Scanners (1981)

[dallywhitty]

Originally Posted by simonjamesconstable

They're only human...

Of flesh and blood they're made...

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

Of flesh and blood they're made...

Human, born to make mistakes...

[manitou]

Originally Posted by tama

One more thing I want to add then I'm done. Criterion did nothing wrong and did not drop the ball with this release. That's a talking fade that has to stop. They're presenting Scanners in the manner that the Director has intended. It was his wish and call for the color timing, not Criterions.

They did they professional thing and respected his wishes. If they had overruled Cronenberg then for future titles why would any other Director or Cinematographer want to work with Criterion knowing their desires wishes and judgements would or could possibly be overruled?

A good colorist worth his salt could help to guide a client toward a better looking image than that. That looks like a one-light dailies timing. Just because Cronenberg may be a brilliant cinematic storyteller does not make him an expert on color timing.

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by manitou

A good colorist worth his salt could help to guide a client toward a better looking image than that. That looks like a one-light dailies timing. Just because Cronenberg may be a brilliant cinematic storyteller does not make him an expert on color timing.

I have worked with good colorists and I have worked with bad colorists ... You would hope these studios would employ experts.

[mar3o]

After seeing the evidence presented here, from the DNR'd/repaired frames with missing objects to the shocking difference in color between a preservation master and what Cronenberg admittedly did off the top of his head, how can anybody even say this seriously?

I can understand people may like one look over another, but how can anybody at this point actually refuse to admit that the Criterion release of this film is not being presented as it was originally presented?

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Are you suggesting that you remember all the little skull bits from when you first saw it, or that you have memorized the color due to photographic memory?




After seeing the evidence presented here, from the DNR'd frames with missing detail to the shocking difference in color between a preservation master and what Cronenberg admittedly did off the top of his head, how can you even say this seriously?

I can understand people may like one look over another, but how can anybody at this point actually refuse to admit that the Criterion release of this film is not being presented as it was originally presented?

Read on my friend ... Read on ... Looks like you missed half the thread.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by tama

One more thing I want to add then I'm done. Criterion did nothing wrong and did not drop the ball with this release. That's a talking fade that has to stop. They're presenting Scanners in the manner that the Director has intended. It was his wish and call for the color timing, not Criterions.

They did they professional thing and respected his wishes. If they had overruled Cronenberg then for future titles why would any other Director or Cinematographer want to work with Criterion knowing their desires wishes and judgements would or could possibly be overruled?

But ultimately it isn't Cronenberg's release - it's Criterion's release. If Criterion looked at it and realized it's far different than how they were expecting it to turn out, and not up to their usual standards, they could have dropped the "director-approved" nonsense and just hired a competent colorist to bring it back where it belonged.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

Read on my friend ... Read on ... Looks like you missed half the thread.

Lol, I did and tried to correct my post a bit after catching up. Sorry about that.

[RandyK]

Originally Posted by mar3o

But ultimately it isn't Cronenberg's release - it's Criterion's release. If Criterion looked at it and realized it's far different than how they were expecting it to turn out, and not up to their usual standards, they could have dropped the "director-approved" nonsense and just hired a competent colorist to bring it back where it belonged.

And have them shoot themselves in the foot and shatter any future working relationship with Cronenberg? Not gonna happen.

[KowalskiVideo]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Yes, on the German release -- there are splashes of blood on the bottom left end of the frame that are not visible because brightness levels have been tweaked.

No. Not true. Otherwise mark the portion in the screenshot. Please.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

As I said earlier, someone was guessing how the film should look.

You mean "guessing" like Cronenberg not using a reference or "guessing" in comparing a protection master with an release print... ?

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

I need to see the disc to tell if something else might have been done as well.

What we do know is that you have not seen the Subkultur disc at all. Different people have already supplied all the information one would need to conclude whether what you suggest is at all logical.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

You may not have mentioned DNR, but someone else did. If DNR was used as speculated, it would have also taken out the grain and destabilized the image.

