A few words about...™ Gone with the Wind -- in Blu-ray

David O. Selznick's Gone with the Wind on Blu-ray -- one doesn't use the directorial possessive for this one -- has arrived from Warner Bros.

For this Event I'll use one or two more than a few words.

Majestical

Epic

Timeless

Gorgeous

Perfect

and on Blu-ray, Extremely Highly Recommended.

Available in a Limited Edition boxed set that defines home video quality.

Recommended reading: Rudy Behlmer's Memo from David O. Selznick & Ron Haver's David O. Selznick's Hollywood
 

RAH

 

"Perfect."  Wow. 

I wonder if we'll see more of the retailer exclusives like we did with The Wizard of Oz.

Thanks Robert for your extremely "few words."

Edited by Mike Frezon - 11/4/09 at 8:02pm

Thanks, Robert. I am so thrilled about this one. How do the reformatted shots look on this edition?

Someone on AVS posted a small jpg of the alleged Target exclusive edition (uses the same design as the movie only dvd re-issue of the 2004 release). No definitive word yet it seems on price or content- though someone mentioned 28.99 SRP.

Does the color in this version more or less match the last DVD release?  I remember some big to-do about how the color of that release was vastly different than previous editions.

The caps on DVD Beaver look incredible.

I'd also like to know if they were able to get another source for the four cropped shots since they stick out a bit on the '04 DVD.

Have not done a film to dvd comparison.  Not certain whether the shots have been slightly field enlarged or other elements were used.  The 1.66 ratio material was out in last SD.

It's more than four shots. It's more like 6 or 7. That being said, does anyone know what the original Intermission card might have looked like? I wonder if it was on film or was simply a slide. Just something I would like to find out.
Edited by Eric Scott Richard - 11/5/09 at 2:42pm

I seem to be a bit of a wet blanket at times upon viewing restorations of films of my youth 75 years ago! Mr. Harris is absolutely correct that audiences today do not know what a particular film looked like upon its release those long years ago and will likely find most of these recent restorations to be exhilerating. Unfortunately, raised in the era of "glorious Technicolor," I cannot help but carp a bit when I see films diverge greatly from their original look.

GWTW is one of my all-time favorite films. I've probably seen it at LEAST 70 times through the years. I DID see it in 1940, but have little memory of it. However, beginning in 1947 I saw each 7 year release MANY, MANY times and thus the "correct" look for me was imprinted long ago. For young people today this rather ruddy red print will be THEIR "correct" look for years to come, I suppose.

I VERY eagerly awaited this release. I bought my first video recorder in November of 1996 because GWTW was going to be broadcast for the first time. I bought a Betamax, the tapes of which held only one hour and cost $20 apiece. But what joy to own it, even if the titles and prolog bore no resemblance to any opening shot in the original. In later years I recorded broadcasts of it on VHS and then, when it was released on tape I bought it. And....when it appeared on laser.....I bought it. And I bought ALL the DVD releases. Each one is VASTLY different in tone and tint from the others. Two releases ago....an infamous version appeared which looked as if the PINK PANTHER had left the color of his pelt upon the flesh of Rhett and Scarlett. Yet, there were moments in it that WERE quite lovely. The most recent release was allegedly more in keeping with the very first prints in 1939-40....golden candlelit style tints. I thought it quite good, though NOT the GWTW of my youth in which blues predominated. 3-strip Technicolor had an INCREDIBLE backlit blue that has NEVER been equaled or reproduced in any home form.

I am VERY disturbed by this release. My generation will hate it. It is FAR too ruddy. Often it is as if a reddish wash has been laid over many of the scenes, like the wash of a watercolor painting. Where are the creamy skin tones of the glory days of Technicolor? Not in THIS release.....not by a LOOOONG shot. They used to talk of a "Technicolor Tan" which made everyone filmed look VERY healthy. Yes, that was true...a LIGHT healthy golden tan look at times...but also creamy in a way that is difficult to describe. They were lush, creamy skin tones that made the heart beat faster because of their beauty. This is NOT "Technicolor Tan," but rather "South Sea Islander Ruddy Red."

I spent almost four hours attempting to moderate the overall reddish wash in the film. My DLP set allows individual color adjustments over six shades. And I STILL cannot get it right. On the PLUS side, grain is held to a minimum, yet IS there for the grain lovers. There ARE moments that are quite lovely, but more than half of the film is ruined by this ruddy look. The contrast range is also problematic for me. The "hat" scene is too dark and lacking in tonal range. Many of the scenes have bright edge flare on the highlight sections and if you tone those down the picture just becomes lost in any gradational range.

The last release was arguably (from my point of view) a bit too golden, even though it may have been a reasonably accurate representation of the film's VERY first release. (Allegedly drastically altered in the tone of the prints for the 1947 release) However, this is FAR removed from that color schema. No gold here....just ruddy reddish faces...until you pull the color WAY down and adjust and adjust and adjust, if your set permits it. Then it all appears flat and tends toward pinkish gray.

After hours of working with it on my 73 inch DLP I tried it on my bedroom LCD....and SOME of it was a LITTLE bit better but it was still VERY ruddy. Pork's shirt with red checkers on it in the "Return to Tara" sequence used to stand out clearly in other manifestations of the film.All of that is lost in this one. The dress Scarlett wears to the train depot where the dying are laid out and which she subsequently wears for much of the next hour of the film used to have very lovely subtle colors visible in it. Now they are are largely covered over by a too yellow/red tonal wash.

The clarity is excellent without giving an overprocessed CGI look that bothered me in parts of the OZ release. It is clear without being OVERLY sharp. In fact, I almost think the previous release looked a bit sharper. I will have to check that aspect out. But it is a fine balance in terms of clarity without beginning to look like a CGI TRANSFORMERS film.

In many of the more recent restorations....and NOT the ones Mr. Harris has beautifully restored....there seems to be an aversion to blue. As I mentioned Technicolor had a REMARKABLE ability to create blues that drew you into them as if into some new dimension. Today everyone seems to hate making films look pretty.....they are all brown or red or gold or green in tone....but seldom appropriately colorful. I can accept a DISTRICT 9 looking devoid of color, but NOT a "golden age" 3 strip Technicolor film. This isn't even CLOSE to what those masterpieces of color of the Technicolor age looked like.

Now.....I readily admit that my generation is almost gone and no one will know or care what these films originally looked like and they will accept a RED MUD GWTW as THE GWTW....but oh, what a glory it was when the palette was rich with color. Very few alive today know what an INCREDIBLE process 3 strip Cinerama was in the 1950s. It made IMAX look like a child's toy. And certainly few today know that for over 40 years RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL was a movie theater....with lines reaching back for blocks and people waiting hours to get into the show. Everything changes.....and what we have today.....will change also......and be forgotten to most and holographic images in the home will undoubtedly render movies of today relics of a distant past. But it is nice to think that a FEW might keep the flame alive. And that is why I am so "picky" about the restoration of 3 strip Technicolor films.

Is THIS the end of releases and restorations of GWTW? Certainly not....not while there is money to be made. But I hope I might be alive to see SOME future release that captures it in ALL its beautiful glory.

I wasn't alive in 1940 and I haven't yet seen the Gone With The Wind Blu-ray so I can't comment on mediagy's observations except to say that I find them fascinating. I do hope that some-one suitably qualified will respond. 

I've seen original prints of 3-strip films on nitrate, and I've seen prints of 3strip films that are color balanced for today and color balanced according to the original look. That said, even though the most recent viewing of a three strip film was only a few months ago, I would never claim to have an accurate memory of what those films look like. Any memory I would have would be hopelessly biased and would fixate on one aspect, there's no way to win when you're comparing against memory, because the memory will always triumph, that's why comparison's like dvd beaver's are so invaluable for making us look at all of them together rather than simply relying on appeals to authority (an authority like memory). I've seen a lot of different films at different movie houses, The decor of a theatre, the color temperature, strength and age of a bulb in the projection booth, or the color of the curtains can have a tremendous effect on your color perception of a movie. Was the movie you saw in 1947 in a theater with red curtains? then it probably affected your perception of the color of the whole movie. Not to mention the warming effect that a projection bulb probably had at that time (making everything more yellow). How well do you remember the color/density and quality jumps that would occur during reel changes then? It's something I always notice in older movies projected at houses that make reel changes, on older prints you can almost always see a difference. But your brain is likely to smooth over this difference within moments and a reel that is in different condition from a previous reel when soon appear to your eye to be the same as the reel before (unless it's a really radical change). And if you then change to a third reel that is identical to the first reel, your brain will see it as being substantially off from both of the previous reels, and then it will perceive it as the new normal within moments. And this isn't even getting into how a home environment can provide totally different optical illusions about the color look and color temperature perception of a film.

