litemakr

Just for comparison, here are some promo pics I scanned in from the 1981 Raiders Storybook and Raiders Book and Record. These are vintage, non-digital publications. All of these are posed stills taken during production. They use different film stock and lenses. You can see they are processed much brighter and possibly with slightly different lighting than the actual 35mm.

Taking these posed stills was a part of the moviemaking process back then. Today on set still photos are more focused on capturing behind the scenes shots, because publicity shots can be pulled from the actual digital movie master.

OldSchoolGamer1203 said:

litemakr said:

OldSchoolGamer1203 said:

The explanation for the blu-ray being orange/teal is because that was a trendy color scheme for action movies at the time. It tends to make things “pop”. It was an attempt to make the film look more modern and to better match Crystal Skull.

So that’s why. I’ve heard about this before. According to TV Tropes:

"Basic complementary color theory states that when two contrasting colors are put together, they “pop,” so the natural technique is to color films to have a strong, contrasting palette.

The one thing you will almost always have in a film is people. Human skin runs from pale pinkish yellow to dark brown, all of which are shades of orange. The color that contrasts best with orange is blue. So you turn up the shadows to the cyan end and the highlights to the orange.

Unlike other pairs of complementary colors, fiery orange and cool blue are strongly associated with opposing concepts — fire and ice, earth and sky, land and sea, day and night, invested humanism vs. elegant indifference, good old fashioned explosions vs. futuristic science stuff."

It’s not as big as it was back then, since it was trend like you stated, but I doubt Spielberg and even Lucas (shocking, I know) had this in mind when shooting Raiders back in the day. But if they approved the transfer, then I guess there’s nothing to do other than wish DrDre the best of luck.

It is shocking to me that Spielberg approved it. Not only because of the color changes, but because it is sloppily done. Color is inconsistent from shot to shot, contrast is reduced, gamma is all over the place, it’s over brightened, color is way oversaturated and there is heavy use of DNR. Some scenes look nice, but overall it is really a mess. Especially when you know how it is supposed to look. I find it hard to believe he is really happy with it. But most likely he never watches it. He has a state of the art cinema in his house, and probably only ever watches high quality prints of his own films.

In this link here it states Spielberg worked from an original negative correcting the print and that Raiders is exactly as it was when released in 1981.

http://collider.com/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-steven-spielberg/

My theory is this is the transfer Spielberg approved for the Blu-ray release because whatever he worked on certainly doesn’t appear to be what the final result turned out to be. Maybe he kept the print for himself?

That article is about the 30th Anniversary restoration, which is the version we call the Wowow. The restoration was done by Laser Pacific from the camera negative, probably in 2010. It was shown in several cinemas around the US in the fall of 2011. I saw it twice in Los Angeles and it looked great.

That restoration was supposed to be the blu-ray release and in fact the early blu-ray trailers used shots from that version. The orange/teal re-grade was hastily done by Technicolor the following year prior to the IMAX and blu-ray releases in summer/fall of 2012. When I saw the IMAX screening I almost fell out of my chair because it looked so different (and much worse) than the version I had seen the previous year.

So it is somewhat ironic that Spielberg did a lot of publicity for that version and then allowed huge changes to it before it got released on blu-ray.

OldSchoolGamer1203 said:

The explanation for the blu-ray being orange/teal is because that was a trendy color scheme for action movies at the time. It tends to make things “pop”. It was an attempt to make the film look more modern and to better match Crystal Skull.

So that’s why. I’ve heard about this before. According to TV Tropes:

"Basic complementary color theory states that when two contrasting colors are put together, they “pop,” so the natural technique is to color films to have a strong, contrasting palette.

The one thing you will almost always have in a film is people. Human skin runs from pale pinkish yellow to dark brown, all of which are shades of orange. The color that contrasts best with orange is blue. So you turn up the shadows to the cyan end and the highlights to the orange.

Unlike other pairs of complementary colors, fiery orange and cool blue are strongly associated with opposing concepts — fire and ice, earth and sky, land and sea, day and night, invested humanism vs. elegant indifference, good old fashioned explosions vs. futuristic science stuff."

