Sat August 04, 2018 4:50 pm
Robert Harris wrote:The current prints are derived from a third generation, duplicate negative, which itself has built-in dupes. Meaning that those prints represent anywhere from fourth to sixth generation copies of the original, and are no more than, and possibly below 2k resolution.
Sat August 04, 2018 5:11 pm
LoathedVermin72 wrote:Jesus Christ, this 2001 print stuff is even worse than I thought.Robert Harris wrote:The current prints are derived from a third generation, duplicate negative, which itself has built-in dupes. Meaning that those prints represent anywhere from fourth to sixth generation copies of the original, and are no more than, and possibly below 2k resolution.
That is absolutely absurd, considering 70mm is capable of holding, like, up to 16K of detail. Fucking Nolan and his moronic aversion to using the original camera negative.
Thankfully, it still sounds like there's hope that the 4K UHD Blu-ray is NOT going to be derived from this "unrestored" bullshit. Fingers crossed...
Sat August 04, 2018 5:14 pm
E.H. Ruddock wrote:LoathedVermin72 wrote:Jesus Christ, this 2001 print stuff is even worse than I thought.Robert Harris wrote:The current prints are derived from a third generation, duplicate negative, which itself has built-in dupes. Meaning that those prints represent anywhere from fourth to sixth generation copies of the original, and are no more than, and possibly below 2k resolution.
That is absolutely absurd, considering 70mm is capable of holding, like, up to 16K of detail. Fucking Nolan and his moronic aversion to using the original camera negative.
Thankfully, it still sounds like there's hope that the 4K UHD Blu-ray is NOT going to be derived from this "unrestored" bullshit. Fingers crossed...
When is the 4k UHD coming?
Sat August 04, 2018 5:18 pm
LoathedVermin72 wrote:Fucking Nolan and his moronic aversion to using the original camera negative.
Sat August 04, 2018 5:20 pm
theplatypus wrote:LoathedVermin72 wrote:Fucking Nolan and his moronic aversion to using the original camera negative.
What is his logic behind doing this?
Sat August 04, 2018 7:52 pm
LoathedVermin72 wrote:Jesus Christ, this 2001 print stuff is even worse than I thought.Robert Harris wrote:The current prints are derived from a third generation, duplicate negative, which itself has built-in dupes. Meaning that those prints represent anywhere from fourth to sixth generation copies of the original, and are no more than, and possibly below 2k resolution.
That is absolutely absurd, considering 70mm is capable of holding, like, up to 16K of detail. Fucking Nolan and his moronic aversion to using the original camera negative.
Thankfully, it still sounds like there's hope that the 4K UHD Blu-ray is NOT going to be derived from this "unrestored" bullshit. Fingers crossed...
Nolan’s explanation is that he’s gone back to the original camera negative to come up with a print that looks like what the very first public audience to view 2001 would have seen. This isn’t entirely accurate, since the 21 minutes Kubrick cut out after that disastrous premiere haven’t been added back in.
https://filmmakermagazine.com/105557-ch ... 2X6o9VKgdU
Collaborating with a team at the FotoKem laboratory in Burbank, Nolan and Ned Price, Warner Bros.’ VP of restoration, first had to spruce up that material. According to Price, the lab spent more than six months cleaning the 50-year-old negative and checking the splices, which included removing a number of older, imperfect repairs. Then they made an answer print, color-timed it by closely adhering to the original timing notes and documentation, and finally made an interpositive and an internegative in 65mm for striking prints. (Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan’s director of photography on “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk,” had a hand in the effort.)
The team also went back to the original six-track soundtrack and faithfully transferred it to the new prints. “The film is mixed in a very extreme way,” Nolan says with awe. “There are incredible sonic peaks that are beyond anything anyone would do today.”
For Price, it’s been a new, exciting adventure with one of the most revered assets in the Warner Bros. vault. “I’ve worked on this film a number of times, and every time I return to it, I find it’s a different film, because I bring to it a different experience,” he says. “And this is the first time I’ve been able to finish it with 70mm theatrical prints. All the previous visits have finished in digital form.”
That includes an upcoming 4K UHD home market version, with which Nolan was also involved.
