A Few Words About A few words about... Lifeboat (1 Viewer)

[seanOhara]

I've always found Casper's commentaries a little too much like a college class with an excessively long winded professor -- I feel like I should be doodling in a notebook when I listen to him.

The worst has to be The Asphalt Jungle, but then you have things like Possessed where he sounds like someone slipped him amphetamines before he went into the recording booth.

 

[Haggai]

I also found his Asphalt Jungle commentary to be disappointing, but he was a lot better on Advise and Consent. He made extensive comparisons with the novel, and acknowledged some of the movie's shortcomings. It was very informative.

 

[willyTass]

I remember watching Lifeboat many years ago. I musta been about 10 or 12 years old. I was engrossed from start to finish.

 

[Keith Paynter]

[sarcasm]This is higher education?[/sarcasm]

Seriously, I've heard wonderful things about this film but have never found a copy to rent in my area in any format, and it may become a blind buy like Narrow Margin was.

 

[willyTass]

excuse my ignorance but why do people like film grain?. I keep reading how so-and-so didn't like citizen kane by Lowry because the grain was removed. I was blown away by the sharpness (as I was with Sunset Boulevard).

To me these "clean" transfers look remarkable

Am I missing something? Is it just an artistic preference to try to keep the image as faithful as possible to the original?

 

[Damin J Toell]

I'm not sure if people actually "like" film grain (even if they might say so), just as I doubt many people would say they actually "like" the sprocket holes on either side of a reel of film. However, whether people like sprocket holes or not, they have to be there to get the negative rolling through the camera during filming and get the print rolling through the projector at your local moviehouse. A filmed image is comprised of grain, and if film grain did not exist, no matter what you did with a reel of film, you would just have a blank piece of acetate or polyester sitting in a camera (although you could make it spin around, if it at least has sprocket holes).

The level to which grain is visible to an audience is determined by a number of factors, including things filmmakers can do intentionally to increase its appearance. Rather than second-guessing filmmakers of decades gone by, retaining a film's original look is never a very risky place to start when transferring a film to DVD.

If you think imagery taken from film can become sharper by removing visible grain, it's only an illusion. Images appear on film as a result of grain (and this minute grain, in turn, typically forms larger groupings that are visible to us as what we refer to as grain), so removing traces of that which created the image can only lessen its detail. Just as, say, removing the texture of brushstrokes on a canvas may make a painting look nicer to some, and the cleaner look may even convince some that the resultant painting has become more detailed somehow, but doing away with those original textures involves doing away with the very parts of what created the painted image in the first place.

Removing grain for its own sake (and not, say, to remove grain added by necessity of available elements being too many generations away from preferable early elements) is the removal of that which makes film...film. This isn't meant as an insult; liking imagery that is devoid of any detectable film grain is surely your prerogative, and heaven knows that I like all sorts of stuff that would lead others to look down their noses at me. But when you watch something that removes the original grain that created the imagery of Citizen Kane in the first place, you should at least acknowledge that you're no longer watching that film; you're just watching some very nice-looking video. And if nice-looking video is all you want to see, then have at it. But it's really not that surprising that other people want to watch films.

DJ

 

[Steve...O]

Although I bought this the week it came out, I didn't have time to watch it until today.

This is a great DVD and I am really impressed with not only the picture quality, but the extensive supplemental material covering the promotion/advertising of this film. Great stuff. The damage in the opening sequence is noticable if you look for it, but it did not distract me that much.

Hitch's daughter, Pat, repeats an off color remark her dad made about Miss Bankhead's wardrobe choices (or lack thereof). I won't repeat it (you'll have to buy the DVD), but it is definitely something one can picture Hitch saying.

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

In a digital transfer, it is not the grain that is removed, but pixels. The pixels represent the film grain. Pedantic? Perhaps, but I feel that the qualification is worth making. Heavy grain can cause problems during compression. The type of player/monitor that you have also effects how grain/video noise/compression artefacts are presented during playback. Blu-Ray discs and high-end players will make the film-to-DVD-to-playback process less problematic, thankfully.

Here is Wikipedia's article on Photographic Film.

