A Few Words About A few words about...™ Pinocchio -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[DaViD Boulet]

Lowry doesn't alter color unless they're asked to by the studio. The follow instructions, and don't make rogue decisions without approval. That's the point that's been made several times.

 

[Robert Harris]

Lowry did not do final color on any of the Disney projects mentioned in this thread. Their production people were responsible for the harvesting, compositing and clean-up of the images, as requested by Disney.

Also, as an aside, the fact that someone is not on IMDB is rather meaningless.

RAH

 

[Josh Steinberg]

post deleted by author

 

[TravisR]

So, you're saying that Disney knows more than the fans?

 

[Edwin-S]

Bad analogy. Take any commuter or regional airline flight and the most likely age of the pilot is 24 to 35 years old. How do you think the gray haired pilot you are referring to got to that stage? He certainly wasn't born that way.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Dude, I was just having a little fun with your emphasis on the age of some of the people you mentioned in your post (hence the "winking smiley"). I hope you aren't suggesting you'd like some harm come to me when I take my next flight.

Bottom line: Without any personal knowledge of the individuals you mentioned, you have made a distinct determination of their skills. Even as you argue that you are also basing it on the quality of the Bond transfers, it also seems to be (unless you know more than you are telling us) an uninformed opinion without direct knowledge of how much control the people you singled out had in the process, or in what shape the original materials are, or any number of other variables that figure into the issue.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Lots of folks in this thread in their 20's and 30's don't seem to have a problem considering in their own point of view as valid. Wonder why that would out-of-hand be deemed a problem for an employee...

 

[rich_d]

Yeah and Disney's people look like they are training on the job, except the jobs are too important for that to occur. Color timing on Peter Pan was disgraceful. Cinderella has been covered here so I won't dwell on it. Sleeping Beauty ... issues but certainly not anything like Peter Pan. Pinocchio ... better still - like I stated, may have issues but I don't sense any agenda nor sense they are picking colors just because they like them.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

for someone who's criticizing (imagined) ignorance on the part of the well-intentioned staff doing the research into archival elements to pick the right colors, you're criticisms seemed based in ignorance.

There is room for debate about what the "right" color scheme is for every film every made, but that's because there's art mixed with science when restoring historic media, and there are many subjective factors (no two release prints ever looked identical even when the feature was new): not because anyone at Disney is "picking colors just because they like them".

It would suit the forum if you would put your comments in the context of asking questions about why decisions were made, since you obviously can't confirm what the right or wrong colors are with any title that's been mentioned, since you have no access to the Disney archive vault and can only make assumptions based on other posters who are also making assumptions.

Rather than make baseless claims, an objective question or discussion that respects those who work late hours to try to do the right thing by Disney's legacy would be more in perspective with your own grounds of limited information.

I'm not suggesting that a productive discussion isn't possible, that studio decisions can't be questioned, or that mistake are never made: even by the experts armed with the most information. But attitudes that pretend that no one at Disney cares about maintaining historical accuracy are utterly misled.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Thank you for raising this point, DaViD. As someone who has worked in a movie theatre, I can tell you that when we would get multiple prints of the same film, colour would always vary from print to print, even with the latest in DI technology; in fact some of those titles actually looked worse.

Show of hands: who has seen an original dye transfer print of Pinocchio at its time of release?


*sound of crickets chirping*


Exactly. While some have said they don't want to go back to the days of LD, by relying on a colour scheme based in that format, that is exactly what they are advocating. Anyone who says those prints weren't digitally manipulated is blowing smoke. Granted, the technology wasn't up to the same level @ that point, but it was still being manipulated, and has to be manipulated in order to present a faithful image in the video domain, HD or otherwise.

 

[WadeM]

 

[ZackR]

I was wondering if others had noticed the audio errors. I'm glad I'm not alone. To quote what I said over in the SD thread (I'm not Blu just yet):


I'm sure Disney will do the right thing. They generally do a good job of fixing mistakes.

