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

[horseflesh]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Well, long story short, Slumdog Millionaire ruled the night with other highlights being Christopher Nolan's speech on behalf of Heath Ledger……
and the comeback kid, namely Mickey Rourke, who made sure to thank his dogs (living as well as deceased) at the end of his acceptance speech.

Speaking of Slumdog Millionaire, I’ve got to search for a post from that Slumdog fan from Austrailia.

One moment……….

What about my man Colin Farrell??

[BluDomain]

Originally Posted by horseflesh

What about my man Colin Farrell??

Missing on the homefront.
http://www.bafta.org/awards/film/fil...09,657,BA.html

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The imdb site won’t tell you this because I don’t believe they itemize by percentages but, you may be interested to know that easily more than half of Slumdog was captured with an SI-2K, which is a 2k digital camera.

There is an interesting article about this in a magazine about digital cinema/cameras that I was looking at recently at Borders. Don't remember the name of the magazine though.

[horseflesh]

Originally Posted by BluDomain

Missing on the homefront.
http://www.bafta.org/awards/film/fil...09,657,BA.html

I know, it seems weird that Colin won a Golden Globe, yet isn't even nominated for a Bafta
(of course the comedy/musical acting categories in the GGs are the reason, and CF being nominated for a Best Actor Bafta would have been a real push).

Still, good to see another Dubliner nominated
By the way Penton, Brendan Gleeson lives in Malahide

[rlsmith]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

This has been all over the web for a while now and wile probably almost everybody except for Mr. Storaro agrees with most of your points they do not really matter as apparently Mr. Storaro is the men when it comes to decide on the AR of both The Last Emperor and Apocalypse Now. So in releasing this movie Criterion could only go wrong and the best might have been to respectfully tell to Mr. Storaro that they would agree to a compromise AR of the 70mm prints (2.20) or else that they would not want to produce the Blu-Ray until he reconsiders. In the end the changed AR hurts their sales and that is too bad as they are just starting out with Blu-Ray and need some good sales to justify more Blu-Ray releases.

With regard to grain: It might be more than you like but I am certain they did not create it to annoy you, it was already there in the elements they used. And of course it would be nice if they had used the 6 channel magnetic 70mm soundtracks for the sound on the Blu-Ray. After all that was apparently the preferred and intended presentation form for the movie.

Thanks, I agree with much of this. I am sorry I am being repetitive, I did want to add some information from my recollections of the film.

As I have told Criterion, I would simply have passed on this release in this condition were I in Criterion's position. They have a reputation to uphold, and I think this hurts them.

With regard to grain: all video versions of TLE have been grainy, I owned 3 different LD's and have seen another DVD. However, my recollection of the 70mm print is that it was not grainy at all.

The colors of the 70mm print were also much brighter and more dazzling. The Blu-ray is muted in comparison.

Finally, the 70mm sound presentation suggests that a DTS 4.0 could have been made for the Blu-ray that would be better than what is on the Blu-ray. I did compare the PCM Dolby Surround 2.0 on my LD to the Blu-ray and I cannot hear much difference. In general, the magnetic tracks from old 70mm films are yielding much better Blu-rays than TLE.

[I am a former union projectionist so I feel qualified to talk about presentation.]

All of these are secondary issues compared to the AR obviously.

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by rlsmith

As I have told Criterion, I would simply have passed on this release in this condition were I in Criterion's position. They have a reputation to uphold, and I think this hurts them.

As this is Penton-Man's thread I also would like to hear his take on this and if he can imagine other companies passing on this altogether instead of releasing the movie in 2.0.

Kind of like David Leans' director of photography saying that he always composed Lawrence of Arabia for the academy format of 1.85:1

Of course in a situation where the studio holds all the rights another option would be to tell the DOP that this kind of revisionism is not really well liked with customers and that for that reason alone the movie will be released in its theatrical AR.

[Bluhorizon]

Originally Posted by Deimos

The question is if there is actualy anyone who really likes Storaro's 2:1 aspect ratio decision.

By the way, I'm interested too if there's an answer regarding the issue with subtitles in black bars on most Sony Pictures titles.

At least Sony usually has the full range of subtitles, unlike most other studios.

This then brings up the question (again): When will we expect to see (if ever) subtitles of your choice through BD Live?