Grain should not be removed in the creation of a high-definition digital tape transfer, as although it may look noisy on standard DVD, when that same HD tape is used to author the Blu-Ray disc, it will look much, much better. Granted, any defects will also be rendered in greater clarity, but the overall, collective image will look more film-like (in theory, of course) and will have greater stability. And always bear in mind, as general law, the bigger the screen/monitor you use for playback, the more you are 'blowing up' the image and the older the film, the coarser the grain, although there are exceptions. I fear that misguided 'noise reduction' practices will continue with Blu-Ray masterings. The real test will indeed be how films like Lifeboat and The Third Man are rendered, not Gladiator or The Matrix films.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Grain should be removed because it will result in a more film-like image?

DJ

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

Right, the pixels are altered.

The sentence should have read, "Grain should not be removed in the creation of a high-definition digital tape transfer..." as it now does!

Serves me right for typing that up when I should have been in bed! :b

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I personally just don't like films on DVD to appear "grainy", and I appreciate when a DVD presentation looks (for lack of the perfect description) "smooth and sharp". I've heard that CITIZEN KANE is missing details as a result of removing too much inherent film grain, but in almost every other example which involves an older movie that I am already extremely familiar with frame for frame, it has always enhanced the visuals and I've noticed more detail, not less.

 

[willyTass]

hear hear

My region 1 version of lifeboat arrived in australia last week: the nitrate decomp was visible but it was still an enjoyable film.The picture quality is better than I can remember and at the price Fox is asking it's a veritable steal.
Bankhead's a riot!

 

[Damin J Toell]

As compared to what?

DJ

 

[Joe Karlosi]

As I said, I mean in comparison to CITIZEN KANE, which I've heard has missed some detail as a result of the "smooth over". The overwhelming majority of old black and white films that are enhanced appear much cleaner and vibrant to me, and I notice textures in skin and clothing (as an example) than I ever had before; not less detail.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Much cleaner and more vibrant than what? You noticed textures that you hadn't seen before where? This is what I was asking you before. What are you making these comparisons based upon? Obviously you're saying you've seen these specific films before (and you're not just making a random comparison to Citizen Kane), but where? Previous video releases? VHS? Laserdisc? Something else?

DJ

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Well, yes - on VHS tapes, on laser, on broadcast television. For the purposes of "home video", I think those 'grain-less' transfers, where the noise and 'snowy-ness' is eliminated, improves the picture, not detracts information from it. I only mentioned KANE because it's been pointed out that this DVD in fact DID lose some information.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Saying that these "enhanced" grain-free transfers show more detail than VHS tapes, LD, and broadcast TV is...not very exciting. I should hope that any DVD transfer shows more detail than a prior VHS release. However, it proves nothing about whether or not such a transfer is more or less detailed than a DVD transfer done with an accurate representation of a film's grain structure.

DJ

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Well, we can dance forever. Bottom line with me is, I prefer smooth and sharp looking pictures as opposed to watching soft or grainy-looking transfers on DVD.

 

[Nelson Au]

At the risk of stepping into a minefield and not knowing any other information, perhaps what Joe is seeing in these enhanced "smoothed over" remastered B/W films is a truely sharper image as opposed to what Joe saw in the past. Those versions could have been poor quality editions. And the new editions that are "smoothed over" happen to have grain removed. So the conclusion is that a "smoothed over" film has sharper detail is really a perception based on the older reference material that was not very sharp in detail.

 

[willyTass]

I'm with Joe
I just revisited North By North West last night and even my mother, a 70 year old with diabetes, was stunned at the sharpness and sheer beauty of the picture at hand.Far more palatable than the grainy complexion Cary had in "an affair to remember"

Lifeboat was great but would I have enjoyed it more if Lowry had cleaned it up? Would Fox have re-couped their costs?

There are probably strong artistic reasons to leave the grain in-situ but I presume studios would find it easier to market DVD's to today's masses if the picture looks sharp & beautiful.

As someone else mentioned in this forum, the impetus on the part of the studios to release "restored" versions can't be a bad thing. At least it gets them off their arse so that great films are now preseved for posterity.