A Few Words About A few words about... ™ 12 Monkeys -- in HD-DVD (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

Can you please explain "purposely shot with older film stock?"

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Prime example of the subtlety of some improvements. The biggest thing I noticed was the lack of MPEG noise and increased fine detail.

 

[Paul.S]

Wow--cool to be able to just mouse over the image to get HD DVD to DVD comparisons instead of scrolling down/over and having to shift one's eyes.

Ray, by "older film stock," are you referring to the what Vincent mentioned in his post 41?

 

[Robert Harris]

Paul.S,

Thank you for the link to Vincent's contribution. I believe the point should be made that the use of 5298 was not a conscious choice to go back to the dark ages, as that was the 500 stock available. Rather like saying, I chose to shoot on orthochromatic black and white, rather than the current stock, when none was available.

 

[Ray_R]

Yup! This should be in my next batch of purchases to upgrade to HDDVD compared to DVD. I figure i buy two from my list of "upgrades" and one new.

Robert, if I were a director I'd want to use certain film stocks too during the picture to achieve a certain cinematic look. Well, depending on certain projects.

 

[Dave H]

I think the differences are there and would be more apparent during "real life" viewing on a larger display (50"+). I do wonder if this would be one of the titles Universal will remaster/re-encode for Blu-ray at some point. If not, I'll still pick it up as the color rendition is a bit better and lack of MPEG artifacting. Again, the fine detail would be more visible on a larger display too.

 

[Paul.S]

Me, too. I'm speculating, especially until U sets more precedent with BD releases, but I tend to think that deeper/non-"A" list titles already released on HD DVD will happen later rather than sooner if for no other reason than to sell through as much of that exisitng HD DVD inventory as possible.

 

[Vincent_P]

I should have worded my contribution a little better, I didn't mean to imply that Gilliam and co. purposely chose an "old" filmstock at the time of shooting. It was the 500 ASA stock that was available at that time from Kodak.

Vincent

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Started watching this the other night and it's very clear that a softer look was intended for this film. Check out the scenes of passing cars intercut with the scenes of Willis and Stowe in Stowe's Jeep. There are halos around the headlights that are clearly the product of net filtering being placed in front of the lens.

I also concur that there is more detail in this disc than in the SD incarnations. It's subtle, but it's still there.