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The Day the Earth Stood Still

#1
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2/8/09 at 3:13am
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I watched the Blu Ray and I have some questions for you, Mr. Harris (and everybody else who has insight). The transfer seems to consist of basically two different kinds of shots. Shots with great clarity and sharpness that seem to have 1080p detail and shots that have more or less DVD resolution and also look often pasty. The latter shots are almost all sfx shots or standard opticals (mostly dissolves). Now it's well known that opticals with their generational loss degrade image quality but the extent it happens here (from 1080p to 480p) looks excessive to me. Why do the opticals look so much worse in this transfer? Is this normal? And is it normal that not only the actual dissolve is suffering but the rest of the shot as well, so the whole shot looks very bad compared to the surrounding shots? Why not replace the rest of the shot with the original? (Tonal) Continuity?
What are the reasons such dissolves are not redone digitally for the HD keeping the transfer on a consistent image quality level? Cost? Original elements not available?
I found the big jumps in image quality rather distracting every time a dissolve was done. One could actually easily see in advance when another dissolve was coming. Great quality, cut, bad quality, dissolve, bad quality, cut, great quality...
Did original prints of that film show the same strong quality variations?
I also noticed not faint halos on some shots that had no opticals. Sharpening or part of the photography of the time?
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#2
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2/15/09 at 8:39am
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Re: The Day the Earth Stood Still

I noticed this as well from the screenshots. I thought it was strange some were pristine and others looked awful.
Maybe the optical effects were redone for the dvd, and only in 480P? So they didn't bother to do them in HD, or redo them again for the Blu-Ray? Or perhaps they just couldn't make it look any better with the original elements gone. Films like Bridge On The River Kwai suffer from the same faults during the fades and opening and closing credits, basically all the optical work.

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#3
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2/16/09 at 8:02am
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Re: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Of course the resolution of opticals is going to suffer. I'm not sure they are dropping to something like 480 resolution, but logically they should drop roughly in half, if that is measurable.

It was also a fairly common practice at the time to have the optical used for the whole shot leading up to a dissolve for instance. That way you wouldn't see a jump in quality in the middle of a shot. In addition there is a fair amount of stock footage in TDTESS and I notice that those shots are particularly soft. Some of the second unit seems to be also, though I'm not sure why.

I've noticed with many B&W films of late 40s and early 50s, halos particularly around car head lights. I'm not sure if this is a result of a commonly used filter, or a limitation of the lenses used at the time, or some artifact of the film stock and the silver content there of. But I see it often enough to think its not a digital artifact.

Hopefully Mr. Harris can provide more info on this.

Doug
"I'm in great shape, for the shape I'm in."
Bob Hope in The Ghostbreakers
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#4
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2/21/09 at 11:09am
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Re: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Actually I've noticed it to be the opposite when it comes to "classic" movies. They tend to splice in JUST the optical, so you'd have a shot that would be taken from original negative, then there'd be a noticeable "jump" accompanied by a drop in image quality as the dissolve of fade is spliced in, then after they optical effect is over, another "jump" and we're back to O-neg for the rest of the shot at the other end. See the Blu-ray of THE THIRD MAN for many examples of this. It seems to have been only later when they started to use opticals of the ENTIRE shots instead of just the effect itself, which works better IMO although now the entire shots will suffer the generational loss. It's a trade off- either you see disruptive "jumps" and the image quality drops in the middle of a shot just for the optical, or the entire lead in/lead out shots themselves have the quality drop but there's no "jump". I haven't watch my THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Blu-ray yet, but maybe that was an early case where they actually DID use the entire shots for the opticals, instead of just the effect itself, and perhaps for the Blu-ray they DNRed the opticals and stock footage to match the grain of the O-neg material, which would result in the resolution drop during those sequences? I doubt they are actually done at 480P resolution, but maybe DNR/grain-removal to match the texture of the non-opticals resulted in the drop in detail/resolution.

Vincent

Quote:
Originally Posted by Douglas Monce
...

It was also a fairly common practice at the time to have the optical used for the whole shot leading up to a dissolve for instance. That way you wouldn't see a jump in quality in the middle of a shot...
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#5
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2/28/09 at 8:43pm
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Re: The Day the Earth Stood Still

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vincent_P
Actually I've noticed it to be the opposite when it comes to "classic" movies. They tend to splice in JUST the optical, so you'd have a shot that would be taken from original negative, then there'd be a noticeable "jump" accompanied by a drop in image quality as the dissolve of fade is spliced in, then after they optical effect is over, another "jump" and we're back to O-neg for the rest of the shot at the other end. See the Blu-ray of THE THIRD MAN for many examples of this. It seems to have been only later when they started to use opticals of the ENTIRE shots instead of just the effect itself, which works better IMO although now the entire shots will suffer the generational loss. It's a trade off- either you see disruptive "jumps" and the image quality drops in the middle of a shot just for the optical, or the entire lead in/lead out shots themselves have the quality drop but there's no "jump". I haven't watch my THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Blu-ray yet, but maybe that was an early case where they actually DID use the entire shots for the opticals, instead of just the effect itself, and perhaps for the Blu-ray they DNRed the opticals and stock footage to match the grain of the O-neg material, which would result in the resolution drop during those sequences? I doubt they are actually done at 480P resolution, but maybe DNR/grain-removal to match the texture of the non-opticals resulted in the drop in detail/resolution.

Vincent

This is quite true, it depends on the era in which the film was made. In the 30's and 40's there would be a jump in the middle of the shot as the dissolve would start.

They seemed to have changed this practice sometime in the late 40's and started using the entire duration of the shot as the optical. I'm not sure exactly when this started but by the mid 50's it seems to be pretty common.

It seems clear that in the 30's and 40's they were attempting to keep the shot pristine for as long as possible, and were hoping that the added film grain in the optical would be lost in the actual dissolve. Maybe as the grain on the film stock became finer in the 50s they decided that a slightly softer shot was less objectionable than a bump in the middle.

Doug
"I'm in great shape, for the shape I'm in."
Bob Hope in The Ghostbreakers
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