But while the photochemical process bears a certain alchemy and magic, the director contends that he’s not attracted by the romance alone. “That tends to obfuscate the greater truth, which is that photochemical is a much higher-quality image format,” he says. “Showing people prints in the cinema is the way you best make that point, and if you could choose one movie to try to show that to people, it would be ‘2001.’”
https://variety.com/2018/artisans/produ ... 202811669/
Nolan's print was made from an interpositive—an intermediate stage in the film development process—that was produced using the original camera negative and based on Kubrick's personal notes. From there, the goal was to produce a clean print that otherwise changed as little as possible.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/10/chri ... 2001-a-spa
“For the first time since the original release, this 70mm print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative,” Nolan explains. “This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits.
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/2001- ... 201955137/
"Ned Price offered to show me some reels from a print made from the original 70-mm camera negative, and they were amazing," he recalls. "He told me that in 1999 Warners had made interpositives from the original camera negative, which Vince Roth had very carefully repaired, but they never had the funding to take the next step to make an internegative and strike new prints."
(An interpositive is a type of film stock that's essential in going from an original camera negative to a final print.)
[...]
"The 1999 interpositive had been made with Kubrick's original notes. None of what we did was interpretive, we didn't correct mistakes, we didn't say 'maybe he would have liked to do it this way.' We used our technical expertise to make sure we got the best prints possible."
[...]
"There is a natural tendency to mistake sharpness for added information but with the photochemical process you have a direct physical relationship with the original light that came through the lens. The same shadows the filmmaker saw are the ones
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mo ... tory.html#
In 1999, as part of a preservation project, Mr. Price’s team had made an “interpositive” of the film — essentially a protection copy of the original camera negatives, made up of 20 reels tucked away in a Burbank studio. To accomplish this in less than a year, the Warner Bros. team carefully cleaned the original negatives, removed old repairs and created new interpositives. The negatives, from which the preservation copies were made, were slightly shrunken and had some color fading. That was where the work stopped. The copies of the original reels were meant only for preservation, not for distribution.
[...]
Mr. Price and Mr. Nolan began by making duplicate negatives and then initiated a complex method of color correction. This process required some imagining of what Kubrick would want, with prompting from the faded source material.
“If the filmmaker intended the walls to be sort of green and you try to make them white, then other things will be problematic,” Mr. Price said. “The flesh tones will go off. The whites will turn magenta. Strange things will happen. To a certain degree, you have to listen to the camera negative itself.”
Sat August 04, 2018 8:45 pm
Mr. Price and Mr. Nolan began by making duplicate negatives
a complex method of color correction. This process required some imagining of what Kubrick would want, with prompting from the faded source material.
Sat August 04, 2018 8:50 pm
durdencommatyler wrote:Even if the colors or the whites are off (and I'm still not certain that they are), I promise most people won't give a shit when they're immersed in the experience and seeing all that a true 70mm film print has to offer. Maybe mistakes were made. I genuinely don't know. I'm not smart or knowledgeable enough. But I can tell you, the joy and suspense and awe that filled while taking it in is something I would never trade for the world. I can live with a color timing we aren't used to, or that some think is off or whatever. I'm not saying I'm right and everyone is wrong or that I don't care about this stuff or anything like that. But actually taking the time to see this is worth it. That's all I'm saying.
At least, that's true for me. Maybe it's not for others. But here we are back around to that whole perception issue.
Sat August 04, 2018 9:09 pm
Good to know. So then some of the reporting you've posted is subjective, speculative, vague, biased, and possibly flat-out incorrect. When you report/post stuff is it just sources you trust? How do you research to discern what is less biased and most accurate?LoathedVermin72 wrote:First of all, one thing you gotta accept when talking about stuff like this is that the reporting is pretty much always contradictory, subjective, speculative, vague, biased, and often just flat-out incorrect.
But doesn't "The negatives, from which the preservation copies were made, were slightly shrunken and had some color fading" address that point and help to explain it?LoathedVermin72 wrote:Second of all, saying that "elements were produced using the original camera negative" means almost nothing. Almost ALL major restorations are, in one way or another, derived from the OCN. That doesn't mean there aren't a bunch of pointless generations between the OCN and the release print. On top of that, Nolan became involved in the project after WB had already gone back to the OCN. He wasn't a part of that stage.
Here's where the problems begin:Mr. Price and Mr. Nolan began by making duplicate negatives
Immediately, from phase one of Nolan's "unrestoration," they are working one generation removed from the OCN. This removes fine detail. It's unavoidable. It's not only completely unnecessary to ultimately strike release prints from elements so far removed from the OCN - it's absolutely mindboggling. Soooooo much fine detail has been lost by the time it hits projectors.
