Terminator: Dark Fate 4K UHD (2019)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by lgans316

If this tanks will Paramount shut down shop or or ask someone else to buy them? They haven't made good money for more than a year and it looks more like Paramount Dark Fate

Update: so looks like this is from Fox.

I doubt that this one movie will gross anything like enough money to fill in the red on their ledger, it was never going to be a billion-dollar baby. Doesn't mean it can't still be a success in itself mind you.

Foxney are handling some of the international distribution. US is via Paramount.

Originally Posted by -shadow-

What would be the reason for this? Would they release a weaker encoding, or just drop something potentially?

I'd be wary of branding it "weaker" without seeing their encode first, this movie seems to have a very clean digital look and isn't overly long so it should compress just fine onto Fox's usual 66GB disc.

[darth.vader]

I worked on the VFX for this (working title was Phoenix) and it pisses me off that the final delivery vertical resolution was 868 pixels, anamorphic, 2.39:1.
Not even HD, and it'll unlikely look good when they'll do a fake upres to 4k.

Meanwhile we were sourcing from 5k/6k plates from ARRI Alexa Mini, and the native scans looked beautiful.

Go figure Hollywood nowadays...

At least the movie is solid and the pace really breathtaking at times.

[fighthefutureofhd]

[-shadow-]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

Go figure Hollywood nowadays...

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I'd be wary of branding it "weaker" without seeing their encode first, this movie seems to have a very clean digital look and isn't overly long so it should compress just fine onto Fox's usual 66GB disc.

Didn't mean it to sound negative, just curious if the encoding would suffer from it or anything like that specifically. Just curious, but if more efficient encoding would be a thing without sacrifice, I can understand the why.

[Vangeli]

Paramount will probably have Dolby Vision in the US, will Fox do an HDR10+ or combo HDR10+/Dolby Vision disc like Alita as Cameron is involved? We’ll know soon enough.

I’m excited to see this one, regardless!

Wait, oh no, Cameron is involved, the disc is gonna look SDR...

[docmoejones]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

I worked on the VFX for this (working title was Phoenix) and it pisses me off that the final delivery vertical resolution was 868 pixels, anamorphic, 2.39:1.
Not even HD, and it'll unlikely look good when they'll do a fake upres to 4k.

Meanwhile we were sourcing from 5k/6k plates from ARRI Alexa Mini, and the native scans looked beautiful.

Go figure Hollywood nowadays...

At least the movie is solid and the pace really breathtaking at times.

hot damn...

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

I worked on the VFX for this (working title was Phoenix) and it pisses me off that the final delivery vertical resolution was 868 pixels, anamorphic, 2.39:1.
Not even HD, and it'll unlikely look good when they'll do a fake upres to 4k.

Meanwhile we were sourcing from 5k/6k plates from ARRI Alexa Mini, and the native scans looked beautiful.

Go figure Hollywood nowadays...

At least the movie is solid and the pace really breathtaking at times.

2048x858 is your standard 2K exhibition resolution so yeah, that figures. I'm confused by the "not even HD" comment though as this will be delivered in consumer HD at 1920x1080 with black bars taking up a big chunk of the vertical resolution, so it'll be something like 1920x800 in terms of active picture area, no?

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

2048x858 is your standard 2K exhibition resolution so yeah, that figures. I'm confused by the "not even HD" comment though as this will be delivered in consumer HD at 1920x1080 with black bars taking up a big chunk of the vertical resolution, so it'll be something like 1920x800 in terms of active picture area, no?

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant, the active picture area in height for consumer delivery is terribly small and resized compared to the native scans. Something I see more and more with classic studios (Sony, Paramount, etc.), while Netflix is instead going on their shows at 4448x3096 as read-in and 3996x2160 as write-out (delivery).

[Geoff D]

I was gonna say, that's just the way of it dude. Netflix do indeed insist on 4K minimum for everything - acquisition, VFX, final delivery, the lot - but them thar movie studios are still very much toeing the 2K line for theatrical releases because they just don't have to do anything more than that.

There is also the issue of deliverables though, with stuff like 3D then shirley that adds to the complexity of the workflows, or if not that then just the physical workload what with all the other grades and versions that are factored in (Dolby, IMAX, 2D, 3.5 fL 3D, 7 fL 3D etc) and all that stuff takes time and money, whereas Netflix aren't concerned about any of that other shit at all: if you deliver a Dolby Vision mezzanine file then that's it, as far as I understand it they'll work up every other version from that on an ad hoc basis.

What was the last theatrical fillum you did 4K VFX for?

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What was the last theatrical fillum you did 4K VFX for?

Once upon a time in Hollywood, 4k, 35mm. A beauty to work on but a pain in the neck for keying blue-screens. And one of the few projects in the past 10 years where I had to dust-bust the plates too.


Don't remember much else other than that at 4k...

It just hurts my heart to read-in such nice looking, sharp scans and having to output such garbage resolutions, just to see them later down the road make a fake upres to 4k, when they already had the native material at that resolution. We could all enjoy a true, higher definition, but it's not worth the trouble for the studios...

Owning a 4k TV and seeing from the inside the real 4k UHD pipeline for most of the titles finished at 2k, it's kinda of BS.

Sorry for my purist vent...

