The Hobbit Trilogy 4K UHD Extended & Theatrical (2012-2014)

[mrferder]

Originally Posted by FritzKubrick

I don't know exactly what Bill means by this.

"For this new Ultra HD master, it appears that Park Road Post (a New Zealand post facility owned by WingNut Films) went back to the original RAW files for live action footage (without VFX) and upsampled the VFX (rendered at 2K) to create a new 4K Digital Intermediate."

It could mean they remastered all the live action and then put the upscaled VFX back into the film. So that that the image contains both true 4K and upscaled 2K simultaneously.

If WarnerBros wanted to do a good job marketing these collections, they should have released a promo video explaining the remastering process, like they used to do whenever Wizard of Oz was released on a new form of home media and they would show the post team scanning the film strips and digitally removing the dust and scratches. It would help clarify things for us nerds, while also showing the average consumers what the big deal is with this 4k remaster (and why they should justify upgrading). Something like the video Peter Jackson did to describe the remastering of his WW1 footage for "They Shall Not Grow Old" would have been great. Instead all we get is a web-cam video of Sean Austin standing against a white wall holding a sword.

[Vader815]

I don't love the Hobbit movies, but I think it sometimes goes unmentioned how difficult to adapt the book really is. It's ultimately a series of episodic encounters that often get resolved in a dues ex machina kind of way (Gandalf, The Eagles, etc). Worse, there's a big ensemble of characters that lack individual characteristics much less character arcs. The Hobbit is more logical as an expensive mini-series in that sense than a feature film.

Any attempt to adapt it into a feature will inevitably require significant liberties to give the movie dramatic shape and structure required by a film. Do I think the liberties taken to do this by PJ and co achieved this? I don't, but I see how much the deck was stacked against them, particularly under the insane time constraints they found themselves in.

They certainly didn't make their lives any easier expanding 2 films into 3 with loads of excess and hollow content. It's a shame, really.

[Neon Kitten]

Originally Posted by mrferder

they should have released a promo video explaining the remastering process, like they used to do whenever Wizard of Oz was released on a new form of home media and they would show the post team scanning the film strips and digitally removing the dust and scratches. It would help clarify things for us nerds, while also showing the average consumers what the big deal is with this 4k remaster (and why they should justify upgrading).

Yes, exactly. I wasn't even going to bother with the Hobbit set as I just presumed they'd all be the existing 2K DIs upscaled, but having learned that they actually went back to the camera files to re-compile the movies (and apparently did some CG fixes as well) I figured it was worth my $62. I'm glad I did, based on the quick look I had at the first movie. It looks stunning.

Totally agree that Warner (or Jackson) needs to put out some sort of "here's what we did to make these look better than before" video, and fast.

(Although the sets are both selling like hot cakes here in Australia, the store person who sold me mine yesterday said she likely wouldn't have time to even put them on the shelves before they were all gone!)

[philthehip]

Originally Posted by pottyaboutpotter1

IIRC the story goes that Billy Connolly was struggling to act through all the prosthetics, with a mixture of that and Parkinson's disease making him forget his lines, leaving Peter Jackson fairly unhappy with his performance. Connolly was also beginning to undergo treatment for prostate cancer as well. Using CGI was the only way to 'reshoot' Connolly's scenes without placing him under the prosthetics, shooting the scenes in a more relaxed environment for Connolly and without having to reshoot other actors scenes as well. I'm fairly certain only one live-action shot of Dain made it into the films, which is the very last shot of the character at the funeral in TBOTFA Extended Edition.

With the greatest respect to Billy Connolly someone should have made the decision to recast the role. PJ and co had no trouble screwing over Stuart Townsend a day before filming started on Rings so I don't see why Connolly was not politely let go as he could not fulfill the role.

[Vashetti]

Originally Posted by Neon Kitten

Yes, exactly. I wasn't even going to bother with the Hobbit set as I just presumed they'd all be the existing 2K DIs upscaled, but having learned that they actually went back to the camera files to re-compile the movies (and apparently did some CG fixes as well) I figured it was worth my $62. I'm glad I did, based on the quick look I had at the first movie. It looks stunning.