It’s not as big as it was back then, since it was trend like you stated, but I doubt Spielberg and even Lucas (shocking, I know) had this in mind when shooting Raiders back in the day. But if they approved the transfer, then I guess there’s nothing to do other than wish DrDre the best of luck.

It is shocking to me that Spielberg approved it. Not only because of the color changes, but because it is sloppily done. Color is inconsistent from shot to shot, contrast is reduced, gamma is all over the place, it’s over brightened, color is way oversaturated and there is heavy use of DNR. Some scenes look nice, but overall it is really a mess. Especially when you know how it is supposed to look. I find it hard to believe he is really happy with it. But most likely he never watches it. He has a state of the art cinema in his house, and probably only ever watches high quality prints of his own films.

Magazines and books prior to the digital age almost exclusively used promo pics taken by stills photographers. That’s because they looked better than frame blow-ups from a print. The stills were processed by the marketing department and often didn’t look much like the actual scenes from the films. Even special effects shots were often specially created as promo pics and not directly from the film. There were a lot of those created for the Star Wars films. You would occasionally see frame blow ups in books or magazines focused on filmmaking, like Cinefex and American Cinematographer.

Starting in the digital age (DVDs), it became more common to see frames taken from a digital transfer (not from an actual print). But they were still subject to alterations in color by the publisher. So I really wouldn’t place much stock in those pics.

Here’s the sky from the LPP:

JayArgonaut said:

Shalashaska said:

I don’t know if OP can answer this, but maybe someone else can.

Is there any difference between the 2003 and 2008 DVD transfers? One site tells me the latter is a remaster while another tells me they’re both using the same transfer.

I own the 2008 (PAL) DVD and it appears to suffer from compression artefacts as a result of Paramount needing to make room for the extras that they decided to include on the same disc as the film for the 2008 release. It’s particularly noticeable during the bar fight scene in Nepal.

Exactly. They are the same master, but the 2008 DVD is more compressed.

Ronster said:

It’s a shame about the fake added dirt on some of the photo’s but, this about the last of it.

!

That sky in the top left photo…

But then the shot here seems to be from the Blu Ray or the 35mm is gone very yellow. The Book was printed in 2008.

This very well may explain why the Blu-Ray is so yellow. Because the first picture in this thread certainly looks right on the 35mm and it has that Blue atmospheric cool tone. Which you can clearly see in the Stone Ball rolling picture.

Belloq stealing the Idol from Indy also seems to have the yellow syndrome in the pictures where others do not.

(Certainly Reel 1 went yellow)

I Think it’s pretty safe to say that their print went yellow. Litemakr’s scan seems to have an issue with magenta and blue mainly… But it does seem that litemakr’s scan is a good if not better reference although like I said it’s not without faults but they are minimal.

Those pictures are mainly on set promo photos, not frame blow-ups from a print, so they aren’t a good reference to the 35mm. They are subject to processing by the photographer, marketing department and book publishers. I have a few examples of frame blow-up from the early 80s I used as a reference, but generally promo pics are not useful.

The shot of Belloq stealing the idol, for example, is not from the film. It is a posed shot taken by a stills photographer using film for a still camera. It was processed after the fact to be brighter and have different color than the 35mm ended up with. The same goes for the shot of Indy with the idol. Both shots were commonly used to promote the film in 1981.

Some of the truck chase shots might be from the film, but most likely from a digital source if the book was published in 2008.

The explanation for the blu-ray being orange/teal is because that was a trendy color scheme for action movies at the time. It tends to make things “pop”. It was an attempt to make the film look more modern and to better match Crystal Skull.

DrDre said:

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

Artifacting in what sense? Both the 35mm and the WOWOW are pretty noisy for this frame, and there’s a lot of color noise too. The foreground noise has been increased somewhat, while the background noise has decreased. I could use the bluray for this shot, which has much less noise, but also somewhat less detail.