[Geoff D]

Nice! I'm not surprised at there being 4K VFX on a show like that because it's not some fast moving action blockbuster that literally has 3000 VFX shots, you know? Same with Nolan doing 4K for the anamorphic 35mm and 5.6K, 6K and up for his large format VFX, he's not got to worry about a shitnote of different deliverables nor is he pushing for thousands of shots. Dunkirk had about 700-odd I think, most of which were rig & wire removal as well as distant ships on the horizon, the wheels coming down on the Spitfire just before it lands, stuff like that. But when dealing with 5 and 15-perf 65mm then I should think 700 shots is still quite enough for people like yourself!

But don't apologise for the "purist" angle at all, you're one of the few people who is actually seeing this stuff on the inside so I don't blame you for being heartbroken when your work gets boiled down to 2K time after time. Do I still think that upscaled UHD discs have a hell of a lot to enjoy when it comes to better chroma resolution, HDR/WCG, better compression (most of the time) and even detail, if the consumer BD was filtered? Sure I do. (I know of another VFX supervisor who can't understand why even his downscaled 1K images at source look better than the 1.9K consumer HD Blu-ray.) But I can totally understand where you're coming from rather than every other "fake 4K" yahoo who writes things off sight-unseen.

Did you work on any of the shots of the planes with the Pan Am livery in OUATIH? They look like blatant CG to me, if not the planes then the actual Pan Am logos for sure, but because of the whole "I don't use CG" myth around Tarantino then some people think they're stock footage, miniatures, something like that.

[tylerman29]

Hopefully Terminator 1 gets an UHD release around the same time as Dark Fate..would love to have the "canon" so far on UHD.

[darth.vader]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Did you work on any of the shots of the planes with the Pan Am livery in OUATIH? They look like blatant CG to me, if not the planes then the actual Pan Am logos for sure, but because of the whole "I don't use CG" myth around Tarantino then some people think they're stock footage, miniatures, something like that.

So the entire Pan Am plane was a miniature, John Dykstra had total creative freedom on the show and even simple blue-screens shots were thought out with the idea of having mid-ground and back-ground elements as miniature elements to integrate in the final composite with the fore-ground actors. Being at the VFX bake-off at the Academy last year, I saw a standing ovation from the Academy members when Paul Lambert mentioned on the stage that he used miniatures in First Man. And that very same movie ended up winning the Oscar. I wouldn't be surprised if OUATIH ends up being a frontrunner for Best VFX as well, considering that Dykstra is one of the most beloved pals in the industry, and he is also a pioneer (i.e. Dykstraflex for stop-motion and motion-blur on miniature models in Star Wars) and a crazy talented dude. Also, Academy members hate pictures with crazy amounts of CG (Marvel, I am looking at you).

[Geoff D]

So no CG on the Pan Am shots at all? Wow. Consider my Armchair Expert™ licence well and truly revoked.

TBH whenever I see Dykstra's name on a show I know I'm in for some good stuff. People hated on the finale of X-Men First Class with the submarine and while a couple of the shots of it rolling onto the beach looked a bit suss the rest of it was excellent. And people wouldn't even know that 95% of the reflective 'reactor room' set was CG, it looks fookin' amazing.

[bailey1987]

Just got back from seeing this, the worst CGI in it was when there on top of the train, I wasn't convinced at all that its was moving, there was no wind in their hair and the backdrop was just terrible. Must be something to do with Trump.

[Brahmzy]

Originally Posted by darth.vader

Once upon a time in Hollywood, 4k, 35mm. A beauty to work on but a pain in the neck for keying blue-screens. And one of the few projects in the past 10 years where I had to dust-bust the plates too.


Don't remember much else other than that at 4k...

It just hurts my heart to read-in such nice looking, sharp scans and having to output such garbage resolutions, just to see them later down the road make a fake upres to 4k, when they already had the native material at that resolution. We could all enjoy a true, higher definition, but it's not worth the trouble for the studios...

Owning a 4k TV and seeing from the inside the real 4k UHD pipeline for most of the titles finished at 2k, it's kinda of BS.

Sorry for my purist vent...

This pisses me off to no end as well. So many on this board don’t seem to give a crap on their 55 OLEDs. On my 75 and working with native 4K material all the time, these uprezzed movies really look bad. Just an utter lack of detail. Yes, some upscales do look ok, but can you imagine what they would’ve looked like native?
It is shit and should have been addressed by now. Why do they get an endless free pass because it’s “expensive” to take the time to do it right?
What other industry’s can get away with halfassing this long into the formats life?
Will 8K be when we finally see the 4K native stuff come out?
Are they intentionally leaving detail on the table to be used later?
They’re going to have to figure something out there.

No more half-ass free-pass dammit! I’ve invested a LOT into this format.give me what I’ve been paying for.

[Nitroboy]

Another 2K DI bastard
So much for the benefit of an IMAX screening...

[Brian81]

Do not read the indiewire movie review!!!

Seriously. The ******* just blurts out the plot and surprises in the first paragraph actually talking about the movie itself (which starts with a handful of paragraphs of whining). The movie is ruined now, i may not even bother to see it in theaters.

[Geoff D]

I don't read/watch movie reviews anyway!!!!

[Mierzwiak]

At the beginning there are shots from T2, I wonder what quality of them would be? The as on T2's UHD or different, better?

As for 2K vs 4K DI, at least we can enjoy many catalogue titles in beautiful, native 4K.

It's ridiculous 2K is still Hollywood standard and at the same time TV industry is pushing 8(GIMMIC)K LOL