A Few Words About While we wait for A few words about...™ Lawrence of Arabia -- in 4k/UHD Blu-ray (3 Viewers)

[Vincent_P]

In a very simplistic way, that's what we did, with a bit of research, editing, audio recording, etc, etc, etc.
RAH

"A bit"? You're a very humble man, Robert.
Vincent

 

[Robert Harris]

Once we got the cutting rooms at Warner Hollywood, now The Lot, open and functioning, things moved quickly.

The first thing we did was to deal with an audio problem, the print master not playing properly. We had the best of the best taking care of us...

John Bonner and Don Rogers.

Need to know anything about audio, these gentlemen would know it.

I was called into a dubbing room as our mag wasn't working properly. It would run, allowing us to make a 4:4 dub, and then suddenly lose itself amidst wow and flutter.

I recall going up to the machine room, where the mag was playing with John Bonner.

We studied it. Waiting for it to have a problem, as we listened in on a monitor.

When it occurred, it was both subtle and obvious.

John was listening, and I was watching.

And then it happened.

Concurrent with the sudden wow, the mag had ridden up on the rollers, which were too narrow to contain them, and then fallen down, creating the problem.

The mags were slightly wider than 35mm. I directed John's eyes to the rollers next time through, and he said matter-of-factly...

"We need oversize rollers. The films more than 35mm wide."

By the next day, engineering had cut oversize rollers, and the tracks were happily duplicated.

John Bonner was an extraordinary man. Many miss him.

The tracks recorded in London arrived, and were cut together, although we had problems with the balcony scene. Charles Gray, who had voiced for Jack Hawkins tried very, very hard, but could not get it perfect.

And Sir David was a perfectionist.

At the same time, I was also spending time at Metro, working with timer Bill Pine, getting the color corrected and ready to present to David. We had gotten it to a point at which it was gorgeous. The Eastman Color negative (5250) had ridden the years beautifully as far as fading.

When David finally arrived, and we screened the first 70mm print for him. He didn't comment until the end.

I recall him putting an arm around me, and walking before he said...

"It's quite beautiful...

but wrong.

The color is perfect. And densities are generally correct.

But the deserts are far too pretty. You've made them pretty.

They should be very, very hot...
and dangerous.

Corrections were made.

We screened a 70mm print one night at Todd-AO, one of the best screens in town. It went from floor to ceiling and was huge. A small group of friends joined us, and some food was brought in, which the studio later disallowed as an expense to the project.

Jim Katz and Marty Wyle joined us, and a dear friend, Richard Arlook brought his wife, who was pregnant at the time. I recall David gently rubbing her belly, and we had a feeling the child would be a filmmaker.

The screening, which was the second time David had seen the film, came off without a hitch, except for one one error.

And it was mine.

We were making minor cuts that day. David wanted to have the line of dialogue from Peter "Then we shall go and get it" not over his image to safe a few feet of time. I had made a mental note of the cut, roughly 55 frames, after we made the picture cut. I would go back afterwards and cut the audio.

Fortunately, it was very near the end of a reel. The shot hit, and immediately we were 55 frames, over two seconds, out of sync. David leaned in to me, gave me an elbow in the ribs, and said, "He is not perfect! It's alright, cut it tomorrow. No harm done."

That screening led us to the Director's Cut.

Once we got into the main theater, and Richard and Gregg were in their element, the audio began to take shape.

Problems were many. We had audio in the following forms:

A dub from the 4-track print master

Newly recorded dialogue

Audio derived from an optical print

Foreign version 4-track

and then new Foley, effects and music dubs.

Gregg listened, and came up with the solution. Richard would create loops for the noise inherent in each type of track.

We ended up with magnetic hiss loops, optical hiss loops, etc.

When newly recorded dialogue, for example Feisal and Bentley, would bump up against an original recording, the different hiss loops would be faded in and out to cover the differential.

Finally, the tracks came together, but the balcony scene, as it was not perfect, was removed once again.

Robert Bolt had told me that the considered it the finest piece of writing he'd ever done.

 

[Mark Oates]

UK retailers are now showing 10th September as the release date.
I'm slightly ashamed to say that I've never been a great fan of LoA, but following this thread has made me want to re-evaluate the movie. One pre-order.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Yeah, Mark, I am sitting here watching the press releases roll in
this morning hoping today is the day.

 

[Mark Oates]

Been there, done that, got the teeshirt, Ron. You've got to love PR companies.

 

[Kosty]

What a great story.

 

[Brianruns10]

Yes it's most excellent!
Now if only RAH will just abuse his connections a bit and post a few screencaps from that blu-ray he has in his possession...
Whaddya say? We won't tell, promise!

 

[John Hodson]

What a fascinating, utterly *fantastic*, story...

 

[Mark Oates]

If you ask me, there's got to be a book in "Restoring Lawrence". I'd buy it.

 

[AdrianTurner]

I'm very much enjoying your serial RAH - the tech stuff is way above my pay grade but the way you have personalised it pleases me very much. Reading through the red stuff I was thinking how the internet has transformed certain things. Given your work and its prominence, and given the fact that LOA is about to have its sixth incarnation (count 'em!) I would have thought your story would have been a feature in, say, the NY Times magazine or its equivalent in the UK because it has far wider import than a mere movie magazine, if such things exist nowadays. But as newspapers have gone mass market and publish mostly garbage these days, the internet and places like the HTF have taken over. Looking forward to the next episode as, 150 years ago, readers looked forward to the next instalment of Oliver Twist or Great Expectations.

 

[Lantz76]

I am new to this forum but I hope my question belongs here.
Rumours tell me that the swag-filled LoA bluray will arrive in November, possibly also the States. But I am curious about the UK release in September. If you check Amazon artwork it says 'Special Edition', but considering the price it must a barebones release. Does anyone know what the September release includes in addition to the feature?

 

[FoxyMulder]

Originally Posted by Lantz76 /t/308191/while-we-wait-for-a-few-words-about-lawrence-of-arabia-in-blu-ray/1680#post_3949467
I am new to this forum but I hope my question belongs here.
Rumours tell me that the swag-filled LoA bluray will arrive in November, possibly also the States. But I am curious about the UK release in September. If you check Amazon artwork it says 'Special Edition', but considering the price it must a barebones release. Does anyone know what the September release includes in addition to the feature?

Play247 and HMV also list it as a 2 disc coming September 10th, also nice and cheap, i can't help but wonder if there is also going to be a 3 disc collectors edition, Play claims it was "[COLOR= rgb(43, 43, 43)]Newly restored and re-mastered at 4K resolution" which doesn't sound right to me unless its a reference to how Sony did an 8K film scan and then made a 4K master and worked on it at that resolution.[/COLOR]

 

[Robert Harris]

We received a call back from the London facility, and were told that the two young filmmakers who had booked several weeks, would be only too happy to give Sir David whatever time he needed.

And would it be alright, if they stayed around and watched a bit?

One more detail needed to be attended to, and that was the dialogue for the balcony sequence. We had no continuity sheets, or daily camera reports -- those would be found later -- an entire set of them -- at a cinema store in London, along with Jackson Bentley's business card.

We had the script, but needed precise dialogue. Jude set out to find someone who could lip read, and finally came up with a delightful hearing impaired couple, who were only too happy to come on the lot and help. They studied our work picture, came to a consensus, and we had our dialogue confirmed.

[SIZE= 14px]The recordings went off without a hitch, with the exception of Charles Gray, who although he tried mightily, could not duplicate Mr. Hawkins' unique vocal style.[/SIZE]

More recordings were necessary to replace dialogue for both Mr. Quinn as well as Mr. Kennedy.

I spoke with Mr. Quinn's assistant, explaining what we were doing, and was met with questions.

"Are you referring to the film that Tony did years ago?"

Yes.

"Like the early 1960s?"

Yes.

"I'll have to ask him, and I can't see why he wouldn't be happy to do it, but..."

But?

"We get requests for ADR several months, or for occasional airline or TV versions a year after post...

but 26 years?"

Now two more problems. We were unable to find a facility in New York free to take care of Mr. Quinn, and Mr. Kennedy had gone AWOL.

Jude went to SAG, trying to find updated information, and all that they had in their data was that he had to move to somewhere in Georgia. A check with Mr. Quinn's assistant, gave us a bit more detailed information, as his Rolodex showed Mr. K in the Atlanta area.

That made it easy.

Jude began to call every Arthur Kennedy, A. Kennedy, and a few other Kennedy's within 25 miles of Atlanta. After a day of no responses to our messages, we began to get concerned. We desperately needed his dialogue, both for a scene with Alec Guinness at the opening of part two, as well as a discussion with Mr. Quinn at the head end of Reel 12 -- "What did the Turkish generals do to him in Deraa..."

