897 Barry Lyndon

[MichaelB]

See also people - sometimes round here, although we’re generally better informed - who refer to “the source print” when talking about a Blu-ray transfer.

Sometimes a projection print is used because there genuinely isn’t an alternative, but for the most part this should be avoided, especially if the film is in colour; the contrast will generally be much too high. There’s a notorious release of Straw Dogs from Fremantle in the UK (Beaver) that’s a textbook example of the problem.

(Optimal sources are the original camera negative, the original interpositive or the original internegative. The OCN is notionally the best, but requires a full regrade, so sometimes the interpos just makes life easier. I remember one project where we went for the interpos because the cement used to hold the various bits of camera neg together was so brittle that we feared for the OCN’s integrity!)

[Drucker]

Leibowitz is mistaken, or someone was having a joke on her. You cannot project a negative. Aside from anything else, there is no soundtrack on a camera negative. An answer print from the negative, perhaps Warner's own reference copy, seems the likeliest option.

That would be hilarious if she added, "Why are the colors fucked up and why is this silent?" to which Marty replied "it's the original camera negative!"

I remember reading a profile of Steven Spielberg in a major magazine which mentioned that he was inspired to join the nascent Film Foundation after watching “the original negative of Jaws in 1989,” which shocked me, too. Aren’t there any fact checkers who are well-versed in film?

Of course, didn't Scorsese make a comment a few years after Taxi Driver and was astounded how much it had already deteriorated? Maybe Spielberg was viewing the negative and was distressed about the condition it had fallen in.

[hearthesilence]

See also people - sometimes round here, although we’re generally better informed - who refer to “the source print” when talking about a Blu-ray transfer.

Sometimes a projection print is used because there genuinely isn’t an alternative, but for the most part this should be avoided, especially if the film is in colour; the contrast will generally be much too high. There’s a notorious release of Straw Dogs from Fremantle in the UK (Beaver) that’s a textbook example of the problem.

(Optimal sources are the original camera negative, the original interpositive or the original internegative. The OCN is notionally the best, but requires a full regrade, so sometimes the interpos just makes life easier. I remember one project where we went for the interpos because the cement used to hold the various bits of camera neg together was so brittle that we feared for the OCN’s integrity!)

This interview with Torsten Kaiser on restoration was a pretty good crash course on the subject - I :

Ken Brown: What does true restoration entail?

Torsten Kaiser: True restoration, in the most complete term, involves photo-chemically working with the best surviving and most complete elements available. It's a selection process, number one. Then, when you reach the photo-optical stage, you come to scanning, telecine work, and color timing. Even then it depends on whether the material has faded, or whether color timing has to be a re-timed in order to get the colors to register exactly as they should register. This is extremely important. Eureka recently bought a master from Fox for an early Robert Wagner film -- Prince Valiant, I think it is. And it says, "Technicolor." But what I saw on the Blu-ray was everything… but it was not Technicolor. Robert Wagner was green in the face. Green. Hiring Mr. Wagner as Prince Valiant is a strange idea already, considering his thick Western-state accent. (Laughs) But he stands out in the picture even more because of the color timing mistakes. Because the background is supposed to be blue, but skews green, the actors' faces are extremely magenta. But Technicolor had a very beautiful registration in terms of brownish and slightly reddish colors, and could capture facial tones really, really well. The same occurs with Deluxe pictures. I don't have An Affair to Remember yet, and that should be quite interesting. Reviewers have been stating that it looks beautiful and absolutely stunning. I hope that it does because it's a Deluxe picture and many of the Deluxe productions were dead on when it comes to facial tones. That was what Deluxe could really do. It was natural, but still very lush. It was a little bit deeper than natural colors would be in reality, but it would still register wonderfully. Yet, what I've seen so often is faded images and faces that derive from inexact color timing.

Ken Brown: How do modern colorists fare in your opinion?

Torsten Kaiser: Unfortunately, and through no fault of their own, more and more colorists don't know anything about the various photo-chemical color processes and their differences. Now the vast majority of colorists work with new negatives or with new IP [interpositive] material. They work a lot for television - with what we call samples for new projects - any they don't have ties to older material. As a result, errors are being made all the time. If you take a look at the Blu-ray release of Galaxy Quest, for instance, it's clear that the transfer was done from an IP. How do I know this? How can I determine that without having worked on the project? Well, it's pretty easy. An IP always has a much higher black level so that it doesn't crush the film element itself. That can only be achieved if you make it as flat as possible. So you don't have a very contrast-y image, but have all the stops in there. Or at least close to it. That's different than a print, which is very contrast-y – it looks very sharp and very punchy when you hold it against the light. On a telecine, a print would really give you a run for your money because it is very difficult to get all the detail out of that thing. However, with an IP, you can get all the detail out of it, but you have to remember the IP is developed to be very flat. As a result, you have to mimic the process from the IP to the intermediate negative to the print; the print being the ultimate end stage; the answer print, one should say, since that is the one being QC'd by the maker. So if you take an IP with the rather flat imagery and reproduce it only as it is on the IP, it doesn't work because the colors don't register as they should. Whites don't appear as they should, and so forth. And that's why Galaxy Quest doesn't work. The Galaxy Quest prints look stunning. They're an absolute knockout. It's the only picture that I was so frustrated with that I changed the settings on my projector. Fortunately, I have a projector which has different user levels, and that's exactly what I used when watching Galaxy Quest. Otherwise, I would have been like Peter Finch in Network. I would have gone to the window and screamed I was mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. It's really that bad.

[Farley Flavors]

(Optimal sources are the original camera negative, the original interpositive or the original internegative. The OCN is notionally the best, but requires a full regrade, so sometimes the interpos just makes life easier. I remember one project where we went for the interpos because the cement used to hold the various bits of camera neg together was so brittle that we feared for the OCN’s integrity!)

Do seperation masters ever enter into the equation, or were they only created for high-end productions?