Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Gosford Park "softened"

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Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 06-21-2003, 01:17 PM:

I have earlier brought Robert Altman's magnificent whodunnit upstairs and downstairs masterpiece up in these forums, and now - running it once more, i need to talk a bit more of the film.

It's not the same print again, but it is the same "soft" picture, impossible to make look nice. -And this time i feel it even worse, because i have in the meantime got the dvd in rental in my videoshop (and of course in collection), and have already several times enjoyed the film on the small screen, where it looks absolutely brilliant - knife sharp and bright.

That means, its not the photographers idea - those bad pictures in the cinema. I have been following Mr Altman's comments on the second track of the dvd - he is not mentioning this at all.

Does anyone know the story or reason for this pulldown..?

Per

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 06-21-2003, 01:55 PM:

Altman has shot in Super 16 before. Could he have shot Gosford Park in Super 16? This would be the reason it is a bit soft on the big screen but looks fine on DVD.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-21-2003, 03:10 PM:

Could there have been a separate interneg with Danish subtitles on it which wasn't very good, hence Per getting two soft prints? When I saw it I thought the print looked average - not showprint-sharp but not super16-fuzzy either. It's a few months since I saw it but from what I can remember I'd be really surprised if this was originated on super 16.

Given the overall budget of this film, e.g. an A-list cast and all those lavish sets, why would Altman have needed to save a comparatively small amount of money by shooting on super 16? The super 16 productions which get a theatrical release tend to be things planned for TV but for whatever reason get taken up by a theatrical distributor, which I don't think this was. And in any case I've never (knowingly) seen a super 16 to 35 'scope blowup - they've usually had a matte of 1:1.75, and shown as 1:1.85.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 06-21-2003, 05:34 PM:

Per, Gosford Park was shot in Super 35mm. What John Pytlak posted in Feature Info & Trailer Attachments will be helpful to you as follows...
………………………………………………………………………………
Andrew Dunn BSC shot it using very fast EI 500 speed film. Based on the following quote, I think the low contrast "look" sounds like a deliberate artistic choice: "We used it for interior candle lit as well as brightly lit scenes, exterior sunny scenes, and exterior dark cloudy rain scenes. It performed magnificently throughout. It dug into the blacks, even with a combination of a stocking on the back of the lens and a black dot filter on the front. There were huge latitudes and I loved the depth and creamy texture. It was like looking through a glass darkly at the shenanigans of a period between World War I and World War II, but in the same breath there is also a naturalistic feel so the audience won't feel too divorced from what actually goes on. All the action is seen through the eyes of the below-stairs people, and in particular one character who takes the audience on a journey, so there has to be a fairly subjective feel to the film."

Sadly this was my last film when I closed my cinema in 2002. [Frown]

The Italian Deluxe print was very good. I have bought the DVD but not run it yet apart from the deleted scenes section.

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 06-21-2003, 08:47 PM:

No doubt about Super-35. This is proved by knife sharp 1:85 trailers and bad feature, but this is really bad. -A shame, when photography is beautiful.
Interneg with subtitles in it is very seldom used in Denmark, and thank God for that. One of the few we had, was MI:2 - a real pain in the behind to focus. Our subtitles are always lasermade, with a extremely seldom use of old cliche printer, when labs are under pressure.
Only very big titles goes over 50 prints total in DK - Gosford only 12 - leaving no big question, why the prints not only are badly printed, but also worn like H... The actual print has big green and yellow scratches, lots of bad splices and this (guess it's local illness) stupid way of marking reel shifts with wide tape wound around the edge, covering half or all the SRD track -plop-plop, plop-plop, dropping out every time.
Number of showings this time, as repertoire, does not encourage me to minor restoration works. For my first-run DTS England was so kind as to lend me a set of discs, as the films danish distributor totally neclects DTS. This time, it would have done even better, due to the wear and tear, making SRD a mess.
Bad prints, Old prints, worn prints - it doesn't really matter, as long as i can give a small audience a good oldie, rather than a maybe little bit bigger audience one of those new crap films, coming out just now, which i would not get until 4 weeks after premiere - long after the stamp "Best before..." expired.
Therefore, next oldies will be "Close Encounter" - directors cut just released here ( 1 print ! ) and THE THIRD MAN - one bw print about 3½ years old - i don't really want to think about it before it's here - this one may be really messy ! But try to imagine "Fast 2Furious" 54 years from now. I prefer the sours of 1949 Austria.

