A List of blu-rays retroactively color timed toward teal (and adjusting your TV to watch them)

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Hutch, May 20, 2016.

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  1. profholt82

    profholt82 Resident Blowhard

    Location:
    West Michigan
    Terminator has always had a blue tint to it. That's how it looked originally. The first blu from 06 or 07 was from a so-so source print and had a number of scenes that had grit on the image. The newer version looks much cleaner and clearer in parts, but the actual color between the two blus is similar. I'd argue that it's the best the film has looked on home video. There are definitely a number of blus out there that have a teal/orange look that is clearly a change from the original look of the film, but there's no way I'd put the latest Terminator blu ray in that conversation. I think the guy in Beamish's link is exaggerating, and/or never saw the film in the theater. I agree with his assessment of some of the other blus though.
     
  2. tone ded freb

    tone ded freb Senior Member

    Location:
    Arizona Snowbowl
    Good to know. I never saw it in the theater. I muxed mine with the original mono audio, so I guess I can be confident that the newest Blu-ray (from 2013) is as true to the original as it can be at HD. :righton:
     
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  3. profholt82

    profholt82 Resident Blowhard

    Location:
    West Michigan
    Well, the closest to the original color of the film as we're ever likely to see on home video would probably be on one of the analogue formats such as VHS or LD before the digital revolution. When comparing each of the DVDs and Blus, each is slightly different looking than the next. I have owned the special edition DVD and the two blus, and while the colors are similar, each is a little different. I've just seen some recent grumblings about the "teal" look of the latest blu remaster, and it bothers me because the film has always had a blue look to it, as that is how it was originally lit and shot. What is nice about the new remaster is how cleaned up the picture is. It is clearer than the earlier blu yet it retains the original grain, so it doesn't have that waxy quality that so many blus do.

    On a related note, would it have killed them to include the original mono soundtrack in either of the blus? It's cool that you've mixed yours.
     
  4. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    I hope they're labeling these revisions.
     
  5. Are you f***ing kidding me?

    Seriously, this is happening?

    Could explain why I don't have many BluRays yet.

    Suddenly I don't give a crap about PAL speed-up and I like my DVD colection a whole lot more. Most of my movies are old editions bought on the cheap because I generally don't care about movies and I have instead a massive collection of TV shows. But there are still quite a few movies I enjoy and most of these I have on DVD with only a slight desire to get BluRay, mainly for the lack of speedup more than anything.
     
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  6. Hutch

    Hutch Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Oh man I forgot: Criterion's Badlands. UGH! :realmad: Their disc of My Own Private Idaho isn't tealized but it's different than I remember. I could be wrong but I remember the golden hues of the DVDs during its theatrical wrong. Any one remember?

    My Own Private Idaho Blu-ray - Keanu Reeves »
     
  7. Hutch

    Hutch Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Nope. Sometimes you get a "director approved" sticker which has the opposite effect on me. That gives me the tip off that they've been fiddling around and if complaints are made will lean on the "director's approval" to shut anyone up. But, as I've noted above, the director will likely blame the studio saying they fudged it after the director left them to finish the project and that the new version of the disc is not what they agreed upon while the director was there.

    My question still stands: Who told all these filmmakers that this color scheme was "more involving"? If find it repulsive, as in "I won't even watch a film with this color timing."
     
  8. Hutch

    Hutch Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Luckily different countries master their movies differently. Europe seems to be much more respectful of the original prints (as best they can) and generally avoid this horrible Orange & Teal trend. If a movie you like has had this crappy treatment, look to another region to see how their blu ray stacks up. BFI & Eureka are godsends for when Criterion mucks things up.
     
