"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Vincent Pereira

I'm guessing the "bleach bypass look", which is very expensive to do photochemically and as such is usually reserved for select "show prints" while the bulk of the release prints are processed normally.

Vincent

Heh, beat me to it. I prefer "silver retention", it's got a more positive, almost "lucrative" spin to it...

But I always assumed, Vincent, that it was done on the neg stage. I'm sure the digital grading (contrast boost/desaturation of certain high frequency colours) would be a far more refined way of achieving the desired look, meaning the DI would be a better way to go regardless, but I'm not sure that the issue is release versus neg prints.

But, then again, I'm not a filmmaker like some people...

ps. I like how Spielberg uses it (Munich, SPR, MR, etc.), but I -love- how Fincher uses it in Se7en...

[Eternal_Sunshine]

The dubs haters are right that it's obviously the best way to watch a movie in the original language... yet they probably have never seen (heard) a really great dub.

Most countrys do not dub movies because it's too expensive and the market for, say, movies dubbed in dutch is way to small to justify the effort. Hence the dutch public is used to see movies in the original language with dutch subs – or even without, because a side effect of this is that most dutch folks speak/understand English very, very well.

Some countrys have a small market, yet still dub movies, but in a very bad, cheap way; the lip movements do not sync to the words at all and sometimes there is just one person dubbing all actors. This is done in some eastern european countrys.

But there are a few markets that are big enough to justify the cost for very professional, sophisticated dubbing. I'm from Germany and over here all movies in cinemas or on TV are dubbed. While I also watch lots of Blu-rays in the original language, I must say that german dubbing is mostly fantastic. Very in sync and with very appropriate voices for most actors. There are some actors where I actually prefer their german voices! Robert De Niro's german voice is just amazing...

P.S. Actually, Blu-ray is the first format to allow europeans to really watch movies with the original actors' voices – on that dirty old format ("DVD" or something...) we had that little thing called PAL speedup where the original 24 fps were double to 48 and then sped up by 4% to match the 50Hz PAL standard, resulting in high-pitched voices and messed up music scores. Another reason why Blu-ray is the bomb and DVDs need to go away ASAP.

[jd213]

Japan is certainly economically large enough to get its own dubs for movies, but other than kids' movies, showings are almost always subbed. They'll maybe have one dub showing at around 10am for blockbusters, while some movies have no dub showings. Otherwise the only way to see something dubbed is on TV or DVD/Blu-ray.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

The dubs haters are right that it's obviously the best way to watch a movie in the original language... yet they probably have never seen (heard) a really great dub.

I've seen a good number of them, some of them incredibly impressive in every measurable aspect (emotive performance, audiovisual alignment, recreated ambience, etc.). However, as excellent as they can be and as much as they can contribute, they will just never be the original actors' performances- even when they're re-performed by the very same actors.

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

P.S. Actually, Blu-ray is the first format to allow europeans to really watch movies with the original actors' voices – on that dirty old format ("DVD" or something...) we had that little thing called PAL speedup where the original 24 fps were double to 48 and then sped up by 4% to match the 50Hz PAL standard, resulting in high-pitched voices and messed up music scores. Another reason why Blu-ray is the bomb and DVDs need to go away ASAP.

That is also the reason why European TV stations and their HD offerings are a big joke - we now have HD airings that again have the high pitched voices and the shorter running times that we could have left behind us once and for all.

After I noticed how bad those squeaky voices and soundtracks sound I started to import DVDs from the US - no more 50Hz speedup for me.

Incredibly enough in Germany I have encountered several movie-based Blu-Rays with a 25 fps framerate, the last one being Meet Bill.

Oh well, I guess I could always try to move to the US

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

The dubs haters are right that it's obviously the best way to watch a movie in the original language... yet they probably have never seen (heard) a really great dub.

Most countrys do not dub movies because it's too expensive and the market for, say, movies dubbed in dutch is way to small to justify the effort. Hence the dutch public is used to see movies in the original language with dutch subs – or even without, because a side effect of this is that most dutch folks speak/understand English very, very well.

