Degrading the transfer for Animal House to suit the director's vision. Going too far? (1 Viewer)

[Gordon McMurphy]

Wait a minute... does this new edition have the original MONO track? Or just a new 5.1 remix?


Gordy

 

[Brian McHale]

We the members of the forum are interested in the film product to be recorded and reproduced as closely as possible to the way the original creator(s) of that particular film intended.

 

[Bryant Frazer]

I'm sympathetic to Landis's concerns, and I say more power to him. I wouldn't say it's a question of "degrading" the transfer as much as it is trying to preserve the proper look. What is commonly thought of as a dynamite DVD transfer has often been tweaked to play to the strengths of the medium, rather than to represent a filmed image.

I recently picked up a copy of Wings of Desire, one of my favorite films, on DVD. I've seen this several times over the years in 35mm, owned a VHS copy and then a laserdisc copy, and was really looking forward to a nice DVD version. Well, the DVD is nice. It's incredibly crisp and detailed. I see things in this version of the film that I hadn't noticed before. But I saw a 35mm print of Wings of Desire in February of this year, projected at the great Castro in San Francisco, and I can pretty confidently say that the new DVD does not do a very good job of representing the look of a theatrical screening. The DVD has that harsh, super-detailed "DVD" look (with some degree of "edge enhancement"), but it does not have the rich and creamy look of the film prints.

Based on the evidence in my own DVD collection, I can tell there are widely varying views out there on the subjects of "digital restoration" and telecine work. Titles like Citizen Kane are beautiful showpieces for the DVD format. They reveal detail that wasn't easily visible in earlier versions, and they can throw an entire film into a new light. But, to those of us who have seen Kane in 35mm, there are important ways in which they don't resemble the original film at all.

I'm often guilty of gushing over the work the folks at the Criterion Collection do, but they seem as well-attuned as anyone to the peculiarities of reproducing a filmed image on DVD. Their Stan Brakhage films, in particular, are just startlingly good. I don't think anyone, even the folks involved in creating the DVD transfers, expected the soul of his work to transfer as well as it did to the digital video medium. Their transfers of black and white films are similarly marvelous, with rich tonal qualities and lots of shadow detail, as well as a crisp image, but without the incredibly sharp edges that sometimes make a DVD image pop off the screen in a way alien to actual 35mm images.

My point? There are a lot of critical decisions to be made in the telecine suite as a film is transferred to video, and it's not always clear which of them are "correct." The best practice, as far as I can tell, is to get the director and/or cinematographer there in the room with the colorist, and what they say goes. This gives us decisions that I disagree with, like Vittorio Storaro's insistence on underframing Apocalypse Now, but it's hard to quibble much.

-bf-

 

[Philip Verdieck]

The point about final cut is that for many films movie-making is a collaborative effort not the single vision of an auteur. So to go back to one person when the DVD is issued and say tell us your original intent is, at best, sophistry.

BS. The film, as a product, is the result of the intent of the director, who interprets the intent of what the scriptwriter gives him, and has actors who interpret the script, but overall it is the directors vision.

So now you would justify whatever the Final Cut is/was as being the most important?

I guess we should obviously recognize the legitimacy of studio execs who impose arbitrary time limits, and repeatedly subject films to cuts to reach those limits?
BS.

I guess we should obviously recognize the legitimacy of the moron filled pre-screening audience who has a mediocre reaction to the film, causing it to be cut and recut before release?
BS.

I guess we should recognize the legitimacy of the author of the original novel who describes how much he loves the movie even though it is a total distortion of his original novel (Tom Clancy and Sum of All Fears)?
BS.

The director is the one person who is guiding the creation to reach a specific vision. So he is the one who counts the most. That isn't sophistry, that's reality.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Bottom line, original intent might not mean director's intent.

If you know of some other filmmaker involved with Animal House who wants something different for the film that Landis's new transfer, please share with us. Otherwise, it just sounds like you're inventing a non-existent situation in order to find a way to not accept a given filmmaker's wishes with regard to his own film. Sophistry, indeed.

DJ

 

[george kaplan]

I think the key phrase here is 'original' intent. Artists are not always the best judge of their own works (there have been famous artists who wanted much of their work destroyed. Should we respect those wishes?)

The problem is that artists who go back and look at their work are not the same people who produced those works originally. They've changed, which is why we get Solo shooting first and FBI guns changed to walkie-talkies in E.T. and pan& scan Kubrick products.

And by the way, if you look at that 'tenet', note it says "original creators" not "director". The director might in many instances be the best judge, but not always.

 

[Thomas T]

The advent of DVD, the promised future of high definition and more specifically the home theatre mindset (and yes, I'm generalizing here) and its impact on movies is very disturbing in some ways.

HT groupies want 60 year old films to look like they were made yesterday! No grain, no scratches, no reel change marks, no shadows, no hiss, no soft focus etc. ..... everything washed in a razor sharp crisp digital makeover!

I say you go, Landis, you go!

 

[Damin J Toell]

And by the way, if you look at that 'tenet', note it says "original creators" not "director". The director might in many instances be the best judge, but not always.

Feel free to inform us at any moment of another Animal House filmmaker who disagrees with John Landis on the new transfer. Until then, I see no reason to doubt that Landis is anything but the best judge of a film he directed.

DJ

 

[TheLongshot]

I was also reading on the Indiana Jones thread about the glass refections in the snake pit (not sure about the source, LD or VHS). Was that invisible in the theater too?

