A few words about...™ Fantasia -- in Blu-ray - Page 6

I can't agree with your comment, "The decision was made in order that the viewing audience, many of whom would be seeing FANTASIA for the first time, wouldn't be drawn out of the film by audible and awkward edits during the narration."

 

I've seen voice edits to other classic films that have worked well. For instance, in the restored version of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," Lee Van Cleef was dead when they set out to add dialogue to certain scenes, so somebody else was hired to fill in for Cleef's dialogue sequences. The studio did not, however, substitute the existing sequences that included Cleef's dialogue with the voice of the fill-in actor. If they had, there would have most certainly been an uproar. The voice of the actor who provided dialogue for Cleef in some sequences, meanwhile, was close enough to Cleef's that some people likely didn't even notice the change.

 

The point, however, is that there should not have been a problem in retaining Deems Taylor's original narration and filling in the blank spots with the voice of another actor who sounded like him, or could have made himself sound like him. What Disney did with "Fantasia" is unadulterated laziness. Instead of trying to find an actor who could mimic Deems Taylor, Disney instead trashed all of Taylor's narration and replaced it with narration by somebody who sounds nothing like Taylor.

 

After the outcry that followed the 2000 DVD release, you would think that somebody at Disney with half a brain would have addressed this by bringing back Taylor's original narration and filling in the missing dialogue sequences with a sound-alike voice. This wasn't the case, however, and consumers are again forced to endure a sub-par release. This to me is no different than what Paramount/CBS did with the DVD releases of the second and third seasons of classic TV show "The Fugitive," where much of the original music was replaced by horrible synthesizer music.

 

With all that said, the Blu-ray of "Fantasia" will still be part of Christmas in my home, as my son - who loves classic animation - never saw it.

I understand he went to work for Waste Management and is now an x-ray technician

I watched some of the film very early this morning. The colour saturation is eye blindingly bright and the picture is so clear that it almost looks 3D. It doesn't look anything like I remember from previous viewings. The revisionist practice of making these old classic animated films look like they were digitally constructed and not shot on film is getting ridiculous. I suppose a lot of people will find this impressive and in a lot of ways I guess it is, but I'd rather see these films look the way they were originally shot.  

There seems to be a lot of pure speculation as to what was done, and the term "revisionist" thrown around by those doing a lot of speculating. The film doesn't look at all close to 3D (looks like vintage Disney animation, not new stuff). To me it looks like a damn good Blu-ray like Mr. Harris agrees with. I don't see over-saturation either. What are you going by? Old releases or memory, both of which are never accurate? I'll take this outstanding transfer any day over any other. The only thing I wish this set had was the extras from the Anthology set - mainly the 3d disc form that set. BD-Live is lame, and not a substitute for me. So I'm keeping that set for the time being. I will probably throw out the 2 DVDs that came with this Blu-ray, and put the Anthology disc 1 and disc 3 in their places.

Edited by urbo73 - 12/26/10 at 7:04am

Great idea, I already did that.
 

Well, I watched the film again. Using the term "3D" was an overstatement and a lot of this film looks good, but to me parts also look different, especially the pastoral symphony sequence. I also still think the colour on this release looked boosted. Maybe my memory or old releases might not be accurate, but I don't believe that this release is any more accurate when it comes to colour. In some sequences colours were so bright that they almost became distracting. When I start noticing the colours in a sequence, more than the sequence itself, then AFAIAC something has been changed. I don't know, maybe the colours in this film are more accurate to the actual cels; however, I've never seen the cels from this film. The only way I have ever seen this movie is on film and video and I don't remember the colours ever "popping" the way they do in this release.

Some of the sequences have accurate colors, like Dance of the Hours, while others are WAY off, like Pastoral. I interviewed some of the color key artists who worked on these films. Color theory at Disney involved subtle contrasts. Bright colors were applied to smaller areas and were contrasted against larger more neutral colors. Warm colors were balanced against cools. Different hues of the same value were set against each other to blend the colors into a harmony. They grayed down colors with complementary colors instead of black to create grayed colors that still had an internal brilliance.... the sorts of colors you can't quite put a name to. But they never just put a bunch of "straight out of the tube" colors together at one time. They were very concerned about eye fatigue, the result of a solid hour of seeing solid blobs of pink and purple and yellow bounce around the screen. Their goal was to create pallettes of colors that all fell together to create an overall feel. It's not possible to do that with several large areas of screaming colors on the screen at one time.

I'm not going to comment on the value of a particular expert's opinions other than to say that there are three ways to approach a project like this. The preservationist strives to halt deterioration and keep the work in its prevent state. The restorationist goes a bit further, striving to reverse the deterioration and return the work to the way it appeared when it was created. The recreationist attempts to add to the work with the goal being to make it look "better" than it originally did.

Keeping those definitions in mind, I don't think anyone can argue that Disney is engaged in restoration or preservation. These films are being processed with the intent of improving what the original artists created. In a situation like that, there are going to be people who like having something old brought up to date, and there are going to be those who would prefer it to remain true to the original artist's vision.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to the question, "Who is more qualified to establish color pallettes, the artists who made the film, or the technicians who prepared it for home video release?" It's my opinion that the best looking home video releases are the ones that start with a carefully done chemical restoration first, and then the digital copy is tweaked to follow the chemical restoration. Night of the Hunter is a superb example of this. Disney's recreations of their classic animated features engage in digital "Lilly gilding" that loses sight of the baseline of what these films originally looked like. That may not bother you, but it isn't restoration.

Well, maybe Disney should start thinking about their old audience and start releasing versions of these films that show the original work and intent that older fans remember. I'd like to see the colour work of the original artists, not a primary colour fest for toddlers that makes the pastoral symphony sequence look like a Care Bears cartoon.