  9. captainsolo

    captainsolo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Murfreesboro, TN
    This is an ongoing issue that has many causes. As Vidiot pointed out you have director preferences that can cause this and hopefully the original will also be presented but that really has only happened with Blade Runner and the scans there of the other cuts are outdated. (The BR set needs an overhaul, stuck in HD-DVD formattings and the old versions are too videoish)

    Then you have individual colorists and studios who for some reason do this process. Warner is a big one and they have done releases for other studios as well. For some reason practically anything that gets a new transfer from them (All the President's Men, Lethal Weapon, Superman) has this push-some worse than others. Gordon Willis went on record saying the ATPM blu was dead wrong and tre previous video copies were perfectly fine. Comparing these show hat it seems to be the same levels of color that keep cropping up. HD downloads and streaming versions of the 20,000 Leagues restoration also show a color push and wouldn't you know it, but the color was handled by WB. I often wonder if maybe the monitors are off or something.

    Theatrical presentations of classic and older films are hardly matched in video which is sad to me. When done right things are wonderful, but there are many titles that would never compare to the image of a decent 35mm print even if here was heavy wear. For example, BATMAN RETURNS is reviewed well on disc but still seems drab and the sets are obvious. On film it is a dark gothic Xmas card from hell as intended. BLADE RUNNER fares well on BD in all cuts, but the Final Cut print obliterates the outdated BD and best of all is the 1992 DC print (from the negative) which is the best I've ever seen and looks perfect without the videoish look we've all lived with since 1980's video copies. (And that still somewhat exists on the BD archival disc)

    Dynamic range compression has been around in movies especially since they started remixing for nearfield home systems in the DVD era. What happens now though is that either the track is remixed to multichannel with no regard to the original design or is a straight port. Many times the audio goes through EQ and noise reduction so that overall the audio pales when compared to the original source or theatrical audio. And to top that off there have been cases of actual brickwalling of multichannel mixes, most recently The Force Awakens which has had its center channel brickwalled for some ungodly reason.

    So, basically what I'm saying is: get ready to do some detective work, understand that there are a hell of a lot of variables and most of the times the majors either do not care or do not spend the time to properly do things.
    And don't throw out old video copies. You'd be surprised at what changes can be made or how some old DVDs and LDs stack up. In the audio department I have a ton of LDs that still hold their own. That's why I got into collecting them really.
     
  10. jsayers

    jsayers Just Drifting....

    Location:
    Horse Shoe, NC
  11. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    It's not an orange-and-teal coloration, but the digital versions of DRACULA (1979) have John Badham's revisionism in that he's drained nearly all color out of the picture. His claim is that he wanted the film that way but the studio wouldn't let him release it with the desaturated look. So he did it retroactively in home video. It's that way on both the DVD and the Blu-ray.

    [​IMG]
     
  12. Mr. Webster the Poster

    Mr. Webster the Poster Well-Known Member

    Location:
    USA
    This post is why we need to be careful and not present this issue as "the sky is falling" or else it leads to the current knee jerk "witch hunt" scenario in this thread where we begin looking for a "problem" rather than address the ones that really have it and portraying it as more of a widespread than it really is. We've already had posts that were later retracted.
     
  13. Hutch

    Hutch Forum Resident Thread Starter

    What should we present this issue as? And what do you mean, "looking for a problem"? If it's there, it's there. And it's a growing trend. I'm going to read reviews before purchasing from now on. I also think unless the buying public are made aware of the situation and express their displeasure that it will become more widespread than it is all already. (See: The French Connection, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or The Fellowship of the Ring debacles.)I don't see any "knee jerk" in most of these posts, but I may've missed some deleted ones.

    The problem is wide spread enough to warrant discussion, whether it's filmmakers "revisiting" old titles and not allowing the original versions for home theater (i.e. Star Wars) or companies mucking up transfers after a standard has been agreed upon with whoever has approval.

    If we can have a problem with brickwalled CDs of past albums, why not this?
     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    He's also made it incredibly darker, which is surprising. I would've tried to convince him to go to a happy medium: somewhat darker, but not to this extreme. Way, way, way too many directors don't grasp that they need to use as much of the available dynamic range in the monitor as they can. If the entire thing is dark, you're throwing all those bits away. There's a way to make stuff like darker without muddy. What you're showing in these stills looks way, way too muddy for me.

    But I'll say this: you see a lot more of the picture in 16x9, so there is that.
     
