A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Bridge on the River Kwai-- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Brian Borst]

Does that mean it was vertically squeezed for the DVD? Since that version has it much less than the Blu-ray.

 

[Reagan]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris
The image is NOT stretched in any way. What people are seeing are the famous CinemaScope "mumps."

RAH

Something occured to me when I read your review on this yesterday (great review, by the way). Wouldn't it be rather easy to digitally correct the anamorphic mumps? I doubt anyone would want to do it, but it might be fun to see the results. I also recall the Robert Mitchum/Marilyn Monroe film "River of No Return" being affected by severe mump-itis.

-R

 

[Geoff_D]

Certain modern anamorphic films still make people look, ah, a little 'stocky' at times. Big Trouble In Little China's one, and Alien³ is another.

 

[Mark-P]

I thought one of the benefits of of the modern age of digitally scanning Cinemascope negatives was the ability to correct the image and eliminate this distortion. I see the removal of this artifact as the same thing as removing the join-lines in "How the West Was Won"

Originally Posted by Robert Harris
The image is NOT stretched in any way. What people are seeing are the famous CinemaScope "mumps."

RAH

 

[theonemacduff]

It may well be the mumps, but it is easy to correct in Photoshop, thus I would think, just as easy to correct for the BD (adjust the pixel aspect ratio maybe?). I won't bore with the Photoshop details, but when I processed a couple of screen grabs from Gary Tooze's DVD Beaver site, they looked much better when corrected to 2.35. What I wondered was – was the BD created from an original negative, if such exists, or was it coded to present at 2.55 based on a scan from one of the existing 2.35 exhibition prints? To my eye – a naive eye, let's say – it looks like the latter.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I viewed this BRD over the weekend and I must say it was an excellent presentation of this great film. A simply wonderful BRD release.







Crawdaddy

 

[Vern Dias]

but it is easy to correct in Photoshop

That's only because you don't fully understand the issue....

CS mumps only affects the center portion of the image and the magnitude of the effect is dependent on the type of shot. Close ups have the worst mumps, medium shots have mild mumps and and long shots have none.

So it must be corrected on a shot by shot basis, reducing the overall AR to 2.35:1 isn't the answer.....

Vern

 

I thought the new blu ray of Alien made everyone look stocky as well.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by Vern Dias


That's only because you don't fully understand the issue....

CS mumps only affects the center portion of the image and the magnitude of the effect is dependent on the type of shot. Close ups have the worst mumps, medium shots have mild mumps and and long shots have none.

So it must be corrected on a shot by shot basis, reducing the overall AR to 2.35:1 isn't the answer.....

Vern

Its not JUST on a shot by shot basis, but with in the shot itself. The problem was with the way the CinemaScope lenses handled focus. The closer the focus was to the lens, the less anamorphic power the lens exhibited. So when projected back out, close ups looked stretched.

In other words, if an actor starts out in a head to toe shot, and walks up to the camera, ending up in a close up, the anamorphic power of that lens changes as the focus is being racked. So you would have to know exactly how fast the camera assistant pulled the focus on that particular shot. Add to that, each lens in Fox's collection was unique, and would have different degrees of this effect. Some could focus closer before the effect was noticeable, than others.

Panavision finally came up with a solution to the problem, which spelled the death of CinemaScope, when actors like John Wayne and Frank Sinatra refused work with anything but Panavision.

Doug

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vern Dias

That's only because you don't fully understand the issue....

CS mumps only affects the center portion of the image and the magnitude of the effect is dependent on the type of shot. Close ups have the worst mumps, medium shots have mild mumps and and long shots have none.

So it must be corrected on a shot by shot basis, reducing the overall AR to 2.35:1 isn't the answer.....

Vern

Actually, there are five different areas of concern re: anamorphic "mumps." From left to right, images are slightly squeezed at the side, more normal at position 2, distorted horizontally in the center, with 4 and 5 following 1 and 2.

One would do everything to avoid placing the leading lady in the center of the frame. Cinematographers at the time were fully aware of the situation.

