The Abyss 4K UHD (1989)

[ryanmcv]

Originally Posted by Dr. T

People will be watching this on their home theaters next week.

How?

[THF90]

Originally Posted by ryanmcv

How?

I’ll be streaming my first viewing of this film on my Apple TV 4K in Dolby Vision.

I’m excited!

[steve_dave]

Originally Posted by ryanmcv

How?

The Abyss, True Lies, and Aliens release on digital to own this December 12th.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by samlop10

Currently, mine is playing previews (AMC Dolby).

It had less previews than normal though as is often, if not quite always, the case with these specials. (The Fathom Events ones, of course, go farther, and have none.)

[mikesncc1701]

Originally Posted by Freakyguy666

“Lower right”??…Dyslexia level is high w/this one…

Oh wow, you're absolutely "right". Sorry about that.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by Pocketkid2

Can confirm, rat is still real, there is no visible grain in the image, but it doesn't matter at all because the restoration work is so good. Remember friends, it's not about grain, it's about detail. For every shot that looked slightly processed there was another shot that looked so good it could have been filmed yesterday. But I guess all you pixel peepers don't want to hear that.

There is grain, often not a lot, but it is there. And in a few underwater scenes where it was just all blue underwater, a few of those even seemed to have 100% full grain. I would not agree that it is simply all about detail and nothing about grain for a film shot production.

I'm too lazy to look up what stck it was shot on and what sort of lighting. Slow stock of some types with strong lighting can have very little grain.

That said, there did feel something a bit uncanny valley about it and it often, mostly didn't seem quite like film (it maybe doesn't help that aspect that Dolby Cinema often feels less like film than IMAX laser, laser or Xenon though). It generally had slews of detail, plenty of shots with way beyond 2k detail. There was a slightly odd feel to it though, sort of detailed, almost hyper detailed and yet with a smoothness (but not smeary), at times in a vaguely uncanny way. Different than the last Titanic theatrical release, but some hints of that. The parts that felt the most curious were some of the close ups on her face. Nothing like T2 though or To Catch A Thief and so on though. Not a waxworks at all.

There have been slews of discs that before that I think will look more unnatural/out and out bad than this since they have smeary DNR or smeary DNR+sharpening on high contrast edges or extremely weird AI processing. In the end, the UHD for this will probably be a little odd and maybe not quite the truly natural look, but not a bad disc (although compression will need to be done well as DCP use shot to shot compression while discs do not and discs are vastly more prone to smearing away detail or adding random 'grain' and you wouldn't want the disc compression losing any hint of low contrast detail or grain that is on the DCP- contrary to talk by someone above, the DCP is always better, when has the disc ever been better than the DCP? they have worse compression, especially for film and only add more DNR and processing, never have less so far as far as I know; OK well one possible exception, partial, is the UHD for LaLaLand was 4k and the best of the DCP only 2k, that was a strange one). For one that seems to do some sort of processing, it does it less outright objectionably than most of these jobs is my prelim opinion. UHD should be nice enough.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

I had an older crowd - mainly late 20's+ and above.

very mixed age crowd, had everything from families with grade school kids to people probably in their 80s and everything inbetween

very packed, only the very worst seats in the DC were empty

wide scale laughs at things here and there

I was worried that folks would laugh at the drowning scene, because that scene had been parodied in South Park many years ago, but no, it went off great. Great scene and intense as hell.

zero of that cringy awful laughing for such scenes at my showing
thankfully that sort of stuff tends to be quite rare in my region

[kwisatzhaderach]

Originally Posted by rubystone356

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/date/2...?ref_=bo_hm_rd

the box office for the abyss screening.

Jacob

Wow, this is pretty impressive for a one day screening of a 34 year old film!

[rubystone356]

Originally Posted by 5150z

I was just about to post the link, and then saw you beat me to it. The best part perhaps starts at the 7:40 mark of the video! LOL

its a great review for the abyss.

Jacob

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW

Slow stock of some types with strong lighting can have very little grain.