This is one of the reasons why you shouldn't try to calibrate your set for a particular movie, but calibrate it to a default standard (akin to what professional equipment uses, though commercial equipment is not nearly so reliable), and the fact that you spent four hours trying to do so should illustrate the futility of it.

Perhaps RAH can provide real information on how the color team A-B-ed Gone with the Wind against other references, but the fact is that any one person's memory is a totally unreliable reference, it's mutable and completely variable. If you were a colorist you may get stuck in the first five shots trying to make each shot match your memory only to go back and change it again as though your memory of the original had changed (which it had) when you looked at the new correction you'd made. The colorists at WB were able to use hard, real-world references as to what a vintage print of Gone with the Wind looks like, and they may have very well tried to match the final corrected master for this DVD to that of the original prints, or to one of the reissues, or maybe they color timed it without reference. But it's pretty likely that the colorist on Gone with the Wind has a much clearer picture of what a 1940s GWTW print looks like than any one person who last saw a 1940s GWTW print in the 1940s.

I'm responding to posts by Adam_S, as well as that just previous, by Mediagy:

First to Adam's comments:

You're words regarding prints, theater surroundings, lamp houses, color temperature, etc. are very accurate.  I'll add to that the huge difference between carbon arc (and the type of carbon rods) and non-carbon -- pick a bulb flavor, xenon, etc.  Watch any cinematographer today walk into a screening and he or she will pull out meters, and check illumination and color temperature in both machines.  Add another layer, the age, condition and "color" of the reflector, the age of the lens, ie. glass, etc.  These all make an impact on the final projected image.

Want to make it even more obtuse?

While smoking is no longer permitted in movie houses, it was once the norm, and allowed us one of those great memories -- shafts of moving light being emitted from the booth and traveling magically to the screen.

Those who love film generally agree that some of the finest color work came from the Powell / Pressburger films -- The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, etc.

The late Jack Cardiff, cinematographer extraordinaire, was in final color timing of Black Narcissus at a major theater in London.  As he told it to archivist Scott MacQueen, he and the team of Technicolor were all seated viewing a final dye transfer print after weeks of work, and had finall hit perfection.  Everything was as he wanted it to be.

The film ended, main curtains closed, the lights came, congratulations and thanks all around.

And then the curtains parted, and a crew walked on stage...

with ladders.  

They didn't think much of the scene until men began climbing the ladders with cans of paint...

and began painting the screen a beautiful new white.

Cardiff turned to the house manager and queried what was occurring.  The answer?

Every five years or so, mostly because of the constant smoking in the house, they needed to re-paint the screen white.  And as they looked on the painters began to brush pure white over what they then realized was a very faded yellowed surface.  And they'd just approved final color timing, based upon all of the various parameters of that theater.

A bit more information on prints.  As dye transfer prints were created in decades past, generally in 1000 foot, 11 minute reels, they were assessed by people whose job it was to identify all of those reels that came out a point or two or three magenta, cyan or yellow.  These reels were assembled into final prints.  Those prints which correctly represented and matched the final answer print were shipped to the major cities, and down to those less perfect, which generally ended up in locations such as Horse's Breath, MT.

To Mediagy's comments:

Gone with the Wind has changed mightily over the decades.  The original nitrates from 1939-41 were color timed much like titles such as Nothing Sacred and Little Princess.  With the additional black & white record in place these early "four-strip" prints had a tendency toward dense, flat and heavily lowered color saturation.  Unlike Oz, which was a fantasy film, or the later Fox musicals, which literally bounced off the screen with color, GWTW was relatively muted and tended toward an overall sepia tone reducing color.  The last prints to look anything close to this, and which were still quite a distance away, were the 1954 safety re-issue prints.  I have one of these in my office at the moment, which will shortly be on its way to the Academy Archive.

I'm personally aware of only two original prints or sections thereof.  One, which I'm told is in an archive in China.  The other reels protected by the George Eastman House in Rochester.  I've examined those in Rochester.

