haineshisway
Senior HTF Member
I'll bite: What are the "obvious" flaws. I'm genuinely interested. Please list them so I can look for them. And just for reference, here is what my pal Jeffrey Kauffman says about the transfer: Fright Night was filmed on a fairly paltry budget and the bulk of this film exhibits signs of less than superior film stock and some less than ideal filming conditions. Despite what was evidently a new high-res scan for this release, the overall image here is a bit on the soft side, though there appears to have been no noise reduction and while soft, the image retains a suitably mid-80's cinematic look. Colors are acceptable, though never really brash. There is some occasional crush in the dark scenes, notably the finale in the cellar of Jerry's home. But close-ups reveal above average levels of fine detail, and this is certainly a sharper presentation than the film has ever had before. The opticals, including some of the special effects, contribute to some of the softness on display, as might be expected. What he is saying in no uncertain terms is the film looks like it's supposed to - low-budget (it was), 80s film stock (it was), less than ideal filming conditions (quick, down and dirty) - no noise reduction (good), the image retains a suitably mid-80s cinematic look (check). Colors are acceptable, though never really brash (check - they never were brash). Don't agree about the "crush" because I don't see anything that isn't a part of the look of the film and that always was - close-ups reveal above average levels of fine detail (check), and this is certainly a sharper presentation than the film has ever had before (double check). And here is the most important sentence: The opticals, including some of the special effects (I would adjust that to say ALL of the special effects, since they're all multi-pass old-fashioned opticals), contribute to some of the softness on display, as might be expected (BINGO). So, what would you have? The film looks like the film is supposed to look. And that makes it a perfect transfer - that is what a transfer is supposed to do. I would posit that a transfer that doesn't do that is a failure. It's not going to look like a film made today. It's not going to look like a film made on stock from the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s. It's going to look exactly like a low-budget 1980s film - to have it look like anything else would be false and bad. So how is this an average release, Moonchild? What should they have done differently? Pumped up the sharpness artificially? Boosted the colors so they resemble day-glo op-art colors that were never there? So, please list for me, if you will, the "obvious" flaws that you see.moonchild69 said:
, and the Blu-ray.com review that critiques the "soft" appearance of the film, I'd say very minimal to no sharpening tools were used in this transfer. You won't be disappointed. Yes, SAE does send shipping confirmation emails. They are shipping a ton of Blu-rays out now, as you can imagine, but they'll get to you.
