I thought the more recent master of Ghostbusters used for the "4K" BD and DCP screenings was closer to the original color timing than the master on the first BD?
I believe that Warner had/has TV distribution rights to the post-Corman-era New World library under license from Lakeshore, who acquired them when they bought Trans Atlantic Entertainment.
Image has the rights to the post-Corman New World catalog. We could get a release if only Toho were willing to cooperate. They've always been uncooperative with Anchor Bay/Lakeshore, and I even think they once claimed that they have full ownership of G85, and New World library owners had/have no claim to it.
Is Toho just angered by the U.S. recut?
The pre-DNR versions are on a cerTain PuBlic tracker, but only in 720p, and if you have the patience to wait for the sporadic seed activity. It may have taken me close to 2 weeks each to get STII and STVI.
For the record, the old HDTV transfer of VI is the theatrical cut, but at 1.90:1. The credits don't have a Starfleet insignia, they look the same as the other versions.
I will believe the claim of an alternate credit sequence when I see visual proof. (Could it have only been on the 70mm prints, like the numberless TWOK title?)
The film was shot Academy and matted. Moonwalker was intended for theatrical release, but also for the song segments to be shown on TV as music videos. So it seems to have been shot to work in both ratios.
Usually, "open matte" home video transfers lose a tiny bit on the sides but gain more on the top and bottom. On the other hand, if the visual effects scenes are in VistaVision format, those scenes have a little bit of extra image on the top and bottom but lose a lot more on the sides. (Some examples: the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jurassic Park.)
Dream Quest did the effects for the Smooth Criminal/Mr. Big segment, and I believe they used VistaVision. If this is the case for Moonwalker, then any time there's a scene with optical effects in that section, it will be the widescreen version that has more picture info, not the full-frame.
That said, the zoomboxed-to-hell YouTube clip of Smooth Criminal sourced from the Moonwalker remaster is absolutely not representative of the actual framing of the Blu-ray release.
This is from the Blu-ray:
This is the same shot from the YouTube clip posted by "MJacksonHD":
So don't worry TylerDurden, the actual BD is not horrifically zoomboxed.
I don't think this "MJacksonHD" channel is officially sanctioned by Sony or the Jackson estate, either; it seems to be a fan. Whoever it is, the crop job is almost certainly theirs, and not an aspect of the BD transfer itself.
As to *why* that YT clip is so severely zoomed - you got me. Maybe it's some kind of trick to fool YouTube's copyright-infringement-detection-bots? I have no idea.
Yes, yes, no more blowout! This makes me think of the archival 70mm print I saw at the Egyptian for Halloween '10.
If I had known this was the transfer being used for the DCP screenings, I wouldn't have blown off my last two opportunities to see it in a theater. Next time there's a DCP showing in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm in.
It's amusing to look at the JP LD in comparison to later releases, because at the time it came out, Video Watchog's Tim Lucas accused Universal of "zoomboxing" the film, cropping picture on all four sides. But in reality, the LD actually had the most OPEN framing!
Can't wait to see this. I remember seeing (and hearing) a home theater demo of JP at a home theater specialist store, and being absolutely blown away.
The DCP version looked better than the 3D BD screenshots look, especially in 2D with no glasses on. Yes, the color timing was different, but in a darkened theater my eyes adjusted better than looking at them on a monitor. And without glasses, it looked nice and bright. Why do the framegrabs from the home version so dark and dim in comparison?
And as I said before, the 2011 BD was also cropped. In fact, looking at DVDBeaver's comparison of the R1 DVD, Superbit DVD and 2011 BD, the framing of the DVDs only showed a tiny bit more picture info than the BD. From the previous comparison I found, the laserdiscs showed more on the top, left and right, but a little less on the bottom.
In both the DVD version and the 3D screenings I saw, the Mr. DNA cartoon has parts where things look shifted up. When he says "a blueprint for building a living thing", the brachiosaur outline's head is very close to the top of frame, and there's blank space underneath. (In 2 out of 3 of the 3D theatrical screenings I recently attended, the projection was framed such that the head was partially cropped off!)
Not all the Nimoy host segments were aired. Nimoy's were taped first, and were SUPPOSED to air first, but Sci-Fi ended up pulling a switcheroo and starting off with Shatner's instead. (Maybe Shatner had a better agent?) When they were two-thirds of the way into the Nimoy versions, the new programming manager Bonnie Hammer initiated a change of direction at the network (the "SciFi 2.0"/"I am SciFi" era), and the Star Trek SEs were abruptly taken off the schedule.
Transcripts of the unaired Nimoy host segments subsequently surfaced on Sci-Fi's Dominion message board (which no longer exists), and were mirrored on a Nimoy fansite (which also no longer exists). Fortunately, through the power of Internet Archive, I salvaged the transcripts and put them into a text file. They could make an interesting bonus for this project.
Wasn't the 2011 Blu transfer cropped too? I've seen a comparison where the LD has more info on the top and sides:
Though apparently, the first pressings of the LD were ALSO cropped on all 4 sides, and it was called out by Video Watchdog. I believe that was what exposed "zoomboxing" to videophiles?
Also, the images of the 3D Blu-ray look very dim. I saw a 2D screening at a theater yesterday, and it looked much brighter than these screenshots.
I'd prefer a color scheme somewhere between the old and the new. While I'm sure that the 1993 theatrical timing was as cold as the 2011 BD, and the new colors are pleasing, I also can't imagine that the '93 color scheme was AS warm as the 3D. I always remember the grass in the Gallimimus scene being "pure" green.
I will at least agree that the sound mix on the 15/70 IMAX screening I went to was uncomfortably loud, and Bane's voice illicited a negative reaction from my ears similar to that from hearing microphone feedback.