I've had several discussions over the years, probably the earliest with Turner's Dick May, who created the protection IP in the '80s, and they all center around what an audience recalls, and what a modern audience will accept.  The bottom line is that while the color and density of an image can be gently pushed toward the original, it still must appeal to a modern audience.  And what we're seeing in the Blu-ray of GWTW, as scanned and finalized at Warner's MPI via Ned Price, is not only a modern magnificent image in quality, but concurrently pays proper respect and tribute to Mr. Selznick and his team, who created the film.  Mr. Price has access to all available color reference going back to 1939, has taken that information and molded it into something that I firmly believe David O. Selznick would not only recognize, but as a consummate showman, would approve for his audience of 2009.

RAH

Yes....I DO understand the quirkiness of memory...no question. And I know that there is NO "correct" print of ANY of those films from that era because they DID vary from reel to reel. Sometimes, in a subrun house we would get reels that varied ENORMOUSLY in the color timing. It was the ONE thing I found annoying about film in my youth. It even happened to some degree with Black and White films. Usually in the large theaters in Philly the prints were more consistent. (BTW...no smoking was EVER allowed in theaters in Philly in my youth!) I also understand the effects of the aging of bulbs and projection lights, length of throws, etc. Certainly, that is all understandably evident to me and always has been. BUTTTTTTTTT......I have somewhere around 5 or 6 different prints of GWTW on VHS, laser, and DVD  and now Bluray. ALL are VERY different. So therefore what is CORRECT? No one can really say. The original prints certainly varied from batch to batch and from theater to theater. BUT......I do not ever recall a print where the shadow detail was missing. The blacks are so overpowered by the reds in this transfer that scenes such as the "hat scene" or the "morning after the funeral" scene are grimly dark...no tonal range or gradation such as exist in earlier transfers. On BOTH my DLP and my LCD sets if they are set for a "normal" reproduction of DVDs, this set OVERWHELMS the sets with red. That should not be. I've NEVER had to adjust the color more than just a TINY bit from film to film or TV show to TV show. With this disc I have had to COMPLETELY change the settings for the first time. If I don't it is just OVERPOWERING RED!

The 1947 prints were allegedly the first to be pumped up in color by M.G.M. and, according to a friend of mine who is pals with one of Selznick's sons, Selznick hated the increase in color saturation, preferring a more muted look. We ALL judge a film (right or wrongly) by our imprinting of it upon our (variable???) memory the first time we see it. Yet sometimes we CAN accept changes. Except for the odd moments of bizarre aspect ratio framing in the 1967 road show release, I actually DID like it. So I CAN accept changes.....but I cannot accept a total shifting of color values towards the red, or the loss of detail and tonal range in the dark scenes.

I well understand that color is a subjective thing. Why do some people like blue rooms or clothes or cars or red ones or yellow ones and others hate them? Who REALLY understands the psychology behind our individual perception of color? Arthur Laurents says that all of the creators of WEST SIDE STORY absolutely LOATHED the cartoonish color used in that film. Through the years SOME of that cartoonish look....those day-glo colors....has been toned down, though it still is too heavily comic book color for my taste....and apparently his as well.

We have to ultimately accept that there IS no "correct" color because of the nature of film and especially of the 3 strip process. It ALWAYS has varied from chemical batch to chemical batch, from reel to reel, from light source to light source, from length of throw to length of throw, to our OWN individual reactions and perceptions of color. To pretend that there IS one "correct" look is to ignore all these variables. ALL that I am ultimately saying is that for people who have perceived color in the same way that I do this will be a TREMENDOUS disappointment and irritation. I wasn't overwhelmed by the more "golden" look that they gave the last DVD release, but I DID accept that this was an attempt to show it as it was in 1939 (not 1947 and subsequently with it's more lush colors) and it had a WIDE tonal range in darker scenes so that I still enjoyed looking at it from time to time.

For new viewers of GWTW this transfer will likely be lovely and they will forever see THIS "ruddy" look as THE look. For me.......it is ugly and a mess. The majority of color films in theaters today either lack richness, subtlety or much of a palette...apparently viewers prefer the look of brown or gold or orange....but I'm not certain why they prefer those rather than the hues of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN or THE BANDWAGON or earlier transfers of GWTW and OZ. My own PERSONAL preference is for COLOR in a color film, but I guess I'm in the minority today. This release lacks the full range of colors that previous releases on VHS, laser and DVD have had and that disturbs me almost as much as the loss of detail in the blacks. But there will be more "restorations" and releases to come. I look forward to one that favors blue and restores a wide tonal range.

