Jurassic Park Collection 4K UHD (1993-2015)

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

^ You mean Retro? Of course the retro look we associate with cinema is the photochemically colour-timed warm, contrasty look, with teal (Yes, it's true!).
All the first three JP films were photochemically timed and all of them look, rich, warm and contrasty in the prints.

JP2 35mm film frame -

Attachment 195105
(There would be more detail in the dark areas during an actual film projection, which appear crushed here.)

Now, the BLUE-ray -

Attachment 195106

Also, everyone, please don't request me to upload the film in 35mm! Such requests have been made in the past.
These are only still photos. I do not have a print.

Another still from my DVD FS 35mm regrade -

Attachment 195108

The Jurassic Park films don't look like how your typical photochemically-finished film would look.

The first and third films have a noticeable golden hue (like the Indiana Jones films also had theatrically) and The Lost World's DP was Janusz Kaminski who has his own distinct look, basically a pseudo-bleach bypass look.

If you look at some of Warner's modern remasters (Christmas Vacation, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Unforgiven, etc) of regular-looking films, that's what you'd expect to see color-wise on a 35mm print being shown on a theater screen.

Sorry but I'm not a fan of your custom presentation of The Lost World as a digitally scanned image of 35mm film will differ from 35mm film being projected onto a screen and I can't recall The Lost World looking that monochromatic and flat.

If I were to make generalizations, a Blu-ray of Jurassic Park with the original color timing would look like the Blu-ray of Raiders of the Lost Ark and a Blu-ray of The Lost World with the original color timing would look like the Blu-ray of Amistad.

[Geoff D]

Jesus Vicks, it's no wonder you don't mind what a print looks like on video if you watch regular stuff with your gamma at 2.6. **** me. Black level cultists, film print cultists, the gang's all here!

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Sorry but I'm not a fan of your custom presentation of The Lost World as a digitally scanned image of 35mm film will differ from 35mm film being projected onto a screen and I can't recall The Lost World looking that monochromatic and flat.

Because it wasn't.

https://www.ebay.it/itm/Jurassic-Par...BS5CEfNHxpBkyg

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

a Blu-ray of Jurassic Park with the original color timing would look like the Blu-ray of Raiders of the Lost Ark

I could die happy.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Jesus Vicks, it's no wonder you don't mind what a print looks like on video if you watch regular stuff with your gamma at 2.6. **** me. Black level cultists, film print cultists, the gang's all here!

Of course i'm only talking about state of the art transfers encoded in 2.2 or less, alot of BD's can barely handle 2.4 and some even 2.2, unfortunately.
Btw 35mm estimated gamma is waay higher than 2.6.

[Riddhi2011]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

The Jurassic Park films don't look like how your typical photochemically-finished film would look.

The first and third films have a noticeable golden hue (like the Indiana Jones films also had theatrically) and The Lost World's DP was Janusz Kaminski who has his own distinct look, basically a pseudo-bleach bypass look.

I have seen all three on 35mm and have seen high quality photos from the reels that were run in cinemas. JP looked warm but still had a pleasant colour separation. JP3 looked similar. But JP2 looks different from the rest. It looks much more warm with a yellow and green timing. The standard Blu-rays of the first three films do not represent their theatrical timing at all. They are grossly incorrect.

I don't understand too much technicalities about colour science that Geoff here does but from what I can tell by experience, almost all films, especially big studio blockbusters, had that warm, yellow, teal and orange push that most today consider revisionist when it appears on home video, because they swear by their CRT era masters.

Just last year I saw an IMAX nature documentary on IMAX film projection. It too had a similar warm timing with a soft and soothing looking image like the JP2 35mm image I posted. I know this debate will lead nowhere because there are many strong divergent opinions as to how prints actually looked in projection. And I know no matter how much proof via actual film print frames I furnish, the debate will still not be settled.

But from what I remember and the film frames that I see, I know that it didn't look anything like the 2D Blu-rays in the market. So, my desire was to try and re-create that warm, high contrasty look to get back that feeling of watching the film as it looked originally; not how it should look on home video with all those technical parameters of colour space, gamma settings, etc.

The bottom image (from an actual theatrical film print) -

JP2 35mm Rex family.jpg

can in no way look like this pile of blue coprolite (in film projection)-

JP2 BD Rex family.jpg

So, my wish (forget my personal DVD grading) was that the 4K UHD should resemble the top image more than the awful bottom one. I hope Universal will not disappoint if they truly scanned JP2 from the 35mm negative.

Originally Posted by VickPS

Because it wasn't.

https://www.ebay.it/itm/Jurassic-Par...BS5CEfNHxpBkyg

Those images are actually from the trailers (in flat and scope) and not the actual theatrical print. This is why you can see a strip from a deleted shot in them that was present in the trailers only.

