"Lil' Abner" Framing Disaster

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Nov 23, 2014.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    This is a good example of how a bad film transfer can wreck an old movie. Apparently, whoever scanned the negative on this film forgot to reframe it for TV... so it winds up looking like this:



    You gotta be blind to make a mistake this dumb. Bad mastering can really hurt a classic movie like this.

    (And now I have "Jubilation T. Cornpone" stuck in my head!)
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2014
  2. TeacFan

    TeacFan Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    Arcadia, Ca.
    I remember watching this on TCM's first go round and thinking....wait a minute.
    Saw this in scope, or whatever, at the Santa Anita Theater in Arcadia back when and really got into it.
    DVD is OOP and no BD never produced. Was happy to see it on TCM. Fun, forgotten musical.
     
    McLover likes this.
  3. Uther

    Uther Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicagoland
    That is called "open matte". When shown in a theater, there would have been directions for the projectionist to adjust the matte to black out those areas. TCM is usually pretty good about preserving the original aspect ratio (OAR). I'm surprised that this one slipped through.
     
    McLover likes this.
  4. TeacFan

    TeacFan Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    Arcadia, Ca.
    Not sure if TCM has ever rerun this. I keep waiting.
     
  5. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Wow, have not seen that in ages.
     
  6. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    That's insane. Was no one even watching when this was transferred?
     
  7. I haven't seen this one in ages! Seem's like it used to be pretty easy to find on TV.

    I wondered if there was a decent Blu ray available, but I couldn't find it. Has this never made it to Blu?
     
  8. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    Probably sitting at a console, feet up, texting...
     
  9. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    I recall seeing "Catch Me If You Can" when it came out, the top wasn't properly matted so we saw any number of elements of production—lights, booms, etc., that were not intended to be seen in the final properly projected version.
     
  10. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit Mi USA
    Julie Newmar:love:
    [​IMG]
     
  11. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    In the world of cinematic presentation, EPIC FAIL............

    A bloody shame that the picture is so excellent and sound very good. Only to let such a nice transfer be let down by epically bad lack of framing. A for everything but framing which means the overall presentation is an F.
     
  12. john greenwood

    john greenwood Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    "Put it back the way it was."
     
    Steve Litos likes this.
  13. acjetnut

    acjetnut Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    It's sort of cool in a "tear down the 4th wall" kind of way. These old musicals always felt like filmed stage productions to me.
     
    Chip TRG and tmtomh like this.
  14. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    I agree, the final version should not look like this. I am not sure that the image should have have been cropped during transfer though. Wouldn't having as much of the original negative allow greater versatility when stabilizing the image? Shouldn't the cropping (formatting) have been done during the output stage?
     
  15. halfjapanese

    halfjapanese Gifs moider!

    You and me both, brother.
     
    Damiano54 likes this.
  16. benjaminhuf

    benjaminhuf Forum Resident

    Is this a VistaVision movie?
     
  17. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I remember renting some Cary Grant movie years ago. It was a 2.35:1 film that'd been reformatted for 1.33:1, and all they did for the transfer was set the "virtual camera" in the middle of the frame. No panning or scanning or anything even attempted - the image took the center of the frame and that was that.

    Wish I could remember what movie it was. I still retain the mental image of a conversation scene in which all you saw was two noses, one at each side of the frame! :laugh:
     
  18. Schoolmaster Bones

    Schoolmaster Bones Poe's Lawyer

    Location:
    ‎The Midwest
    My compliments to the Costume Designer.
     
    Steve Litos and F_C_FRANKLIN like this.
  19. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    When I saw Moonstruck in the theater, it was like that.
     
  20. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Isn't this the cinematographer's fault? Why would they even release a print with the top of the background, boom, mic or light showing? That's insane. I would have fired the cinematographer on the spot. Why would you trust some projectionist or a git at a tv station to be paying attention enough to crop out the lights. I had no idea they'd even consider let a print like this out in the wild, or even shooting a film like this.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2014
  21. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    I saw a TV print of "All the President's Men" that was like that if not worse. There was a scene with them at their desks at the end of the day, facing each other lounging back on their chairs with their feet up, where both their heads were cut off at opposite sides of the screen.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It is not called open matte by anybody who works in the business. "Open matte" is a term made up by fans who don't know any better. A more accurate name is full-aperture, where it's intended to be matted or recomposed and anamorphically squeezed for theatrical release.

    Pan/scan is never easy. The alternative for what you saw is what I call a "ping pong match," where we're frantically panning back and forth to try to include somebody in the show. You figure you're going to lose at least 40% of the picture in 1.33, so something is always going to be left out of the frame. But I think there's a way to do pan/scan acceptably, and a way to do it horribly. We try to lean towards the former.

    Pan/scan is still alive and well, and many widescreen movies today still go through a pan/scan process to get them to 16x9 HD. But the difference between 2.40 theatrical and 1.78 HD is not nearly as bad: you're losing about 25% of the image.
     
    Steve Litos and Chip TRG like this.
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Most likely, the DP framed the shot with the understanding that the top 1/3 of the picture would never be seen. If a boom mic or set edge or lights are ever visible, it's the mastering engineer's fault that they're seen, and nobody else. It just takes one knob to tilt down and avoid all that stuff. Ideally, the mastering person should also worry about how well the image is balanced in terms of composition and they should eliminate excessive headroom whenever possible, using the Rule of Thirds:

    http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds/

    Yep, VistaVision... so it has to be optically reframed for theatrical release. It looks like it should've been 2.35 or 2.40 scope to me.

    My guess is that this was the original scan, and the file was intended to go through one more step where it would be reframed for 4x3 TV and for 16x9 TV... and somebody screw up and just released the original scan. I also think the color correction is too warm in some of the scenes, but that boils down to taste and personal preference.
     
    benjaminhuf likes this.
  24. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    A ping-pong cut (not pan) of the heads of the guys as they talked would have been better in that case, I think. Or just mask it and show the whole frame, but I realize that has problems, too. Back in the early 90s when I had a 6.5 foot diagonal 4:3 screen we watched a LaserDisc of "Lawrence of Arabia" where they did that, and I don't think more than a foot or so of the vertical height of the screen was used. We enjoyed it, but if you were trying to watch it on a 20" set you probably had a ribbon of 3 or 4 inches spread across the center.
     
  25. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    Contents noteworthy also.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine