Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Alamo Prints

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Posted by Brian Douglass (Member # 2094) on 04-09-2004, 03:58 AM:

The print of THE ALAMO that was recieved by our theater, seemed to have had the brightness effected greatly during printing. Anyone else finding this problem?

Everything that should be dark/black is BLUE. I'm not sure if it's one bad print, or if anyone else is having this problem.

Posted by Chris Liczbinski (Member # 1957) on 04-09-2004, 04:07 AM:

I cannot speak for anyone else here but the two prints we received were fine- dark areas were black..
Does every reel of yours have this problem?
Sorry I could not be of more help.

EDIT- I was replying from just looking at the print when building it up- now that I have seen several scenes I agree that in some scenes night does not look like night!

[ 04-10-2004, 03:04 AM: Message edited by: Chris Liczbinski ]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-09-2004, 05:03 AM:

The print I screened did not have true blacks in it. It wasn't bad, but certainly not up to Buena Vista's normal extremely high level of image quality.

BTW, be prepared for lots of people not seeing this problem (since so many theaters are underlit, that is).

(At least the Alamo print didn't look like it was transferred from VHS with tons of edge enhancement, like Walking Tall does!)

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-09-2004, 07:13 AM:

Are all blacks low in density or not neutral? Or just a few scenes? An underexposed negative, or one shot without proper filtration, may sometimes have "smoky" blacks or slight coloration from contrast mismatch. Sometimes, the "look" is deliberate, as in the use of "fog" or contrast reducing filters.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-09-2004, 03:01 PM:

Looked more like a "fix it in post" issue to me (push developed in the lab). It wasn't in every shot, but was probably in every reel. Obviously it was most easily seen in the nighttime shots.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-09-2004, 06:26 PM:

Perhaps they did some day for night scenes in the film.... Those are almost always obvious.

Mark

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 04-09-2004, 06:29 PM:

Just saw this film. Yeah, in a lot of the dark scenes (but not all) there was a lack of true black and a lot of "digital grain"

There was also a scene where there was a slow sunrise, and the digital noise "danced" at the same speed as the slow fadeup.

Shoddy production if you ask me. Shoddy movie, too.

=TMP=

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 04-09-2004, 07:06 PM:

Same thing for our print, both used prints of Hidalgo we received about a month ago had the same issue as well. Will somebody pull Disney's hands off these historical epics if they can't make a good looking print? [Razz]

Posted by Darren Crimmins (Member # 1116) on 04-09-2004, 10:21 PM:

Mine looked similar to the way that Brad described above, something just wasn't right. Also, sometimes when they would change angles it would be out-of-focus for a few seconds, and then to another angle it would be fine again. I'm not sure who is in charge of that stuff, but it was pretty shoddy. They will probably win an Oscar for it, like Master and Commander won for best sound.