The actual film prints were hard-matted to a 3-perf ratio with rounded edges, as you can see from my photo. No full frame theatrical prints exist, unlike Jurassic Park and JP3, which were both partially 4-perf.

Anyway, discussion amid differing opinions is fun and healthy if there is no name calling involved. This discussion has been civil so far, thankfully.

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

It looks much more warm with a yellow and green timing.

That yellow/green timing must be a consequence of bad storage, most prints of TLW have a different look. Alot of shades are totally missing in those pics.

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

Those images are actually from the trailers (in flat and scope) and not the actual theatrical print. This is why you can see a strip from a deleted shot in them that was present in the trailers only.

Yeah i couldn't find other pictures, it's a rare ass print.
But i saw a theatrical projection of an italian print in 2013 and that yellow push was not present at all. Looked identical to the Senitype.
Sure the movie is warmer than the BD, but nowhere near those pics and actually looks very similar to all printed material from '97.

[imsounoriginal]

I guess we haven't moved on from the dinosaur-sized pictures.

[Riddhi2011]

I don't think so. Since 1993, Kodak introduced a polyester stock called E-Star, which is basically no-fade and would last over 100 years. The colours wouldn't really fade within 20 years like that.

Can you furnish some photo evidence of other JP2 theatrical prints? Then we can compare. The 35mm pics from ebay that you provided the link of, are all from the trailer reels (flat and scope). They do not represent timing of the actual movie prints.

Again, I've said before, Fuji and Kodak stocks varied slightly in colour tonality. The 2013 Italian print that you saw, could be a Fuji stock, or Kodak, depending on which one was timed to be more yellow and which wasn't. It's just conjecture at this point.

As for me, I've received still photos from two different THEATRICAL prints of JP2 (which I provided here as evidence) and both have them have the same yellow-green push.

At the end of the day, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Just need proper evidence.

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

I guess we haven't moved on from the dinosaur-sized pictures.

Is that not allowed here? Let me know if it isn't. Also, I'm using the images to try and prove my perspective on the matter. You can't attempt to prove anything by words alone.

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

I have seen all three on 35mm and have seen high quality photos from the reels that were run in cinemas. JP looked warm but still had a pleasant colour separation. JP3 looked similar. But JP2 looks different from the rest. It looks much more warm with a yellow and green timing. The standard Blu-rays of the first three films do not represent their theatrical timing at all. They are grossly incorrect.

I don't understand too much technicalities about colour science that Geoff here does but from what I can tell by experience, almost all films, especially big studio blockbusters, had that warm, yellow, teal and orange push that most today consider revisionist when it appears on home video, because they swear by their CRT era masters.

But what a lot of people consider "teal and orange" isn't actually teal and orange, instead it is simply different and more neutral than their overly magenta-pushed DVD masters which they ridiculously hold as reference. Look at the Goodfellas remaster, people were up in arms over that being "tealed" when it looks like how you'd expect film to look and doesn't even have a constant hue of any kind.

Not every (or almost every) film had that "warm, yellow, teal and orange push", just like not every Blu-ray which has that look is revisionist. Saying that almost every film had that look is just as extreme and as untrue as saying no pre-2000 film had that look. There is a middle ground somewhere.

[Riddhi2011]

^ I said the major studio blockbusters had that look, for the most part, not every single film. Yes, I shouldn't have said "almost all films."
Even as I was studying cinematography, very recently, my teacher who is a working DOP, always preferred the warm look and said it makes images look better to him, personally.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

Is that not allowed here? Let me know if it isn't. Also, I'm using the images to try and prove my perspective on the matter. You can't attempt to prove anything by words alone.

It's just easier to put them in Spoiler tags, so they don't take as much time to load. Also when people quote you, we won't see the same huge images over and over again. But technically no, I guess it's not against the rules.

[Riddhi2011]

Someone suggested here that the person quoting, could also put spoiler tags because if I do that, then most won't even bother looking at the hidden images. They'd likely just scroll by.

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

I don't think so. Since 1993, Kodak introduced a polyester stock called E-Star, which is basically no-fade and would last over 100 years. The colours wouldn't really fade within 20 years like that.

This is pure utopy. I repeat, i trust my eyes and the print i saw wasn't straight monochromatic yellow at all, so it must depend on one (of the billions) possible implication of bad storage. That or a bad scanning process.

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

At the end of the day, I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Just need proper evidence.

That's really hard to do given how ****ing rare this print is.
But what i saw looked similar to this negative showcase.

ILM Before and After TLW - YouTube

And talk about film gamma..

Originally Posted by Riddhi2011

Even as I was studying cinematography, very recently, my teacher who is a working DOP, always preferred the warm look and said it makes images look better to him, personally.

And to me, also.
But i find those pics just ugly as they're hiding tons of shades naturally present on the versions i saw.

This movie was my first theatre experience, so i REALLY hope we could get a negative scan from Universal.. but they'll likely just re-scan the current fine grain IP used for the BD.