While we waited, a call came in from, as I recall, Paul ("This is a knife...") Hogan's production office. Seems he had heard of our plight, was doing his ADR in NY for Crocodile Dundee 2, and offered to send his people out of a long lunch. "Would an hour do it? If not, they'll have desert..." News travels in strange ways. His offer was accepted, graciously, and Mr. Quinn was able to give us his lines.

The following day, Jude answered the phone, turned to me with smile and voiced the words "It's him!"

It's always strange when you speak to someone on the phone, and you get the odd sensation, in this case that you're having a chat with Jackson Bentley, but a bit older.

He would be thrilled to help, but couldn't come to Los Angeles. If he could record in Atlanta, he'd be able to make arrangements.

And he did.

Jim Painten, a huge fan of Mr. Kennedy's work (and who isn't?) packed recording gear, flew to Atlanta, and spent the day with Mr. Kennedy, who got back into his role with perfection. They recorded his dialogue in a local TV station.

We were now at a point just weeks before David would arrive in L.A., with a lot to accomplish. With the exception of two shots, that he requested not be in the reconstruction, we'd gotten the film back to its premiere length of 222 minutes. The negative, made up up much of the original, plus shots taken from 65mm sep masters, and a number of trims, had now been cut into A & B rolls for printing. The old splices were still a problem, and a couple had popped, but we were hopeful that we'd be able to get the elements through color timing, and finally out to a new 65mm interpositive, which would be the new preservation element. Eventually, we'd be printing from a beautiful new dupe.

It took three or four passes, with timer Bill Pine to get the film where we felt it should be, but printed via wet gate, it looked generally magnificent, except for some of the dupes.

When David arrived, our first stop, as mentioned earlier in the thread, was Metro, where I was informed that the desert looked "too pretty."

Working with David could not have been better, more interesting, or educational.

We had a problem with one cut in the film. We had put back the sequence of the slaughtered Arab women and children, but it wasn't working. David watched it on the KEM, along with me and Richard Anderson.

It was Richard that finally had an idea.

"The problem is that we don't see Peter looking at the carnage. If we cut this shot in the middle, pop the shot of Peter turning his head in that cut..."

I remember David turning to Richard and saying "I'm the Master Editor here! How dare you!"

As the color drained from Richard's face.

And then David smiled, pounded Richard on the shoulders, and told him to make the cut. Great idea.

And it worked.

One evening Ann stopped by after leaving her cutting room in Culver City. We had been making temporary trims toward creating David's Director's Cut, and I had taken the trims and placed many strategically on the pins of a trim bin, and others, to have them nearby, either taped to the KEM, or to the wall nearby. Ann entered and was unamused by what she saw. "You can't possibly cut in this mess!" David quieted her, and responded. "I know, but he seems to know where everything is."

I recall going out for meals on different occasions. Once our entire group, to a small restaurant (I'm forgetting the name) right across Santa Monica from Warner Hollywood. We had been there several times, and I had always picked up the check for the studio. David decided that this time lunch was on him. Wait staff and others had always been attentive, but this time, as the credit card receipt was brought for signing, the entire staff stood by, including the manager, telling us how pleased they were to have us there.

I'd never received that treatment, albeit always friendly.

I mentioned it, half-jokingly to Sandra Cooke, who would eventually become Lady Lean, and she handed me David's credit card. "Sir David Lean."

Point made.

Another time, I had arranged for us to dine at Chardonnay. It was a small group. Jim Painten and his wife Mary Bell, David and Sandra, and Ann Coates and I.

Across from us was seated an interesting couple. A gentleman who appeared to be in his sixties, with a younger woman, whose chest appeared to be attempting to escape her outfit. He kept turning to us, and apparently looking at David.

At one point, the lady left the table, and he stood as she left. He then turned toward us, and said "You know, you're dining with a legend."

David, who was quite shy in these circumstances said nothing. I kicked him gently under the table, and he finally stood, and replied, accepting the kind words.

"What do you do," he asked.

The gentleman was a professor from (I believe ) USC.

"And what do you teach?"

"Well, right now I'm teaching a course about the interrelationships of the characters in Bridge on the River Kwai."

They shook hands, and we returned to our meal. When his lady friend returned, there was a quiet flurry of excited conversation.

As things moved along, we prepared for a screening, as requested by Dawn Steel. She suggested that we screen in a small room on the lot, which was then at the back of the Warner lot in Burbank.

David felt that we needed size and quality audio, and the screening was moved to the Goldwyn Theatre at the Academy.