Totally agree that Warner (or Jackson) needs to put out some sort of "here's what we did to make these look better than before" video, and fast.

(Although the sets are both selling like hot cakes here in Australia, the store person who sold me mine yesterday said she likely wouldn't have time to even put them on the shelves before they were all gone!)

Is this true? I haven't kept up with The Hobbit 4K release as much as the LOTR one.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by FritzKubrick

I don't know exactly what Bill means by this.

"For this new Ultra HD master, it appears that Park Road Post (a New Zealand post facility owned by WingNut Films) went back to the original RAW files for live action footage (without VFX) and upsampled the VFX (rendered at 2K) to create a new 4K Digital Intermediate."

It could mean they remastered all the live action and then put the upscaled VFX back into the film. So that that the image contains both true 4K and upscaled 2K simultaneously.

I'd say no, unless Bill made the specific notation of the VFX being newly composited into 6000+ shots. Which he didn't. That reads exactly like I said: shots without VFX were taken from the raw files, everything else was upsampled from the final 2K shot. That doesn't leave a whole lot of "native 4K" material...

Originally Posted by Neon Kitten

Yes, exactly. I wasn't even going to bother with the Hobbit set as I just presumed they'd all be the existing 2K DIs upscaled, but having learned that they actually went back to the camera files to re-compile the movies (and apparently did some CG fixes as well) I figured it was worth my $62. I'm glad I did, based on the quick look I had at the first movie. It looks stunning.

Following on from the above reply, note the "it appears" qualification at the start of Bill's comment there, so this isn't even specific knowledge being relayed, it's a guesstimate by someone who, quite honestly, isn't as technically minded as people think he is. He's already spread a bunch of bullshit around that Phantom Menace's UHD was transferred from a filmout (nope), that it and the other prequels had 'film look' processing applied to them (nope), he really does seem to just pull this stuff out of nowhere.

[slumcat]

Originally Posted by Vader815

I don't love the Hobbit movies, but I think it sometimes goes unmentioned how difficult to adapt the book really is. It's ultimately a series of episodic encounters that often get resolved in a dues ex machina kind of way (Gandalf, The Eagles, etc). Worse, there's a big ensemble of characters that lack individual characteristics much less character arcs.

I agree with this and even with 9 hours or 3 times what the run time should have been PJ fixed exactly ZERO of these problems. The story is still episodic, sill has duex ex machina and still have undefined characters.

So clearly the solution - of stretching it to 3 times the length failed.

I'd counter it with this, yes the book is episodic, but I think that itself becomes the structure - the entire out of frying pan into the fire theme. Of essentially a kinda darkly funny tall tale of peril after peril.

It would hold together better and make more sense when done in one go.

It seems even more disjointed now that it is split over 3 parts at odd places and has 9 hours footage and does not have 13 undefined characters but 26 with all of the added disctractions.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by philthehip

With the greatest respect to Billy Connolly someone should have made the decision to recast the role. PJ and co had no trouble screwing over Stuart Townsend a day before filming started on Rings so I don't see why Connolly was not politely let go as he could not fulfill the role.

Because Billy Connolly even sick> Stuart Townsend.

[philthehip]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

Because Billy Connolly even sick> Stuart Townsend.

So because you like Billy Connolly he deserves to impact on a movie but because Stuart Townsend was a bad choice it is acceptable to let him train and rehearse for 2 months to then be fired a day before shooting when the director realizes he made a mistake and then to shaft him properly they refuse to pay him because he hadn't work enough on the project?

Think a little yeah.

[Neon Kitten]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Following on from the above reply, note the "it appears" qualification at the start of Bill's comment there, so this isn't even specific knowledge being relayed, it's a guesstimate by someone who, quite honestly, isn't as technically minded as people think he is.

