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

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

....ps. Nevermind. I went to AVS (links to there aren't allowed, right?)...

As far as I know….links to AVS are allowed…. they’re just frowned upon if somebody repeatedly does so, because then it begs the question, why doesn’t the member just hang out there rather than coming here………..to link there.

I haven’t seen the post or thread on the title in question but, I don’t mind if you link it here, as long as someone had something productive to contribute with some adjunctive real-time viewing.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

This got me thinking about another issue common to photography as well as cinematography: chromatic aberration. This is an optical problem that can occur with camera lenses when photographing high contrast objects, such as a brightly colored object shot in bright daylight or a silhouette of a dead tree against a sunset. The image may end up with color fringing problems on high contrast edges and even halos.

That's just another thing to think about when accusations are made that the video encoders "turned up the EE knob." The problem could very well be in the original photography itself.

I'm aware of that. I think that this is one of the definitive papers to which you refer -
Mukai, Y. Matsui, and I. Harumoto, "Effects of aspheric surfaces on optical performance and their application to lenses for 35mm Cinematography," J. SMPTE 88, 542-545 (1979).

However, usually, with a lens deficiency (I’m told), there is also some color(ed) fringing (purple, etc.) involved and it has more of a *glow* look, meaning it is diffuse and thicker, like involving a character walking toward his horse in a certain scene in a Budd Boetticher western.

A completely translucent, thin, well-defined halo is more suggestive of digital manipulation. But I'm not one to argue. If you think it's C.A., then that's o.k. with moi.

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Huh. Yeah, again, I didn't see on first viewing anything atrocious, save for what I thought to be some instances of haloing due to what I thought was mere backlight. The reviewer here, fwiw, glowed about the transfer (5/5).

I'm not sure you can provide more specifics, it might be cool (ie., what scens you think are particularly egregious and what elements of the frame to look out for. It's a genuine request, I'm not looking for furtherance intra-insider confrontation here (in case that's why you're being mildly coy), just pedagogical assistance.

Short version: I'm clearly a moron about this. Teach me (specifically) what I missed.

At least, if you care to...

**********

ps. Nevermind. I went to AVS (links to there aren't allowed, right?) As expected, there are screenshots. Yes, I see the issues they're pointing out. In motion there's some light highlighting, I found, in certain high contrast areas, but I just didn't think on my set it was -nearly- as awful looking as the SD clips they showed elsewhere on the disc (hence my question about whether you saw it on BD or not). The train scene in particular looked pretty bad in SD (exacerbating, if I take your point, the issue that was already there on the HD master used for both).

FWIW, again, these shots on my (uncalibrated laptop) monitor look decidedly worse still than the same scenes on my (calibrated) 60" Plasma, but, well, there you go. I'd still be interested if you could shed light as to what you think was the cause of what's, with this evidence, a "challenging" transfer?

pps. Any reason for the intermittent colour discoloration that I -did- manage to notice on first viewing on the left side of frame?

Days of Heaven still looks good but it is probably one of several cases where Criterion worked from masters that are a bit older and it shows.

I am saying this as many of their releases have no halos whatsoever so I would think that they got the message but do not have the resources to redo every movie they release (which imo was most unfortunate in the case of PlayTime that is also suffering from halos and mediocre detail).

[Penton-Man]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/insider-di...ml#post3628846
^ what, no comments?

At the very end of the interview, Jim talks about degraining and denoising the Aliens Blu-ray. I would have thought with the constant preoccupation on internet forums with film grain and sharpening, his remarks would have been of some, at least a little, interest?

Or perhaps …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lge_mf2JxVk

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

https://forum.blu-ray.com/insider-di...ml#post3628846
^ what, no comments?

At the very end of the interview, Jim talks about degraining and denoising the Aliens Blu-ray. I would have thought with the constant preoccupation on internet forums with film grain and sharpening, his remarks would have been of some, at least a little, interest?

Or perhaps …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lge_mf2JxVk

Oh my, I did not get that.

