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In Reply to: RE: The Godfather blu-ray box was waiting on my doorstep when I got home posted by Jazz Inmate on September 24, 2008 at 18:28:06
I was not expecting Paramount to do such a good job with this. They screwed the pooch on the Butch Cassidy BD, but Godfather was a phenomenal experience on BD.
-------------Call it, friendo.
Follow Ups:
...and am disappointed. It has been brightened so much so that it seems like a different film. I liked the darker original. It reminds me of the complaints about the chemical clean up done to the Sistine chapel many years ago: that the chemicals stripped away some of Michaelangelo's artistic intent, along with the muck and mire of 400 years of candles and tourists. I know that Coppola and the cinematographer oversaw the color correction for the BD, but this is just another video abuse of a film original. I think they made a serious creative change, and it doesn't work for me. I have a Panasonic BD30 player and a Panasonic 42 inch plasma monitor. I tried to tweak the setting, turned down the brightness, and it didn't help much. Oh, well.
There are plenty of dark scenes, rich dark colors and inky blacks. But the daylight scenes are not supposed to appear dark. There is no "color correction", according to Robert A. Harris, the motion picture archivist who was involved in the project. Here are his full comments:
"The comments offered below are meant to place a bit of reality to the various posts on other sites proffering everything from color is wrong to concepts such as "for the restoration, those guys made a print and cleaned it."
For the cleaning of photographic emulsions, we generally find that an extra fine or 0000 steel wool works best.
There are a great many functions applied during the restoration, all based upon our selection of specific shots or frames from one element over another, that led to the final look and feel of the films on 35mm as well as Blu. I won't even get into SD, as our abilities there to replicate an image are so far removed from those of BD, that I prefer not to go there.
We began with between 150 to 155 minutes of slightly faded, heavily damaged and dirty OCN and from there scanned samples of every available dupe or preservation element we felt viable, inclusive of an original CRI produced in 1972 for UK and foreign.
In a number of cases we were saddled with dupe shots (some damaged as early as 1972), field enlargements, etc. that were up to fifth generation. A great deal of effort went into adapting and massaging these to make them work within the context of the film as a unit.
The general ethic we use in any restoration is to virtually disassemble the film, and then rebuild it using the best (the meaning of which changes on occasion) shots or frames available after side-by-side comparisons with their counterparts as well as original reference.
All decisions toward the creation of the final product were made with only film in mind. The idea that we made certain decisions, color corrections or whatever toward a potential SD or even HD release as I've seen posted elsewhere are laughable.
Referencing the CRI, we found that although it would ordinarily have been written off without inspection, that it had been produced slightly underexposed, ie. darker, which was beneficial in that some reels had less fade than they might, and allowed us to harvest certain shots from the unit.
I'll bring up one other anomaly here, that being the concept of "reference." We used the final Technicolor reference print of GF 1, which has survived under the aegis of the Academy Film Archive, as well as several dye transfer prints of GF 2 (courtesy of AMPAS, UCLA and Harvard Film Archive) as color and density reference, further supported by aid from Mr. Willis and Mr. Daviau.
We had found in the past and confirmed once again that Technicolor reference is not perfect, and the reason appears to be economic. Final density and color changes originally made their way into the printing process and final printing matrices. One gets to a place, whether attempting to maneuver a point's difference one way or the other, that the lab is going to cease the creation of six thousand feet of matrix for a small change.
Those anomalies become apparent through multiple examinations of the print, and some final tweaks which never made it into the "final" set of printing matrices are included in our 4k data files as well as all digital derivatives."
-------------Call it, friendo.
...quoted from the HiDef digest (online) review, is information from the "Video:Sizing up the picture" section (link included) that mentions what Coppola did affect in this restoration: "Contrast is intensified on these transfers, which does improve image clarity but also adds a hotness (particularly to outdoor scenes) that may shock those used to the previous, much more muted video editions." Now, I've seen the films (one and two) at least 20 times in the theater, not to mention multiple video and dvd viewings. The new changes I see are not imaginary, and they are the invention of the original film makers. They have the right and the artistic license to do as they please-more power to them. I'll bet I'm not going to be the only one who doesn't care for this approach. If I'd seen this in a movie theater, I'd have thought that the print was defective. The reviews cites his Coppola source from the supplemental extras on the BD/DVD. I'm going to look for that stuff tonight.