[Penton-Man]

Thanks for the invite Max but, my participation here and elsewhere on this forum is going to be curtailed as I’m still playing catch-up since the holidays and CES.
While I’m here though, let me take this opportunity to give folks in the L.A. area a quick heads-up for a local screening of TCCoBB (Benjamin Button) at the AFI at ArcLight next Wed. which has a Q & A with screenwriter Eric Roth……………
http://www.afi.com/onscreen/arclight...ght.aspx#sched

If anyone is interested, purchase your tickets ASAP because some of these screenings sell out before you know it (see Wall-E, above).
I don’t think that Eric will get into the post- production side of it, however, at a Hollywood Section Meeting last September…….
http://www.hsmpte.org/2008%20Meeting...025%202008.htm (< hey, Stacey Spears, that guy on the far left with the beard is your inspiration. )

anyway, it was mentioned by the post production supervisor as well as Pat C. that Lowry Digital performed their magic on this feature film actually as part of the post-production process rather than in the restoration sense that most here are familiar with, such as the James Bond titles.
Specifically, after a primary color correction at MPI, the images were digitally
processed to produce a consistent amount noise and sharpness for the entire film.
I can get more into it when the Blu-ray itself actually streets.

In the meantime, like Wally P. for The Dark Knight, Claudio M. for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is on the short list here…
http://www.theasc.com/news/News_Articles/News_200.php

with the Oscar Nominations Announcement coming up this Thursday.
No other news to report except for the fact that what seems to be taking up a lot of peoples’ time and efforts is discovering a truly killer app for BD-Live.

Later.

[Jeff Kleist]

Specifically, after a primary color correction at MPI, the images were digitally
processed to produce a consistent amount noise and sharpness for the entire film.
I can get more into it when the Blu-ray itself actually streets.

And if I remember correctly, Zodiac had a similar process applied yes?

[Penton-Man]

Yes, you remember correctly.

I commented on that feature film looong time ago in regards to David F.’s pushing the low end of the primary acquisition device (shot in 4:4:4 RGB DPX format) and if Zodiac hadn’t been Lowry-ized during post, it would surely have ended up looking similar to Miami Vice, which was not the intent of David Fincher for Zodiac.
The captured underexposed footage just had too much noise which obscured detail.

Given the success with the Lowry process during the post production of Zodiac, the filmmakers decided to make Lowry Digital part of the standard workflow for Benjamin Button.

[scott1256ca]

Penton, or Robert Harris, or whoever else would be "in the know":
If you were to apply the best process for grain removal (probably Lowry?) to a single scene, and by that I mean nothing out of the ordinary about the scene, i.e. one which had consistent grain in it, fairly consistent lighting etc., then were to add grain back in to mimic what was removed, how difficult would it be for someone to tell the difference between the original and the new scene (with all that horrid DNR )? Could it fool an expert who was not familiar with the original? How about a "well schooled hobbyist"? A layman?
Are there obvious differences?

When I say "add grain back in to mimic the original", I mean same amount, same grain size etc. For purposes here, assume the "best" process you are aware of which adds grain. Finally, how would that "best" process compare to (for example) Thomsons FGT?

Thanks

[Robert Harris]

Originally Posted by scott1256ca

If you were to apply the best process for grain removal to a single scene, and by that I mean nothing out of the ordinary about the scene, i.e. one which had consistent grain in it, fairly consistent lighting etc., then were to add grain back in to mimic what was removed, how difficult would it be for someone to tell the difference between the original and the new scene (with all that horrid DNR )? Could it fool an expert who was not familiar with the original? How about a "well schooled hobbyist"? A layman?
Are there obvious differences?

When I say "add grain back in to mimic the original", I mean same amount, same grain size etc. For purposes here, assume the "best" process you are aware of which adds grain. Finally, how would that "best" process compare to (for example) Thomsons FGT?

Thanks

I'm not certain that I understand your question.

If one does things properly, it would be extremely difficult to tell the difference, especially on video. If taken back to film, one could examine the grain structure under a microscope. Each film's stock under normal processing has its own granular fingerprint. If "horrid DNR" were to be applied, extremely easy.

[scott1256ca]

I'm not certain that I understand your question.

