Raiders of the Lost Ark on Blu-ray

[Tyler Purcell]

I don't think Steven Spielberg runs out of time. I think he makes a decision that what he has looks good enough, or he comes back the next day

 

Maybe… I've just been told contrary things over the years by people who've worked with him recently. He moves very fast and if it looks good, they move on.

[timHealy]

Tim, when you watch that scene closely, I think they ran out of daylight during shooting. Maybe they didn't have a lot of time allotted for that location. The quick fix was to bring in the HMI's and flood the place, which for the opening of the movie, didn't bode well. :(

Hey Taylor,

 

I don't think that was the case. It may have been cloudy and the lights so close to the actors beefed up exposure so much, it looked darker in the background. It took a long time to shoot those scenes. I agree with Stuart that Spielberg does not run out of time. His movies can be big and he is fast. I worked on the east coast portion of War of the Worlds and with all the toys they never ran behind schedule. If call was at 6am, Spielberg was on set ready to work at 6am trying to get his first shot off. Not rehearsing scenes and getting breakfast.

 

Janusz was trying for something but I didn't get it.

 

I worked on the Connecticut portion of Indy 4 and Janusz gave the second units boys grief when he thought they weren't using enough light to match the work first unit was using.

 

I like Janusz a lot and would look forward to working for him again. Regardless of what I think about his final result. I like most of his work anyway. It was just the beginning of Indy 4 I didn't get.

 

Best

 

Tim

[George Ebersole]

I was watching the special features on the blu-ray set I bought, and compared to other directors I've worked for, he's pretty meticulous and highly skilled in getting just the right nuances from actors. The fact that he works fast as well, to me at least, speaks to real genius on his part.

 

Some directors I worked for were real hard asses, and yelled at the crew. Others were pretty silent, spoke briefly with the talent, and then went for the shot. Others talked with the talent a little bit, and then went for the for next setup. The only time I've ever seen anyone else work like Spielberg (from what I saw on the disc) was Norm Jewison, only I think he really believed in a lot of rehersals, and I think was semi famous for going over time and budget. Even so the results are spectacular.

[steve waschka]

Skulls turned out like a story book. I love the feel of that film.

[George Ebersole]

I hate to keep harping on this, but can someone explain why both the VHS and original and collectors DVDs look so radically different from the blu-ray?

 

When I looked at the blu-ray I also noticed a lot of light glinting off anything that was polished metal, notably the eyeglass frames. Was the film supposed to look like this in the theatre? Because I don't remember it being that way.

[David Mullen ASC]

Old telecine transfers, old color-correction systems, interlaced-scan, different colorist, different film element perhaps, not HD, etc. Are you suggesting that they spent the money and time to add glints to metal in post for the blu-ray version?

 

The blu-ray comes closest to looking like a 35mm print version than any pan & scan VHS NTSC tape would. Believe me, I saw the movie 25 times in a theater just in the first year of release, and I've seen it in theaters a number of times since then. Do you honestly believe that when it was released in the movie theater, it looked like the old VHS copy?

[David Mullen ASC]

Here is a quick comparison of some shots in the old DVD versus the blu-ray. The only thing I did was reduce the blu-ray frames down to the same size as the DVD's so the resolution difference is harder to see. Mainly what you see is a difference in the choices of the colorist. The DVD transfer, which is 24P like the blu-ray, unlike the old VHS version, which would have been 60i, was timed to be more neutral and the blu-ray is timed to be warmer. The look of the original theatrical prints was somewhere in between the two in warmth, I definitely remember the movie having some golden cast to it though it was shot straight, no warming filters.

 

You'll also note that the DVD frames have more edge-enhancement to electronically sharpen them (look at the bricks in the mud walls in the alley), the blu-rays don't have as much artificial sharpening because a 1080P transfer needs it less than a 480P one, but I could have added it to match them better.

 

DVD

 

blu-ray

 

DVD

 

blu-ray

 

DVD

 

blu-ray

[David Mullen ASC]

This frame enlargement shows how the lower resolution DVD version has more edge enhancement that makes it look sharper but actually contains less detail than the blu-ray version:

 

DVD

 

blu-ray

[George Ebersole]

Thanks David,

 

I guess what I'm saying is that the blu-ray feels like it's got a lot of well lit sets, but the DVD looks darker on my computer monitor, and almost like it was put through some kind of filter in post.

 

Your first pair of images illustrates what I'm talking about. The DVD image is only slightly darker here, but on my computer and TV they're considerably darker than the bluray. I honestly thought it was some kind of artistic choice initially, but you're showing my different.

 

Mos t interesting.

[David Mullen ASC]

Even if the same colorist did both versions (unlikely), the sessions were years apart and choices on how hot to make a highlight or dark to make a shadow is going to change. Your choices can even change in the course of one session, which is why you have to keep frame captures as you go along so you don't drift away in look. For example, stare at a blue-lit scene for a couple of hours in a dark room and it is going to look closer to neutral and you'll keep adding blue to make it look consistent when you are actually making it more inconsistent, so you keep reference frames to reset your eyes in the session.

 

Also, for all we know, the blu-ray was made as part of a new digital restoration from a scan of the original negative rather than a telecine transfer from a timed color interpositive, so you'll have a little bit more shadow detail to play with in the color correction.

[steve waschka]

you can take the dvd screen shot and dig quite a bit out of it with just apple preview.

[George Ebersole]

*snip*

 

Also, for all we know, the blu-ray was made as part of a new digital restoration from a scan of the original negative rather than a telecine transfer from a timed color interpositive, so you'll have a little bit more shadow detail to play with in the color correction.

 

I guess that was my real question, because it looked like a brand new scan.