WOWOW matched to 35mm:

Bluray matched to 35mm:

It doesn’t look like grain to me, It looks pixelated. It doesn’t quite look like compression artifacts to me, but it also doesn’t look right.

It can be improved somewhat:

Some of it is grain, but there are also compression artifacts in the WOWOW, as it is more compressed than the bluray (for example the sky in the original WOWOW frame). Some of these are made less visible in the regrade, while others are made more visible. I think this regraded frame looks pretty descent, considering the increase in brightness. For example, the sky looks much better for the regrade. The only alternative is to use the bluray, but I’m not too keen on mixing WOWOW frames with bluray frames, as the difference between the two is quite jarring, so you either go all wow or all blu.

I think it looks fine. There will be some artifacts in the wowow simply because it was a TV broadcast. It actually looks very good considering. The Japanese have higher standards and broadcast in true 1080p unlike most US broadcasts which are 720p or 1080i. And I would stick with the wowow and not use the blu at all.

Ronster said:

Your regrade mildly adhusted.

The yellow I think is correct don’t fight it. Blue might be the problem. At the end of the day do what you like. I have no objections to the color. But this I think might be closer to what it is “Meant to look like” taking in to account the problem with the dark grain and how it’s smearing the wall blue. It might also mean this guy has a grey jacket too 😃

Just trying to be helpful. I am not asking you to change it.

You went a little too far. The jacket is suppoed to be more of a slate gray and the shirt light blue.

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

This shot is part of an optical dissolve, so it is 5th or 6th generation on the LPP and 2nd or 3rd on the Wowow. So it is going to be grainy unless a lot of DNR is applied (like on the blu-ray). The same issue occurs with other dissolves in the film. Most notably the dissolve from Brody saying “an army which carries the ark is invincible” to the outside of Indy’s house.

The DVD has the best exposure of any Raiders transfer. Skies are clear and blue, nothing in the ark opening scene is overexposed. The wowow has some issues and the blu-ray is much worse. They should actually be better since they were created from a negative scan and the DVD from a 2nd gen print. Either the scan was not done correctly or (most likely) things were overexposed during grading.

You will definitely run into some challenges trying to match the wowow to the DVD (and LPP), particularly during the ark opening.

Looking at the lamps from another angle it is apparent that is just the way they actually look. There are candle flames and other warmly colored objects in the shot, so it’s not a case of the color being too cool. They are just white lamps. They are white in behind the scenes footage as well.

Here’s a comparison to clips from the 1981 Making Of Raiders documentary. Clearly the red cast is not there. And it actually looks a bit cooler than the LPP. Less contrast and saturation have some effect on that perception. This is really evident when you compare to the wowow and blu, both of which are almost absurdly oversaturated. The blu also lacks contrast.

35mm

1981 Making Of

35mm

1981 Making Of

Wowow

Blu

Dek Rollins said:

litemakr said:

Dek Rollins said:

Darth Lucas said:

Maybe a thread should be made to discuss the color timing of Raiders.

There is this thread.

Ugh. Lol. That thread is pretty much obsolete at this point. It has been firmly established that the blu-ray is incorrect. The color is fundamentally changed using inconsistent application of orange and teal in an attempt to “modernize” the look of the film. We can debate minor degrees of warmth, but that color scheme simply does not exist in the theatrical version.

You’re right, but DL was suggesting: “Maybe a thread should be made to discuss the color timing of Raiders.”

That thread is pretty much just discussion about Raiders’ color timing. Though it was obviously centered around whether or not the BD timing was correct, a lot of discussion (especially in later pages) was just about the color timing in general, and figuring out the original and such. I was just saying that a thread on the subject already existed, rather than start another thread about the color in Raiders.

Gotcha 😉

Dek Rollins said:

Darth Lucas said:

Maybe a thread should be made to discuss the color timing of Raiders.

There is this thread.

Ugh. Lol. That thread is pretty much obsolete at this point. It has been firmly established that the blu-ray is incorrect. The color is fundamentally changed using inconsistent application of orange and teal in an attempt to “modernize” the look of the film. We can debate minor degrees of warmth, but that color scheme simply does not exist in the theatrical version.