Sounds like revisionism at its best and it is not only the grain that has been changed. But it is the same as with Ridley Scott in so far as that nobody will deny Cameron if this is what he wants to do with Aliens and after this interview there can be no doubt about that.

I would really wish that directors and DOP leave their movies be and I applaud every studio that tries to steer them in that direction whenever the director or DOP are involved with the production of a Blu-Ray. But I guess there is only so much you can do to steer James Cameron into a direction he does not like...

[micks_address]

From reading Camerons words though it seems like the film stock used at the time let him down and he wasnt happy with the results back then.. so i guess this has given him the opportunity to make things right.. as long as of course it doesnt end up being dnr'd to death...

Originally Posted by Oliver K

Oh my, I did not get that.

Sounds like revisionism at its best and it is not only the grain that has been changed. But it is the same as with Ridley Scott in so far as that nobody will deny Cameron if this is what he wants to do with Aliens and after this interview there can be no doubt about that.

I would really wish that directors and DOP leave their movies be and I applaud every studio that tries to steer them in that direction whenever the director or DOP are involved with the production of a Blu-Ray. But I guess there is only so much you can do to steer James Cameron into a direction he does not like...

[micks_address]

hi folks,

i have a question re how the black bars are mastered on blu-ray dics for 2:25:1 material.. are they part of the film negative or are they added as part of the mastering process? Are the bars always the same level of blackness? can they vary in shade based on ecode type used or bit rate etc?

Apologies if this is a very basic question! Just having some flucuating brightness on my new Panasonic Plasma and its head wrecking.. seems most obvious with blu-rays that are 2:35:1

Cheers,
Mick

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by micks_address

From reading Camerons words though it seems like the film stock used at the time let him down and he wasnt happy with the results back then.. so i guess this has given him the opportunity to make things right.. as long as of course it doesnt end up being dnr'd to death...

Well, with the light conditions he shot in there is no way that he could have shot without having visible grain even with different stocks. So he could have taken down the grain a notch or two if he wanted to emulate better film stock but obviously this is not what he wanted - he wanted for Aliens to look completely different from its original look. I always thought the grain and the murkiness added tremendously to the atmosphere of the movie - not anymore I guess...

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by micks_address

hi folks,

i have a question re how the black bars are mastered on blu-ray dics for 2:25:1 material.. are they part of the film negative or are they added as part of the mastering process? Are the bars always the same level of blackness? can they vary in shade based on ecode type used or bit rate etc?

Apologies if this is a very basic question! Just having some flucuating brightness on my new Panasonic Plasma and its head wrecking.. seems most obvious with blu-rays that are 2:35:1

Cheers,
Mick

The black bars are generated digitally - if you want to know a little more about film and film formats go to widescreenmuseum.com.

There is a Hi-Res gallery there that features many film frames so that you can see how these originally looked.

I would guess that you have some automatic brightness/contrast setting switched to on and that is mucking up the black bars.

[madshi]

Originally Posted by micks_address

From reading Camerons words though it seems like the film stock used at the time let him down and he wasnt happy with the results back then.. so i guess this has given him the opportunity to make things right.. as long as of course it doesnt end up being dnr'd to death...

Well, he didn't say he toned the grain down a bit. He explicitely and very clearly said that he removed *ALL* the grain. I fear for the worst.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

[Show spoiler]If at the end of the flick, Laeddis still was under the delusion that he was “Teddy”, he wouldn’t have gone so willingly with the orderlies for his ice-pick lobotomy.

In the Blu-ray extras, I think some of the filmmakers (other than Laeta) also make reference to the ending . That may be of help to you too.

Heh.... It's a good point, but:

[Show spoiler]There's an argument to be made that he's now blocking exactly what they're going to be doing to him, the same thing that "broke" in his head is now making him not cope with what's really going on.

