Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008 - Page 5

Douglas Monce · 08-16-2008, 07:16 AM

I would think that most of the cells probably no longer exist, and those that do are probably in the hands of private collectors.

Its common practice to destroy or sell animation art work after the film is completed.

Doug

Stephen_J_H · 08-16-2008, 12:20 PM

Not in the case of Disney films. As one of the few who own a copy of Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life can attest, Disney retains control of its artwork and has it archived. Colours have remained very stable; in fact, at the time The Illusion of life was published, the only cel showing any damage reproduced in the book was from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where some of the paint had cracked and peeled away from the cel.

Stephen_J_H · 08-16-2008, 12:27 PM

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Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

Interesting. Damage on opening day sounds to me like sloppy lab work. I wonder who made the prints?

Damage on opening day also could be sloppy handling by the projectionist who assembled the film on the platter.

Tim Glover · 08-16-2008, 03:46 PM

I'm glad I wasn't alone in some of this.

Douglas Monce · 08-16-2008, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen_J_H

Not in the case of Disney films. As one of the few who own a copy of Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life can attest, Disney retains control of its artwork and has it archived. Colours have remained very stable; in fact, at the time The Illusion of life was published, the only cel showing any damage reproduced in the book was from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where some of the paint had cracked and peeled away from the cel.

Probably true, but I think its unlikely that they will go back and rephotograph the animation cells.

Doug

Cees Alons · 08-16-2008, 04:47 PM

That's the crucial point!

It doesn't really matter if it is artistically "thought" to be from animation cells or film - it's where it actually comes from.

If the original cells would be used to create the digitized image, there's no need at all to add artificial grain to make it look more authentic, of course. And the absence of grain should not bother us.

But if the digital master is created by scanning film elements, then (whatever artistic view you're caressing), DNR can damage the high resolution details if it's applied carelessly.

(In fact, it's almost totally impossible NOT to damage the HR content of the image if attempts are made to remove grain by applying DNR on a per-frame basis. The only chance would be using sophisticated algorithms taking information from multiple successive frames, but I wonder if those algorithms exist. Another method would be "individually by hand" - extremely expensive, therefore)

In my opinion that should be the main reason for anyone to oppose to "grain removal": if the HR content of the image is affected (I think RAH would say: infected). And because the grain is at the heart of the image rendering process of analog film, it's bound to be affected - always.

Cees

DaViD Boulet · 08-16-2008, 06:02 PM

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If the original cells would be used to create the digitized image, there's no need at all to add artificial grain to make it look more authentic, of course. And the absence of grain should not bother us.

But if the digital master is created by scanning film elements, then (whatever artistic view you're caressing), DNR can damage the high resolution details if it's applied carelessly.

True.

Quote:

(In fact, it's almost totally impossible NOT to damage the HR content of the image if attempts are made to remove grain by applying DNR on a per-frame basis. The only chance would be using sophisticated algorithms taking information from multiple successive frames, but I wonder if those algorithms exist. Another method would be "individually by hand" - extremely expensive, therefore)

Disney has used Lowry (now "DTS Digital Images") to do the work and they are one of the few (only?) companies that do digital cleanup the right way you describe: analyze successive frames and use manual editing to even teach the software what's noise and what's real picture information.

Their services are extremely expensive. Disney used them for Cinderella but not for Little Mermaid, for instance (and it shows).

Worth mentioning is that FOX didn't use Lowry for Patton (not surprising based on the results).

Lowry's algorithms and hand-cleanup are able to digitally remove grain and random noise without harming real high-frequency information... at least to the eye. But as I mentioned, their services are extremely costly, and so only a few studios are willing to pay to have them clean up A-list titles.

Stephen_J_H · 08-16-2008, 06:10 PM

The only reason I mention that Disney still has cels is that they can use these as colour reference. I agree that grain reduction should not be necessary on a Technirama film like Sleeping Beauty. As my personal favourite Disney animated feature, I will be utterly devastated if the end product looks as bad as The Longest Day; I trust this will not be the case.

On a side note, I took my boys to see The Clone Wars. The print was pristine, but the thing that struck me about the character animation was that they looked as if they were sculpted out of clay and hand painted; not entirely different from the screencaps of The Longest Day posted here.

DaViD Boulet · 08-16-2008, 06:11 PM

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I disagree with this point of view. The art was always intended to be photographed on film and it was designed with that in mind. Tests were done and colors and designs were made based on the format and film stocks to be used. The artwork was never intended for anything other than to be photographed.

Just like any other film, live action or not, it was created with the strengths and weaknesses of the motion picture camera in mind.

In addition as was stated before, this is a large format film and grain reduction should not be necessary.

A wholy legitamate point of view. I actually share *both* points of view on this topic... I can either enjoy animation in a "preserve the film" manner for the reasons you state, or enjoy the "preserve the painting" look of many of Disney's classics on DVD. Both produce beautiful results on DVD, but as you say, your approach is probably truer to the original intention of the artists as they were indeed considering the film stock and the effects of photography when comprising their hand-painted artwork.

In the case of Lowry's digital cleanup, I'm sure that Disney has provided them with records of how the color balance should appear in the original photography to use as a reference. My guess is given the relatively grain-free large format negatives, most of the "clean up" probably involve balancing contrast frame-to-frame. and spurious cel dust etc.

Fingers crossed that the end result looks as stunning as it looked at the demo that I saw. I think that whichever point of view one takes about the best way to preserve and present these animated classics on digital media, one would be well pleased with the result. At least that's my optimistic anticipation.

Edwin-S · 08-16-2008, 07:11 PM

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Originally Posted by Kris Z.

I find it a bit of a double standard too, and as mentioned I would love to have the grainy versions, but personally I justify it as a special case through the following:

1) It's animation. The effects are not going to be that devastating as there isn't as much inherent detail to lose. And as David mentioned, the process is basically from more or less solid colours (cels), to grainy film, and back to solid colours; compared to live-action where it's from reality with detailed skintones and textures, to the same with grain, and then generally to a more "smoothed" reality.

How do you fgure that there isn't as much inherent detail to be lost? Everyone seems to be focussing on the cels and forgetting that there is more to animated film than character cels. The backgrounds have to be taken into account on these films. Older animated films use a lot of highly detailed and dimensional looking painted backgrounds. The backgrounds contain a lot of detail. If DNR is used to remove grain then a probable side effect will be the loss of detail in background paintings.

These animated films should be treated no differently than their live action counterparts. The grain of the film that they were shot on should be preserved.

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2) The "collectors" are getting more and more important but these are still children's films originally, and children don't want grain. "Original", "unmanipulated" and "art" means nothing.

Once again, I'm going to have to disagree with the generalized statement that these films were originally children's films. They were not. Disney did not continually risk the solvency of his studio to make films aimed only at children. These films were designed and made for a general audience. I can still watch these films as an adult. If they were child centric there is no way that I would be able to stomach watching them.

The assumption that kids "do not want grain" is fallacious. Kids do not have enough awareness about the technicalities of film to want anything, other than to be entertained. A kid watching one of these films is not about to say, " I hate this film because it has grain". They are going to watch it and say, " I like it" or " I hate it" and then go on to something new. The existence or lack of existence of grain isn't even going to impinge on their consciousness. That being the case, these films should be preserved as close to their filmic appearance as possible.