For an audience, Dawn shut down Columbia Pictures, and had the entire staff, short of a few left to answer phones, brought over by buses. As word got out about the screening more people joined. Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy and many others.

The balcony sequence had been once again removed, as the dialogue wasn't perfect, but with orders from David to make it right, and get it back in after he left for Cannes.

The screening went perfectly. When the special 70mm Columbia logo hit the screen, the entire room erupted in applause.

 

[Robin9]

I am new to this forum but I hope my question belongs here.
Rumours tell me that the swag-filled LoA bluray will arrive in November, possibly also the States. But I am curious about the UK release in September. If you check Amazon artwork it says 'Special Edition', but considering the price it must a barebones release. Does anyone know what the September release includes in addition to the feature?

UK prices are often surprisingly cheap and do not indicate a cut-down product. Cleopatra did not cost a lot and that has masses of "extras".

 

[Lantz76]

I am new to this forum but I hope my question belongs here.
Rumours tell me that the swag-filled LoA bluray will arrive in November, possibly also the States. But I am curious about the UK release in September. If you check Amazon artwork it says 'Special Edition', but considering the price it must a barebones release. Does anyone know what the September release includes in addition to the feature?

UK prices are often surprisingly cheap and do not indicate a cut-down product. Cleopatra did not cost a lot and that has masses of "extras".

True. Cleopatra was an excellent yet ridiculously cheap release. Well, I hope further details on the September release will be published soon. I might go for that one. Not too keen on that artwork, though.

 

[Robert Harris]

It was now early May of 1988, and with the exception of dealing with the balcony sequence we were nearly done.

Or so we thought.

Immediately upon David's departure for Cannes, we heard from the studio, telling us to shut down the cutting room within 72 hours or so, and to "finish up." Most of the that was spent gathering elements, and getting them shipped back to various vaults, and no time was available for work on the balcony.

One thing that absolutely need to get done before I left town, was to make certain that we were able to strike a 65mm protection interpositive. Something that should have been routine.

It wasn't.

The last IP made from the original was back in 1967. It was a 35mm scope element, that had been used for the past 20 years for both broadcast, as well as home video releases. I had always noticed something odd about the early home videos, as well as some of the 35mm Eastman prints. It seems that in printing from the original, an entire reel 2B, the well sequence and arrival of Ali, had been flopped. Those with older videos will note that the watch on Peter's wrist moves from one to the other, and that camel's travel in the wrong direction. More on the early video versions later.

When Metro began to produce the IP, trouble struck.

Even moving at a leisurely 150 feet per minute, through a wet gate mechanism, and with torque to a minimum, the film began to self-destruct. It had been mishandled so badly over the decades that it somehow selected this particular moment to give up the ghost. Possibly because of the wet gate fluid, which we needed, splices began to pop open, and footage began to tear.

My phone would ring at 7 in the morning, letting me know what we had lost in the previous nights printing.

It was back to the sep masters to create new dupes, back to trims, where we could use them, as things continued to go bad.

The IP which should have taken a couple of weeks to produce, was finally completed in November of 1988. It was at that time that I called Dawn Steel, and asked if we might have a bit more budget -- another $60,000 to produce a backup IP. She agreed.

As we prepared for openings in May of 1989, the studio was preparing to produce the video master. One was created by the studio, and I had asked to view it, to make certain that everything was proper. My request was turned down. Keep in mind that this was early on, and there were no large format quality transfer devices. The best means of producing a master was to print down to 35mm, and run that element. Although there was no planned 35mm release, the studio had produced a single 35mm dupe negative, in standard scope format -- ie. 2.35:1. The wrong aspect ratio for Lawrence.

With that element used for the transfer, the studio decided to contact David in London for his approval. He was brought to a post facility, and a clone was to be run for him. During that time, my phone rang in New York. It was Jimmy Honore, the studio's terrific new head of post, with a concerned question.

He had just received a call from the post facility, telling him that David had viewed the first couple of reels and then stood up, and saying nothing, walked off. They had no idea what was going on.

Was he coming back? They had held the tape, presuming that he may have had to use the men's room. He didn't come back.

As I was speaking with Jimmy, another line rang. David Lean on line 2.

He was calling from his car. He had left the screening, in disgust.

What was wrong? Was there a problem?

"You need to fix it!"

Fix what?

"The studio's transfer. The sand is blue!"

