poita

It’s great to see so many people interested in colour grading.
Looking at some of the examples being posted I’m wondering if people are calibrating their screens. I’d recommend grabbing a cheap colormunki or i1 probe at a minimum, there isn’t a lot of use colour correcting if your screen is adding a blue tint in the shadows, and a green tint in the highlights for example.
Other than having a bit of fun, correcting the video I posted would be an exercise in frustration, as it is pretty crushed. If people want to keep playing, I’ll post a non-crushed (but still colour terrible!) version that has more range to play with.

I haven’t the funds to get the rest of the reels cleaned yet, or even shipped, so Reel1 will be the playground for a while.

Really?
To my eyes there is way more shadow detail in the German scan than in the grindhouse.

I cannot reveal the scanner used, but it currently sells for USD1.1 million, and has the highest dynamic range of any film scanner currently available. Each frame was ‘triple flashed’ to get as much out of the print as possible.
I wish we had a neg, but we have to make do with prints.

poita said:

pleasehello said:

I did a little compare with the TN1 Grindhouse and while this is not true across the board, in select shots it seems as though there is some more detail to be had in the dark areas. Take princess Leia’s hair below for example:

Is there any more range in the German scan to pull out some of those details?

Boosting the German image to Hoth take a look…

I’d say yes.
That scene should be dark with Leia’s face being the focal point, lit against the shadow, but yes, there is more detail in the print if you dig it out.

I agree that the corrected versions posted are leaning towards the yellows too much.

pleasehello said:

I did a little compare with the TN1 Grindhouse and while this is not true across the board, in select shots it seems as though there is some more detail to be had in the dark areas. Take princess Leia’s hair below for example:

Is there any more range in the German scan to pull out some of those details?

Boosting the image of the German scan to Hoth take a look…

I’d say yes, there is a lot more shadow detail in this scan than in the grindhouse releas.

However, that scene should be dark with Leia’s face being the focal point, lit against the shadow, but yes, there is more detail in the print if you dig it out.
Remember the reel I posted has not been corrected.

Dreamaster said:

Poita… I’m a little scared you’re going to get mad at me…

It’s a beautiful scan… and I KNOW you’re in the “HOTH IS BLUE NOT WHITE!!” camp… and I know I’m not Dr. Dre… but that entire clip has a strong blue push to it. I’m reencoding it with Avidemux… I’ll post some comparison screenshots when it’s done?

Nah, I never get mad, always like to get constructive feedback.
There was no colour correction done to the Reel, it was just a test with the scanning light adjusted with an offset to counter the fade.
There are plenty of scenes where the snow is very blue, I’m not in that camp as such, it is just a fact when you watch the few unfaded prints that are left projected.

I’ll do a correction on the reels later, it is slow going at the moment scraping enough together for cleaning and scanning. Once that is done I can sit down in a screening room and correct to the print.

One interesting thing, a lot of the comp scenes are very dirty, but the dirt was in the comp, not the print itself. The dirt is identical in all prints, so it leaves one with the philosophical question of do you leave the dirt in. It was absolutely there in the theatrical release, and was part of the limitations of the tech at the time. It is also absolutely horrendous at times, it shows how different audience expectation was at the time that it was never mentioned in any reviews etc.
Check out the probe droid scene when it first rises up out of the crater and flies to the left of screen as an example of this.

Might have to be more specific, I can never find anything on FanRes, I find the layout completely baffling.

You downloaded that fast… ;^)

The print went AWOL for a long time, and I thought it was lost. It just turned up thankfully, hoping to get the rest of it scanned as I can wrangle it.

Just a little preview for our German friends.

No audio, no real correction other than an offset for the red, just a straight scan test of Reel1 to see how the print looks.

https://infinit.io/_/QQRNpkF

SilverWook said:

Don’t you mean 1978 release?

Errrm…well…yes.

fixed

Some more images are here:
http://imgur.com/a/FD2MK

I recently purchased and scanned a 1971 US print of THX 1138. This the military version, i.e. it was put out to 16mm as a flat (or cropped) print for movie nights for the troops.

The picture and audio is in quite good condition.

Okay, I think we are now at the point where we can say we have discovered a few things about THX that have been misrepresented in ‘common knowledge’ of THX’s history.

1. On Home releases, before the film begins, the Director’s Cut shows a trailer from the SF-series “Buck Rogers” episode “Tragedy on Saturn Chapter Two” (1939). According to imdb, the theatrical version had a segment from the S/F-film “Things to Come” (1936).

False: I have now seen 4 separate prints, all from 1971 that have the Buck Rogers intro , not ‘Things to Come’.
It would appear that the story that the 1971 release had ‘Things to Come’ as the intro, and that was later changed to Buck Rogers is incorrect.
Also interesting is that if you listen to the Buck Rogers opening, Lucas changes the audio from “The 25th Century” to “The 20th Century”, to make it more poignant which also supports it not being a ‘last second replacement’.