CodySolo said:

And then there is this scan of the 83 reissue trailer that also shows the bluer timing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-FxiQJSVAc

I was curious so I dug out my 35mm trailer which is the same as the '83 reissue above except that mine is much warmer, even much warmer than the home video versions. I would imagine this is just the film itself shifting toward red as it ages, right?

Sorry for the awful quality, I don’t currently have a setup that lets me get decent resolution out of 35mm films.

That is severely red shifted, as most are most surviving Raiders prints are. The LPP we scanned is truly a rare beast. I would expect a trailer from 1983 to be in better shape, but who knows what film stock they used.

Papai2013 said:

DrDre said:

The amount of correction you’re suggesting, would give all the daylight scenes a pronounced yellow/orange cast. Since all the other scenes have perfectly balanced colors, the colors for the bar scene should be accurate, as far as the original theatrical color timing is concerned. The fact that the same color timing can be found on an early home video release confirms this.

See, I am not asking you to do any of this, just expressing my honest opinion. There is no way that lantern was meant to give out a blue glow. It has to be yellow, it’s common sense (my tone is not rough or harsh, in case you read it as such). Just because all other scenes look ok doesn’t mean this shot cannot be wrong. Human error happens.

Then you would have to factor in the yellow-bulbs making the print more yellow. The DOP would light the shots and the colour timer would time them keeping in mind the warm projection bulbs, which would alter the col temp of the image.

Also, no need to alter the other scenes. They are more or less fine, colour-wise.
A VHS or laserdisc cannot be reliable sources of original colour timing.

The VHS and laserdisc (and DVD/BD) of Jurassic Park, all had a blue colour-cast which was totally wrong for decades until the 4K remaster showed that the actual tinting was much warmer. In fact, 35mm frames from the prints floating in the internet confirmed this warmer timing. Though the 3D BD went slightly overboard with the orange.

I also remembered the Leaky Cauldron tavern scene in ‘Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone.’ It was a similar low-lit, scene filled with candles and lanterns. And that scene also had a warm yellow-golden hue.

That is how the bar looks on the print. That is how it looks in trailers, making of specials and early home video editions. Nothing special was done to that shot to change the color compared to the rest of the scene. There is always some leeway of course, but that is accurate to how THIS print would look projected and it seems to be a reliable reference. Look at other scenes in the LPP release and you will clearly see the color tends towards warm, not cool.

If anything, the LPP version should be a tad more green in places. Some reels had too much green, not red. The green had to be dialed down slightly on some reels to make the color match throughout the film.

The most likely explanation is that the lamp in the bar used a white electric bulb on set and no one noticed until they tweaked the color for home video releases. The original intent was for the bar to be a cold, dark dive bar in Nepal. At some point the decision was made to warm up the scene in home video versions.

I’ve never found any compelling evidence to suggest that prints from that era were intentionally timed cooler to compensate for warmer projector bulbs. If you look at the video releases based on timed prints (1983 VHS, 1992 LD, 2003 DVD) they are mostly cooler temperature wise compared to the LPP (the bar scene excepted because it seems to have been intentionally changed).

We are hoping to raise funds to scan a Fuji color print. It will be very interesting to compare the color between them. But the LPP in theory should be the most accurate because they don’t have any noticeable fade or color shift. I do have a lowfade Super 8mm print which was used as a reference, and it matches the LPP nearly exactly.

Synnöve said:

Is there any chance of a version being produced with UHD spec color space and bit depth? I’m not sure more than HD resolution would be helpful due to the limitations of release prints, but surely the expanded rec2020 color space and 10 bit color could provide noticeable benefits.

The film was scanned in 12 bit CinemaDNG RAW with 12 stops of dynamic range. If we can get another print scanned, the plan is to create a UHD release with HDR.

alexp120 said:

litemakr said:

alexp120 said:

To enhance this rare LLP theatre experience, I’ve uploaded on the ‘spleen a folder containing audio files of sound mixes of the film that have been edited to play in sync with this release.