I agree that the film points to him actively deciding to be lobotomized, I simply suggest that there remains a moment of doubt about whether that's in fact the case

Again, we're debating the nature of character here, and in this case it really is subjective. Agree or not, I think it a bit more subtle than "he's now fine and going to his doom", just as those that think the top has to fall in Inception (no dream) or that it hasn't fallen yet (dream). That, remember, was my original point, that sometimes by not answering such questions the film is actually richer for it. If, in this case, you feel that Shutter Island ends without any mystery (the way, for example, Se7en neatly ties everything up), then, cool! I read it as more, er, "ambivalent", but such is the nature of exegesis I guess...

What we're not debating is that while SI doesn't rise to the level of his greatest films, it's a pretty damn compelling work that's far more than some silly spooky-fest that the trailers made it out to be. Ruffalo in particular is pretty excellent in it (a guy that obviously DOES know all the angles, being, you know, of sound mind).

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

As far as I know….links to AVS are allowed…. they’re just frowned upon if somebody repeatedly does so, because then it begs the question, why doesn’t the member just hang out there rather than coming here………..to link there.

I haven’t seen the post or thread on the title in question but, I don’t mind if you link it here, as long as someone had something productive to contribute with some adjunctive real-time viewing.

Starts with a link back to the positive review here at bd.com

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ht=days+heaven

Ends with:

Days of Heaven definitely is EE, it's fairly egregious and obvious.
I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise after looking at the screenshots above.

Pretty straightforward.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

https://forum.blu-ray.com/insider-di...ml#post3628846
^ what, no comments?

At the very end of the interview, Jim talks about degraining and denoising the Aliens Blu-ray. I would have thought with the constant preoccupation on internet forums with film grain and sharpening, his remarks would have been of some, at least a little, interest?

Or perhaps …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lge_mf2JxVk

well, he does say that he did it to the "long" version (the "FM mix"). He obviously wasn't happy with the original grain. The question is, given the branching, whether or not we'll have jumps from old-to-new, or if the original cut is merely a subset of this new, "cleaned up" version.

But, yeah, interesting clip, especially with regards to the notions of "definitive". The same claims regarding the "film that was nominated for X number of academy awards" applies to more than a few films that have seen revisions, without a proper archive, at least at home, of the original version.

[Oliver K]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

well, he does say that he did it to the "long" version (the "FM mix"). He obviously wasn't happy with the original grain. The question is, given the branching, whether or not we'll have jumps from old-to-new, or if the original cut is merely a subset of this new, "cleaned up" version.

He specifially said he went over the complete movie and when he talked about eliminating the grain it certainly was also meant for the whole movie or otherwise the new Blu-Ray would look really silly with jumps from heavy grain to no grain at all

I doubt we will see seamless branching between the longer cut and the theatrical cut but it would of course be a nice surpise to have both when I really only expect the long cut.

Originally Posted by sharkshark

But, yeah, interesting clip, especially with regards to the notions of "definitive". The same claims regarding the "film that was nominated for X number of academy awards" applies to more than a few films that have seen revisions, without a proper archive, at least at home, of the original version.

In most cases I find it unfortunate to not have a movie available in its original theatrical cut and look. At least for the content I would have thought that seamless branching would allow is to be able to have both versions on one disc but it seems that this feature is not used very often.

It seems to happen more often now with the Blu-Ray format where within the limits of the format the look and/or the content of the theatrical presentation is not available anymore but instead a different looking and/or longer version.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Starts with a link back to the positive review here at bd.com

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ht=days+heaven

Ends with:

Good thread. I recognize many of the names of the contributors from thee ole days when I participated over there.

I really should invite ‘oink’ over here because I miss him and I think that he and Kram would provide some balance to Blu-ray.com, not to mention the fact that I was recently reading that investing in real estate in Bend, Oregon was a very wise thing to do for the future. Article said…. thumbs–up to Bend and thumbs-down to Naples and Miami.

You’ve also got some heavy hitters posting on those two pages of that thread. I remember last conversing in an AVS thread with ‘ChrisWiggles’ about the Sony encoders of the day to which the likes of Ben Waggoner (from Microsoft) and I think Stacey also got involved in the robust discussion.