This is a good example of bias in reporting you were talking about above. I can certainly understand your frustration with the term, though. That is dumb. But you're taking it way too seriously. I'm not sure even he takes it that seriously. Feels more like a marketing or differentiation thing. But, yes, it's silly.LoathedVermin72 wrote:Here's another problem:a complex method of color correction. This process required some imagining of what Kubrick would want, with prompting from the faded source material.
Color correction is, of course, a part of restoring a film. Has to be done. But Nolan saying there isn't any potential revisionism here is just wrong. The goal, usually, is to get as close to the source as possible, but interpretation is involved at this stage. And this is often molded by contemporary grading trends and - when you have someone like Nolan involved - his own biases. (Speaking of modern trends, raised blacks is another one Nolan loves, and I'm terrified of seeing that in 2001, a film which is full of the deep black of space.)
And his own movies look like shit. He has proven time and time again that he has no idea about how to properly present a film for home video release, let alone an "unrestoration" for projection prints.
Also, that goddamn word. "Unrestored." It's completely meaningless, and betrays just how little Nolan actually knows about what a "restoration" is. He acts like restoring a film is what George Lucas did when he created the OT Special Editions or something. Just utter cluelessness.
I didn't know that about him. That's super interesting. I remember taking a perceptions class in college. We talked at length about all kinds of errors in perception. I don't remember the exact stats at this point, but it's something like 1 in 12 men have some kind of colorblindness or deficiency.LoathedVermin72 wrote:And here's one last little kicker: Christopher Nolan is red-green colorblind. It's mystifying that he would be allowed to have a hand in color correcting 2001 with that knowledge in mind.
Sat August 04, 2018 9:12 pm
LoathedVermin72 wrote:durdencommatyler wrote:Even if the colors or the whites are off (and I'm still not certain that they are), I promise most people won't give a shit when they're immersed in the experience and seeing all that a true 70mm film print has to offer. Maybe mistakes were made. I genuinely don't know. I'm not smart or knowledgeable enough. But I can tell you, the joy and suspense and awe that filled while taking it in is something I would never trade for the world. I can live with a color timing we aren't used to, or that some think is off or whatever. I'm not saying I'm right and everyone is wrong or that I don't care about this stuff or anything like that. But actually taking the time to see this is worth it. That's all I'm saying.
At least, that's true for me. Maybe it's not for others. But here we are back around to that whole perception issue.
One last thought: I do not care how "most people" will feel when they're watching it. Most people still buy fucking DVDs (or stream in shit quality). Most people do not give a shit about stuff like this at all. Film restoration/preservation is a very niche subject. I care about it. It matters to me. It's great that most people will be amazed by watching this on the big screen, but that's just because it's a deeply powerful work of moviemaking. The point is: there's no reason it can't be a technically perfect presentation as well. And it likely would have been if they hadn't involved Nolan as a publicity stunt. And if his involvement effectively ruins the accuracy and quality of home video presentations for years to come? That's a crime.
Sat August 04, 2018 9:16 pm
Sat August 04, 2018 9:23 pm
Sat August 04, 2018 9:25 pm
Sat August 04, 2018 9:31 pm
run2death wrote:I'm not trying to butt in, but I can't comprehend how someone could like the shitty yellow version of 2001 over the stark white version.
Sat August 04, 2018 9:32 pm
run2death wrote:I'd rather a shitty, old VHS copy of the original over a 70MM version of that garbage. Colors matter.
Sat August 04, 2018 9:37 pm
Sat August 04, 2018 9:38 pm
run2death wrote:To say that Kubrick didn't intentionally pick out his color palette, is to not know Kubrick at all.
He had a legendary love of red and to turn that into blue is heresy.
Sat August 04, 2018 10:11 pm
Sat August 04, 2018 10:27 pm
LoathedVermin72 wrote:This conversation is exhausting. There are so many things to address that I don’t even know where to start.
Sat August 04, 2018 11:29 pm
durdencommatyler wrote:run2death wrote:I'd rather a shitty, old VHS copy of the original over a 70MM version of that garbage. Colors matter.
They do. And these colors are gorgeous. Maybe they aren't what you're used to. Maybe they are finally the way they were meant to be. I don't know. Maybe Nolan and Co fucked it all up. But it's still really beautiful.