Rather than duplicate the unintentional splicing of the release print’s optical soundtrack caused by damaged missing frames, these edits were made to polish the transition over the skip-frames so that you can better immerse yourself into the movie.

The audio options are as follows:
5.1 channel, DTS-HDMA mix from the official 2012 Blu Ray release. [dts file]
2.0 channel, Dolby Surround-encoded, 1981 theatrical mix sourced from the 1989 Japanese, Full-Screen, LaserDisc release (WAV file)*
2.0 channel, Dolby Surround-encoded, 1992 mix for the US, Wide-Screen LaserDisc release (WAV file)*

All you have to do is mux these files to the MKV video and you are good to go.

Bear in mind that each of these audio files includes the length of the introduction that proceeds the film, so, for best results, apply these files to the original video file that came with litemakr’s release

*audio files were made possible by schorman13 from his Indiana Jones LaserDisc Archive. My thanks to schorman13 for capturing the LD’s audio, for sharing, and for maintaining the archive.

Enjoy.

Awesome, thanks! If you have some extra time, the DVD mix should be included. That is a 5.1 version of the original 70mm 6 track mix. Pretty much the same as the wowow mix but less compressed. I prefer it to the blu-ray mix, which is a bit too remixed for me.

Just uploaded the edited 5.1 Dolby Digital track from the 2008 DVD.

Enjoy.

Thanks!

alexp120 said:

litemakr said:

Btw, alexp120, the blu-ray mix is not synched up correctly in your release. The audio is ahead most of the time. The LD mixes seem correct.

When I was editing the audio files I didn’t use any delay. All I did was remove audio material and made sure that the length of my audio edits matched the length of your video.

When I played your video with my audio edits muxed-in on my computer via MPC-HC, the audio tracks, including the DTS track, were all in sync perfectly. However, when I played it through my OPPO Blu Ray player’s USB port (from my portable hard drive), I did use my Onkyo receiver’s A/V Sync feature to sync them up. My receiver always has issues with the audio not being in-sync with the video from my Blu Ray/DVD player whether its playing a physical disc or material from a USB port.

So, the solution: you may have to adjust the audio delay in your media player or audio receiver to get it in-sync with the picture.

I’ll try that, but I’m only seeing a problem with the DTS track. Btw, I also have an Oppo player and and Onkyo receiver and am playing the file from a portable hard drive lol.

DrDre said:

With regards to early home video releases, I found a clip from a VHS version a couple of months ago, that doesn’t have a red shift for the bar fight scene and, aside from being low contrast, is consistent with the 35mm LPP. I can’t find the clip anymore, but here are two screenshots:

Good find. Glad you could confirm that. I’ll track down the 1992 LD and see if that has it.

The major differences between DVD and wowow are in exposure. The DVD has almost perfect exposure, nothing is blown out or uneven and shadow detail is good (even though several scenes were brightened, probably at the print stage). The color is also more balanced overall (not surprising since it uses a 2nd generation timed print for the scan). However they are similar and I think that is simply because the restoration shown on wowow was intended to recreate the theatrical version timing.

I am curious as to the red cast in the bar. It is definitely not there in the 35mm print but does seem to be in every home video version to some extent. It’s also not there in the footage shown in the 1981 Making of documentary. I wonder if they re-timed that scene for the 1983 theatrical re-release? Maybe they did and that timing was used in successive video transfers.

The Wowow broadcast is a restoration directly from the negative and was done for the 30th anniversary. It was restored by Laser Pacific, not Lowry. Lowry’s 2003 restoration used a timed low contrast print (struck from the negative) and looks considerably different. There was an HD version of the Lowry restoration which was shown on HD channels in the US and UK (only Japan got the newer Laser Pacific restoration). I think this has caused a lot of confusion. The old Laser Pacific website had stills from their restoration and stated it was a 4k restoration from the negative. Laser Pacific was then bought by Technicolor, who replaced the Laser Pacific color team and re-graded it in 2012 with the “modernized” blu-ray color.