Though to be fair, it wasn't as bad as the 70mm screening of Wrath of Khan I attended where they ran the print without Dolby Type A, and every phaser, torpedo, transporter and warp would peak the treble.
I remember TDKR sounding better in DCP. Maybe my IMAX venue jacked up the sound themselves?
The Director's Cut was obviously done because at the time, every single theatrical re-release had to follow the Star Wars SE model and redo special effects with CGI or pad the running time with deleted scenes.
Directors like Forman, William Friedkin, Richard Donner and Steven Spielberg, who approved the original released versions of Amadeus, The Exorcist, Superman and E.T., suddenly decided they "always wanted" to include scenes which they were perfectly fine with cutting 20-30 years before.
I'm still not sure how much of it was the directors indulging their whims because they could, and how much of it was studio executives insisting "It doesn't matter if it's a new restoration on a big screen, nobody will see it if it's the same version they can watch on video!" (And before anyone points out that Superman didn't get a theatrical re-release, it was originally supposed to, but WB got cold feet after one lukewarm test screening.)
I would welcome a reconstruction of the theatrical cut. Also, could you put the Orion logo from the original theatrical version back at the front, in place of the anachronistic modern Warner Bros. logo?
skyjedi2005 said:
The rarer Definitive box second issue with the mistakes corrected from first issue boxset had making of star wars, spfx and classic creatures in new digital transfers also available separately. But they left off the Creative impulse book.
Did that version of Making of Star Wars have the original William Conrad narration, or did it have the updated Don LaFontaine narration that was on the 1995 mail-away VHS?
Also, I believe that all video releases of SPFX removed clips from Mary Poppins and The Black Hole - presumably because Lucas only licensed them for TV, and Disney asked too much to license them again for video.
Good job. (Though I've read on forums that there was SOME superimposed text mention of DTS? I didn't see JP in the theater, so I don't know for sure. Better not to guess what it may have said, or at what point it appeared...)
As I said in the main DTS thead, the regular, post-JP "This theatre features DTS Digital Sound" version would be great to preserve. I've always loved that bass ending with that weird noise as the words slide in.
As a kid (b. 1987), my local premium-sound venues all seemed to be DTS; I saw The Digital Experience, and in THX-certified auditoriums I saw Grand and Tex, and occasionally Broadway (I remember that one on Titanic, and possibly the Star Wars SE's). I don't think I ever saw a Dolby Digital trailer until 1999. And I never found myself in an SDDS theater, so I didn't see those until the Internet.
Boris, I don't recall you ever answering if you have that later standard Digital Experience on disc - do you? I believe it was a separate disc, just as the trailer came by itself.
I keep reading that there's some sort of phase/channel bleeding issue in the 2.0 mix on DVD/BD.
Listening to it through headphones, I do hear an echo effect in the music, but I'm not sure that's the same thing they're talking about (there's a similar echo in the 1977 Dolby Stereo mix of Star Wars).
Either way, a preservation of the LD audio would still be good - these same people say the LD didn't have the problems the DVD/BD 2.0 mix has.
I think the widescreen LDs for all the films should be preserved at some point. II and especially III had different color timing (daytime skies were originally "bleached" in the lab to hide the wires holding Superman, Zod, etc.), and the Japanese LD of IV is the 93-minute overseas cut.
Yeah, that's it, but the version shown in theaters didn't have the DTS logo zoom back like that. Notice that the entire image pulls back. That was done in telecine when it was transferred for 16x9 anamorphic DVD release, because the framing was tighter on the second half. (I was just a kid then, but I distinctly remember either "THIS THEATRE FEATURES" or "SOUND" sometimes being partially cut off in the theaters where I saw it flat.)
That, plus the general lack of an HD video source for the trailer, is why a 35mm flat copy would be so great. It could be scanned in high-res, synced up with a cinema disc, and included as a separate track set to play before the film if one were to burn a Blu-ray/theatrical DTS sync to BD. It would complete the recreation of the DTS cinema experience.
This guy did a mind-blowing near-4k scan of the original SDDS trailer, with his own DIY rig.
When I suggested the Digital Experience trailer, I meant a preservation of the more familiar "stand-alone" version, from a cinema disc. Boris said he had some trailer discs, and I'd love to hear a perfect theatrically-accurate version (as opposed to one from LD or DVD).
Someone is offering a 35mm trailer lot that includes a DTS trailer. It would indeed be cool to have a 35mm scan to sync up with the audio, so we can finally have a high-def version of the trailer.
Actually, the WOWOW broadcasts had the original jeep drop.
Oh, and another thing that would be cool - a preservation of the classic "Digital Experience" trailer audio. (Obviously, the later, more familiar version - because nobody has the visual for the shorter version that was attached to Jurassic Park.)
I remember that trailer always blew me away in the theater.
The blue light through the blinds still looks teal. Can that be fixed?
Wait, you have DTS theatrical discs for ID4? Or just the DTS LD?
EDIT: Oh, you did mention earlier that you had the ID4 discs. Awesome.
A suggestion for another DTS cinema preservation if anyone ever comes across the discs: how about Independence Day? I can't remember if I saw it in true DTS, but everyone who experienced it in theaters remembers the impact of the buildings going boom.
Wow, so the DCP version isn't as blown out? I have missed a couple opportunities to see the film in digital because I assume it'd just be a 4K straight from the Blu-ray master (as with Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, etc.)
Wow, you revealed something interesting. The new HD version basically blocks out the poster entirely (with only vestiges of the detail left), and the old DVD version just fuzzed it out.
Perhaps the uncensored portion from that one frame could be mixed with the LD version, or the luma from the LD could be combined with the chroma from the DVD?