Sure...in bright daylight on pristine 50-speed stock. But at the sort of illumination levels available for the near-permanent underwater murk of The Abuse then they needed fast stock and in 1988\89 the only choices of such stock were grainy as balls. Not as horribly grainy as those which directly preceded them in the early/mid '80s, but still very noisy and this film is no exception. The one mitigating factor is Cameron's Super 35 penchant of overexposing his fast stocks to try and tamp down the grain as much as possible before it went into the optical blow-up to create theatrical prints from, but even so it wouldn't make the grain vanish.

[Crysist]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Sure...in bright daylight on pristine 50-speed stock. But at the sort of illumination levels available for the near-permanent underwater murk of The Abuse then they needed fast stock and in 1988\89 the only choices of such stock were grainy as balls. Not as horribly grainy as those which directly preceded them in the early/mid '80s, but still very noisy and this film is no exception. The one mitigating factor is Cameron's Super 35 penchant of overexposing his fast stocks to try and tamp down the grain as much as possible before it went into the optical blow-up to create theatrical prints from, but even so it wouldn't make the grain vanish.

Those open matte promo pics from the Titanic thread (for the 2012 release iirc) seemed pretty good even on scenes which might have used 500 speed stock. It even looks rather fine on the larger promo images, just heavily present. I think what makes things worse is when it shows up muddy on lower resolution scans.

Maybe I'm just a bit of a grain fan tho.

The thing I'm still wondering about overexposing fast stocks to reduce grain is you end up with an overexposed negative compared to your intended exposure. What do they do with those scenes now that they're a stop brighter?

Also, dumb question, but being able to overexpose the faster stock OR if they were gunning to shoot with slower stocks in those tricky dark environments to handle the grain... couldn't they just blast dark scenes with a ton of light? I'm assuming they needed some excess of light to even be able to shoot 2/3 or 1 stop over as you've mentioned, anyway. Why not add more? (besides melting the set and actors)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Crysist

Those open matte promo pics from the Titanic thread (for the 2012 release iirc) seemed pretty good even on scenes which might have used 500 speed stock. It even looks rather fine on the larger promo images, just heavily present. I think what makes things worse is when it shows up muddy on lower resolution scans.

Maybe I'm just a bit of a grain fan tho.

The thing I'm still wondering about overexposing fast stocks to reduce grain is you end up with an overexposed negative compared to your intended exposure. What do they do with those scenes now that they're a stop brighter?

Also, dumb question, but being able to overexpose the faster stock OR if they were gunning to shoot with slower stocks in those tricky dark environments to handle the grain... couldn't they just blast dark scenes with a ton of light? I'm assuming they needed some excess of light to even be able to shoot 2/3 or 1 stop over as you've mentioned, anyway. Why not add more? (besides melting the set and actors)

You can still clearly see the denser dye clouds from the 500-speed emulsion in the darker shots/interiors on those 2012 promo scans though, and when that's cropped down to a 2.39 extraction it'll embiggen the grain even more. The daylight scenes are however virtually grainless as befits 50-speed EXR stock being drenched with sunlight. Besides which, The Abuse WILL be grainier, all things being equal, owing to the near 10-year gap in film technology, it was likely lensed on 5295 which is a world away from the mostly T-grain EXR 5279 that Titanic's darker exteriors and interiors were shot to.

As Carpenter said in AmCin re: Titanic, the negative has so much range that the highlights don't blow out despite the overexposure (2/3rds of a stop), and you can print the image down however you like when doing your answer timing. Though even then, Cameron or Carpenter said in that other piece on S35 that you don't want your IP printed too dark so you've got enough range to deal with when making your prints.

As for blasting slow stock with light in dark scenes, what's the point? Unless you could literally emulate the power of the sun - in which case it would no longer be a dark scene anyway - you'll still agitate more of the largest crystals in that emulsion than not, so it'll still look grainier than the same stock shot in broad daylight. Then there's the logistics of it, fast stock was literally invented so people could use LESS light, which means less expense on lighting. Think about how vast a challenge it was to light the frickin' full size Titanic in the wide shots and then scale it up by however many more stops you'd need to expose the 50-speed stock rather than the 500! Madness.

It's all academic in the end though as Cameron would rather scrub the grain and sharpen the detail to produce something else entirely.

[Owsler]

So this might not bode well for Aliens then?

[PonyoBellanote]

Originally Posted by Owsler

So this might not bode well for Aliens then?