If one does things properly, it would be extremely difficult to tell the difference, especially on video. If taken back to film, one could examine the grain structure under a microscope. Each films stock under normal processing has its own granular fingerprint. If "horrid DNR" were to be applied, extremely easy.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I wasn't interested in creating a forgery, so microscopes are not a requirement
Assume the 2 alternatives are
1. BD (or 2k) created with "most accurate transfer possible", i.e. what you did with Godfather (which I quite liked by the way). In fact, why not use Godfather as the example. Pick any scene from it you like. So some scene from the Godfather on either BD or 2k
vs.
2. BD (or 2k) created with no DNR except grain removal by Lowry (or some better process if you know of one), then played back using Thomson FGT with settings to create grain much like the original. If you know of a better process for adding grain than Thomson, you can assume that.

BTW, I have no idea if the Thomson process has the option for setting amount of grain or size of the grain or any other parameters.

My question was, on playing back on a high end setup, would the processed scene look convincing if played back next to the original?

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Penton-Man]

It sounds like you’re basically asking if one can tell the difference between “natural” grain and “artificial” grain. That probably depends on multiple factors, i.e. the experience of the movie watcher, the skills of the operator and the tools utilized to regrain.

In real world working conditions, what people strive for is to avoid mismatched grain structure which can just ruin a composited scene because grain in the different elements tends to dance to different beats.
A common technique used in VFX houses is to degrain the elements prior to compositing and then regrain the composited scene to make it look more natural than it would without doing anything at all. Most high-end facilities do a good job at it.

The Vistavision capture in The Dark Knight had noticeably different grain structure than the IMAX footage so a lot of work was done (at 6k) to degrain the Vista stuff and then regrain the images with IMAX grain which is much finer. Honestly, could you see any differences in grain structure between the handful of Vistavision shots and the IMAX footage?

As far as good available off the shelf regrain applications used in post, some people use Shake with Filmlight's plug-in TrueLight Kodak Vision Premier and select whichever Kodak Eastman film grain stock option they desire (such as Kodak 5229, 5293, etc.) which is available in the library.

[Squozen]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The imdb site won’t tell you this because I don’t believe they itemize by percentages but, you may be interested to know that easily more than half of Slumdog was captured with an SI-2K, which is a 2k digital camera.

Yes, I know. There was plenty of digital noise in low light scenes to give that away.

What I really liked was the extreme processing of the colours and contrast - it gave it a very exciting, exotic look. Very similar to parts of Danny Boyle's 'Millions'.

There was an interesting interview with Boyle or his DOP discussing how they got that footage in Mumbai - basically the guts of the cameras were in backpacks and the operators just had a small box with the sensor attached to the lens, and had a lot of mobility without obviously looking like they were shooting a major motion picture (as they would have done with a shoulder-mounted 35mm or steadicam rig).

[scott1256ca]

thank you, yes, that about answers it.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Squozen

What I really liked was the extreme processing of the colours and contrast - it gave it a very exciting, exotic look.......

Translation – “I liked the work that was done in the DI suite.”

Since, this is another one of those hybrid imagery acquisitions that was shot with both film and digital cameras (80%), it should be no surprise that some de-graining and sharpening was performed during the non-linear color grading, so that the 35mm capture would flow seamlessly with the digitally acquired images. Like you, I also think that the resultant imagery looks superb.

Although, I’m certain the unfiltered dogmatists out there in *science* that just read what I typed, are now grinding their teeth and have begun to polish their magnifying glasses to hunt for halos and count grain particles for when the Blu-ray edition debuts but, you know what – none of those *types* have won a Golden Globe or have an American Society of Cinematographers nomination for Outstanding Achievement.

[Penton-Man]

Quick Note – “Are You Talking To Me?”..........

I received a bunch of PM’s from people having the impression that Tax Driver is streeting on Feb. 3 and therefore asking about specs and info on extras.
I’m not sure where that info/street date came from but, don’t plan on seeing Taxi Driver appear on Blu-ray on 2/3. I certainly never said that it would and there was never any official announcement from SPHE.

[Slec]

and before anyone gets riled up about the news post on this site from July
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1583
"As these are all unofficial announcements no additional information is known at this time." <my emphasis>

[Bobby Henderson]

The only Scorsese movie getting released on Blu-ray anytime soon is Raging Bull, which streets on February 10. I don't know any of the particulars about that disc. I just hope MGM does a great job with the release.