2. That WB butchered Lucas’ version of the movie, making him remove ‘X’ minutes from the film, which is why it failed at the box office.

False: Comparing the 1971 release to his 1978 release and the Home Video versions, whilst there are some differences, there are actually very few changes, and there is some extra footage of SEN with the children in the 1971 release. There certainly weren’t enough changes to alter the film in any tangible way, apart from humanising SEN a little. This also fits with Coppola’s claim that Warners barely touched the film for the intial release.

We can confidently now quantify the changes between the 1971 and 1978/Home Video releases, which up until this point were not known/recorded.

I don’t get the MB credit until an account is created.

Anyone that would like a look at the US flat (cropped) version of THX, drop me your email address in a PM 😃

MP 30 (http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/pics/arisia09/arisia0907.jpg) or Mignon 35 portable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evnc3d8uxGE take up the least space and are easy to modify

Apart from Yard sales/garage sales, and film collectors, there aren’t a lot of options.
Projectors are expensive, so you are better off buying one from someone who services them and get one that is in tip top condition, that has new belts and has been properly serviced and lubricated etc. otherwise you will end up with nothing but trouble.

There are so many projectors out there it is hard to recommend particular models. You want one that has easy access to remove the gate and pressure plate, as you probably want to file those out a little to expose more of the film image area, and also ease of removing the shutter, as you will also want to remove it. Something that is known to be reliable and gentle on film is also a good idea.
The Bauer projectors are good for S8 and 16mm, the Hokushin 16mm projectors typically have an open film path and are easy to work on.
The main thing is to get one in great condition, or one that has been serviced with new belts and rubber parts replaced. It will cost hundreds, but the rest of the gear to catpure in hidef in realtime is going to set you back around $1000-$2000 or so in total, so it isn’t the expensive part of the build.

Yep, it is not in my scans or on the film.

I have another little THX surprise I would like to share with anyone interested, but I need another 1GB of hosting space. If a couple of people could use infinit with my referral, it will get me the extra space I need so that I can share the file.
https://infinit.io/?referral=poita
They aren’t dodgy, just a very useful file storage service, and it gets me extra space to be able to share more files.

The runtime is 195 minutes, that is ten reels of 35mm, it is a beast. If you want to pony up the $700 in return freight, plus funds for the HDDs and scanning, then sure thing ;^) I’d be more than happy to send it to along to them 😃

In all seriousness I don’t currently have the 30TB storage to scan it here, and my scanner needs a new driver board, so it will be on the shelf anyway till that is replaced.
If the opportunity comes up to get it scanned, I will certainly get it done, at the moment it is going to sit in the archive for a while.

I currently have no resources or storage available for scanning it, but the print is here and looks good.

I Picked up David’s print.

Also, please don’t post images or names from the 35mm forum here, it will get people banned from the 35mm forum.

I’m taking a look tonight.

It would actually be quite easy to do this as an optical on the equipment in the 70s, but I will check the 16mm and see.

The Superscope prints themselves were not cropped. This is how it worked.

The print itself had all the animation sequences full frame, and the live action sequences squeezed. The exception is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence, which was also squeezed.

The print was then screened with a supercope lens, similar to a cinemascope lens.
This resulted in the full-frame animation sequences looking all stretched horizontally. The thinking at the time was that no-one would notice if the animation was squashed, but they thought everyone will notice Mickey looking short and fat, as they would any live action, so they were printed in the squeezed format, so that they would come out looking normal when projected.

It was a horror show, but thankfully the print itself didn’t have the animation cropped, so it is a good thing for us.

I can’t say much more at the moment, but I wouldn’t spend any more time on restoring Fantasia, a work is in progress that is going to be very, very good, and not too long away.

FrankT, personally I’d concentrate on Alice as your first one to restore, it is a lot easier, and was the scan you originally requested. Lessons learned on that less gargantuan effort for restoration would then be put to good use on any future, more difficult project.

The only thing you can do in this isntance is add a little noise to the image. This stops the stepped-gradient effect happening when you start adjusting things. The noise can then mostly be removed afterwards.
It isn’t perfect, but can stop colour banding from occuring when manipulating 8 bit files.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B62pEVm4T0Iga25vT21ySVQ5TWM

The blue is meant to be there, the sky is quite blue in those shots, which makes the smoke etc. also quite blue.
The original prints do have a lot of blue in the Hoth scenes, not as much as the BD release, but still quite a lot more than the home releases, which appear to have been ‘auto balanced’ when the telecine was done, removing a lot of colour from the snow scenes, probably working on the assumption that snow should always be white.

I have access to a non-faded Empire 35mm print that is available for me to view, so we can have an accurate to the print restoration.
Many people may not like the colours of the original, they probably aren’t what they remember, but we can certainly match a scan to it.