Poor Jimmy was stuck in the middle of this. We decided that they should ship me a clone so that I could see if it was fixable. Concurrently, I contacted Criterion, who were making their own transfer in New York. As I recall, Maria Palazzola came up, and we viewed the two master on a split screen. The studio's sand had a definite blue look. Colors weren't right.

The Criterion master was better, but still had problems. Just less of them.

And the studio had a release date for VHS and laserdisc.

The next day I met Maria in the City, and we viewed more of what she had done. Desert whites were washed out. Contrast was odd. We needed to see the transfer element on a bench.

While I had presumed that we'd be looking at the same negative used by the studio, I had presumed wrong.

It was a print.

And not only a print, but a defective answer print. Timed several point magenta, and too thin to provide a decent transfer.

Where was the negative?

Checking with the studio, we were told that it had been "destroyed in transfer."

There was no other element.

To this day, my hat remains off to Criterion and Maria, as their laserdisc release did not fully belie the problems. Whites were extremely thin, but Maria had been able to wrangle the color and create a quality release -- in spite of the proper transfer element being "destroyed in transfer."

All that is water under the bridge, and to the studio's credit, they didn't flinch...

well, they flinched just a bit, when David told them that he wanted the 1989 video release letterboxed.

They took a deep breath and went along with it. I believe it may have been only the second time that a major film was handled in such a manner, the first being Manhattan. It was actually a gutsy move.

Years later, Sony had created a 2k scanner, had scanned one of the IPs, and created a new transfer, which was used on the early DVDs. Far better than the initial releases, it was still problematic, as it had been electronically sharpened, creating a myriad of problems. Still on DVD, it looked decent.

When Blu-ray appeared the studio once again was prepared with this HD master in tow. I was brought in as a courtesy by Mr. Crisp, and was able to perform timing changed at Technicolor in New York. But some things still weren't correct.

As may of you are aware, the Blu-ray release was put off.

I believe it was in 2007 or '08, that I spend an afternoon with Mr. Crisp at a Burbank facility, going over the yet another master. It seemed that while the sharpening problems appeared to have been "baked in" to the HD used for the DVDs, he had found in inventory, an earlier master derived from the same 2k image harvest, that had far less sharpening.

We viewed this master, trying to get skies to look correct, and could not. There was very prevalent magenta and cyan banding, and it wasn't going away.

What should be done?

I suggested a new image harvest.

Take the first IP, and scan it. The result would be a gorgeous.

Mr. Crisp would think about it and advice of any future movement.

And here's what separates Mr. Crisp from the rest of the crowd. Yes, he's been at his post and working in digital as long or longer than anyone, but it's the mindset. And I need to acknowledge here, that some other terrific asset protection execs are bound by studio contracts with vendors, as well as restrictive budgets. And if they could, they might well do the same.

However, Mr. Crisp did it. And it was an extremely brave decision.

I warned him that he was opening Pandora's box, by doing it.

He was going back to the 65mm Original element that we had cut together from various sources back in 1988.

He was determined to do what he felt was best, not only for the studio, but for the film.

The original 65mm element would be scanned in 8k at FotoKem, and it would be done dry -- the only way possible.

This meant that every scratch, every tear, every bit of embedded or photographed dirt in both original and dupes, along with half a century of wear and tear, would all have to be dealt with in the digital domain.

Heat damage, that was partially covered by wet gate, was not front and center, fully revealed, along with everything else.

Working from one of our original 1989 prints, the entire film would be re-graded at Sony's Colorworks facility.

There would be no grain reduction.

No sharpening.

He agreed that the image would appear on Blu-ray as it would have not only on a 70mm screen, but as it survived on the original negative elements.

He was led on an odyssey of digital damage correction that took well over a year to get right.

In the end, he would create not only newly produced -- perfect -- asset protection data, but also something that could be down-rezzed to create, what to my eye, appears to be the finest, most highly resolved Blu-ray, ever created for a classic film.

Bar none.

I'm hoping that we can now tell his story of the multi-year effort to create what you'll soon be seeing on Blu-ray.

RAH

 

[BluRules12]

I am looking forward to this on bluray. I tried to learn the difference between 35mm and 70mm lens but still don't understand. Any help would be great

 

[Dr Griffin]

The wait is almost over. This film is truly the holy grail of catalog releases. It's been a five year wait but at least it sounds like they've gone to the nth degree to get it right.

 

[willyTass]

Easily the Blu Ray release of the century

 

[Brian Husar]

You are making me more anxious. I hope they make the announcement soon.