...yeah, I found that the general level of English in the Scandinavian countries is miles (kilometers?) better than the general level in France/Italy/Germany (present company excluded, naturally). Hell, in Stockholm I saw Sesame Street with subtitles....

Preferring the dub on aesthetic ground seems anathema, while for the sake of those with compromised sight I'd think a descriptive track would do a better job, no? Once again, I don't begrudge the choice, it's a minor compromise to the grand scheme of the disc, and it's best to give us more rather than less. As one guy that actually watches all the "extra" stuff on my discs, I'm not going to go and piss on somebody who likes to hear and not read their movies.

Still, even those in favour of dubs must admit from the start that the priority would be for the original soundtrack to be presented in the best way possible, and that all other languages should be subservient to the master track.

Wait, that sounds fascist. Ah, well, you know what I mean...

[woodspoon]

Penton, can you tell us if Sony is planning on adding more dinamic themes for Ps3 users for other movies apart from Zombieland? http://playstation.joystiq.com/2010/...theme-for-ps3/
It seems like the guys at Sony read my mind...I thought about it two months ago...and here it is!

[Jeff Kleist]

I mean, really - even subtitles are a step removed from the "true" film (for foreign films, not the few US/UK ones that were originally crafted with subtitles in mind and meant for an English-speaking audience). For those unable to understand the original language, subtitles are added so they can follow. But certainly something is lost by not understanding the original language - no translation is perfect, and certain concepts are difficult to describe outside the original language. There is an inherent disconnect between what is being said and the performance of the actor giving it. And you just plain can't focus on the visuals as much as you could if you weren't also reading the subtitles at the same time. With this in mind, do you think it would be reasonable or understandable for someone to refuse to watch any movie that had languages they could not understand? Or would you consider that foolish?

It's the same amount you lose with the dub, and half (or more) of the actors performance, not to mention the intended direction of of the director are lost. Dubs are also often produced in radically different ways than the original track. Check out Spirited Aways doc. Miyazaki directs his actors in Japanese style, everyone records together like a radio play under his direct supervision. The US dub actors record alone, and brag about making "different choices". As was mentioned above about the Dutch, my original comprehension of Japanese comes from watching subtitled TV and movies, and human beings are human beings. You still won't get all the body language, the slight tics, or all of the other cultural idiosyncricies that are in the performance, but you're also denied those inflections and other vocal traits, both universal and language specific, and leaving yourself at the tender mercy of some overworked minimum wage team who have had zero training in VoiceOver acting. So no, dubs never communicate better than subtitles, and if you don't want to watch it right, don't watch it at all

[Vincent Pereira]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Heh, beat me to it. I prefer "silver retention", it's got a more positive, almost "lucrative" spin to it...

But I always assumed, Vincent, that it was done on the neg stage. I'm sure the digital grading (contrast boost/desaturation of certain high frequency colours) would be a far more refined way of achieving the desired look, meaning the DI would be a better way to go regardless, but I'm not sure that the issue is release versus neg prints.

But, then again, I'm not a filmmaker like some people...

ps. I like how Spielberg uses it (Munich, SPR, MR, etc.), but I -love- how Fincher uses it in Se7en...

It's usually done at the print stage which is why it's more expensive/time consuming and is usually only done to select show prints, although I remember reading about at least one film that did it either to the negative itself or an intermediate, I wish I could remember what it was (I believe it was a European film but I could be wrong). I think it's not usually done at the negative stage because it's an unusual process and the filmmakers and labs don't want to risk damaging the negative.

And you're right, "silver retention" is a much better word for it.

Vincent

[Eternal_Sunshine]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

Incredibly enough in Germany I have encountered several movie-based Blu-Rays with a 25 fps framerate, the last one being Meet Bill.

To be fair, according to this list there have only eight (8) 50i Blu-rays with film-based content been released in Germany, all from minor/independent publishers.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1117941

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Still, even those in favour of dubs must admit from the start that the priority would be for the original soundtrack to be presented in the best way possible, and that all other languages should be subservient to the master track.

And that's exactly how all major publishers do it over here: lossless for the original soundtrack, lossy for dubs. Except for Sony: their releases are usually more localized, which means the dub is also lossless, but there are fewer dubbed versions on the disc. (Other majors release more "global" european editions with all the different dubs and subs.)

