I Hate Movie Remasters

Ye gads ( comparison).
Holding onto my Dvds / blu‘s

 

Well, this is pretty much my day job, so I'm naturally going to react when somebody makes a blanket statement like "I Hate Movie Remasters." Are you saying there's never any good ones? Do you understand what the remastering process entails and how hard (and time-consuming and expensive) it is?

Our general policy is to request a copy of the most recent previous video version approved by the director and/or the DP, and then we scan the original negative (when it's available) and meticulously match it to that previous version -- only now we're in HD or 4K. In cases where I think there were mistakes in the old mastering, we fix them just using what we hope is taste and experience. I generally lean towards "a little brighter," on the reasoning that there's a greater chance nowadays that viewers may be using a cellphone or a tablet or some other online source. Also, viewers rarely complain if something is a tiny bit brighter, but they will complain (often vociferously) if it's too dark.

If no previous version is available, then we just try to use our best judgement to make the whites white, the blacks black, and the fleshtones normal, then make every shot match. We also try to size the image and show as much area as we can, again leaning towards a little more area if possible (even if it's just 1/4" or 1/8" on all four sides). I'm not generally an orange & teal guy, but I can and have done it when directors insist on it. I prefer what I call "an honest blue," which we can easily see on the vectorscope. There are cases where the previous version is suspect or it just looks like absolute crap, and we'll back off and lean more towards "a normal look" and not anything crazy/different. We have run into cases where the directors or DPs are still alive and willing to come in and supervise, and one issue there is that their tastes and temperament in 2020 may be different today than they were 20-30-40 years ago when the film was made. In that case, they get what they want, because it's their film. The mastering engineer can make tactful suggestions, but ultimately the directors get the final word -- not the viewer.

Often, the new versions are considerably sharper than the old, mainly because we use pin-registered film scanners, which are extremely steady and don't have the weave and jitter of older telecines (and similar devices). I generally don't use any enhancement at all, because the benefits of sharpening cause issues with film (except in cases where it's very, very clean). We use a bit of grain reduction, but never so much that it eliminates roughly the same amount of grain you'd see in a high-quality print. We do eliminate all the rips, tears, dirt, splotches, splices, and other flaws that afflict old film elements over time.

Sound is not my area and other people are generally used to restore the old sound mix and then sync it up with my picture. I know of cases where the original film sound materials are gone or hopelessly damaged, so 1980s or 1990s videotape soundtracks have been used instead to provide a usable track. It's not ideal, but it happens. I also know of cases where the mag tracks have vanished but an optical soundtrack survives, so they clean that up and use that. Under ideal circumstances, it can be acceptable but it's not ideal. I know of cases where original digital tracks deteriorated to the point where they were unusable, but the 6-track mags could be used for very high-quality surround. Every mastering project has a different story, but know that a team of hard-working engineers and mastering specialists did their best within the available time and budget, using the surviving picture and sound materials.

 

I'd ask how your display is calibrated. If it's not calibrated to a known standard (like Rec709 for HD or Rec2021 for HDR/Dolby Vision), all bets are off. Without calibration, you have no idea what you're looking at.

I believe the recent 4K Apocalypse Now was done by Jan Yarbrough over at Warner MPI, which (for some reason) Paramount uses for a bunch of their remastering projects. Jan is an old-school guy who would not steer it towards a weird color scheme, and I don't think Coppola would allow that, either.

I have seen cases where remasters done from 35mm interpositives (which have a yellow/orange base) tend to lean towards yellow, and we have to struggle to crank enough blue in the image to compensate. This can be done well with a lot of work, and most mastering people I know are aware of how to get it done. I do still see stuff go out that's got too much yellow in it, but there could be more than one factor involved. The stuff I do doesn't have that issue.

 

Did you ever you ever work on The Searchers? If yes or no, what is the best version out there?

 

The Matrix was silver-ish (eg the walls of the building where Agent Smith imprisoned Morpheus) in its theatrical release, and the green was not so present. The first DVD release pretty much matched the 1999 theatrical.

In 2003/2004, The Matrix was given more green to match "Reloaded" and "Revolutions", that were a green-fest. And that's what we have on the "remastered" DVD from 2003/2004 and the Blu Ray.

The 4K version seems to lean towards... blue. I've not seen the new 4K, just some screenshots here and there, but it seems sooooo wrong.

 

Thanks for the insight. Yeah I might buy one of those calibration discs and do that. FWIW, even the SD Blu-rays in the set do look sharper than the old Blu-ray I've got and the 4K UHD disc does look really nice.

 

I’ve only watched the final cut so far but can’t recall having any issues with the colour timing.

