The Curse of Frankenstein 4K UHD (1957) Hammer Pre-order

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Seems to be a hell of a lot of this going on lately. People defending the sanctity of their own personal preferences, as if it's what the filmmakers definitely intended. Yet how many living directors and filmmakers are being dismissed and trashed for approving something x person didn't like?

It all seems pretty silly and unnecessary. It's okay to like or prefer something even if it isn't what was originally intended. I mean filmmakers back then weren't intending for audiences to see direct OCN scans with digital grading and consumer-style HDR, yet everybody seems to be completely fine with that.

I also think people often hide behind a supposed anti-revisionist stance to defend their arguments, often without realizing the extent of how revisionist their own preferences are just because it's what they grew up with. The past they remember in home video is often far more revisionist than what we are getting now, even though they don't realize it, but that's how the history of home video really is. This is the best it's ever been, and not even close, in every way possible.

[Deadend45]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

I also think people often hide behind a supposed anti-revisionist stance to defend their arguments

And the pro-revisionists who never seen a film print claim thats what the film looked like when something that can only be done digitally was applied to the transfer. But tell me about pancake make-up again. lol

Hiding behind 'director approved' (even when the director is dead) does not make a title like the film was when first released.

[Pecker]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Seems to be a hell of a lot of this going on lately. People defending the sanctity of their own personal preferences, as if it's what the filmmakers definitely intended. Yet how many living directors and filmmakers are being dismissed and trashed for approving something x person didn't like?

It all seems pretty silly and unnecessary. It's okay to like or prefer something even if it isn't what was originally intended. I mean filmmakers back then weren't intending for audiences to see direct OCN scans with digital grading and consumer-style HDR, yet everybody seems to be completely fine with that.

For the record, I have no personal preference. My view is purely from watching the film in both 1.37:1 and 1.66:1, and my personal opinion is that some shots look better in one ratio and others in the other. And by ‘better’ I don’t mean in a ‘personal preference’ way, I mean how they are composed compared with other films of the era.

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Originally Posted by Pecker

For the record, I have no personal preference. My view is purely from watching the film in both 1.37:1 and 1.66:1, and my personal opinion is that some shots look better in one ratio and others in the other. And by ‘better’ I don’t mean in a ‘personal preference’ way, I mean how they are composed compared with other films of the era.

That's not irregular for early widescreen films though, as this wasn't long after the transition and filmmakers were adapting to a whole new format. Personally, I think there's more shots in On the Waterfront that look better in 1.37:1, than there are in Curse of Frankenstein, and I'd never say that On the Waterfront wasn't a widescreen film.

What you're suggesting is that the film was mainly composed for 1.37:1, and sorry, but there is absolutely no convincing evidence supporting this take. If a film was that compromised then there would be obvious issues. Try doing a 2.35:1 center crop of a 1.85:1 film for example, and see how that looks; I imagine you'd have undeniable issues with the opening credits themselves for a lot of films.

I briefly looked back at the HTF thread, and maybe you should too. A lot of your arguments were based on terribly flawed references, which others were telling you at the time (and were proven correct). It seemed you were basing your take off the Hammer restoration assuming that the geometry was correct and that the scan and 4:3 framing was consistent which didn't appear to be the case. I liked RAH's analogy about Hammer desiring a boiled egg, yet when it came time to put the egg in, they dropped in an onion. You were endlessly debating how an onion should be handled, acting as if it was an egg.

[Hammerlover]

We're getting THREE different aspect ratios and people are still kvetching. Oy.

[ste71]

Originally Posted by Hammerlover

We're getting THREE different aspect ratios and people are still kvetching. Oy.

It was exactly the same over 10 years ago when Icon released their Blu. Lordy.

[Cat Vision]

Originally Posted by Deadend45

Hiding behind 'director approved' (even when the director is dead) does not make a title like the film was when first released.

Which is good, because no blu-ray or UHD should look like a 4th generation print from 1957.

[Jaymole]

Originally Posted by Hammerlover

We're getting THREE different aspect ratios and people are still kvetching. Oy.

Yes, its completely meshuga

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by Hammerlover

We're getting THREE different aspect ratios and people are still kvetching. Oy.

They should have converted it to 3D, the deep aspect of the future!

Why are we stuck with our old movies looking so flat?

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by Deadend45

And the pro-revisionists who never seen a film print claim thats what the film looked like when something that can only be done digitally was applied to the transfer. But tell me about pancake make-up again. lol

The biggest example of what you are talking about is actually the haters of teal, people who argue that any teal is revisionist, even when it's demonstrably proven that teal tints existed in many classic films. And even when they get proof of that, including for movies they complain as being "modernized with teal", they deny it with arguments like "print must have faded to teal", even though prints actually fade to magenta. And when they are told there's no such a thing as a print fading to teal, they say "that print must have been doctored to look modern!". Such crowd is hiding behind anti-revisionism to defend their own revisionist preferences.

[Deciazulado]

Magenta and red are opposites to green and cyan (teal) so if a negative fades towards that, it's "positive" image fades towards cyan green. And the opposite is true.

About teal (blue greens) not being "available" in films of yore, studying the P3 color gamut, tho P3 corresponds and encompasses up to the RGB color points of tri-color separation filters, it still doesn't cover the whole gamut of Technicolor and chromogenic film dyes, particularly on the blue green spectrum (needs 2020 for that) so even P3 cant do some of the teal/cyans film could.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Magenta and red are opposites to green and cyan (teal) so if a negative fades towards that, it's "positive" image fades towards cyan green. And the opposite is true.

About teal (blue greens) not being "available" in films of yore, studying the P3 color gamut, tho P3 corresponds and encompasses up to the RGB color points of tri-color separation filters, it still doesn't cover the whole gamut of Technicolor and chromogenic film dyes, particularly on the blue green spectrum (needs 2020 for that) so even P3 cant do some of the teal/cyans film could.

I was talking about release prints, like the ones in filmcolors.org

I've seen an article saying that in film there are dyes, in the green-blue spectrum if I remember correctly, that not even Rec. 2020 can do!

[Deciazulado]

I posted a CIE '31 x,y color diagram map in one of the early "HDR" threads, that mapped and included the color points of several Kodak, Fuji, etc. color films, Maybe in one of the "crayons" threads. I think there were a couple of hue points (mainly blue green) that fell outside of the 2020 bluegreen line, but just a couple.

Recently, thanks to Napoléon I stumbled on a diagram of it with the Technicolor dyes' points, which I'd been looking for a long while, overlaid over the P3 triangle, but it is in different CIE coordinates, so I would have to measure the points along the blue green curve that fall outside of P3 and using a color calculator, recalculate them for Cie '31 x,y to compare properly. But the Tech IB blue greens seem will fall inside the 2020.

Another issue is that color scientists and photographers often use a white point of D50 (or sometimes Illuminant "C"), so after you calculate the points, you have to use a chromacity eye adaptation calculator to remap those to D65, which is what is used on "video". (And movies kind of use ~D60 in projection).

I did that when I compared the RGB color filters used in film tri-color separation from Kodak's Wratten filter specifications book, and when they recalculated, they fell onto the three P3's D65 RGB x,y chromaticities' points.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

I posted a CIE '31 x,y color diagram map in one of the early "HDR" threads, that mapped and included the color points of several Kodak, Fuji, etc. color films, Maybe in one of the "crayons" threads. I think there were a couple of hue points (mainly blue green) that fell outside of the 2020 bluegreen line, but just a couple.

Recently, thanks to Napoléon I stumbled on a diagram of it with the Technicolor dyes' points, which I'd been looking for a long while, overlaid over the P3 triangle, but it is in different CIE coordinates, so I would have to measure the points along the blue green curve that fall outside of P3 and using a color calculator, recalculate them for Cie '31 x,y to compare properly. But the Tech IB blue greens seem will fall inside the 2020.

Another issue is that color scientists and photographers often use a white point of D50 (or sometimes Illuminant "C"), so after you calculate the points, you have to use a chromacity eye adaptation calculator to remap those to D65, which is what is used on "video". (And movies kind of use ~D60 in projection).

I did that when I compared the RGB color filters used in film tri-color separation from Kodak's Wratten filter specifications book, and when they recalculated, they fell onto the three P3's D65 RGB x,y chromaticities' points.

Interesting. I found the article I was thinking about. Starts in page 71 of the PDF below. It's called "The Case for Multi-spectral Scanning of Historical Colour Films". I got my details wrong though, regarding the green-blue dyes. Anyway, I would love your thoughts.

https://www.calameo.com/fiaf/read/00091854063f747f857c4

[Deciazulado]

Oh that's the one I was talking about, shows P3 vs Technicolor, I mentioned on the Napoléon 4K and the Rob Zombie Devil's Rejects 4K threads

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

<snip>These are assumptions of what's on the discs/video frames, the only way to be certain would be to compare the video images to actual frames showing sprockets to compare dimensions, like these from the International Federation of Film Archives' Journal of Film Preservation April issue (very good articles, specially to me one about the accuracy of color in film scans and preservation (in simple words: Not accurate/not archival yet) that gave me information I've been looking for a while: Technicolor's color gamut as it compares to UHD-HDR/modern TV's.

Maybe if I search, I'll find the one I posted ~a decade ago, the dawn of HDR.


This in a sense is relevant, as the Technicolor Hammer prints I saw as a kid could be drenched in Technicolours like.. blood