Chris W. knows his stuff. Also, my old friend mhafner probably gets more face time on audio/video forums vis-à-vis links to his classic article on DNR with the companion article by his partner at the time, Bjoern Roy, regarding the topic of EE than anyone I recall off-hand.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by micks address

From reading Camerons words though it seems like the film stock used at the time let him down and he wasnt happy with the results back then

I can't remember where I read it, but I'm pretty sure film stock limitations were a big culprit in why Cameron chose to film Aliens in the 1.85:1 format rather than crop down to 2.35:1. In cropping to 'scope the grain would have been significantly enlarged. He could have filmed Aliens in 4/35 anamorphic (like the original movie was filmed), but James Cameron has avoided shooting anamorphic. It's easier to shoot a movie with spherical lenses.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Heh.... It's a good point, but:

[Show spoiler]There's an argument to be made that he's now blocking exactly what they're going to be doing to him, the same thing that "broke" in his head is now making him not cope with what's really going on.

I agree that the film points to him actively deciding to be lobotomized, I simply suggest that there remains a moment of doubt about whether that's in fact the case

Again, we're debating the nature of character here, and in this case it really is subjective. Agree or not, I think it a bit more subtle than "he's now fine and going to his doom", just as those that think the top has to fall in Inception (no dream) or that it hasn't fallen yet (dream). That, remember, was my original point, that sometimes by not answering such questions the film is actually richer for it. If, in this case, you feel that Shutter Island ends without any mystery (the way, for example, Se7en neatly ties everything up), then, cool! I read it as more, er, "ambivalent", but such is the nature of exegesis I guess...

What we're not debating is that while SI doesn't rise to the level of his greatest films, it's a pretty damn compelling work that's far more than some silly spooky-fest that the trailers made it out to be. Ruffalo in particular is pretty excellent in it (a guy that obviously DOES know all the angles, being, you know, of sound mind).

Have you watched both of the supplements on the Blu-ray disc of Shutter Island?

[Show spoiler]Well, yeah!, I think that any sane person will have a “moment of doubt” up until the very last second as to having somebody knock an ice pick thru your orbital plate and scramble your frontal lobe(s).

I don’t think he’s blocking anything as exemplified by the fact that he says “Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?” Shark, I really think that you’re over-analyzing the situation.

The really, really sad thing I find about the ending isn’t so much that Laeddis has decided to commit ‘soul sacrifice’, which is undeniably sad and poignant in itself, but also that Dr. Cawley was clueless to the fact that his method actually worked and the implication was that those of the mindset of Dr. Naehring would continue to practice *old school psychiatry* now with little or no impediment from the Board. It was a great blow to Dr. Cawley given how much he cared for his patients.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Oliver K

Oh my, I did not get that.

Best thing about the interview is that Jim doesn’t say “DVNR” like some marketing rep.

[wallendo]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

https://forum.blu-ray.com/insider-di...ml#post3628846
^ what, no comments?

At the very end of the interview, Jim talks about degraining and denoising the Aliens Blu-ray. I would have thought with the constant preoccupation on internet forums with film grain and sharpening, his remarks would have been of some, at least a little, interest?

Or perhaps …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lge_mf2JxVk

Consistency is not part of the blu-ray lifestyle

People want the image to reflect the original source, but also demand the sound be remixed to 7.1 sound.

Many of the people whose childhoods were raped by serial childhood-raper George Lucas, will look at this as a loving intimate encounter with a beloved father figure.

I think Cameron is just trying to make the Alien series look like Avatar. Older films should be presented as originally filmed. Deciding 25 years later, that he "intended" to film a different movie doesn't cut it.

[The Big Blue]

Originally Posted by micks_address

Just having some flucuating brightness on my new Panasonic Plasma and its head wrecking.. seems most obvious with blu-rays that are 2:35:1

Cheers,
Mick

My parents' Panny has a setting called 'AI' (pretty sure that's right) that was causing this problem.