fmalover

I’ve been recently watching the blu-ray editions of the Film series and while It looks like they did they did a good job for the most part (It’s Lowry Digital, their restorarions are not to be trusted) I noticed that with the exception of Die Another Day the movies from the Brosnan era look terrible, Goldeneye in particular. My question is why? His movies are from the mid-to-late 1990’s which IMO was the pinnacle of photochemical film processing so they shouldn’t look this bad.

Another issue I have is I think they went a little overboard with the hot filters as there are instances where the actors look like they have Oompa-Loompa ancestry if you know what I mean.

I’ve noticed this recent edition of Jurassic Park has vastly different colour timing from previous home video releases. My question is: I the colour timing accurate or just part of the “orange/teal” colour contrast trend that seems prevalent in today’s movie industry and has gone as far as altering older movies which had no such colour timing?

I want to talk a little about this particular screenshot. As you can see the changes are very subtle(which is the case in many others), but trust me this was one of the hardest frames to colour correct.

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Honestly I did not expect such a positive reaction to this. Thank you very much! Now if only the High Priest himself poita could come by.

The controversial Bacta Tank.

I must confess I'm not too sure about this particular shot.

bkev said:

This does, however, look quite good to me.  It has just enough of a blue push that it's not as lacking as the GOUT.

 That's another reason I decided to do this. 

The green Tauntaun was because I went overboard with hue adjustments, a lapse in judgement.

TServo2049 said:

The "how blue was Hoth" question is still not fully resolved. VideoCollector's bootleg and the Puggo 16mm print show a lot of blue, but nobody has seen a 35mm LPP yet, with the possible exception of poita.

 A part of me is hoping poita takes a look at this thread and tells me what I got wrong.

More screenshots:

WOW. This truly is something special, being complimented by the Masters themselves, I am humbled.

I do admit I have occasionally used the 2013 DCP as reference as it displays a more faithful colour palette although it still has fading in places, as one of my many concerns was not only bringing out the blue in the frames, but it also had to be the correct shade of blue. One problem I encountered with the DCP is that it had poor contrast and the image has too much brightness.

Greetings everyone.

Here’s my clumsy amateur attempt and doing a colour correction of the Grindhouse Edition, a personal project for fun and nothing else. I only took screenshots and colour corrected them using Photoshop through a mix of photographic filters and colour boosting, I have no video editing skills whatsoever so don’t think there is a video of this colour correction lying around the internet because it doesn’t exist. I admit I’m having a lot of fun with this and will keep posting if you guys like what I’ve done. So far I’ve only done the first 25 minutes and I must say the most challenging part when doing the colour correction is keeping 3PO golden and preserving anything that’s green that way. The reason I’m doing this is because as we all know the Grindhouse Ed lacks blue and anything that’s supposed to be blue (Luke’s lightsaber for example) looks greenish/turqouise/aquamarine, and I thought it would be really fun if somebody made the effort of bringing out the blues.

So without further ado here’s some screenshots. Enjoy.

Now I know this isn’t perfect and for the most part I had to trust my instincts, but I’m rather pleased with the results. Feel free to criticise my work.

This topic may have already been discussed somewhere else in this forum, but reading a review for the Spartacus blu-ray the reviwer says this is one of the worst transfers because the colour timing is totally wrong, and it would be best to save your money and avoid this blu-ray. Has anyone taken the liberty to make a colour-accurate restoration of Spartacus?

OK, finished watching the 2013 DCP and I must say it more or less matches the colour adjusted Grindhouse Edition, with more robust blues, because even with the colour adjustments anything that is supposed to be blue still has a hint of green. Was the blue in Hoth originally there or was it colour adjustments on your behalf?

So you're saying you pretty much trusted your instincts? Impressive, most impressive.

Hey Harmy, I've been watching the 2013 DCP and I want to ask: Did you use it as reference for colour timing V2.0? Because the Hoth scenes more or less match.

I just started downloading the 2013 DCP and I want to ask just how accurate is that version? Will any of it be used for your definitive restoration?

BTW, I myself made a few adjustments to the Grindhouse edition to bring out the blue(i.e. Luke's lightsaber is supposed to be blue yet it appears green) and noticed many scenes have slightly green tint.

