LOTR - Extended Editions

Tim Tyler · December 28, 2004

Anybody else notice contrast and color correction problems with the "Return of the King" extened edition DVD's?

The first two movies looked great, but the third has shots and short scenes where the the blacks turn to grays, and the overall contrast seems poor.

The most glaring issue was a shot in Shelob the spider's tunnel where we see Frodo in the distance stumbling around. He is surrounded by darkness, except for an exact circle of "brightness" that tracks him through the frame. It's not a practicle light emmision, but rather a post production attempt to correct exposure in the vicinity of his character. It looked really bad.

There were plenty of other shots throughout the movie too that just didn't look right, especially dark shots that had no true blacks in them.

All three movies have plent of addiditonal shots and extended scenes and I never noticed anything until 'ROTK'. I wonder if the DVD team was different or rushed on ROTK.

David Mullen ASC · December 28, 2004

In the theaters I noticed some heavy-handed Power Windows effects for ROTK, especially the four-shot of the Hobbits when everyone is kneeling down in front of them. Maybe you're just now noticing how much they overdid the trick.

Mike Panczenko · December 28, 2004

I loved Lesnie's work on Fellowship- I think, and this will probably start a riot, that it is one of the most beautifully shot films ever. The second one I thought looked good, too, though not as much.- I'm not a fan of the whole desaturated palette so that is more of an opinion, there. The third one, though, had some weak CG and compositing and also weak grading. I've heard the argument that Lesnie is essentially making real what is fantasy, so he could not make it look any other way. Personally, I think he went overboard. Especially the Ride of the Rohirrim scene- the magenta cast of the whole image and the clouds, especially, was very odd to me. The Grey Havens scene, too, had issues with that. Overall, though, I think Lesnie did a fantastic job on the trilogy, and he deserves that Oscar that he won.

Edited December 28, 2004 by mpanc1

Tim Tyler · December 28, 2004

I loved Lesnie's work on Fellowship-

I like the camera work and lighting (for the most part) too.

Each film's extended version comes with about 3 hours of behind the scenes documentary stuff glued together with lots of green screen interviews. Lesnie pops up from time to time on the documentaries for the first two films, but he's nowhere to be found in the third.

I got the impression from the documentaries that Fellowship and the first half of Two Towers where shot much like conventional films, while a lot of ROTK was handed off to the computer folks at WETA. I bet the production people got so comfortable with the post magic on the first two films that "We'll fix/adjust it in post" was not uncommon on ROTK.

Mike Panczenko · December 30, 2004

What's interesting to me, though, is that since the films overlapped in their production- a day of ROTK here, two days of The Two Towers there- I don't think it can be blamed on the shooting style being different on ROTK, since they were so jumbled in the schedule. I do believe that more of ROTK was shot towards the end of principal photography, but, I don't think it can be blamed on the shooting style, or, at least, mainly on the shooting style. My feeling is that the DI was rushed, and that Lesnie got carried away with the tools. Most jarring to me, though, were the horrible composites and some lackluster effects.

December 30, 2004

This doesn't have much to do with the subject in hand, but I got the set for Christmas, and.. well.. they weren't lying when they said "extended edition" were they...

batman_dan · February 24, 2005

That is for sure. I remember with ROTK half the audience at the advance screening stood up at a black screen and clapped 7/8 through the film before the ends were tied all together. That was a funny instance.

:ph34r: