TServo2049

Another buggered 5.1 remix I forgot to mention: Grease.

When the film was remixed in 5.1 for the 20th anniversary re-release, they completely overhauled the music mixing to sound more "modern." You can read a whole lot more about it here: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/287394/a-few-words-about-grease-in-blu-ray

Here's the original mix of "You're the One That I Want" from an old TBS broadcast. And here's the remix. Notice the extra "It's electrifying!", the much louder background vocals and brass, and how during the second verse, the male backup singers are actually out of sync!

There really needs to be a preservation of the original version. Just take the Blu-ray, synch it with the original Dolby Stereo from one of the pre-1998 laserdiscs, and restore the original Paramount logos at the beginning and end from another film on Blu-ray (like Star Trek: The Motion Picture).

Chuck Pennington says that the original analog stereo laserdisc didn't sound very good, but LDDB says that there was a re-release of the full-screen LD with digital sound. They also list a Japanese LD with a digital track. Those would probably be the best source for such a project.

Why do people always say that's Harrison's voice? It really doesn't sound like him to me.

But you could be right about that shot. I still can't figure out why/how the Reel 1 used for the film cells was the revised version, but the Reel 6 was the original. (For those who don't know, I sighted a 70mm cell on eBay where Luke was about to fall off the weathervane, and it was the version seen in the Super 8 with Luke in the center and no radar dish.)

captainsolo said:

Speaking of Dolby Stereo, Batman sounds like crud on DVD/Blu-ray. Very confined and almost tinny in places. The LD features the original Dolby Stereo with really exceptional split surrounds, that in my rig (5.1 setup playing ProLogic) almost sounds like 5.1 in places. I really enjoy the film more this way, and have made excuses to watch my LD many times in the past few months.

I wonder what the 6-track sounded like compared to the Dolby Stereo. For a lot of these movies, I wonder if the 70mm was just a higher-quality, discrete version of the mix used for the 35mm, maybe with a little "baby boom" added. I don't recall the 70mm prints of Star Trek II or Ghostbusters sounding different.

(However, I can't judge ST2 fairly, since at the screening I attended, the print was apparently not run through a proper Dolby Stereo 6-Track decoder, so the treble and upper midrange would shoot up to ear-splitting levels every time there was a loud sound effect. As with Ghostbusters, I believe NSBulk attended the same screening in L.A., and if so he could vouch for this.)

msycamore said:

The Griff said:

AFAIK, the 5.1 remix has been the only available English-language option on all DVD and BD releases. The LDs were mono.

If you wanna sample the difference, perhaps try playing one of the other languages for the first five minutes (until the credits finish) and during the rooftop shoot-out (under the 'Jesus Saves' sign). That should give you an idea of the overall differences between the original and remixed tracks.

I see, modern gun shots sound effects I presume, I actually own it on LD and haven't upgraded yet, so I haven't been exposed to the re-mix. But I can imagine how unfitting the new sound effects may be. I absolutely don't care if they make these unnecessary re-mixes, it's when they replace the original mix it becomes a rewriting of film history. There's no single reason why they cannot include the original mixes alongside the re-mix, are the guys who do the re-mixes afraid to get their work compared with the originals or what!? It's damn tiring.

Did they replace the iconic .44 Magnum sound effect, the same one that Leia's gun makes in the mono mix of ANH? Or is it iconic enough to have been retained? (I know that in the hijacking scene in Magnum Force, they replaced it to fix a blooper where the sound came out of a gun that wasn't a Magnum.)

That stock Magnum gunshot is one of my favorite sound effects, and it's one of the biggest casualties of 5.1 remixes. It was replaced in Superman, The Terminator, and who knows what else.

Way back when Superman first came out on DVD, one critic said that the new gunshots sounded like they had silencers on them - that person basically hit it on the nose. The modern gunshot sounds are often less powerful and less punchy than the ones in the original mixes - even if they use the original effects, they're often buried in aural mush.

Jonno said:

Thanks for the info, it's good to know that the studios occasionally get these things right.

I can't say if they got them right or not. There are plenty of people who would know more than I. For example, Neil S. Bulk is the one who confirmed that Raiders is accurate to the 6-track (while the old laserdisc mixes weren't).

Jonno said:

Does anyone know what the story is on Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The DTS tracks on DVD and Blu-ray get univerally good reviews, but having never seen/heard the film theatrically I just wondered if the original 6-track mix had been significantly tampered with in its transition to home theatre (a la Jaws).