Nocturnaloner said:

fmalover said:

That last comment makes me feel sad. I myself love film projectors and watching a movie in 3-strip Cinerama and 70mm film are my only remaining assignments to complete my Cinematic experience.

 By 3-strip Cinerama, do you mean the original 3 camera setup?  Does that exist anywhere?

 I once read there are still a few of those the States and some European countries, and for some reason the one I remember best is one in Seattle which yes, is the original 3-projector setup.

That last comment makes me feel sad. I myself love film projectors and watching a movie in 3-strip Cinerama and 70mm film are my only remaining assignments to complete my Cinematic experience.

I will add my voice to what Beber and towne32 saying. I really like the way 3PO looks in the t-1 scan with the warm shade of deep gold as opposed to the washed out gold.

I wanted to say that Ive decided to do a colour correction of my own and will be posting the results here soon just to help out with the finished product. Is that ok by the Team?

I've already seen the raw print like four times in a row and you know what, I feel like watching it again.

BTW, I noticed the scene in which Luke's X-Wing takes off from Dagobah is missing about half a second of frames.

Harmy said:

This is from a heavily red-faded print and the colors have been partially corrected but trust me, I've seen what the print actually looks like and you just can't use it as a color reference, because half the color information is missing - this is why Hoth looks whiter here - most of the blue channel information is gone from the print.

 Is that why anything that's supposed to be blue either looks teal/aquamarine/turquoise or outright green?

OK, I finally watched the raw scan of ESB and WOW! Sure, it's just a preview but the fact remains that it still looks infinitely better than the blu-ray which says a lot about how poorly handled the films have been treated special edition changes notwithstanding. A few points:

- Harmy and poita have argued about how the planet Hoth is indeed quite blue but I'm still not sold. To me whiter than white Hoth fits a lot better with the rest of the movie than the bluish tint poita talks about, I have even tested by playing around with the colour channels and although there is a hint of blue in some scenes it is very faint and is more aquamarine/turqouise than blue, being most evident in the scene where Luke sees Obi-Wan's ghost and whenever Anakin's lightsaber is ignited (it's got this greenish tint). My only concern is that liking "White Hoth" better than "Blue Hoth" and being wrong about it would make me a revisionist but I can't help it, White Hoth just looks right to me, it's a gut feeling.

- Looking at all 3 OT DVDs and BDs TESB has always struck me as weird-looking and the odd one out compared to SW and ROTJ because both SW and ROTJ look similar from a photographic point of view, as both have this grainy sharp focus look, with fairly strong contrast in many scenes and deep inky blacks whereas in TESB has a lot of soft focus and assumed it was down to the cinematographer (every movie had a different cinematographer and I imagined the cinematographer for TESB took a different aproach to his predecessor whereas the one for ROTJ decided to go back to the look of the original film). After watching Team Negative1's raw print I now know that is not the case, as in fact TESB is every bit as grainy and sharp with strong contrast and deep blacks as the other two which makes me realise the following: Although SW and ROTJ have had the most obvious alterations in terms of visual effects the prints Lucasfilm scanned them from were still in fairly good condition despite the many alterations in colour timing as there still is consistency between the many film prints you've aquired and the colour corrected blu-ray shots, and TESB was scanned from a very deteriorated film print. How else can you explain the poor contrast, smeared textures (compare Chewie's fur here vs. the blu-ray) crushed blacks to the point of drowning out any detail, washed out blacks come out as dark gray and that weird soft focus effect applied to many scenes to hide their shortcomings.

- The image quality is so detailed I noticed the amount of double exposure photography applied for the visual effects in this movie, lots and lots of translucent ships plus lots of garbage mattes, lol. I wonder if you'll let them be or will make your best attempt to correct those, do leave the matte lines alone please, I find them rather charming.

-Thoughout the movie I noticed almost anything blue looks teal/aquamarine/turquoise (i.e. Anakin's lightsaber, daytime skies) or outright green (end credits). Why?

I seriusly cannot wait until you release the finished product with all the colour corrections, colour boosting, dirt-scratch removal and overall cleanup. This is going to be the MUST-OWN version of TESB.