There actually is a "correct" look.  However that look, as I noted earlier, would not be appreciated by modern audiences.  Generally when restoring a film, creating a new master, be it film or data, the archivist will search out an Approved Answer Print.  This is the final print signed off on by the director and / or DP.  By the grace of the Academy, we had the Final AP approved by Gordon Willis for The Godfather.  To the best of my knowledge an approved print does not exist for GWTW.

This is a bit of a mea culpa....but only a bit of one! After two days of going nuts trying to achieve SOME kind of acceptable image from the GWTW disc I FINALLY did find a combination of settings that worked....and with that.....Mr. Harris is absolutely right. It is truly ASTONISHING!  It is alive in ways that it never was before....not even in 1947 when MGM changed the color from the original candlelit schema and made it more like their lush musical product of the mid and late 40's. It is a truly beautiful restoration, very vibrant and looking as new as AVATAR. (Well...a bit of hyperbole doesn't hurt.....Hollywood is nothing BUT hyperbole!!!!)

BUT......what STILL disturbs me is that I had to spend two days working to achieve that look. I ultimately had to turn the master color control down to a negative point where, if I leave it at these settings, the images and tints on TV are a bit TOO pale and incorrect. And the individual color controls for magenta, red, yellow, green, cyan and blue had to be set in the strangest configuration they have EVER been in....with VERY little red. I have written down ALL the settings and will leave them in the box so that I can set the TV for it whenever I play it in the future. But that shouldn't have to be the case. The ideal is, of course, to have one setting that works for all materials....which is why we buy reference discs to tune the TV. But I've never found that practical. All you need is one disc that is too dark or too light or too lacking in color or too overcolored (as this appears to be) and you have upset all of that careful calibration that you did. And when we add in the many controls of a video device then we are changing the image however you slice it. One slight turn of color or tint or contrast or brightness and we are seeing a different image than that which the makers of the film, and at the end of the chain, those creating the DVD or BLURAY had in mind. I think it is the old "too many cooks" problem...but in this case....too many variables. Everyone DOES perceive color slightly differently and are more sensitive to certain shades than others. So it all becomes terribly complex in defining what is right.

I have not had a problem like this ever before...where I had to completely change virtually ALL of my settings in order to accomodate the best presentation of a film. My LCD set in the bedroom is much simpler than my large DLP, and has very few controls....but even there the flush of red is too intense. I have to pull the color control WAY down again on that set for GWTW but then the underlying colors change as a result. The good news for me IS that I DID finally get it to be startlingly beautiful. I just wish they had held the intensity back a bit on the disc. I worry about all the people who will buy this who will NOT be willing to spend hours attempting to align all their controls to achieve the impressive image that IS in this release.

I grant you that we are talking about two delivery systems here that are as different as apples and oranges. Projected film will obviously give one result, depending on the projector, the throw, the ambient light, and most definitely the print at hand, etc. Television is an entirely different animal and we now have SO many different color delivery systems.....DLP, LCD, OLED and PLASMA.....and ALL give different types of color which is why we spend hours in a store looking at different makes and models and systems, looking for one that matches OUR idea of what good color should be. Soooooo....when you then use one of those delivery systems to exhibit something that already has its own variables built in which have led to a hard copy disc....then it is a wonder that ANYTHING looks good to us.

I guess what I want is a TV system that reproduces film on disc so perfectly and in such a standardized manner that I don't EVER have to touch the controls in order to achieve good results. In an ideal world I should be able to calibrate a set (or the factory should) and NEVER have to change the controls again. Unfortunately, that is NOT the case. Every program, every movie, every source used for a TV will require adjustments. Most of the time we can live without making those adjustments to a set that has been calibrated to a particular standard. But now and then....something like this comes along.....and you DO have to significantly change your settings. If you have numerical gradations on each setting then you can restore them later, but if you don't.....God help you!

It's just not a perfect world. Duh! At any rate, I DO apologize for my initial reaction. But I still think a lot of people are going to be watching images that are heavy on the ruddy side because they do not have the controls or the time to adjust them.

Once you HAVE achieved the right balance of ALL the variables.....I have to ultimately say, this is BETTER than ANY print I have EVER seen of GWTW in my 75 years. (Quite a switch from my initial reaction, right?) But God help me....if I lose the paper with all the numerical settings on it for this disc!!!! :-)

Interesting read so far on the color issues w/ this release -- and yeah, plenty of hyperrrr-bolies.

I'm probably one of those in the modern audience who are not well acquainted *and* might not well appreciate the original color look.  Then again, maybe I would appreciate it, if I ever got the chance to see it, since I'm also not one to love the modern, fully digital, buttery smooth, etc. look that today's digital photography movement (especially in the still photography world) has fostered.  I guess I might be considered a bit of a retro kind of guy in such respects.   OTOH, actually, I just love variety more than some particular look, etc., soooo...

Anyway, I can hardly *ever* find time to sit down for a 4-hour stretch to watch a classic like GWTW (or even a 3-hour stretch for anything else) -- and still haven't learned to do like the old days and just split the viewing between 2 sittings (on 2 separate days).  Maybe I'll be able to do just that this coming holiday season when I'll spend a couple weeks at home "on vacation" (as I typically do to end each year).  Maybe I'll give this a rent just for that while I wait for Warner to eventually release it in a modestly priced, no-frills edition.

And hmmm...  Maybe this would also make a great classic for my growing little family to watch together (instead of the likes of Twilight and Transformers) while I'm home "on vacation" this holiday season -- would certainly make it easier to find that long time stretch for it.  Our (tween-aged) kids are starting to appreciate a bit of quality films (and even opera in some instances) lately, and I could imagine GWTW (along w/ others like Casablanca and It's a Wonderful Life, not to mention WoOz) could become a part of some sort of family classics tradition for us...

And thanks, y'all, for the interesting read so far...

_Man_

Edited by Man-Fai Wong - 11/15/09 at 2:00am

Bob:

I noticed that you mention that you tweak your set but have you ever had it professionally calibrated by an ISF tech? Are you watching your copy of the Blu-ray on a DLP set or your plasma? I know from my own experience that when my DLP set was a few weeks old I couldn't count on the color for anything as the bulb output was way off.

I am just curious as to what you are watching it on and if it might have something to do with your view of the disc since you were finally able to get it look right to you after a lot of calibration.

Parker

No....I have only used the usual calibration discs myself on my last two sets....and found them to be basically useless in the long run because I ALWAYS seem to encounter discs - and TV shows - that need adjustments. I have a 73 inch Mitsubishi DLP. It gives FANTASTIC images when all the settings are optimum and I DO love the fact that EVERY major color can be individually adjusted, which allowed me to EVENTUALLY create a STUNNING image for GWTW. BUT.......the one thing that it lacks is the ability to save more than one preset. In other words....once you adjust it.....that adjustment becomes the new default.

What I think I've discovered is that Blurays require a VERY different setting on certain sets (perhaps ALL) than DVDs. I HATED the OZ disc at first also, not because of too much red, but because it looked "overprocessed," like all the modern fake looking CGI films in theaters. Now....on this new setting it looks GORGEOUS. BUT.....regular DVDS and TV do NOT!

Actually, this makes a great deal of sense, if you think about it. Certainly the Bluray process is going to ultimately require different settings than standard HD TV. So people need to be aware that they should RESET their settings for any BLURAY discs in order to get the best images out of them.

I'm just sorry that my VERY expensive set does not have optional input saving settings. And...ultimately....EVERY set is going to be different because we have so many different TYPES of sets....OLED, LCD, LED, PLASMA and coming next spring.....3-D. It's a wonder that we EVER get anything to look right.

Hmm, it's all over the Internet that the 2004 restoration was color timed to Selznick's answer print.  The story goes that it was found five weeks into the video restoration, so they started all over from scratch.

Bob, did you play around with the gamma and color temp settings? If somehow the correct gamma setting was thrown off, you would have a bitch of a time getting anything to look 'correct'. Conversely, if you were going in and altering the individual color settings in an extreme way, you might have been able to avoid that (and get a result closer to what was intended) by a small gamma tweak in conjunction with a cooler color temp setting.
Since you put so much time in to tweaking here, you probably already worked on this aspect, but  I thought I would throw this out just in case

Paul....many thanks for your comments. Yes, I did do that. As I said, eventually it turned into an astonishing image.....BUT......it still has too much copper tone for my taste.

