Seems like they're all in stock at Amazon.com finally. I have an order at DVD Pacific, but only "A Clockwork Orange" has been filled so far.Dan Lindley said:
Pat, I noticed this as well. I read in one of these threads that what your seeing is the reflective paint on the wall that the background plate was shown on. If you look at it, it does look like paint, from a roller. Sorry, i dont remember the thread, or who said it. But thats why the leopards eyes glow too!PatWahlquist said:
Rick it right. It looks to me to be an uneven application of the 3M reflective material on the front projection screen. (this is the same stuff that makes stop signs glow) All of those ape shots were done in a studio in England. The background plates are actually large format still photographs that were taken in African and front projected into the scene.PatWahlquist said:
I didn't notice any "twitter" or aliasing on the space station, but then I've only got a 47" TV. It might be more visible on a large projection screen.DaViD Boulet said:
Yes but he was talking about a 35mm release print.DonovanCampbell said:
Hello Dave,DaViD Boulet said:
At HD resolution (1080) the difference between 35mm and 70mm should not be discernible. There just isn't enough resolution to be able to see that level of detail.OliverK said:Hello Dave,
good to meet each other on the forums again
From what I have seen so far with regard to 65/70mm movies out on DVD and HD the detail of these movies is always below what can be seen on the very best discs available in either format. This certainly is not due to a lack of detail in the original negative and what you say indicates that RAH is unfortunately correct when he says 6k scans are not what Warner usually does for their large format stock. From watching Mutiny on the Bounty, Battle of the Bulge and Grand Prix I would say that none of these come close to making full use of the available resolution in the original camera negative. If they did these would be among the most detailed movies available in the HD format but sadly they aren't.
Still I am happy these came out at all - Warner is the only studio doing something worthwhile about movies in large format so far. We also have to take into account that most of the movies we call classics are movies that sell in very limited numbers and 2001 might very well be the first of the released classics that earns Warner not only prestige but also money. So we cannot expect them to pay unlimited amounts of money for the best transfers and masters money can buy when we look at things from the business side.
Oliver
Yes, but you mentioned VistaVision, so I was just correcting that.Douglas Monce said:
According to Robert Harris the 65mm ON was in pretty bad shape so unless they did a full restoration I have my doubts about them using it for this transfer. I suspect this transfer comes from a 35mm element.DaViD Boulet said:Hey Oliver! Thanks for chiming in. Got some widescreen reviews waiting for you whenever you're ready.
Hey Doug,
part of the problem with "large format" films in the past is that the *scanning equipment* used to digitize the 65/70mm elements hasn't been up-to-snuff. Just take a look at the Ben-Hur DVD... another disc that received a great deal of praise despite some apparent inaccuracies to the source. Even in pathetic 480p resolution, you can see that the older DVD, scanned from a 35mm print (on equipment optimized for 35mm) looks MUCH more detailed than the newer DVD scanned from 65mm on "inferior" telecine gear (by inferior, I mean gear not optimized for large-format). It's not that DVD can show you the difference between the resolution of 35mm and 65mm camera negatives. It's that DVD can show you the difference between a scan from a device optimized for the film it's scanning (or not). Same with HD.
There are a few devices out there than can do a high-fidelity digital capture from large-format elements but they are $$$ to use and Warner has not used them in the past.
What I'm seeing from this BD/HD DVD looks like high-frequency information has been rolled off. Trust me, the 35mm print I saw was RAZOR SHARP... it was shocking. This HD image looks "soft" by comparison, which suggests to me that WB may have indeed scanned a 65mm source, but done so with gear not optimized for the task. Either that or they used a 35mm print but may have filtered it to ease compression demands given the somewhat average low-bit-rate of the VC-1 codec used to compress this title. WB has been tailoring their authoring for 30 GB which may or may not have a slight negative impact on image/sound quality depending on content... but I have noticed that in general the VC-1 WB BDs tend to look less sharp/detailed in comparison to high-bit-rate AVC titles by Sony/Disney (with a few exceptions of course). That general trend causes me to be suspect whenever I see VC-1 used at a low bit-rate.
I'd love to hear more input from someone familiar with what went into this actual disc. Does anyone really know what source/method WB used to get this image?
Right. But I was talking about VistaVision for live action photography in the 50s and 60s, not its later application for visual effects. In other words the reduction printing of VistaVision to 35mm was said to produce a shaper more detailed image than a 35mm to 35mm release print. The same should be true of a 65mm to 35mm reduction print.DonovanCampbell said:
Doug,Douglas Monce said:
