words. I didn't mean a transfer in 1080p native. I meant a transfer of high enough resolution that it could be used to derive a true 1080p release.

Again, I wouldn't be surprised if the existing DC transfer was only done at a resolution of 720p, because it was just intended for DVD.

I am guessing that the Director's Cut was only mastered to 720p because it was intended to be downconverted to 480p for DVD.

So whoever has the DC film element (presumably MGM?) would have to rescan it for us to have a real 1080p transfer.

Does Universal even have access the OCN? All Universal did was buy U.S. distribution rights from DeLaurentiis, the film's actual owner.

I am certain that Universal does not have access to any film element of the DC; why else would Bruce Campbell have had to loan out his personal copy for the Anchor Bay DVD transfer?

Antcu, I revised my post, it was a fully digital restoration - I believe the first of its kind: http://articles.latimes.com/1993-07-31/entertainment/ca-18865_1_snow-white

I was getting mixed up with the YCM Labs photochemical restoration done for the 50th anniversary re-release. But yes, each frame of the 1993 digital restoration was output to film after completion, as the New York Times article describes: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/30/business/business-technology-snow-white-is-made-over-frame-by-frame-and-byte-by-byte.html

As I said before, the technology to produce a direct-digital transfer either didn't exist, was in the experimental stages, or would have been prohibitively expensive. It was major news when Pixar did a direct-digital transfer of A Bug's Life, in 1999.

And as far as The Sword in the Stone, Disney does have HD masters of quite a few of their catalog which have still never been released on physical media. To name a few; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, A Goofy Movie. But this surprises me because it IS on Blu-ray, yet has an iTunes version that is superior! How often does THAT happen?