Interestingly, in the supplements they have a variety of trailers from 1939 onward. We see the same scenes over and over again through the years and they are ALL different. In some there IS that coppery "Technicolor Tan" look...but in others the skin tones are natural and the tonal range in scenes like the "hat scene" and the "morning after the funeral sequence" is wide and looks very beautiful. In this version they are VERY dark, no matter how you set it. The last release was all golden and we were told that this was the way Selznick wanted it. Allegedly, he hated the 1947 and 1954 releases which featured a brighter and more lush type of color. Through a friend of mine who is friendly with Danny Selznick...I've heard that Danny has been VERY unhappy with WB's releases. Don't know the full story or if it has anything to do with the color.

As others, including Mr. Harris, have pointed out....we all fight memory, faulty or not. I saw the original but don't remember it (was 6 at the time) but I DID see the 1947 and subsequent releases. When I look at the trailers I see the GWTW that I loved....bright and beautiful in even the scenes with chiarascuro lighting. In those releases through much of its history the skin tones have been much more natural. So I am fighting that fact......copper/ruddy skin tones are NOT natural to me and I never have liked the idea of the overuse of that look to convey that a film is set in the past. I'm not speaking against a pastel look, such as the British often used, but gosh, if a film is set in 1862, we KNOW it is in the past. We don't need an antiquated look. I know....I know.....I'm being picky.....and foolish.....BUT......I maintain that when we see a film for the first time....its look is embedded in our brains as the "correct" look so that any subsequent variance from that will look wrong. Perhaps....if they could drain out the comic book color from WEST SIDE STORY, Sondheim and Laurents (and me...hehe) would like it better....but the comic book look will remain the "correct" look for me because that was the way it WAS. For me, SOUND OF MUSIC has yet to be done completely right. At the Rivoli in NYC it was much brighter and glowing than the most recent release which seemed to have too much of a black and white underlying image.

All of this being said.....I DO recognize that when you set the controls to your INDIVIDUAL satisfaction.....this is an ASTONISHINGLY beautiful representation. Is it MY GWTW? No! And I absolutely GUARANTEE you that the NEXT release will be DIFFERENT from this one. Every single release/restoration is different from the one before. Instead of 19 hours of extras....why not a box set with all the differing prints? Or...why not get the Chinese (who have our Technicolor equipment, from what I've read in years past) to do a print? They have a sense of color that is usually quite lovely....let's see what THEY can do with it.

But, thank you, Paul, for your kind comment. I deeply appreciate it.

We did testing at the Chinese lab, which I'm told is now a strip mall. It's been shut down for years.

I would definitely recommend getting an ISF calibration done. I tried using calibration discs and getting accurate settings on my 50" plasma, but I was never satisfied from title to title. I was always changing the settings. Frustrated, I saved up for an ISF calibration. It may seem expensive, but it really isn't if you use your display quite often. I use mine everyday. I didn't think that I'd get much out of a calibration and thought it'd be a rip-off, until I took the leap and had one performed. Why I lived without it for so long, I don't know. Chalk it up to skepticism! But you really don't know what you are missing until it's done. Now, I rarely ever have to make adjustments and when I do they are minute adjustments. I am always satisfied with the accuracy of the color, contrast, and black level, knowing full well that whatever anomalies I see are due to the material on the blu-ray or dvd.

Erik:

That's a very helpful post on a subject about which I've always wondered. 

Thanks!

Thanks Erik....I think I will try that.....last resort :-). I've had the set for four years and it has always been VERY lovely. Never had a problem until this release....and the Oz release. I DO think that SOME (not all) of it has to do with inherent differences between Bluray and SD. They will likely NEVER match totally correctly and I will need a set one day (Next spring? 3-D????) that allows you to store personal preferences for various settings.Thanks for the suggestion.

 I am now really confused about the Target exclusive of GWTW. I belong to the Film Tech Forum and there is a discussion about the Target BD being a two disc set  instead of the a single disc  everyone is reporting here. One of the members even posted a Target ad advertising it as a two disc. To see the ad and read the discussions on "The Afterlife" forum,   go here---

    http://www.film-tech.com

-Claude

I haven''t seen anything to indicate the Target GWTW is a 1-disc release.

Isn't the film spread out over 2-discs?  Seems like it's got to be a two-disc bare bones release.

But understand...this is pure conjecture on my part. 

Info corrected below.


Edited by Mike Frezon - 11/16/09 at 8:19pm

The film (and commentary) are on Disc 1. All other bonus are on Disc 2.

No.  The entire film is on one disc.

Thanks, guys.  I'll strike-out that info above.