- Joined
- Feb 8, 1999
- Messages
- 17,037
- Real Name
- Robert Harris
Let's begin with several caveats.
I'm not a fan of giallo, never have been, and presumably, never will be.
But I respect the fact that there are numerous fans, and to them the films are of great importance.
BwtCP was shot in Technicolor's proprietary Techniscope (TS) process, which arrived in 1960, and was used primarily for "Spaghetti" westerns, and other low budget productions, as a cost saving device. It used half the raw stock, and added savings by not using Panavision, which was a far superior process.
Here's an image borrowed by Wiki.
Hundreds of productions used the process, inclusive of some studio favorites, such as American Graffiti. Most recently it was used for Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, as much like its earlier incarnation in the '60s, a scan and finalization as DI, allowed first generation imagery.
During its prime years, all prints were first gen, as the printing matrices were produced directly from the 2-perf OCN. Films of that era, using the process were the "Dollars" films, The Good, The Bad..., One Upon a Time in the West, Two-Lane Blacktop and many others.
Because the negative was a wide screen image, it could be anamorphosized, and enlarged to 35mm 4-perf scope for projection. The downside was that the vertical image was very close to 16mm. This meant that shadow detail, grain structure, black levels, etc, could be problematic.
But dollars were being saved by the process.
Another anomaly, was that since splices would have destroyed a major portion of the image area, extras frames, generally one at the head and one at the tail of each shot, were left intact during negative cutting and conformation. That made splices a non-issue.
So you're going to release a film on Blu-ray. And that film was shot TS. Best of luck.
And that's precisely what the team involved with TBwtCP needed, as led by Arrow's James White.
A 4k scan of 16mm is generally not recommended, as there simply isn't 4k data involved. What you get is really beautiful grain. Grain that would have been reduced by the loss of overall resolution in the dye transfer printing process.
Dirt, damage and detritus doubles in size. Scratches being the worst offenders. Black levels become potentially problematic, along with the possibility of blown out areas.
And then there are all those errant extra frames, which must be accounted for and wrangled.
End of caveats!
So what does Arrow's TBwtCP look like on Blu-ray?
Far better than I would have surmised, and actually, quite lovely.
Grain pops just a bit. I'm seeing a tad of lack of shadow detail in certain shots. A few areas where there are unavoidable tramline marks, but beyond that...
the release is a delight, which I'm certain will thrill the fans.
A note to those who may compare this release to earlier video incarnations, which is a waste of time in any case.
The optical process by which both matrices, and IPs were produced, protected the edges of the film, especially from dirt which might find its way into the gate.
With a digital harvest, there is no need. An image can be extracted going beyond the edges of the frame, which means that a bit more picture area can be exposed. Optical camera setup also might create a situation in which the image might be balanced more to one side or the other by a couple of millimeters. This also no longer comes into play. Which means that positioning may be slightly different.
Extras?
Tons of them, in typical Arrow style.
Image - 4.75
Audio - 5
4k Up-rez - 5
Pass / Fail - Pass
Highly Recommended
RAH
I'm not a fan of giallo, never have been, and presumably, never will be.
But I respect the fact that there are numerous fans, and to them the films are of great importance.
BwtCP was shot in Technicolor's proprietary Techniscope (TS) process, which arrived in 1960, and was used primarily for "Spaghetti" westerns, and other low budget productions, as a cost saving device. It used half the raw stock, and added savings by not using Panavision, which was a far superior process.
Here's an image borrowed by Wiki.
Hundreds of productions used the process, inclusive of some studio favorites, such as American Graffiti. Most recently it was used for Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, as much like its earlier incarnation in the '60s, a scan and finalization as DI, allowed first generation imagery.
During its prime years, all prints were first gen, as the printing matrices were produced directly from the 2-perf OCN. Films of that era, using the process were the "Dollars" films, The Good, The Bad..., One Upon a Time in the West, Two-Lane Blacktop and many others.
Because the negative was a wide screen image, it could be anamorphosized, and enlarged to 35mm 4-perf scope for projection. The downside was that the vertical image was very close to 16mm. This meant that shadow detail, grain structure, black levels, etc, could be problematic.
But dollars were being saved by the process.
Another anomaly, was that since splices would have destroyed a major portion of the image area, extras frames, generally one at the head and one at the tail of each shot, were left intact during negative cutting and conformation. That made splices a non-issue.
So you're going to release a film on Blu-ray. And that film was shot TS. Best of luck.
And that's precisely what the team involved with TBwtCP needed, as led by Arrow's James White.
A 4k scan of 16mm is generally not recommended, as there simply isn't 4k data involved. What you get is really beautiful grain. Grain that would have been reduced by the loss of overall resolution in the dye transfer printing process.
Dirt, damage and detritus doubles in size. Scratches being the worst offenders. Black levels become potentially problematic, along with the possibility of blown out areas.
And then there are all those errant extra frames, which must be accounted for and wrangled.
End of caveats!
So what does Arrow's TBwtCP look like on Blu-ray?
Far better than I would have surmised, and actually, quite lovely.
Grain pops just a bit. I'm seeing a tad of lack of shadow detail in certain shots. A few areas where there are unavoidable tramline marks, but beyond that...
the release is a delight, which I'm certain will thrill the fans.
A note to those who may compare this release to earlier video incarnations, which is a waste of time in any case.
The optical process by which both matrices, and IPs were produced, protected the edges of the film, especially from dirt which might find its way into the gate.
With a digital harvest, there is no need. An image can be extracted going beyond the edges of the frame, which means that a bit more picture area can be exposed. Optical camera setup also might create a situation in which the image might be balanced more to one side or the other by a couple of millimeters. This also no longer comes into play. Which means that positioning may be slightly different.
Extras?
Tons of them, in typical Arrow style.
Image - 4.75
Audio - 5
4k Up-rez - 5
Pass / Fail - Pass
Highly Recommended
RAH