The version shown on Wowow was also shown in theaters in fall 2011 with much fanfare as the 30th anniversary restoration (I personally saw it twice in L.A.). It was intended to be the blu-ray release, and the early blu-ray trailers used shots from that version. It was late in the game in 2012 that the decision was made to “modernize” the color and remix the sound, probably for the IMAX release. It was hastily done by Technicolor and that is what was released on blu-ray.

There isn’t any evidence that Spielberg disliked the Laser Pacific version. In fact, he appeared at at least one 30th anniversary screening in 2011 and did press proclaiming what an amazing restoration it was and stating that he would never release an altered version of Raiders on the blu-ray. Apparently he (or someone) changed that decision and decided to make major alterations in picture and sound for the IMAX and blu-ray releases the next year.

Keep in mind that Spielberg has done press for every new video transfer of Raiders (1983, 1992, 2003, 2011 and 2012) proclaiming they were state of the art restorations which accurately reflected what the film looked like in theaters. Although I don’t think I have ever seen an interview where he praises the blu-ray, only the 2011 version and the IMAX version. And he never said the IMAX version looked accurate, but that it looked BETTER than the theatrical.

The widescreen LD remix is my favorite mix as well. It has the best overall balance and dynamics. If we could get a pristine version of the original Dolby mix that would be my first choice. I like the DVD/70mm mix as well, but it doesn’t quite have the same punch, even though it has discreet tracks. The blu-ray mix is quite a disappointment. Ben Burtt clearly went back to the original tapes to get the best quality, then did a bass heavy mix that is strangely flat in places. Plus the echoed music in the surround channels is really annoying.

I need to do more comparison on the 1989 LD mix, but it is not the same as the optical mix. It doesn’t seem to have any surround information encoded. Since that mix was done in 1983, I’m guessing it is a 2 channel stereo mix made specifically for home video and intentionally compressed to play well on mono TV speakers.

I suspect the Vistasonic mix sounds more like the alternate mix. That mix is more rough and the theatrical version is more polished. The foreign mixes probably use the alternate mix because the English mix was redone close to release and there wasn’t time to go back and change all of the foreign mixes.

Btw, alexp120, the blu-ray mix is not synched up correctly in your release. The audio is ahead most of the time. The LD mixes seem correct.

After listing to the 1989 LD soundtrack some more it’s clear it is a remix. The optical track seems to be the only option for original theatrical sound. Here is a perfect scene to compare all 4 soundtracks:

After the ark is opened and Toht is laughing, the generator starts whirring and the lights explode. Then the Ark starts humming ominously. Mist erupts and emerges. Watch with each soundtrack starting around 1:45:50 to 1:46:28 (adjusting to a comparable volume for each) and listen for the following:

35mm Optical Dolby Track
The sound of the lights exploding is loud, with good dynamics. The humming of the Ark is distinct. The sound effects of the mist erupting and emerging are distinct.

1989 Japanese LD
The sound is thin and compressed, with less dynamic volume when the lights explode. There is an added echo as the generator flames out which isn’t on the optical track. The humming is less distinct. The sound effects of the mist erupting and emerging are distinct.

1992 LD
There is an added wind sound that starts right before the generator whir which isn’t on the other tracks. The lights exploding are loud and distinct. No echo on the flame out. The sound of the mist emerging is muted.

2002 blu-ray
The wind sound is there with less volume. The lights exploding have more bass, but aren’t as dynamic. No echo on the flame out. The music has a distinct echo added, which is very pronounced in the surround channels. The humming is much lower in volume. The sound of the mist emerging is muted.

Comparing the optical and blu-ray directly you can really hear the differences. The dynamics of the optical mix are much more dramatic.

stretch009 said:

stretch009 said:

A little bit off topic but which LD track (what year) is used on the Spleen’s 38gb WOWOW?

Edit: Okay it’s probably more than a little off topic but I just couldn’t help but wonder if the WOWOW on the Spleen has the unlistenable 1989 mix or not.

Do you know litemakr? I don’t want to burn it to a BD50 until I know what LD mix it is.

I don’t know what mix was included in that version.