Glad to see there are some interested parties besides myself though! Considering the obscurity of the movie. It’ll make me get back to it a little faster 😃
And maybe I’ll do Cremaster 2 also.
Just watch this thread for updates. I’ll make sure to post about it when I’m finished. Been very busy recently.
Asking for proof of ownership from people who request the scan and haven’t donated is a great idea. Haven’t seen that done before.
Hopefully processing of a non-beta 1.0 version can start in around a week or so. It will still take considerable time even once that is going as each reel is like 20,000 frames and it will take my PC ages to process 20,000 DNG to intermediate stills (especially since Photoshop seems to crash out overnight after only doing like 2000 frames or so, hopefully that issue can get resolved so a much longer time each night can be spent having it render frames out.
Davinci Resolve will recognize a series of DNGs as a video file as long as the DNGs are named correctly (in series). No need for Photoshop.
So… is there gonna be any problems with the project because of what happened in the community?
No reason it should. If the organizer is concerned about the scans leaking, they should send the scans to individual donors via PM rather than publicly. If they don’t care about them leaking, then proceed as normal.
Someone made a torrent of my whole saga; at least the English audio was retained! 😃
Search for
Harry Potter. Collection (2001-2011) [Open Matte, Fundamental Collection] HDTV-Hybrid 1080p [UKR_ENG] [Hurtom]
How big are the individual movies? I’m trying to figure out which version to download (there are different versions on my tracker with varying sizes).
Cremaster 3 is about 1000x more obscure than most movies that are usually talked about on here (here’s a Letterboxd link: https://letterboxd.com/film/cremaster-3/), but I thought I’d share anyway.
Recently I saw Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle at Metrograph in NYC and loved it. It was an extremely rare screening of all five films on 35mm. The movie series is infamous for its rarity of screenings and never being available in any at-home capacity–a little bit of artificial scarcity at play (although I completely understand Barney’s desire for audiences to see his work in a theater).
All of the Cremaster films have been available through torrenting (their origin being, I believe, the very rare, very expensive DVDs Barney sold many years ago). However, the torrents don’t do the cinematography justice. Since 99% of people who see these films these days are watching the torrents rather than the superb print, I’ve decided to AI-upscale the only known digital transfer of Cremaster 3 (which is the most ambitious and famous film from the cycle) to 4K. Then I’m going to grade the movie to the best of my memory of the print (with some added grain).
Obviously, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room when it comes to grading something that originated on DVD. But I’ve brought a chunk of the film into Resolve, and there is a lot of info in the shadows that people are missing out on. The crushing of shadows and the clipping of highlights is the biggest difference between the print and the digital transfer that I’ve noticed, other than the resolution difference. Not much I can do about the clipping, but the shadows can be addressed.
I am using Gaia through Topaz Video AI. The results are similar to Inland Empire’s recent official 4K “restoration.” It is definitely an increase in resolution, especially in close-ups, but it certainly isn’t reaching actual 4K’s resolving power. I’d say it is closer to 1080p or a nice 720p.
I’ll probably take my time doing this considering I’m probably the only one who cares, but I’ll update when it is finished.
original (easy shot)
AI-Upscale with some color work
original (difficult shot)
AI-Upscale with some color work
That’s exciting—open matte or hard matte? Are you going to take donations for scanning?
Users RU.08 or The Aluminum Falcon could probably give you good advice regarding taking care of the film and getting it scanned.
Sent a bit to your paypal to help. Interested to see how it turns out! I have labs I could recommend in the US (https://thenegative.space is someone I have worked with professionally many times before, although I have never sent them copyrighted materials), but RU.08 knows what they are doing.