[Eternal_Sunshine]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

(...) leaving yourself at the tender mercy of some overworked minimum wage team who have had zero training in VoiceOver acting.

This is not how dubbing is done in markets that allow more money to be spent on dubs.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

So no, dubs never communicate better than subtitles, and if you don't want to watch it right, don't watch it at all.

With all due respect, but do you speak one of the languages in which quality dubs are made, for example German? While I agree that watching the original is the best way to watch, the dubbing over here is really very, very good. And reading subs does take you out of the picture, too. So it's really rather a case of picking your (mild) poison...

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Eternal_Sunshine

And reading subs does take you out of the picture, too. So it's really rather a case of picking your (mild) poison...

At the theater, probably. At home, I've never felt that way...

Originally Posted by woodspoon

Penton, can you tell us if Sony is planning on adding more dinamic themes for Ps3 users for other movies apart from Zombieland? http://playstation.joystiq.com/2010/...theme-for-ps3/

VERY COOL!

~Alan

[Jeff Kleist]

With all due respect, but do you speak one of the languages in which quality dubs are made, for example German? While I agree that watching the original is the best way to watch, the dubbing over here is really very, very good. And reading subs does take you out of the picture, too. So it's really rather a case of picking your (mild) poison...

Japan has top notch voice talent, and I have personally met and spent a lot of time with some of their top talent, including the Japanese James Bond (he always dubs Bond, no matter who plays him, Japanese Bugs Bunny and so on. Heck, they even still have a lively radio drama scene there. That still doesn't mean that the dubs aren't mediocre-terrible, or that the voices don't sound completely wrong for the body they inhabit (when you guys watch Ponyo, Liam Neeson and Matt Damon, while both being excellent actors IRL, are wooden, and their voices sound completely wrong for the characters they're doing. To doubly prove how bad our dubbing scene is no matter how much money is spent, Megan Fox won for best female voice acting at the video game awards for the Transformers 2 game, a performance I might add, that made her onscreen role look like Oscar material

It doesn't matter how good or bad the acting is, it only matters that it's not the film as intended to be originally exhibited. Subs only take you out of the picture if you're not practiced watching them, and while subs may be limited by the text you put on screen, a dub is always far more limited by the lip flaps available. I would also say that America spends just as much on their dubs as any other country, because just like France or Germany, or Quebec (that has "watch a movie dubbed in French and see how much better it is" day, and might have 1 in 3 theaters playing the English version despite the fact that the vast majority also speak English) we're pigheaded when it comes to such things.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

To doubly prove how bad our dubbing scene is no matter how much money is spent, Megan Fox won for best female voice acting at the video game awards for the Transformers 2 game, a performance I might add, that made her onscreen role look like Oscar material

Now, Jeff, let's have some intellectual honesty here. I know you know that award was given for the sole purpose of getting Megan Fox onto the stage at the show. Let's condemn dubs for their failings, but that is no reasonable measure.

[Jeff Kleist]

Actually it was given because a bunch of horny teenagers voted for her ass...etts. And there was a smiley for a reason

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Before my absence in this thread, I had expressed concern about the bitrate and codec thread referenced here. Keeping the stats is a noble goal, I guess, as would be the myriad of Tier and PQ/SQ threads. But, like the much pilloried "screenshot science" often admonished here, there's a clear connection made between, say, high bitrate and a preferred codec and a subsequent quality disc. I simply do not think that the connection can be made except on a disc-by-disc basis, and that even "bitrate starved" formats were able to present gloriously cinematic presentations (Forbidden Planet, Grand Prix) whereas full 50gb, high bandwidth, lossless audio presentations of films that have been scrubbed of grain and tweaked for "pop" should not be celebrated as an accomplishment.

Though I don't frequent any bitrate or codec threads, and I CERTAINLY don't frequent any "tier" threads (something which I find ridiculous at this point in time)... I do find the bitrate and codec information interesting... for several reasons.