Bernard: To close a cinema is the trauma over all - But You sure did go with style, chosing a film, Your audiences will remember You and Your theater for with a smile..

p.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-22-2003, 07:20 AM:

I saw the original version and it was so blurry that I almost went blind (yes, we checked the focus, cleaned the lenses etc etc).

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-22-2003, 07:57 AM:

Presumably you showed a print with German subtitles, so I'm inclined to stick to my theory. If Per's prints were laser-subtitled I guess that undermines it though. But a small number of intensively used prints won't explain loss of definition. It would explain scratches, dirt, worn perforations, multiple joins and all the other ways of doing film wrong, but not a defect in the photographic image which was there to begin with.

I'd have thought that this was a big enough release for a subtitled interneg to be made rather than import a few prints and laser-subtitle them. Does anyone know how the economies of scale work here - i.e. how many prints you need to make before it is cheaper to make an interneg? Maybe this process - if it's not done very well - can soften the image. If they're overlaying the subtitle element on a fine-grain pos and then contact-printing this sandwich to create a subtitled interneg, I can see that this would reduce the picture definition a bit.

Having said that, I showed plenty of 'printed on' subtitled prints during my years in the box and cannot think of any which were especially bad. Perhaps there is one European lab somewhere in which quality control has slipped a bit?

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 06-22-2003, 04:03 PM:

I don't think it's anything to do with foreign prints.

I saw a UK print when the film came out.

Soft as candy floss.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-22-2003, 04:47 PM:

Original version without subtitles. I don`t remember unfortunately where the print came from.

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 06-22-2003, 07:26 PM:

Thanks, Schaffer

"Blurred" was the word, i could not find. It covers better than anything. But gee, repertoire with video-released films is not good for business here.

Gosford sold fine, when it was new, customers being just as enthusiastic by the film as myself, and i really thought it would be able to sell again, but no: Friday 3; sat 8 and sunday 6 tickets ! Only one film has done worse: Banger Sisters was seen by one person the first evening, and then zero, zero, zero -and one - and OUT !

After Gosford, to get the rent in house in time, i've got to trust the world premiere thursday (yeah: one day before all You guys !!) on Charlie's Angels. -Advance sale is close to nothing, and i'm beginning to shatter... This is new to me: (Matrix 2 and this one) Due to the early release, i will receive the print split in two shipments - three reels each - and heavy instructions about how to lock up Your booth, -bring one reel with You home to bed etc., etc.
Is this normal policy in Your big world out there ?

p.

p.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 06-23-2003, 07:30 AM:

As noted, the original photography deliberately went for a "soft" look. Perhaps when the transfer was made for DVD release, they decided to increase the contrast and go for a sharper look with the tools available with today's telecines.

If the subtitles were done using the "bi-pack" method (sandwiching the subtitle and picture negatives when making the release prints), sharpness could be affected. But laser or chemical etch subtitles should not affect sharpness.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 06-23-2003, 11:10 PM:

The same cinematographer came back to lens Sweet Home Alabama with the same pitiful results.

Soft focus = lots of complaints.

Posted by David Rigby (Member # 1301) on 06-24-2003, 06:40 AM:

When I saw this it looked so bad I got a refund. Not just the overall poor image quality (looked like super8 most of the time) - but the print was unbelievably scratched and had so much dirt embedded in it that during bright scenes it was like watching the movie through a sandstorm. Truly appalling....and made all the worse since it's a movie that so obviously begs for a beautful sharp print.

David