 

[Paul Penna]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris
Quote:

Actually, there are five different areas of concern re: anamorphic "mumps." From left to right, images are slightly squeezed at the side, more normal at position 2, distorted horizontally in the center, with 4 and 5 following 1 and 2.

One would do everything to avoid placing the leading lady in the center of the frame. Cinematographers at the time were fully aware of the situation.

This is something I was conscious of while watching "Three Coins in the Fountain" the other day. A cut from a long shot of two actors to a medium close-up of one alone would have him (I say "him" because I'm specifically thinking of a long scene between Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire) placed off-center. Throughout the film I noticed the ways in which cinematographer Milton Krasner sought to avoid the oddities of the optics. Usually I noticed them only where they couldn't be avoided, such as in pans. This guy obviously knew exactly what he was doing. I'm not in any way annoyed by these optical anomalies, even though I usually can't help but spot them.

 

[marsnkc]

Instances of squeezing at the sides are most apparent in 'The Robe'.

 

[Douglas Monce]

This is something I was conscious of while watching "Three Coins in the Fountain" the other day. A cut from a long shot of two actors to a medium close-up of one alone would have him (I say "him" because I'm specifically thinking of a long scene between Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire) placed off-center. Throughout the film I noticed the ways in which cinematographer Milton Krasner sought to avoid the oddities of the optics. Usually I noticed them only where they couldn't be avoided, such as in pans. This guy obviously knew exactly what he was doing. I'm not in any way annoyed by these optical anomalies, even though I usually can't help but spot them.

Its not uncommon to put actors off center in a close up, just because it is just a more pleasing composition. It also gives the actor "looking room" that helps establish the geography of a scene. IE the rule of thirds. Its a happy accident that off center worked better for old CinemaScope lenses.

Doug

 

[theonemacduff]

Thanks for the corrections; some of the posts contain the best explanation of mumps I've read. But I should have been clearer about exactly what it is that Photoshop can do, what it means to apply that process.

Using the "image size" dialogue box it's possible to hold the vertical dimension constant while adjusting the horizontal. The effect of this is to re-apply an anamorphic squeeze, a slight one, to the image. But you're not simply correcting the "image" when you do that; and I should be clear that I'm not talking about extracting a 2.35 image out of the 2.55 original by cropping the edges. What Photoshop is doing is applying a lens correction, not simply re-sizing the image, that is, the process adjusts for the geometry of the lens itself. Photoshop also has an add-on feature that allows users to create a lens profile, which can then be applied to automatically correct images produced by particular lenses. I admit that what I did is open to the charge of arbitrariness in that I simply plugged in the figure of 2.35 in order to get a slight anamorphic squeeze. But I believe the method of lens correction is sound, and needs only more accurate data to be applied.

If I understand what people have said, the early cinemascope photographers did everything they could to minimize these inherent defects in the way the lenses created images, that is, they did not want this effect. If those lenses still exist, or data on how they worked exists, it should be possible to build lens profiles which can then be used to eliminate the mumps, automatically, at the point of scanning. Moreover, I don't see why we shouldn't try to do this. If restoration means restoring the colors, getting rid of the scratches, realigning technicolor matrices, and so on, I don't see any inherent problem with also correcting for defects in lenses.

 

[theonemacduff]

Here are a couple of illustrations of the process.

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by theonemacduff
Thanks for the corrections; some of the posts contain the best explanation of mumps I've read. But I should have been clearer about exactly what it is that Photoshop can do, what it means to apply that process.

Using the "image size" dialogue box it's possible to hold the vertical dimension constant while adjusting the horizontal. The effect of this is to re-apply an anamorphic squeeze, a slight one, to the image. But you're not simply correcting the "image" when you do that; and I should be clear that I'm not talking about extracting a 2.35 image out of the 2.55 original by cropping the edges. What Photoshop is doing is applying a lens correction, not simply re-sizing the image, that is, the process adjusts for the geometry of the lens itself. Photoshop also has an add-on feature that allows users to create a lens profile, which can then be applied to automatically correct images produced by particular lenses. I admit that what I did is open to the charge of arbitrariness in that I simply plugged in the figure of 2.35 in order to get a slight anamorphic squeeze. But I believe the method of lens correction is sound, and needs only more accurate data to be applied.