If you didn't like how Titanic looked, then you won't like how any of the other films will look, because they all have most likely received the same treatment by Cameron and with Park Road.

Me, I don't think they're the worst, so.. I can deal with the weirdness. And some of them haven't gotten BDs ever..

[thebarnman]

Nothing cringey about the line "keep your pantyhose on." To me it isn't any different than someone saying to a male "put on your your big boy pants."

It's a Idiom as in saying to behave as a mature adult. It's to imply that one is not behaving in such a way...nothing more.

[Danespina]

Yes but the line was delivered with the intention of getting a laugh, then would reoccur as if the audience was in on the joke and enjoying it.

I honestly didn’t mind it, but it’s not just about what the line means, but in how it was executed.

[Crysist]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

You can still clearly see the denser dye clouds from the 500-speed emulsion in the darker shots/interiors on those 2012 promo scans though, and when that's cropped down to a 2.39 extraction it'll embiggen the grain even more. The daylight scenes are however virtually grainless as befits 50-speed EXR stock being drenched with sunlight. Besides which, The Abuse WILL be grainier, all things being equal, owing to the near 10-year gap in film technology, it was likely lensed on 5295 which is a world away from the mostly T-grain EXR 5279 that Titanic's darker exteriors and interiors were shot to.

As Carpenter said in AmCin re: Titanic, the negative has so much range that the highlights don't blow out despite the overexposure (2/3rds of a stop), and you can print the image down however you like when doing your answer timing. Though even then, Cameron or Carpenter said in that other piece on S35 that you don't want your IP printed too dark so you've got enough range to deal with when making your prints.

As for blasting slow stock with light in dark scenes, what's the point? Unless you could literally emulate the power of the sun - in which case it would no longer be a dark scene anyway - you'll still agitate more of the largest crystals in that emulsion than not, so it'll still look grainier than the same stock shot in broad daylight. Then there's the logistics of it, fast stock was literally invented so people could use LESS light, which means less expense on lighting. Think about how vast a challenge it was to light the frickin' full size Titanic in the wide shots and then scale it up by however many more stops you'd need to expose the 50-speed stock rather than the 500! Madness.

It's all academic in the end though as Cameron would rather scrub the grain and sharpen the detail to produce something else entirely.

Right, so it really is me being a lot more ok with it lol. I suppose I was hoping that all his other tricks would make up well enough relative to the other releases of the day. But going from the full gate to that filling a movie screen will be a bit rougher, admittedly. All the really high quality S35 stuff from the 90s and 2000s that we've got stellar 4k examples of might be biasing me a lot more into saying "what do you mean, he's got the T grain here it'll be fiiiinee"

I understand better now. I read that piece and, between my fascination at the lab terminology, I was left thinking "ok i see, so you maintain that exposure through the process as well (grading, etc) to keep up the beefiness and thus the finer grain, but won't that material just end up brighter it the end? more than desired?" but between the multiple ways they can make use of that negative, or just use that exposure anyway, it makes sense.

About the light uuhhh... I don't know. I'm not at all attuned to the difficulties of production lighting, I'm just a silly guy oo-ing about parts of the process and making guesses. I was supposing that if 1 stop was doable then maybe a bit more through aperture or even more light. But at that point you'll have a scene practically looking like day anddd... yeah I was focusing a bit too much on "overexpose the slow stock!" lol

AND YES, SADLY :'(

Thanks again Geoff!

[bilbofett]

The Aliens SE in HD looks more filmic and grainy than the Abyss screening did in 4k. Different film stock? Treatment? We'll have to see next week (and when they come out on disc)

[Jbabler]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

Nothing cringey about the line "keep your pantyhose on." To me it isn't any different than someone saying to a male "put on your your big boy pants."

It's a Idiom as in saying to behave as a mature adult. It's to imply that one is not behaving in such a way...nothing more.

The idiom is actually "Keep your pants on" and it's meaning is "calm down".

Referring instead to pantyhose is Bud's playful take on it.

[Dr. T]

Originally Posted by admccroan

And the overuse of the phrase “keep your pantyhose on” was cringey.

If you think that's "cringey" I've got a line for you from "True Lies."