DePalma's 70's early 80's movies on Blu-ray--Image Question - Blu-ray Forum

joevitus1 · 08-31-2020, 05:03 AM

So, I've noticed that both Sisters and Carrie have very strong, I guess I'd call it "visual noise." Hard to describe, and I am not talking about the presence of film grain, which I like. But if you look at, say, scenes in Carrie like the traveling shot from the kids coming down the staircase to Carrie waiting in Mrs. Finch's outer office of the principal's office, or the black colors in the scene inside the Snell house when Carrie's mother arrives (the back of the t.v. set, and Mrs. White's clothes and leather satchel), it's just really distracting and ugly. The Sisters Blu-ray is frustratingly filled with images like this all the way through (though the African Room scene is the most egregious).
Now, I've never seen Sisters on the big screen, and it was a very low-budget effort, so when I watched the Blu-ray, I just assumed I was watching an accurate reproduction of the images in Hi Def, and that the restoration simply revealed the inherently poor quality of the original images. But I have seen Carrie on the big screen, and such visual noise was never apparent.
Dressed to Kill had some of this, too. In that case, DVD Beaver put it down to De Palma's use of "smokey" (i.e., misty or slightly foggy) imagery combined with the film stock of the era and how that transfers to Blu-ray. But Sisters and Carrie don't have a use "smokey" pictorial effects in the scenes where this happens, and in fact, in the scenes where a "smokey" effect is used in Carrie (the final dream sequence, say, or the pan through the girls' locker room during the credit sequence), the image is utterly free of this "visual noise."
The only Blu-ray of De-Palma's work from this period which seems to me to have none of these issues is Blow Out.
So what's up? I really, really hate it. In the case of Sisters, I just can't watch the Blu-ray (doesn't help that a few final letters of some crew members' last names are cut off in the opening credits because the right side of the screen seems to have been cropped). Dressed to Kill and Carrie, I can still watch but the problem is distracting.
Sorry my ability at describing technical issues is bad, but can someone tell me why these issues exist across releasing companies presumably using different film stocks (depending on the studio and the year) and if there is--hypothetically--a way for Blu-ray restorations to fix this without resorting to the sort of ugly, grainless images of poorly transferred films (everything getting that pasty/plastic look)?

08-31-2020, 05:03 AM	#1
joevitus1 New Member Member since:Aug 2017	DePalma's 70's early 80's movies on Blu-ray--Image Question So, I've noticed that both Sisters and Carrie have very strong, I guess I'd call it "visual noise." Hard to describe, and I am not talking about the presence of film grain, which I like. But if you look at, say, scenes in Carrie like the traveling shot from the kids coming down the staircase to Carrie waiting in Mrs. Finch's outer office of the principal's office, or the black colors in the scene inside the Snell house when Carrie's mother arrives (the back of the t.v. set, and Mrs. White's clothes and leather satchel), it's just really distracting and ugly. The Sisters Blu-ray is frustratingly filled with images like this all the way through (though the African Room scene is the most egregious). Now, I've never seen Sisters on the big screen, and it was a very low-budget effort, so when I watched the Blu-ray, I just assumed I was watching an accurate reproduction of the images in Hi Def, and that the restoration simply revealed the inherently poor quality of the original images. But I have seen Carrie on the big screen, and such visual noise was never apparent. Dressed to Kill had some of this, too. In that case, DVD Beaver put it down to De Palma's use of "smokey" (i.e., misty or slightly foggy) imagery combined with the film stock of the era and how that transfers to Blu-ray. But Sisters and Carrie don't have a use "smokey" pictorial effects in the scenes where this happens, and in fact, in the scenes where a "smokey" effect is used in Carrie (the final dream sequence, say, or the pan through the girls' locker room during the credit sequence), the image is utterly free of this "visual noise." The only Blu-ray of De-Palma's work from this period which seems to me to have none of these issues is Blow Out. So what's up? I really, really hate it. In the case of Sisters, I just can't watch the Blu-ray (doesn't help that a few final letters of some crew members' last names are cut off in the opening credits because the right side of the screen seems to have been cropped). Dressed to Kill and Carrie, I can still watch but the problem is distracting. Sorry my ability at describing technical issues is bad, but can someone tell me why these issues exist across releasing companies presumably using different film stocks (depending on the studio and the year) and if there is--hypothetically--a way for Blu-ray restorations to fix this without resorting to the sort of ugly, grainless images of poorly transferred films (everything getting that pasty/plastic look)?

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