Jaws was mono. CE3K was 6-track. I can't say whether the modern mixes are faithful to the original 6-track or not, since I've never seen the film in a theater, but the bass humming when the UFOs fly by seems robust, so I'm guessing that the "baby boom" effects are intact (unlike a certain other film from 1977).

Late 70s/early 80s 6-track releases often seem to have faithful 5.1 "remixes." We all know about Alien, but I can't recall complaints about CE3K, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Blade Runner.

Now Superman...I have no idea what happened to the 1978 6-track mix for that. The theatrical cut releases only have a 2.0 track that sounds to have the standard 35mm Dolby Stereo dynamic range. (However, some people on Home Theater Forum have complained of phasing/bleeding issues that aren't present on the old laserdiscs. Supposedly, the laserdisc may more accurately reflect the original Dolby Stereo? I can't comment on that.)

Molly, I was talking about most animated films, I know that those two were 70mm. My point was that nothing that was not Disney ever had 70mm blowups, so An American Tail was only 35mm.

Oh, I forgot those. I do believe, though, that by then the master sound mixes were in 6-track, so the Dolby Stereo tracks were usually just LCRS mixdowns. However, I can't say whether the modern 5.1 mixes are the same as the original 6-track mixes.

But thanks for reminding me - Fantasia is another screwed-up 5.1 remix, not even counting the fact that Deems Taylor's real voice is replaced by a Corey Burton impersonation. For some reason the directional effects are less pronounced than the 1990 restoration, which was intended to be the closest possible re-creation of the original 1940 Fantasound version.

One of the best examples is the opening of "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" - I saw a theatrical screening of a 1990 print recently, and I was just blown away when Leopold Stokowski motions to the players on the left, and the sound comes out of the left side, then he motions to the right, and it comes out the right side. Stuff like that is nowhere near as powerful in the modern remixes.

In addition, the 5.1 remixes were absolutely steamrolled by noise reduction, destroying the ambience and finer sound details. Also, the 5.1 mixes sound "flatter" to me. Not sure if this is just because of noise reduction, or different equalization (probably some of both).

I know that the 1990 version was hissy and I think it may have had some peaking/distortion issues, but the mixing changes and overzealous denoising negate any improvements in the later 5.1 versions. Luckily, the standard CAV laserdisc (i.e., the gatefold, not the deluxe box) is cheap and easy to find.

No. Animated films didn't get 70mm blowups. The film was 35mm only, Dolby Stereo only. The mix heard on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, and the HDTV broadcasts is the one and only original mix. The 5.1 remix was done by Universal about 10 years ago, with no input from Don Bluth or anyone involved with the production.

Perhaps the additional/alternate SFX and walla were alternate/unused stems from '86, like the additional off-screen dialogue and the alternate voices for the orphans. But whether they were new or just not utilized in the released mix back in '86, I must reiterate, they were not in the original, approved, released mix.

Sometimes it's additional effects or dialogue. Sometimes it's missing effects or dialogue. You may recall the 5.1 remix of Animal House, where for some reason Neidermeyer's "Now drop and give me 20!" is joined in progress, so it's just "--drop and give me 20!" Even if a 5.1 remix is made entirely from original stems, it needs to be meticulously checked against the original final mix.

An American Tail. I'm serious about this one. The 5.1 DVD remix is semi-notorious for being altered from the original Dolby Stereo. As with Superman, they added sound effects and they are sometimes quite intrusive. For example, Fievel is being pushed through the snow by one cat towards another, they added a train whistle sound. I know this is a cartoon, but that sound was not there originally, and it is inappropriately zany.

Also, there is additional walla and background "human world" dialogue. When we track in on the house at the beginning, you can hear laughter from the human inhabitants which spoils the music. When that lady in the apartment changes the cylinder in the gramophone, you can here a background conversation that was not in the original mix. Also, the frightened "A mouse!" screaming is different, and again more cartoonish, like something out of Tom and Jerry.

There is additional ADR that is by main cast members, so that was obviously recorded during production, but again, it is an alteration.

The most infamous change are the three orphans who taunt Fievel late in the film. In the original mix, their voices are either by kids or sound appropriately childlike. In the remix, they are clearly adults, and the actual lines are different. The most egregious difference (for many) is that as they are laughing at them, the one orphan doesn't chime in "Pit-ee-ful!"

However, most critics of this mix are wrong on one thing: they were not newly redubbed. The "new" voices are, in fact, the original tracks that the animation was synched to - the DVD version matches the mouth movements and the original mix doesn't. During post, they replaced the adult voices (Don Bluth's crew members, maybe?) with the ones heard in the final '86 mix. "Pitiful" may have even been an adlib by the kid brought in to redub the voice.