Regards
:(
But frankly I think the DVD and VHS versions looked defective and this Blu-ray was produced right. Compare it to other films, and you'll see what I mean. With all due respect to the High Def Digest reviewer, I don't think the contrast is pumped up on the BD; I think it was dynamicaly squashed/compressed on previous GF home video releases. But given that we don't have the source material, it's hard to say. What impresses me so much and leads me to believe Harris' approach is proper is the level of detail, definition and resolution that made the BD version appear more lifelike, vibrant and true. Signs of inappropriate processing always get in the way of those characteristics, but I believe Harris' approach was 100% appropriate.
His work on Vertigo and Rear Window was nothing short of astonishing-it was like seeing those films for the first time (I saw the restored Rear Window in the theater).
Can't wait for the BD versions of those.
-------------Call it, friendo.
the hundredth iteration of the Beatles hits, too.
Unless you like paying a fortune to sit on seats caked with a layer of gum, soda and popcorn, and deal with people texting, coughing, farting, kicking your seat and talking.
This is the only 1080p version of two of the greatest movies ever made, meticulously restored under supervision by the director himself. If you think this is no big deal, frankly you have no business participating on a film forum.
-------------Call it, friendo.
"Unless you like paying a fortune"
Movies cost 7 to 10 dollars where I live- not a fortune to me.
"to sit on seats caked with a layer of gum, soda and popcorn,"
never happened to me
"and deal with people texting, coughing, farting, kicking your seat and talking."
sometimes people talk- not often- my smell is obviously less sensitive than your own, as the farting has not been a problem for me.
While I will gladly admit that Blu-ray is a damn sight closer to the movie theater experience than DVD, well, it's still not the movie theater experience. The resolution of 1080p is not anywhere close to 35 mm film. Ok go ahead and say the projectors are out of focus, you never achieve ideal film resolution, etc. etc. But if you are honest about what you actually see on a screen, you will admit you see more detail, i.e. more resolution in a movie theater than on your home TV. Look at the pattern on a wallpaper for example. Does this matter? To me it does.
The real point is that the Godfather is not playing in theaters and the BR version is a fine option to enjoy the best possible home version of this great classic. But there is no need to denigrate movie theaters. If the Godfather were to show again in a theater, that would be the best place to see it.
Just a couple highlights of experiences I have had in recent years:
after previews ended and opening credits rolled, a guy sitting one seat away from me continued talking on his phone. I had to politely whisper over his girlfriend for him to get off the phone please, at which point his date told me I was rude.
during one of the most sensitive moments of a very emotional, intense film (Letters from Iwo Jima), a man sitting next to my date let two loud farts rip. A different man sitting behind us coughed throughout.
at one of the most graphically disturbing and violent war films ever made (Black Hawk Down) a woman had an infant and young child (maybe five years old) who acted up throughout the movie.
I could go on and on about the behavior of others in the movie theater. Usually it involves use of cell phones, but kicking the back of seats is a problem and it isn't too fun to walk out and realize you have a couple junior mints stuck to your ass thanks to a sloppy patron who earlier sat where you did.
But I'm glad your experiences at the theater have been more positive. I did see Burn After Reading the other day and had a great time, so it's not like I've sworn off the theater altogether and I don't mean to say that every trip to the AMC is abysmal. I do agree with your point about film, but what about a film's audio, which has an even greater emotional impact than video? No theater can compare to a good home theater, by virtue of the advantages of nearfield listening (not to mention quality of electronics and care in setup and room acoustics).
But back to video. My observation is that a BD produced from good source with a decent transfer on a large 1080p plasma has qualities that trick the eye into thinking it is seeing film to a far greater extent than DVD, line doubled/quadrupled DVD or upscaled DVD ever did.
-------------Call it, friendo.
conflating this forum with the video one.
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