The Disney restoration team does seek out IB Tech prints for reference (I know they found them on BAMBI, SNOW WHITE, 101 DALMATIONS, JUNGLE BOOK, SLEEPING BEAUTY, LADY, DUMBO) and also do extensive research at the Animation Research Library to see what the surving cells and BGs look like since the negatives are b/w sucessive exposure and that has to be factored in during color timing.  Everything I've heard is that they take great pains to research and engage in long debates about the color. 

All of which counts for nothing when the people making the decisions refer to some of the original creators as "the geezer show" and only feign interest in what they have to say.

The Animation Research library only has color reference for cels post Cinderella. All of the nitrate cels were put in barrels and buried at the Golden Oak ranch back in the late sixties. However, the great pains and research doesn't seem to be making much of a difference. Every version of Alice looks different than the one before it and Sleeping Beauty is one of the worst color balances since the glow in the dark Turner version of Gone With The Wind.

I'm very glad to hear that Disney is engaged in film preservation. A digital scan is not the same as a film print projected in a theater using a film projector. The Universal fire kicked a big hole in the available film prints for rental. Hopefully, Disney is in the process of reversing their previous trend towards only offering digital projection of older films. The UCLA Film and Television Archive is overladed with elements from studios that aren't farsighted enough to preserve film as film.

Merry Christmas!  My wife got me the Fantasia Anthology DVD set (to replace the one I sold last year), plus the Culhane book too!  No more hassling with that ill-conceived "Vault" crap.

 

I'd forgotten how substantial the DVD set looks and feels... what a classy package.  I once called it the "crown jewel" of my DVD collection.... now I remember why.  I don't mind the space it takes on my shelf, right next to the blu-ray.

 

So can anyone comment on the assertion by the Ultimate Disney review that the Fantasia 2000 Blu-ray actually includes all the Legacy bonus features encoded on the disc, but simply does not allow access to them from the menus?  It says that if you have a PC Blu-ray drive (I do not), you can find all the material on the disc and play it directly.

 

I've been searching for confirmation of this but have yet to find any...

 

I detest the decision to make the extras BD-Live only... I really hope Disney does not find this method successful enough to screw its customers again next time.

Hmm..Don't have a Blu-ray drive so I can't test, but it would seem strange for it to be true. If the content would fit, why would they have BD-Live? Makes zero sense...

I must report that I changed my mind about the Deems Taylor dubs: It was the right thing to do. It was accomplished pretty much flawlessly, and truly the only way to re-create the roadshow version was to have somebody else fill in for all the dialogue. The overall Blu-ray presentation of the actual film is a 10 out of 10 in my book. The only problem I have with the Blu-ray is having all of the Legacy bonus material only available via BD Live.

 

I agree with urbo73 that it would not make any sense to make that additional content available only to those with a Blu-ray drive. If the material was encoded on the disc, then it should be available to anybody with a Blu-ray player, period.

 

The conspiracy theorist in me would think they just want a way to keep tabs on you even while the actual content gets loaded from the disc.

 

Actually, this would be not much diff than how digital copies are typically handled although you're required to use a limited use authentication code/key for that.

 

It actually makes good sense for the content to be stored on disc (for better use of resources), and then only use BD-Live as a gateway-of-sorts for accessing that content (even though it's on the disc) so they can do stuff like usage tracking, promote other usages of BD-Live, etc.

 

Remember, whatever Disney chooses to do would be what they believe is best overall for them as a business, not just for the consumer.  Of course, this is just idle speculation from me -- and I don't even know if any of that content is actually stored on the discs...

 

_Man_

I'm pretty sure if the content was actually stored on the disc, it wouldn't take so damned to load, then stutter as it plays.  There's definitely some streaming happening, which wouldn't be necessary if the content was actually present on the disc.

 

EDIT:  Okay, I misunderstood.  The review asserts that the content is BOTH available via BD-Live and is authored on the Fantasia 2000 BD (but only accessible by using a BD-ROM drive).  I won't have a BD-ROM drive for at least another couple of months, so I have no way of verifying it.... but I'm intrigued.  As I stated a few posts back, I've got the DVD Anthology set, so I'm set either way.

Edited by Craig Beam - 12/30/10 at 6:37pm

I just checked the Fantasia 2000 disc in my computer, and there is a 48 min documentary called The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature. It does in fact exist on the disc as a 480p video file. I can't find a way to access that file from the disc menu, unless the virtual vault is actually playing it from the disc. I'm also not sure why you can't view it full screen if that is the case.

 

Also someone, I don't remember if it was in this thread or another, suggested that Destino was only presented in 480p. This is in fact NOT the case. It is a 1080p AVC file.

 

Doug

Thanks for checking Douglas!  You didn't find any of the other bonuses on there?

 

I agree with Craig... it is definitely streaming when played through the menus.

 

I believe that Disney decided late in the game to "test the waters" with this Virtual Vault crap and just removed it from the menu.

I didn't find any of the other features. Also I'm 90% sure that The Fantasia Legacy plays from the disc. It starts instantly, where if I go to the other features, they bring up a buffering bar.

 

Again why you can't play it full screen I don't know.

 

Doug

 

It certainly wasn't stated as such in my review. However, the "Disney/Dali" documentary detailing the careers of both men and the creation of the short IS in 480i.

 

OH no it wasn't in your review or anyone else's. I believe it was stated by someone who posted in a thread, but I'm too lazy to go find the post. :-)

 

Yes the documentary is 480I

 

Doug

Just watching this on blu for the first time. I very much miss Deems Taylor's voice, but I'm still loving the film and it still gives me a chill...First saw it at the age of 10, maybe, and I've never seen it looking and sounding this good. The colors once in a while look almost a little too bright. But maybe I'm just getting used to it.

Edited by benbess - 4/26/11 at 3:28pm