If I understand what people have said, the early cinemascope photographers did everything they could to minimize these inherent defects in the way the lenses created images, that is, they did not want this effect. If those lenses still exist, or data on how they worked exists, it should be possible to build lens profiles which can then be used to eliminate the mumps, automatically, at the point of scanning. Moreover, I don't see why we shouldn't try to do this. If restoration means restoring the colors, getting rid of the scratches, realigning technicolor matrices, and so on, I don't see any inherent problem with also correcting for defects in lenses.

The inherent problem is not affected by aspect ratio, which is controlled by the amount of horizontal real estate being used in principle photography.

As to correcting the problem? It should not be corrected. If it were to be corrected the correction would change slightly for each lens in use. Not a simple thing, as a film would need to be broken down and corrected shot by shot.

This is the way that Kwai was shot. It is to be left that way.

RAH

 

[theonemacduff]

Sigh. Agreed. (I just noted a post in another thread on the differences between restoration and recreation). But still .... the utopian in me yearns to "fix" things, whether they need it or not.

 

[David_B_K]

I kinda like the "mumps" effect. Not for its sake; but I just remember going to see movies on a huge screen and feeling that the "mumps" distortion was just part of the big screen process. Actually, when I watched the Kwai disc, I scarcely noticed it. I just felt like I was in a theater watching a 50's widescreen epic.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by theonemacduff
Thanks for the corrections; some of the posts contain the best explanation of mumps I've read. But I should have been clearer about exactly what it is that Photoshop can do, what it means to apply that process.

Using the "image size" dialogue box it's possible to hold the vertical dimension constant while adjusting the horizontal. The effect of this is to re-apply an anamorphic squeeze, a slight one, to the image. But you're not simply correcting the "image" when you do that; and I should be clear that I'm not talking about extracting a 2.35 image out of the 2.55 original by cropping the edges. What Photoshop is doing is applying a lens correction, not simply re-sizing the image, that is, the process adjusts for the geometry of the lens itself. Photoshop also has an add-on feature that allows users to create a lens profile, which can then be applied to automatically correct images produced by particular lenses. I admit that what I did is open to the charge of arbitrariness in that I simply plugged in the figure of 2.35 in order to get a slight anamorphic squeeze. But I believe the method of lens correction is sound, and needs only more accurate data to be applied.

If I understand what people have said, the early cinemascope photographers did everything they could to minimize these inherent defects in the way the lenses created images, that is, they did not want this effect. If those lenses still exist, or data on how they worked exists, it should be possible to build lens profiles which can then be used to eliminate the mumps, automatically, at the point of scanning. Moreover, I don't see why we shouldn't try to do this. If restoration means restoring the colors, getting rid of the scratches, realigning technicolor matrices, and so on, I don't see any inherent problem with also correcting for defects in lenses.

Photoshop was designed to work with single still images, not one image following another for 2 hours. I suspect if that solution was applied to a shot from a film like Kwai, you would end up with a shimmering effect (like being underwater) anytime the cameras focus is adjusted. I think that proprietary software would have to be written to take into account the changing geometry of each lens as the focus changes, so as to create a smooth correction.

Add to that the amount of time and work that would have to be put into each shot of a film, I think the whole idea is impractical.

As Mr. Harris has stated, this is the way these films were photographed and they should be left that way. Cleaning up dust and dirt is one thing, correcting for the quirks of the equipment used is quite another.

Doug

 

[dpippel]

I finally got around to watching this last night and WOW, what a presentation! In some ways it seemed as if I was watching Kwai for the first time again. Marvelous!

And I simply cannot WAIT for Lawrence...