I guess ultimately, I can only trust my own eyes , and while I've only had a brief look at the first movie, it very much looked like native 4K to me - especially cross-compared with my old 1080p Blu-ray.

This is, though, why Jackson or Warner need to get out there and say exactly what was done with these releases. However we do know (via Twitter, if I recall) that the LotR trilogy is a native 4K re-scan, so it's entirely plausible that Jackson would have gone back to the camera files for The Hobbit and reassembled the movies in much the same way. Owning your own post-production house doesn't hurt

He's already spread a bunch of bullshit around that Phantom Menace's UHD was transferred from a filmout (nope), that it and the other prequels had 'film look' processing applied to them (nope), he really does seem to just pull this stuff out of nowhere.

Well, those are pretty obvious just from looking at them in all their primitive-digital-video glory. I haven't sat through them in their entirety (I didn't bother to buy the UHDs of the prequels but have access to the 4K versions on Disney+) but they'd rank for me as three of the most pointless UHD releases ever.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Neon Kitten

I guess ultimately, I can only trust my own eyes , and while I've only had a brief look at the first movie, it very much looked like native 4K to me - especially cross-compared with my old 1080p Blu-ray.

This is, though, why Jackson or Warner need to get out there and say exactly what was done with these releases. However we do know (via Twitter, if I recall) that the LotR trilogy is a native 4K re-scan, so it's entirely plausible that Jackson would have gone back to the camera files for The Hobbit and reassembled the movies in much the same way. Owning your own post-production house doesn't hurt

Yeah, but I say the same thing to everyone who says the bolded: Jackson doesn't operate it for free. Never has, never will. If no-one pays, he ain't doing jack.

As for "reassembling" them, they didn't recomposite the VFX for LOTR and they didn't do that for the Hobbitses, they used camera negative for untouched live action on the former and upscaled the rest (~500 VFX shots in FOTR, 800 shots in TTT, 1500 shots in ROTK) which still gives a goodly amount of 4K live action material in those. It's not them "appearing" to apply the same process to the Hobbitses that I'm contesting, it's that we're talking upwards of 2000 VFX shots in each movie on average (with movies that are shorter than the LOTRs to boot) so the 4K untouched live action is going to be minuscule.

That they look betterer than the 1080p discs, leaving the perceptual sharpness effect of HDR aside, well, lemme just say it wouldn't be the first (or tenth, or twentieth) time that I've seen a 2K upscale beat the original 1080p for spatial resolution ESPECIALLY when it comes to Warners and their bit-starved 1080p encodes replete with goodies like banding, not to mention the 4x chroma resolution that even an upscale has vs the 1080p disc.

But yes, I completely agree that SOME kind of remastering info would be greatly appreciated by nerds like me. People wondered aloud how this remaster managed to fly under the radar like it did and I countered with 'new transfers are going on every day of whatever movie, but we rarely hear about them until they're released' which is one thing, but the total lack of such info coming from official sources after the fact is puzzling. As someone said in this or the other thread, the best they could manage is Sean Astin talking to a webcam for a minute-long plug of this set? lol

Well, those are pretty obvious just from looking at them in all their primitive-digital-video glory. I haven't sat through them in their entirety (I didn't bother to buy the UHDs of the prequels but have access to the 4K versions on Disney+) but they'd rank for me as three of the most pointless UHD releases ever.

The pointlessness of them is not the issue, it's the nonsense being pulled out of thin air by 'trusted sources' that I'm referring to.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Got it today and it was mint until i looked at the discs.. all had fingerprints on them which were easy to get out with my shirt but battle of the five armies has a big scratch i ever seen on the back =/.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by philthehip

So because you like Billy Connolly he deserves to impact on a movie but because Stuart Townsend was a bad choice it is acceptable to let him train and rehearse for 2 months to then be fired a day before shooting when the director realizes he made a mistake and then to shaft him properly they refuse to pay him because he hadn't work enough on the project?

Think a little yeah.