Who'd have thought this movie would have such an unfaithful remix? Fortunately, in this case the HDTV version is the original stereo from '86.

LexX said:

So, a widescreen release that is still missing. Interesting.

Not exactly. 1.85:1 films were usually shot open-matte, and they knew that Battle for Endor would go straight to TV in the U.S., so the full-frame versions of Battle for Endor would be at least mostly open-matte.

Notice I said "mostly." What I am curious about are the visual effects. ILM shot in VistaVision, so anything intended for theatrical release would use the full VistaVision frame. This means that for full-frame video transfers, the non-FX footage would be open-matte (or at least as open-matte as full-frame video transfers usually were - most of them did remove just a bit of picture on all 4 sides), but the FX shots would be cropped on the sides.

For an example of this, watch the ending of Back to the Future in full-frame and compare it to the widescreen version. There's a lot more picture on the top and bottom, and maybe a little less on the sides, until it cuts to the DeLorean lifting off, at which point there's only maybe a sliver of extra picture on the top and bottom, and a whole lot cropped off the sides.

The "ILM: The Art of Special Effects" coffee-table book mentions that for The Ewok Adventure, panning was added to matte shots by shooting the live plate in VistaVision, compositing the painting in, and then printing it down to standard 35mm and panning it optically. (I believe this same "P&S VistaVision" technique was used to add movement to matte paintings and composite shots on Star Trek: The Next Generation, though they did it at the telecine stage.)

If I had to guess, in European theaters the whole of The Ewok Adventure was matted, including these shots. I doubt that they went back to the static, un-panned matte composites, since they pan-and-scanned them specifically to add camera movement and make the matte shots less obvious.

The question is whether the theatrical prints of The Battle for Endor had the FX shots in real widescreen, or if they were also matted down from 1.33:1. If they incorporated optical horizontal "tracking" into the FX shots in that film as well, then I'd guess that even the theatrical release was matted.

Since the rise of Blu-ray, Universal has given less of a shit about DVD. When they released Metalstorm a couple years ago, it was a pan-and-scan transfer made for pay cable in the 90s (when they started letterboxing the credits instead of squeezing them). Yes, a P&S-only disc of a 2.35:1 film, in 2010. Sickening.

Anyway, as far as Python, glad to see the project is coming along.

Aside from the boosted reds, the '92/'97 DC feels more "early 80s color timing" than the Archival transfers. Make no mistake, the Archival versions are obviously better TRANSFERS, and the color is certainly better than the anachronistic Final Cut. However, the color timing and the contrast still seem kind of...off?

Obviously, older video transfers had their own issues with color accuracy. But what I'm trying to say is that to me, it seems like the timing of the film source for '92/'97, and the way the film color was carried over, are more genuinely "early 80s" than the Archival. But maybe that's just me.

As a digression about home video color timing vs. theatrical color timing, I've never seen a completely color-accurate transfer of Ghostbusters, old or new. The 1984 70mm print I saw in 2010 had high contrast, a healthy amount of color saturation, and a sort of subtle yellow-greenish bias (yet with all other colors having very good fidelity and not seeming tinted).

The old transfers were always too bright and/or the contrast was too flat and/or the color was too desaturated; while the modern HDTV and Blu-ray transfers somehow look too flat and too contrasty at the same time. The whole image is too bright, the highlights are horribly clipped, the midtones are dull, and the shadows aren't shadow-y enough (yet the blacks are still crushed!), and while there's a greenish cast, it's a different kind, which makes the image look TOO green when it's not supposed to be. While the Blu-ray has some improvements over the earlier version seen on the 2005 DVD and on HDTV broadcasts, it still has many of the same problems.

The 1999 DVD seems to have more accurate color timing and contrast...or at least the film source did. You can see shadow detail and highlight detail that are clipped out in modern transfers, but the image is too dark and has a sort of red-magenta bias.

You can see differences between the 1999 DVD, 2005 DVD and 2010 Blu-ray here: http://www.theraffon.net/~spookcentral/gb1_homevid_compare.htm

For a general idea of how the theatrical prints looked, watch this footage of an 80s 16mm print: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnNfwhloWBY This guy's video camera didn't pick up the full luminance of the projected image, so the yellow-green cast looks much more severe than it actually is, but it seems like the color timing on this print matches to the 70mm screening I attended.

