Are movies altered to be on Blu-ray?

[Erman_94]

i just had a general question on how blu rays are made.

isn't blu ray supposed to be generally what the movie ACTUALLY looked like in real life? hence the "high definition"...

if so, how can we "rate" video quality on blu rays if it is what it looks like to begin with?

isnt it like saying an orange shouldn't be an orange, it should be an apple? (or it looks like this, but it should look like this?)

and in many reviews i hear about skin tones that are off etc. etc.
...does this mean that the people producing these blu rays alter the picture and source material to make it look like what they want? and not what it actually is? shouldn't these skin tones (or anything else for that matter) just be what appeared on the source material through the camera used?


i may be way off, but i would certainly appreciate some input

thanks.

[BluWave]

I would agree with you. Blu-rays and High def movies are the least altered because they are all releasded in their native aspects and these companies are using the best possible transfer processes available as quality needed to be the main goal in the War that we recently won. If color tones are off or grain was in the picture thats the original copies flaws as well as even the end users display settings or capabilties. Well all of that is again just my opinion. I personally dont produce the BDs myself.....

[wallendo]

I guess it depends on the director's intent. In many movies, the color balance is intentionally altered for artistic effect (e.g., the green tint in The Matrix). These color shifts should not be corrected.

In other cases, the colors of the original film have shifted during the aging process. I suspect most people would want these colors corrected.

I agree that sometimes some reviewers seem to be more obsessed with pretty pixels than the original appearance of the film. Old grainy movies should be grainy, but faded film should be restored (my opinion - it's worth what you paid for it).

[Erman_94]

well i was reading the ocean's boxset review just now and it said some of the skin tones were too "pink"

was this the director's intent? or poor source material?

clearly for older movies, the source material may not be up to par and some altering may have to occur to restore some "authenticity", but for newer movies such as ocean's what is the explanation?

could it be artistic effect as you alluded to?

[Kayne314]

As movies age and deteriorate, the color can change. Definitely something to be corrected.

Some movies depend entirely on the director's intent. These shouldn't be touched at all.

Sometimes, a movie is finalized by a production house that can get it wrong. Some movies are released without the director having a say in the color intensity or grain. The director's intent is lost. Lots of directors have horror stories about this sort of thing.

This is the challenge. How can we determine if the movie was badly mastered by the production house, or if it was the director's intent?

Without the director watching the movie with you, on a professionally calibrated display, there is no real way to tell.

Blu-ray will give you the closest experience to the original master you can have, short of getting your hands on the original and watching it on a projector in your living room.

I highly doubt the directors will be involved in many transfers to Blu-ray. On those that do, you can be assured of a perfect replication of the director's intent. On the rest... well at least you have the best transfer available in the market today.

Until ALL movies are released to Blu-ray as Directors cuts or "as supervised by" the director. This is something we'll have to accept.

That, and some movies just look like crap no matter what the format.

[Knight-Errant]

Unfortunately it's true that directors don't always get the chance to supervise tranfers of their films.

I remember David Cronenberg at one point refusing to do a commentary for The Fly as he wasn't going to be allowed to supervise the transfer. He was unhappy with the way it had always looked on video.

Thankfully this was resolved and the presence of the commentary track proved he'd supervised the transfer on the collectors edition dvd.
This was then released on Blu-ray.

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by wallendo

I guess it depends on the director's intent. In many movies, the color balance is intentionally altered for artistic effect (e.g., the green tint in The Matrix). These color shifts should not be corrected.

In other cases, the colors of the original film have shifted during the aging process. I suspect most people would want these colors corrected.

I agree that sometimes some reviewers seem to be more obsessed with pretty pixels than the original appearance of the film. Old grainy movies should be grainy, but faded film should be restored (my opinion - it's worth what you paid for it).

Anyone remember the discussion surrounding the restoration of Gone With the Wind for VHS? How naturalistic should the color really be? How red were those fires when the film was first released. Those sort of conversations.

If the filmmaker approves a look for the film, that should be what is seen IMO.

[Clark Kent]

What reviewers often use as a basis of comparison is other home video versions of a movie. These could be a laserdisc, or a dvd, or even a D-VHS. Rarely do reviewers have access to what the film looked like projected when it was first released(especially on older catalog titles that may not have been in a theater for many years). Many times the only people that know the look of a film are the people who directly worked on it like the director or the d.p. Really the best review would come from someone that is intimately familiar with the original look of the film ala the director.

[Anthony P]

for one thing BD video is always compressed and so one can really and honestly talk about video quality in the way you describe. on the other hand most discussions of video quality tends to just be a mirror of the reviewers own bias.

Sometimes "skin tones" being too pink could be directly from choices made by the director ( I want this lighting and film so they are more pink, or even let's digitally manipulate the colours), other times they can be from other decisions that affects the film (I will use this film, or this camera or badly calibrated equipment for this lighting)