[ravenus]

Originally Posted by bruce holecheck

Prior Blus (Something Weird, Second Sight, etc.) were sourced from the 35mm blow-up IP, but the 16mm camera negative had been discovered. Frank has said he turned over all his materials to the MOMA, so I would assume the original negs would be the basis of their new scan. (Unless there's an issue with the materials, of course.)

From what I gather, even the 2011 BD was sourced from the 16mm negative. Quoting the video section of the review on this site:

Under the supervision of director Frank Henenlotter, Something Weird Video and Image Entertainment have produced a new high definition master of Basket Case that's quite impressive on Blu-ray, especially if you've seen any previous standard definition versions of the film. In the special features, there's a new introduction by Henenlotter, who starts off by saying, "I know what you're thinking, Basket Case in HD?" He then goes on to explain exactly how preparing the film for Blu-ray has made it look better than it ever looked theatrically. When the film was released, the 1.37:1 16mm print was blown up to 35mm and projected in widescreen 1.85:1, resulting in an image that was cropped, extremely grainy, and had lost much of its color and clarity in the blow up. Here, Henenlotter and the Blu-ray producers went back to the original 16mm negatives and made the decision to present the film in its native aspect ratio, which restores quite a lot of the picture to the top and bottom of the frame. Henenlotter also talks about the decision to keep the 16mm grain structure as is, and not try to digitally smooth it out with noise reduction techniques. The result is a 1080p/AVC- encoded transfer that's faithful to its low-budget source—grainy and never as sharp as a 35mm picture would be, but definitely true to itself.