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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Baraka - Blu-ray
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-21-2008 01:00 AM
Actually, I heard that 2K was not used at all on The Dark Knight. The 35mm anamorphic elements were processed in 4K. The IMAX footage was scanned and processed in 8K. According to what a couple of folks who participate at Blu-ray.com told me, FotoKem did the scanning work on The Dark Knight. It's also been mentioned that Baraka was a "test case" of sorts to see if doing 8K work on a major feature was feasible.
That being said, Baraka still looks better. That's mainly over the quality of the 65mm cinematography and the often bright, colorful subject matter being photographed.
The Dark Knight is a dark movie. There is a lot of material in there which I was surprised anyone would even attempt to film in IMAX. How many night scenes do you see in Baraka? Not many. And the few that you do see are usually motion control time lapse sequences. Some of those shots have quite a bit of grain too.
I think WB boosted the levels on the IMAX material for the Blu-ray release of The Dark Knight. When I saw the movie in IMAX at a Cinemark theater in Colorado Springs the IMAX material seemed a little under-exposed. That didn't surprise me considering the light requirements for 15/70. Shooting footage of Hong Kong or Chicago at dusk or night in 15/70 cannot be easy at all.
The Dark Knight operates at bit rates a little lower than what you see on the Baraka disc. WB threw in nearly an hour's worth of "focus points" videos on various aspects of the movie's production on disc 1. That squeezed the movie's bit rate some. I liked it that they spent a lot of time talking about the experience of shooting in IMAX. They even show footage of one IMAX camera on a car crane getting smashed during a car chase sequence. Yeesh!
Overall, I think The Dark Knight pretty damned good. The IMAX sourced footage sometimes attains that rich coffee table book level of photography. I really liked many of the shots in the opening bank robbery sequence. The colors on the clown masks really popped. Although the focal plane was limited for that kind of depth of field, anything that was in the focal plane was very sharp. Fine fabric weave, individual hairs, deep and noise free blacks as well as very rich color were all on display.
I'll also throw in this additional observation. The Dark Knight can look pretty different on different HDTV monitors. I saw the Blu-ray again a couple nights ago at a friend's house. He has a Samsung Series 7 52" HDTV and a PS3. I noticed a lot of shimmering on the IMAX sourced shot of the Hong Kong skyline (Batman and a Chinese money launderer are flying through the foreground on a cable). I didn't see that same level of shimmering on my Sony Bravia 52" XBR4 TV. I have all noise reduction and "motion flow" crap turned off. He may have a couple of those artificial features still turned on.
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