Anyway, the point of this digression was to show how sometimes, NO video transfer matches the theatrical color timing, and the only way to know the true original colors is to project an actual film print with intact color.

The mono mixes of AHDN and Help! showed up in a bootleg set called "The Beatles Filmography." Anybody have this?

As far as Yellow Submarine, the Blu-ray will have the mono mix, but I'm not sure if they just recycled the version from the 1999 DVD with that one part being in stereo. FYI, it switches to stereo right after the end of "All Together Now", and goes back to mono after George says "I think I burnt me finger."

Technically, if you combined the mono mixes of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Only a Northern Song" with a mono fold-down of the 1987 LD (which I believe is the original mono rechanneled to stereo during the non-song sections), you'd probably end up with a good simulation of the mono mix. Still, I'd love to hear that section in mono, and I hope it's intact on the Blu-ray.

There are two mono 16mm prints on eBay right now - one is faded, but the other apparently isn't. However, the unfaded print is about to end, and both of them are too expensive for me. I have no idea which cut is represented on either of these prints.'

The faded print is here. Buy It Now for 500 bucks: http://www.ebay.com/itm/16mm-Beatles-YELLOW-SUBMARINE-Complete-Uncut-Feature-Film-Theatrical-/110873662574

The unfaded print is here. I will note that the reserve doesn't seem to be met, so this may end up being relisted: http://www.ebay.com/itm/EXTREMELY-RARE-16mm-film-Yellow-Submarine-1968-Beatles-UNIQUE-OPPORTUNITY-/290704540177?pt=US_Film&hash=item43af574211

Apart from 16mm prints, there is a preservation of a Christmas 1979 BBC broadcast floating around out there. Does anybody have this, either? It used to be online, but disappeared in the Great File Locker Purge...

Tobar said:

Star Wars Purist said:

You are right.  The dialogue from Star Wars (and Return of the Jedi) suggests that Luke's father/Anakin and Ben/Obi were equals rather than master-apprentice.

 

BEN: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

 

Before ESB, this line was only talking about Vader, not Luke's father.

When Lucas wrote that dialogue, Vader and Luke's father were two separate people. When Alec Guinness performed that dialogue, Vader and Luke's father were two separate people. When audiences first heard that dialogue, Vader and Luke's father were two separate people. Until Lucas wrote the second draft of ESB in 1978, Darth Vader was not Luke's father. Between then and April 12, 1980 (when the novelization was released), Luke's father and Darth Vader were still officially two separate people.

So Luke's father was originally supposed to be Vanilla Ice?

Seriously, as SHoSW points out, it's never said that Luke's father was Ben's pupil. All he says is "I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father." I think the original assumption at the time was that they were equals, not master and apprentice.

msycamore said:

TServo2049 said:

And that laser...awful. That shot is recomposited, notice how the difference in grain between the 70mm and the Blu-ray is much more visible than in the other comparison.

 Are you sure about that? the difference in grain, could it not just be the result of Lowry?

You may well be right. The heavy smoke may have caused more visible grain with each generation than other scenes, so the negative might not look as grainy as this print.

I shouldn't have said that the shot IS recomposited, because I really can't prove it. I guess I just got that impression from looking at the comparison. The lasers look so different that I just assumed that they were recomposited, like the lightsaber scenes.

When I come up with a theory, I sometimes get carried away and start talking about it like it's definitely true. I apologize for that. The truth is that I have no clue as to whether the lasers were recomposited or not.

I just tried boosting the red on the 70mm image, and the feathered glow around the core does become fat and dense like in the Blu-ray. Maybe the dark "stencil" around the laser core is yet another artifact of the red clipping. I know that when I boosted the red in the 70mm image of R2 and 3PO, the dots on the wall light started to get darker like in the Blu-ray image, so maybe the same thing is happening with the laser.

I'd like to see what these scenes look like after snicker's red clipping fix.

Wow, both comparisons are shocking. That red light looks heinous in the modern transfer, especially when you see it up close - the grid pattern thing is much darker than the original, and the reflection that was basically white is now this ugly dark purple.

And I know snicker says there aren't many green clipping issues, but I'm noticing that the green reflection on R2's translucent circle also seems to be overpowering compared to the 70mm frame. Is that evidence of green clipping?

And that laser...awful. That shot is recomposited, notice how the difference in grain between the 70mm and the Blu-ray is much more visible than in the other comparison. A lot of the recomposited lasers in that sequence have the same problem - the glow element is way too saturated and fat, there's no difference in opacity/density between the beam and the surrounding glow, and the actual beam shape just looks like a stencil on top of the glow.