 

I'm old enough to remember the furor over the color scheme of the 1999 "Matrix" DVD.

TONS of complaints about how green it was!

 

That’s not calibration, that’s approximation at the best. Calibration is done with special hardware by a professional.

What's an „SD Blu-ray“?

 

Most recently: Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia. Before that: a lot. Look at Blu-ray.com for more examples.

 

Matrix DVD art design looked cheap. Maybe the content good.

 

That Terminator 2 screenshot (the super greenish one) looks horrible. It looks like a scene from The Ring.

 

What movie is this?

 

No, you pretty much have to hire a guy to calibrate the set. The disc just tells you how far off the set is, not how to fix it.

 

I am pretty sure it’s not from a film, just a stock image available online for anyone to download and use. It appears in all sorts of places. For example:

Free Images : man, person, looking, male, portrait, human, darkness, hairstyle, straight, head, adult, screenshot, bearded, side face 5472x3648 - - 883815 - Free stock photos - PxHere

Grenfell 2 years on | SS Systems

Why Don't I Feel Like a "Cookie Cutter" Mormon? | LDS.net

 

I remember watching Terminator 2 on some form of media and being disgusted (and bored) by the amount of blue light. Now I want to see a copy of the original version because that blueness really did make me dislike the movie, coupled with the fact the director's cut is a big slog in the middle section. I always favored the first film, however that one also had the early 80's redness changed to bluish on my bluray.

 

It should be said that the Terminator 2 UHD disc received bad review across the board and is most certainly the exception, rather than the norm. Most transfers to 4K discs have been exceptional. But there'll always be bad examples.

 

This is the most detailed account I've found of one of those HDtv calibration professionals calibrating a $6000 big screen OLED LG tv in someone's home.

Jump to about 10 minutes in where it mentions Dolby Vision standards format war. That's where the calibration pro gets into the meat of what he's doing. I watched the entire video which gets into chit-chat about misconceptions about the HDtv's manufacturing standards and other interesting FYI tid bits. Note the year it was posted. Things may have improved and/or changed by then.

 

Guaranteed, the director had final approval of what got released, so -- good or bad -- what you see is what the filmmaker wanted. And sometimes what they want today is not what they got 20-30-40 years ago (as I've said many times).

I know of several cases where the director came in and said, "I never got what I wanted back in the 1980s or 1990s, because the studio went and color-timed the film behind my back, but now I'm going to get what I always wanted." And we make some fairly huge changes. Not too long ago, I had an experience where I actually agreed with the director and, once I understood what the (no longer living) cinematographer had done, I realized we were actually going in the right direction. It was a different look than the last DVD, but in a lot of ways, it was more accurate to how it looked in theaters back in the day. But I suspect some people will still complain.

 

I guess I wasn't old enough to be online where ever it was back then chatting about the colors of The Matrix DVD, I just remember playing the DVD on our 21inch Trinitron using a PS2 and thinking it was the most amazing picture I had ever seen at the time. Well I had technically watched Titanic on our Desktop PC and that looked incredible as well on the PC's CRT display but I'd say it was the best thing I had watched on the Trinitron at the time.
I also remember that DVD for being more of a yellowish-green as well because there was a fan film that came out in 2003 while I was doing my multimedia course and they had aimed for the DVD look of the Matrix.
I did actually see The Matrix on the big screen that year, when The Matrix Revolutions came out they showed all 3 of them back to back on the first night though I didn't find myself looking at the colors so much as how much sharper the picture was than the DVD. You could see the pores in Laurence Fishburne's face and that blew me away.

 

But that's a terrible reason to do so. Should Deutsche Grammaphon start adding modern beats to Beethoven's symphonies to interest young listeners?

 

I've been looking at the different Apocalypse Now versions lately. The older Blu-ray actually tends more to the orange.

Here's some frame grabs from the theatrical version. I think I'm doing the 4K frame capture correctly, but I'm not sure why there's less color saturation than the 2K version of the same remaster:

'Full Disclosure' theatrical Blu-ray:


'Final Cut' theatrical Blu-ray:


'Final Cut' theatrical 4K:

 

The main problem with the T2 4K UHD is the absurd amount of DNR they slapped on the master used for the 3D version. It's a friggin' wax fest.

Because you can't screencap the HDR layer, so 4K screenshots look flatter and darker than what you see on the TV screen. That's why this kind of comparison shots doesn't tell the viewer a lot.

 

It's not a screencap. It's a decoded frame.

 

Yes, I'm doing it wrong. There's lots to learn about HDR color spaces. I did find a bit about it here.

Anyway, this site is good for comparing different frame captures, and it does show the older Apocalypse Now Blu-ray with much more orange. I don't which version is truer to the original.