[s_har]

What's the general opinion of the colors of the JP1 DVD? Is it considered closer to the theatrical look than the BD?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by VickPS

Of course i'm only talking about state of the art transfers encoded in 2.2 or less, alot of BD's can barely handle 2.4 and some even 2.2, unfortunately.
Btw 35mm estimated gamma is waay higher than 2.6.

I know it is, that's why I keep talking about print gamma the way that I do. But if you're someone who uses 2.6 then that will inure you more to those extremes of print gamma, no?

You know what would interest me more when it comes to this print preservation thing though? If someone could do a 16-bit scan to capture all the available dynamic range and then do an HDR colour correction to better balance the extremes of light and shade that are inherent to prints by their very nature. I'd love to see how something like that would turn out.

As it is, the gamma is just too high to translate across into a conventional video space without crushing the shadow detail to buggery, as evinced in those JP2 pics that Riddhi keeps posting on every page. That's what I meant before about taking it out of the projection display environment and transposing it to another, not viewing it without a light source entirely. That would be dumb.

A scanner is not pushing as much light through it as a projection bulb would do because it doesn't need to, it doesn't have to throw the image onto, say, a 30ft screen that's 60ft away. Sure, some scanners have modes for dealing with print stock just as they have modes for dealing with low-con pre-print elements e.g. a blue filter to negate the orange mask on a neg or an IP, but when converted into linear video signals it's still not able to capture the intended viewing parameters that the print material was designed for.

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

But if you're someone who uses 2.6 then that will inure you more to those extremes of print gamma, no?

Well, it's a bit of the opposite as well since i've moved to higher gammas also because i grown up around slides and CRT Monitors.
I loved Goodfellas and Close Encounters 40th on BD btw, this should say enough.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

You know what would interest me more when it comes to this print preservation thing though? If someone could do a 16-bit scan to capture all the available dynamic range and then do an HDR colour correction to better balance the extremes of light and shade that are inherent to prints by their very nature. I'd love to see how something like that would turn out.

The result would look oustanding for sure. But to my eyes, not at all better than the same minus the "HDR colour correction to better balance the extremes of light and shade that are inherent to prints".

Originally Posted by s_har

What's the general opinion of the colors of the JP1 DVD? Is it considered closer to the theatrical look than the BD?

Absolutely. Same Master but looks less processed and it's way more barable than the BD to me.

By the way, i just saw this for the first time.

[Show spoiler]

So the first Mummy is really a new master, looks stunningly filmic apparently, and they also nailed the CG presentation.. now i start to feel a bit like an idiot for all the bash on Universal, and couldn't be more hyped for this release..

[Geoff D]

The Mummy looks awesome. Even Riddhi - yes, Riddhi - seems to like what he's seen of it via our pics and comments, so what does that tell you?

Personally I think Universal have dropped the ball (or at least fumbled it) with several HDR regrades since then so I'm 50/50 on how the Jurassic Parks will turn out in UHD.

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The Mummy looks awesome. Even Riddhi - yes, Riddhi - seems to like what he's seen of it via our pics and comments, so what does that tell you?

Enough.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Personally I think Universal have dropped the ball (or at least fumbled it) with several HDR regrades since then so I'm 50/50 on how the Jurassic Parks will turn out in UHD.

Well, they were the absolute worsts on Blu-ray, still the case on UHD?

[Geoff D]

They got off to a rather inauspicious start with the Bourne films, them literally taking the old 1080p telecine for Bourne Identity, uprezzing it, noise reducing it and dulling down the colour. Disastrous. But Mummy and Mummy Returns are both new transfers and the rest of their catalogue stuff - they've released quite a bit - is actually pretty decent, but just lately I've noticed a kind of 'set and forget' trend of them crushing down the blacks significantly in the HDR grade on several movies which makes me all kinds of nervous about pretty much anything else that they've got coming up.

[VickPS]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

They got off to a rather inauspicious start with the Bourne films, them literally taking the old 1080p telecine for Bourne Identity, uprezzing it, noise reducing it and dulling down the colour.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Disastrous. But Mummy and Mummy Returns are both new transfers

The Mummy master looks reaally good for Universal standars, Caps-a-holic comparison really surprised me. But Returns is not as good.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

and the rest of their catalogue stuff -they've released quite a bit - is actually pretty decent, but just lately I've noticed a kind of 'set and forget' trend of them crushing down the blacks significantly in the HDR grade on several movies which makes me all kinds of nervous about pretty much anything else that they've got coming up.

OMG, so i would actually love them even more for that!
Even more hyped now.

[s_har]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

But Mummy and Mummy Returns are both new transfers and the rest of their catalogue stuff - they've released quite a bit - is actually pretty decent,

And now that those Universal released titles directed by Stephen Sommers are mentioned may I just add how awesome I think the Van Helsing UHD looks?