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  15. Hutch

    Hutch Forum Resident Thread Starter

    You know what's funny? I remember some masterings doing the opposite: lightening a film more than the original film. I think Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 suffered from this. Carpenter purposefully made it a dark and shadowy movie and some DVD or blu-ray editions lightened it up, negating the original effect of the film. I find it so strange that there doesn't seem to be a template that new mastering houses can use to get a general sense of the original film's color/lighting scheme.

    EDIT: are any of these changes due to directors/producers trying to compensate for what they think are deficiencies of HDTVs (or them thinking people won't calibrate their sets properly)?
     
  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There is no "template" because it boils down to experience and good judgement. There's also a lot of room for "creative intent," so a lot is really up to the director and cinematographer.

    There's no way to anticipate how bad off-shelf monitors will be in stores, because they run the gamut (literally and figuratively). I'd say if anything, displays in stores are generally much too bright.
     
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  17. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I seem to recall a version of HALLOWEEN on DVD that was brightened up considerably.
     
  18. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Not much of a list yet. Scaring folks away from blu-ray.

    Please tell me those chiming in here have ISF pro-calibrated projectors or panels.
     
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  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I often cringe at some of the reviews I read online, because it's not possible they're looking at a calibrated monitor. In mastering, there are times when we fight over 1/2 a unit of difference on a specific adjustment, and some of the changes we make are really, really precise. Once it plays back on a Costco display TV set to retina-searing brightness level and the picture's all blue, god help you.
     
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  20. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    Yes. I just wonder how many reading this thread or posting in it own a display capable of proper color accuracy and saturation. Forget about gray scale too. FACT: You don't know how much you're missing if your display is not calibrated by a real pro.
     
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  21. captainsolo

    captainsolo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Murfreesboro, TN
    Both BATMAN and RETURNS have this problem to a huge degree. The old transfer was brightened to be more visible on crts along he day and it got recycled onto the first DVD. The later transfer is better but still nowhere near as dark as it should be for either film.
     
  22. Johnny66

    Johnny66 Laird of Boleskine

    Location:
    Australia.
    There's quite a convoluted history with that title (across various home video formats). Anchor Bay's first DVD release was panned outright (often a soupy blob of impenetrable black in the night scenes); Dean Cundey's approved DVD transfer from 1999 was deemed by many to add an exaggerated blue tint to the film, at least compared to the color timing of the original theatrical release (memories of which were no doubt muddied by the atrocious VHS releases up until that point). A subsequent Divimax AB DVD release lost the tint and offered much improved detail (that was otherwise lost in the murky, ill-defined black levels on the original release), but there were those who felt the lack of blue was too great.

    The first AB BD release of the title largely struck a workable compromise, with high detail, unobtrusive blue hues (from memory) but some oversaturated greens. The subsequent 35th Anniversary changed tack and offered up a far more muted colour palette, with significantly less of an autumnal feel - apparently approved by both Cundey and Carpenter.

    So, perhaps not an orange and teal issue, but nevertheless each Halloween release always seems to offer up questionable transfer choices.
     
    Hutch likes this.
  23. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    That's right. Having a properly calibrated screen is important so that you can see the exact shade of teal and orange that was intended! :D

    I kid of course, calibration is important, but with so many 'artistic interpretations' of movies out there, it does somewhat reduce the need in some peoples' eyes.
     
  24. jh901

    jh901 Forum Resident

    Location:
    PARRISH FL USA
    There aren't "so many 'artistic interpretations'" out there. Sure, there's poor transfer work and there are most certainly controversies here and there, but it is just plain 100% wrong to suggest that calibrated displays aren't imperative. There are thousands of titles on blu-ray which deliver both audio and video that are as close to archival quality that we could reasonably expect (for the consumer). I can guarantee you that when I screen a well transferred film on blu in my home theater that the experience is beyond what all but the most extreme enthusiasts could even imagine possible. We are in a golden era. Discover it!
     
  25. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    And when Shout! Factory released Halloween in that box set a while back, it was two discs; one was the 35th anniversary edition (plus the original mono mix, I believe) and the other was Anchor Bay's original Blu.

    My two cents is the original DVD and the 35th Blu look more natural to me.
     
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