 

[DavidRaymore]

I notified Disney about the missing dialogue in the song "Give it a Little Whistle" yesterday. Today, I received an email to call their technical support line to give more information, and I did just that. The first person that I talked to asked for my email address to find the email I had sent, and then she got someone from technical support for me to talk to about the problem.

The guy that I talked to said that they are looking into the matter, and they will notify me when they are finished. He said they were not aware about the missing dialogue and that's why they are investigating it. To me, I thought it was a standard brush off since he never asked me for any further details. I hope they will correct the problem and offer a disk replacement. I guess only time will tell, but I think nothing will be done since the technical support guy did not seem at all interested in this problem.

David Raymore

 

[rich_d]

It wouldn't matter. If someone posted a positive response to your question, their memory of the viewing would be called into question and reasonably so.

[satire tag]

Di$nay Corp announces a music score restoration for their classic animated film Long Nose.

Alison Forthright comments: 'We realized that the sound elements on the original score may not have been as Wally and his team envisioned. That and improved microphones, acoustic panels, 128 track mixing stations and advances in modern sound stage design have given us the ability to capture Long Nose's music as Wally originally conceptualized.

As all members of the original orchestra have passed on we went to Davey in our research library to determine a course of action. We managed to track down all the original instruments of the Swinging 21 (as they were called) from the archive and through loans from heirs. The last find was Dickey Ride's trumpet which had been donated to Our Lady of the Buena Vista Junior High. We were lucky enough to have as part of our committee Al Joist who had lessons with the renowned Swinging 21 tenor saxophonist Richie Conn."

Al Joist comments: "my sound on tenor saxophone is much like Richie Conn's because he is the guy that taught me. Now to get the right tone, having Richie's saxophone was so helpful. Fortunately, I remember that Richie always used a number 3 1/2 saxophone reed (unless he was tipsy) so I just needed to blow on his five mouthpieces to decide which one he might have used on Long Nose."

Forthright continues: "that's how it all magically came together. We pulled together these great session musicians all with great knowledge and appreciation and love for music before their time and got the original session sheet music as well as Arty Moose's conducting notes and it worked out to a result that is truly the original film music as heard for the first time. I'm confident that Wally would be quite please that we are going to continue to grow Long Nose and honor Long Nose's legacy."
[/satire tag]

 

[Stephen_J_H]

Apples and oranges, Rich. We are all well aware of revisionist "restorations" of music, and Disney has been far from innocent in this regard (1982 digital recording of the Fantasia soundtrack, anyone?). that being said, it's clear that Disney is making efforts to be true to the source within the confines of present technology. I dare say their efforts are verging on the heroic in terms of research and development. BD may have 6x the resolution of DVD and in some respects may be better than older film stocks, but it's always going to be an approximation, with that approximation increasing in fidelity as the technology improves.

Frankly, I'm getting sick of the excessive nitpicking. While problems need to be pointed out, we're now to a point with the technology that one has to sit 6 inches away from the screen with a magnifying glass to pick out some of the problems being described here. It's interefering with the enjoyment of the movie, and that's a tragedy.

 

[Brandon Conway]

If those couple lines are in some Region B disc's 7.1 mix a replacement program should be a fairly simple process. Question: Do those Region B discs have the lines in the Mono as well?

As for the colors - I agree with Stephen.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Granted, a 50+ year old memory is a very subjective thing. I think he means familiarity with the elements now... as in working in the Disney Vault or having access to archived media and historical notes about artistic intent.

 

[Brian Borst]

Sadly, we don't have the Mono, because there have to be several foreign dubs on the disc.

 

[MatS]

I guess I don't understand why forums like this can't just take the lead and put out a inquiry for all to their studio contacts which I'm sure they must have.

Has this been done?

 

[Ethan Riley]

Well you're calling the wrong people. Tech support people didn't work on the film's restoration. They're just there to help people by asking questions like "are you sure your dvd player is plugged in?"

Mat S--by now, the right people must know. The missing dialogue thing is all over the web. Disney always finds out about these things.