It always depends on what kind of "DNR" is used on what kind of image, so i would say this remark is not per se correct.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

What appears to have been used on the Criterion release is a repair application -- from what I gather similar to the one that caused a few snowflakes to be affected on Arrow's release of Runaway Train.

Its a flaw and it needs to be adressed. Does not matter if its "just a few pieces of skull & brain" and since you haven't seen the Subkultur release you can't really know whats missing, because you haven't seen it.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Grain/noise management is fine. And so is dirt removal. And so are repair applications.

Generalisation. Not accepted.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

There are countless fantastic looking releases, with strong organic qualities, that have this type of work done on them.

Accepted. But what does this tell us? Certain tools can be useful in certain situation.. again this is like... obvious.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

On the other hand, the encoding can also underexpose/overexpose some details, or make one release look sharper, misleading people to believe that there is more/less grain on a release, though additional grain adjustments were not performed.

On the other hand, the additional grain adjustments can also underexpose/overexpose some details, or make one release look softer, misleading people to believe that there is bad compression on a release, though were none. ...probably neither. If you put it this way, it means nothing.

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

At the end of the day I can only repeat what I said earlier: There is nothing wild about the Criterion release. It has a strong organic appearance. As confirmed by Criterion, the color scheme is as Cronenberg wants it.

Yeah i know, because the press materials that were sent by Criterion noted "supervised". So this must be true. Since advertisment always tells the whole truth. This rock solid evidence. I mean one excatly knows what "supervised" means, if they put in the press release. This is not only "approved" but also "supervised".

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

People speculating that it is a botched release appear to be confused what the term actually implies -- it would have been such a release if Criterion intended one thing, but delivered something completely different. Clearly, this isn't the case.

So you are saying under the "directors approved" banner, they could release anything and it wouldn't be false advertising, because nobody promised anything. So you mean like this whole "approved" thing is worthless (or even carte blanche to put out any kind of sub-par crap and calling it approved?).

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

The reality is this: It is the one and only home video release of Scanners which uses a transfer supervised by the director.

So following this logic, this needs to get 5 stars straight without even looking at it, because Mr. Cronenberg supervised every pixel of it (subpixel(!) since this was oversampled @ 2k). You have just been unemployed.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by RandyK

And have them shoot themselves in the foot and shatter any future working relationship with Cronenberg? Not gonna happen.

Unfortunately, that may be why they released this as they did. They already had Cronenberg signed in as part of this project, so if they went against his wishes, it may hurt future projects with him.

[Member-167298]

Just thought of something mildly amusing…

The movie is called SCANNERS and Criterion / Cronenberg ironically messed up the SCAN!

Zing!

[nagysaudio]

The Subkulture release is sub-par. Do you guys even know what DNR is? What you see there in the head exploding screenshots is not DNR, it's automatic dirt removal. This is absolutely normal and the Criterion disc looks terrific. It's not too bright either. The Subkulture is too dark because the contrast is blown out.

This is sad...

And those of you who result in name calling and personal attacks instead of having a discussion should go elsewhere.

[crazyBLUE]

I will only say this once ~ The next person to call A reviewer for this site a name it will be a months vacation as someone just received with a warning of ~ next time will be A year!

[KowalskiVideo]

Originally Posted by nagysaudio

The Subkulture release is sub-par. Do you guys even know what DNR is? What you see there in the head exploding screenshots is not DNR, it's automatic dirt removal.

Some people said "DNR" but specifically meant auto-clean. The distinction was already made.

Originally Posted by nagysaudio

This is absolutely normal and the Criterion disc looks terrific. It's not too bright either. The Subkulture is too dark because the contrast is blown out.
This is sad...

Just take a look at the levels of the criterion through a histogram, there is a nothing (flat line) for upper 1/3 of the pictures levels (for every screenshot!), meaning there are no information, where the Subkultur disc uses the whole range (which is already very limited to what actual 35mm material has to offer). This means the Criterion only uses around 66% of the available luma. The Subkultur is not "too dark" in comparsion to the Criterion there no shadowdetails missing. If i'm mistaken please point the cap you are refering to.