Townsed who has had a history of prima Donna behavior, acting better than everyone. Ignoring direction, not showing up to rehearsal and being an all around pain who was miscast. Fine. Get rid of him. Didn’t realize Townsend’s agents are on Blu-ray forum. Make sure you tell him from me that he sucks!

[Cook]

Originally Posted by slumcat

I agree with this and even with 9 hours or 3 times what the run time should have been PJ fixed exactly ZERO of these problems. The story is still episodic, sill has duex ex machina and still have undefined characters.

So clearly the solution - of stretching it to 3 times the length failed.

I'd counter it with this, yes the book is episodic, but I think that itself becomes the structure - the entire out of frying pan into the fire theme. Of essentially a kinda darkly funny tall tale of peril after peril.

It would hold together better and make more sense when done in one go.

It seems even more disjointed now that it is split over 3 parts at odd places and has 9 hours footage and does not have 13 undefined characters but 26 with all of the added disctractions.

The hobbit is short because Tolkien summarizes and skips over a lot of fine details. Its like a 500 page story glossed over in 250 pages. It easily warranted at least 2 films. On television it would have probably received 8 - 10 hours. The issue isn't that it received 9 hours of film to tell its story. The issue is Jackson's adaption choices, and how he chose to fill out the gaps and vague summaries that the Hobbit book is riddled with.

[PissedOffPeoN]

Holy crap my mind is blown i just fast foward the battle of the fire armies all the way and it did not glitch once.. where my game of thrones messed up on menu and episode 2 and 3 and had 2 scratches. The hobbit scratch was so big though O.O.

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by Cook

The hobbit is short because Tolkien summarizes and skips over a lot of fine details. Its like a 500 page story glossed over in 250 pages. It easily warranted at least 2 films. On television it would have probably received 8 - 10 hours. The issue isn't that it received 9 hours of film to tell its story. The issue is Jackson's adaption choices, and how he chose to fill out the gaps and vague summaries that the Hobbit book is riddled with.

Well said!

[faapf]

I watched the hobbit and i believe what Bill meant is they went to the original file timeline, with finished VFX and everything already done, but just before the original grading was applied, and upscaled it to 4K and only then they did the HDR grade.

[Resettito]

Originally Posted by philthehip

With the greatest respect to Billy Connolly someone should have made the decision to recast the role. PJ and co had no trouble screwing over Stuart Townsend a day before filming started on Rings so I don't see why Connolly was not politely let go as he could not fulfill the role.

Screwing over?!!! Townsend ultimately wasn't the right choice, that happens. Can you imagine someone else than Viggo in the role?

[Resettito]

I know the making ofs and appendices always show you (though BOFA surprisingly did show moments where Peter was struggling (which were then of course taken out of context) ) the good times, etc, but I could see a lot of passion in Peter for the films. He's later said unprompted that he was really proud of them.

That the films turned out so well (and yes they have their flaws) with how little prep time he had is one heck of a feat.

[rexcrk]

I still think that the amount of hate that the Hobbit movies get is just.. not fair. Especially when you consider that the majority of those complaints could easily be applied to Lord of the Rings as well. Had the Hobbit movies come out right after LotR in ‘04, ‘05, and ‘06, we’d be hearing about “the amazing six-film Middle-earth saga from the early 2000s”. There’s no denying that between 2003 and 2012, the world just became a more cynical place (especially when it comes to “nerdy” things).

I dunno, it just really bothers me to see people whining about stuff from the Hobbit movies and then turn around and be like “yassss Lord of the Rings I love this from my childhood” when there are really a LOT of liberties taken from the source material.

It’s that whole “old thing good new thing bad” mentality that drives me crazy. My favorite example of this is one time, a friend of mine and I were watching Fear the Walking Dead. Something dumb and ridiculous happened and my friend was like “what the hell! That was so stupid and made no sense” and I said “yeah but.. what about [dumb thing] that happened on the regular Walking Dead?” and he legit said “well.. the original show is allowed to get away with stuff like that. It’s older and has earned it” like.. seriously, dude?