Once upon a time, I favored AVC over VC-1, but that was before I saw what VC-1 could do with a high-bandwidth encode. Not that I hadn't seen some excellent lower bitrate VC-1 titles, but the majority of VC-1 titles I had seen were from WB... which tended to have other issues (I rarely had complaints regarding the HD DVDs I had seen from Paramount/Universal). Now I could care less about which codec is used. Before I had a "lossless" capable receiver, I preferred DTS-HD MA, but now that I have one, I could care less which "lossless" format is used. The video codecs lists can be good to keep though as it can help to explain why some movies encoded in MPEG2 on a BD25 might not have certain extras, and so forth. The specs which list the amount of disc space used can also come in handy in regards to extras... as well as a source for anger for why WB chose to not offer "lossless" on a certain title even though they had room to... something which hopefully won't be an issue anymore...

As far as bitrates go, I think we're to the point where they don't matter quite as much as they used to... but I still enjoy my PS3's bitrate meter (flawed though it may be) from time to time. I certainly don't use it to "judge" the quality of the disc, though there have been times in the past where it might have helped explain certain things...

As far as "Forbidden Planet" and "Grand Prix" goes, I owned FP on HD DVD and will be double-dipping this Fall, and will probably pick up GP in a few months, and you are certainly correct regarding FP... but then, for as many complaints as I've had regarding WB and their practices (video issues, no "lossless" on TV titles, as well as lack of "lossless" on other titles in the past, etc...), I've never had an issue (to my recollection) for WB's handling of the video on classic titles... as it's generally excellent.

~Alan

[Jeff Kleist]

Bitrates are also only going to go down as encoders get better, the same that happened with DVD, except that there PQ improved because they were able to get the bitrate down.

You're going to see VC-1 being phased out over the next year or two, I know one major house just dumped it.The speed and quality improvements in the AVC encoders, which are still in active development now have enough tangible benefits to make new purchases financially feasible (faster/better encodes=more projects in the same time=more $$)

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Bitrates are also only going to go down as encoders get better, the same that happened with DVD, except that there PQ improved because they were able to get the bitrate down.

Good point!

~Alan

[Tok]

Bitrates going down is not always necessarily a good thing. Just like amping it to the max may not help starving it can be detrimental as well.

I for one was not as impressed with the quality of many DVDs over the mid 2000s and beyond timeframe. I think many studios were starving bitrates to save space for (mostly) useless fluff features that they felt they had to put on the discs to market them.

I agree the encoders will get better, but I don't want to see a repeat of degrading the feature for special features that at most get viewed a once or twice.

I was not that impressed with Warner's new HP6 disc. Just like the original five discs it seems to suffer from the Warner softee syndrome. Come to find out they stuffed a 150m movie into a 27G file space (WARNER we don't need encodes optimized for HD DVD anymore). Just like with DVD, I think many companies are overfiltering titles to save encoding space. Maybe they are fearful of giving near pristine copies to begin with. I mean Warner's is already remarketing the first two HP films in Ultimate Editions and it sounds like they used higher bitrates to improve upon the video quality.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

It's the same amount you lose with the dub, and half (or more) of the actors performance, not to mention the intended direction of of the director are lost. Dubs are also often produced in radically different ways than the original track. Check out Spirited Aways doc. Miyazaki directs his actors in Japanese style, everyone records together like a radio play under his direct supervision. The US dub actors record alone, and brag about making "different choices". As was mentioned above about the Dutch, my original comprehension of Japanese comes from watching subtitled TV and movies, and human beings are human beings. You still won't get all the body language, the slight tics, or all of the other cultural idiosyncricies that are in the performance, but you're also denied those inflections and other vocal traits, both universal and language specific, and leaving yourself at the tender mercy of some overworked minimum wage team who have had zero training in VoiceOver acting. So no, dubs never communicate better than subtitles, and if you don't want to watch it right, don't watch it at all

I never meant to say that dubs could ever communicate better than subs. I completely agree that subtitles are always better than audio dubbing, in absolutely all situations. I was saying that subtitles are already a few steps away from experiencing the true film, and audio dubbing is FURTHER steps away. They are degrees of optimality. If you understand the original language, great problem solved. If you don't understand the original language, but can read, use subtitles. If you don't understand the original language AND you can't read the subtitles for whatever reason, then and only then do you use the dub.