Considering I just saw it projected last week, I'll comment on this. While it probably wasn't the most ideal enviroment (outdoors), I can say that I didn't see the glass reflection, and I was looking for it. (It also wasn't a new print, since the title of the film was still "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".)

There are a lot of times when I noticed effects on DVD, but not in the movie theater. It might be because I didn't see it enough times in the theater, but I do think there is a difference between film and digital that's more than just resolution.

Interesting that this is the opposite argument from those who prefer "Sunset Boulivard"-type transfers. (Jeffry Wells) His is the argument that since it is in a digital format, it should look ultra clean. Problem is, that isn't the intent of a lot of filmmakers.

It also goes into the territory of Donner redoing the sound of Superman because he didn't think it sounded right.

Jason

 

[ChrisA]

Could someone please summarize the differences betewwn the Special Edition I already own and the Doule Secret Probation Edition... I want to be well informed on my choice to sell the one I have and buy the double secret probation.

I look foward to the Blu-Ray version....

 

[george kaplan]

You miss the point. My point was that John Landis (2003) isn't the same person as John Landis (1978). Would John Landis (1978) disagree with John Landis (2003)? I don't know, and frankly, I feel no need to try to prove anything. I have my opinion, you have yours. But I am pretty certain that Steven Speilberg (1982) would disagree with Steven Speilberg (2002) about certain changes to E.T. Charlie Chaplin (1942) thought that adding his narrative to The Gold Rush improved that film. I disagree, and I'm going to watch what I feel to be the superior version, not the inferior one, even if the director disagrees with me.

John Landis (1978) is the only director who I trust to evaluate Animal House, and he doesn't exist anymore. Are you the same person, with all of the same tastes and opinions, that you were in 1978? I'm not.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Would 2003 director agree with 78 or 82 director, lol !Funniest thing i heard all day !

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

I forgot to mention , my local suncoast was taking preorders for animal house for 13.99.

 

[Damin J Toell]

John Landis (1978) is the only director who I trust to evaluate Animal House, and he doesn't exist anymore. Are you the same person, with all of the same tastes and opinions, that you were in 1978? I'm not.

Presumably, then, there's no person you trust with regard to any film, since even the passage of a day or an hour can change a person drastically. So what to do? Toss out all respect for film? Declare that the only trustworthy person no longer exists, so it doesn't matter how we present it? If there's no one we can trust, we may as well pan & scan and colorize, I guess, right?

DJ

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

I'm with Tony Zannikos - funniest post all day!

You've heard of Back To The Future, now - Back To The Movie Lab!

Landis '03: Landis, what are you doing to my movie?!

Landis '78: Hey, man, what you talkin' about your movie - this is my movie, beard-o!

Landis '03: No, no - you're using the wrong printing stock. *Here*, I brought some fine-grain Eastmancolor stock from the future for you to print on.

Landis '78: Oh, cool!

Landis '03 & Landis '78: See you next wednesday!


I'm still waiting for Michael Wadleigh to take out all that goddamn hippy music out of Woodstock and replace it with 70s Kraut-Rock - Kraftwerk, Can and then capped-off with Neil Young's, 'Revolution Blues'.

And would Gilliam please take out all those drug scenes in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas?

Just say 'no'.


Gordy

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

This thread reminds me of that famous line from the austin powers movie, allow me to introduce myself to myself, lol ! Good one Gordon !

 

[ChrisA]

Could someone please summarize the differences between the Special Edition I already own and the Doule Secret Probation Edition... I want to be well informed on my choice to sell the one I have and buy the double secret probation.

I look foward to the Blu-Ray version....

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Let's think about motion pictures, how they are photographed and how they are distributed, or at least were, in the olden days. ( )

You shoot a negative. This negative is printed as a positive. This positive is copied onto duplicate negatives. These negatives are printed to the thousands of positives that make their way into the theatres.

Each of these stages has its own set of characteristics. Let's say you knew you were photographing a film that would be distributed on a cheap, grainy, high-contrast stock. To make the film look the way you want it to in the theatres, you'll have to do different things at different stages to compensate for that. But, now, twenty years later, you go back to the original negative and make a new video transfer from it. Without that grainy, contrasty step in the middle, your film suddenly looks totally different.

So, let's say you had used contrast-reducing filters and a bit of a softening filter of some kind to tone down your film to compensate for that cheap printing stock. The new video transfer will lack colour and be all soft compared to what it should look like.

People make the very bad assumption that you can simply make a positive from the negative and no interpretation is needed, when, in fact, there are numerous artistic judments to be made at the printing stage. This means that a "new transfer from the negative" also will have to have all of these artistic judgments made, hopefully by the same people who made them in the first place or by people who've at least seen what the film is supposed to look like.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Aaron's point is an important one. One criticism that was raised of the 2001 DVD was that with the resolution of DVD you could now see what was holding up the pen in zero gravity, whereas it was hidden in film grain on later-generation prints before. I think similar objections were raised to some effects work on one of the Chaplin features done for Image.

 

[rich_d]

I guess we should obviously recognize the legitimacy of studio execs who impose arbitrary time limits, and repeatedly subject films to cuts to reach those limits?

Philip, there's no need for impolite language. As to your point - whether you want to recognize the legitimacy of studio execs is up to you. However, there is a difference between how you would like the world to operate and the way it does operate. You don't even have to like it. But it is a business. And those that put up the money, get to make the decisions - including the decision to give some director final cut. If there's no final cut in the contract, then do not assume that it is anyone else's film than the film backers - because it won't be.