Originally Posted by nagysaudio

And those of you who result in name calling and personal attacks instead of having a discussion should go elsewhere.

I'm not calling names. I'm just genuinely interesseted in a in-depth discussion and trying to follow pro-bass reasoning and what it means.

[nagysaudio]

Originally Posted by KowalskiVideo

Some people said "DNR" but specifically meant auto-clean. The distinction was already made.


Just take a look at the levels of the criterion through a histogram, there is a nothing (flat line) for upper 1/3 of the pictures levels (for every screenshot!), meaning there are no information, where the Subkultur disc uses the whole range (which is already very limited to what actual 35mm material has to offer). This means the Criterion only uses around 66% of the available luma. The Subkultur is not "too dark" in comparsion to the Criterion there no shadowdetails missing. If i'm mistaken please point the cap you are refering to.


I'm not calling names. I'm just genuinely interesseted in a in-depth discussion and trying to follow pro-bass reasoning and what it means.

Sure, but now you're getting into color grading and that's personal preference. There is no right or wrong. And the new color grading was approved by the director himself, so it leaves very little room for arguing even if it's not the same as it was during the theatrical run. The scan itself looks great, with a significant increase in detail.

[KowalskiVideo]

I have to disagree. In fact their is objectivty in the reproduction (!) of color. If one gathers all the information (stock used, process used and a general understanding how they affect each other) it is completly possible to re-create the original look of the film very accurate (if that is what one is after). This must be to true, otherwise nobody could have been sure skintones did come out natural one day and all of a sudden blue the next. These chemical processes were developed to give equivalent results. One only needs in-depth knowledge about it, thats what restorationist are for.

Further you haven't reacted to any of the specific questions i asked. I base my opinion on the facts and not "personal preference", otherwise the discussion would be meaningless.

And you've repeatatly pointed out "a significant increase in detail" or "tons of more detail". Please specify. I can point out where there is less detail in the Criterion vs. Subkultur disc, if you want me to, but i can't see the "tons of more detail" in the Criterion.

And throwing around the "approved by the director himself" is getting us nowhere, because we don't know how it went down excatly, this supervision. If you just want to say "The director approved transfer is the director approved transfer", this is self-evident.

[bgart13]

Has anyone seen the Criterion HD digital download of SCANNERS that's been available for a while? Is it the same as the bd? If so, then this news should be old by now.

[JoeBuck]

Originally Posted by KowalskiVideo

And throwing around the "approved by the director himself" is getting us nowhere, because we don't know how it went down excatly, this supervision. If you just want to say "The director approved transfer is the director approved transfer", this is self-evident.

Criterion does have their Directors watch the transfer to actually approve it, its why titles like The Game and Y Tu Mama Tambien took so long to get released.
Tellin' yuh right now that if they say this was Cronenbergs preference, it was Cronenbergs preference.

[nagysaudio]

Originally Posted by KowalskiVideo

I have to disagree. In fact their is objectivty in the reproduction (!) of color. If one gathers all the information (stock used, process used and a general understanding how they affect each other) it is completly possible to re-create the original look of the film very accurate (if that is what one is after). This must be to true, otherwise nobody could have been sure skintones did come out natural one day and all of a sudden blue the next. These chemical processes were developed to give equivalent results. One only needs in-depth knowledge about it, thats what restorationist are for.

Further you haven't reacted to any of the specific questions i asked. I base my opinion on the facts and not "personal preference", otherwise the discussion would be meaningless.

And you've repeatatly pointed out "a significant increase in detail" or "tons of more detail". Please specify. I can point out where there is less detail in the Criterion vs. Subkultur disc, if you want me to, but i can't see the "tons of more detail" in the Criterion.

And throwing around the "approved by the director himself" is getting us nowhere, because we don't know how it went down excatly, this supervision. If you just want to say "The director approved transfer is the director approved transfer", this is self-evident.

Except in this case it's irrelevant on what can be recreated. What matters is what the director wants period. And all Criterion screenshots show more detail IMO, I don't even have to post them as it would be redundant. Simply all of them. Subkulture release has been sharpened, so don't mistake sharpening for detail.