The recomposited lightsaber shots had a lot of the same issues. Whenever animation was recomposited, there seems to have been no attempt to duplicate the way the various elements were exposed and layered in the original composites, or even to get the colors right. Thus we have things like Luke's saber looking white or greenish, even though it was most definitely BLUE on the original theatrical prints.

That frame, and the one of Leia peeking behind the corner, really make the red clipping obvious. In the 3PO/lobster-man frame, look at the reflection on 3PO's left leg. Even in the improved version, it's still an oversaturated blob that doesn't mesh with the rest of the image at all. You can see several other oversaturated red points among the wall lights, the reflections on 3PO, etc. There's blooming and pixellation around the edges - it look nasty even when the rest of the image is improved.

I'm absolutely not faulting you, Y_T - the red information in the transfer is just that screwed up.

Hey snicker, have you done any more work on your project to fix the clipped reds?

Good call. I've been getting kind of antsy that the new Cameron-approved transfer will be something like Aliens, with its modern blue-and-orange palette.

That scene's color was retimed and boosted with absolutely no thought given to the people running past the doorway in the background. So when the red levels were jacked up, it played havoc with the skintones of those extras.

Even in the foreground stuff with 3PO you can tell that the red was pumped up too much. The little reflections off of his body have red haloes - someone compared them to Christmas lights. I think the red lights on the walls are also visibly clipped.

I had the pleasure of riding this a couple more times before it closed. I enjoyed it as much in 2010 as I did my first time in 1992.

Lucasfilm needs to work out a deal with Disney to put the 1987 ride film on a future release. I'd love to see it on Blu-ray in 30p.

I'd also love to see a making-of or behind the scenes footage from the ride film. Jim Hill says that ILM had to go back and reprogram/reshoot the Death Star run because the first try didn't have the kinetic feel of the films.

A presentation of the '87 Star Tours, like the Back to the Future ride presentation on that DVD release, would be on my dream OUT release (along with From Star Wars to Jedi, and a REAL documentary about ILM's work on the OT and their pre-CGI days).

I still have 45 invites that I've accumulated but never used, so I'll invite you and anybody else who PMs me with their e-mail address.

I found a couple more good-looking images of film cells from ANH. Again, there is less light traveling through these frames than there would be on a film projector, so I adjusted the brightness/contrast levels to bring out the colors. I made absolutely no hue/saturation adjustments.

The more I look at good images of these film cells, the more I realize that 1.) they came from an unfaded source, and 2.) they fully retain the original '77 color timing.

The print from which these film cells were cut seems to be low-fade, and I'm still perplexed about the lack of sound striping on every single ANH cell I've seen. Was this print struck specifically for the film cells? Did LFL or Fox happen to have a low-fade, unstriped 70mm print lying around?

Prints with the original color timing were still being screened as late as 1994, so later interpositives and print masters most likely still exist in the vaults. They may be grainy, they may be dirty, and they may be worn, but any later IPs/print masters/whatever were probably on low-fade stock and still retain the original color.

I understand that these elements were obviously too many generations removed from the source to have been usable in the SE restoration, but Lucas' implications that absolutely nothing of the original version exists in good quality is a load of Bantha poodoo.

The original U.S. DVD had the theatrical cut, with DD 2.0 mono sound, I'm sure the transition could be easily obtained from that.

Another source from which the English theatrical mono audio could be obtained would be the original VHS/Beta releases. Since Beta Hi-fi supposedly sounded superior to VHS Hi-fi, I'd go with Beta...and speak of the devil, look what I found on eBay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Beta-Monty-Python-and-Holy-Grail-/320885851436?pt=VHS&hash=item4ab649852c

Buy It Now for $2.99? Sounds like a steal, especially for a Beta...

Also, I think my memory may have been playing tricks on me. The 35mm print I saw in 2004 (not 2003, as I first recalled) apparently DID have the "Get on with it" scene - some blogger back in '04 mentioned it being a "slightly longer edit". Also, I think I was wrong that it was open matte - it was probably 1.66:1, since I think it was actually shot hard-matted at that ratio (all the full-frame releases were cropped). My memory may have gotten mixed up because the Paramount's screen is Academy ratio.

Either way, it didn't have Dentist on the Job at the start, or anything before the credits. And it retained the "Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen" subtitle that was missing from the 2001 DVD - remember, this was before the 2006 DVD that corrected the fault in the subtitles, for which someone was hopefully sacked. :)