Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: ETC Screens Digitally Restored "Wizard of Oz"

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Posted by Bevan Wright (Member # 1884) on 12-02-2005, 07:11 AM:

ETC Screens Digitally Restored "Wizard of Oz"

By Staff

Nov 29, 2005, 16:37

The Entertainment Technology Center at will be holding a screening of the digitally restored version of "Wizard of Oz" on Monday, December 5, 2005 at 7:00 PM.

"Wizard of Oz" is the first classic film scanned and restored at 4K using Warner Bros. patent-pending Ultra-Resolution software. This "Wizard of Oz" presentation has greater visual clarity than the original Technicolor release, and far surpasses later versions that suffered from deformities to the original nitrate negatives. Using the Ultra-Resolution software, the Warner Bros. team precisely aligned the original 3-Strip negatives as well as captured the glorious Technicolor palette of the initial dye transfer prints. "Wizard of Oz" will be exhibited with Christie's 2K DLP Cinema projector.

Learn how "Wizard of Oz" was restored for the recent Collector's Edition and Special Edition DVD releases during the Q&A following the screening.
Guest speakers:

Chris Cookson, president, Warner Bros. Technical Operations; CTO, Warner
Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Rob Hummel, senior vice president, production technologies, Warner Bros.
Advanced Media Services

WHERE: Digital Cinema Laboratory at the historic Hollywood Pacific Theatre
6433 Hollywood Blvd., between Cahuenga and Wilcox
Public parking on Wilcox, south of Hollywood Blvd.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-02-2005, 10:56 AM:

I was really excited until I got to this line...

quote: Bevan Wright
"Wizard of Oz" will be exhibited with Christie's 2K DLP Cinema projector.

I hope they at least made a couple of prints on 2393 film stock. I mean, it is The Wizard Of Oz after all.

[Frown]

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-02-2005, 01:17 PM:

Assuming they show it in the original 1.37:1 "Academy" format, there will be lots of unused pixels that never light the screen. [Frown]

Many film archivists hoped that "classic" (1.37:1) and silent movies would have been better accomodated by Digital Cinema standards.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-02-2005, 01:21 PM:

Would it be possible to use some sort of reverse-anamorphic lens (and specially prepared digital movie file) to squeeze the image down to Academy frame? Would there be any benefit to doing so with respect to image quality or screen illumination?

What needed to be restored, anyway? The 1998 dye-transfer prints of Oz are breathtakingly gorgeous.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-02-2005, 01:52 PM:

That's easy: Somebody said, "How can we milk some more money out of Oz?"

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 12-02-2005, 01:52 PM:

Sure, using an anamorphic lens to use all the pixels in a 2K projector to show 1.37:1 would be feasible, but at what cost? Was probably hard to justify just for showing "classic" films at their optimum.

As always, the advantage of using all the available pixels (or image area on a film print) are light efficiency and sharpness.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 12-02-2005, 03:56 PM:

Scott, the 1998 prints did show some mis-registration errors in the YCM on some shots, either due to differential O-neg shrinking or slight mis-alignment of the camera optics. For this restoration they digitally resized each color in each frame to achieve better registration. That must've been one tedious job.

Posted by George Roher (Member # 91) on 12-02-2005, 05:26 PM:

I also thought the dye-transfer print was incredible when I ran it a couple years ago. It was one of the best looking 35mm shows I've seen. If they're showing this in 2k and not using all the pixels then it's a joke.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 12-03-2005, 04:19 AM:

i haven't seen a 1998 ib print but i saw an lpp from that digital "restoration" several weeks ago. it didn't look right. particularly in the b&w sections, the highlights had that harsh look that you get with material shot on video or put through a digital intermediate. it was hard to watch. the only misregistrations i recall were for a split second at the starts of some shots. they quickly snapped into alignment.

analogue all the way!

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-04-2005, 04:09 AM:

quote: Carl Martin
the highlights had that harsh look that you get with material shot on video or put through a digital intermediate.

I've seen this on quite a few films; 'The Constant Gardener', which I ran for two shows yesterday, for example. I think it looks horrible. However, I've also seen digital work which doesn't look like this, so there would seem to be two possibilities:

1. It's just bad digital work.

or

2. That was the look they wanted for the film.

Anyone care to comment?

quote: John Pytlak
As always, the advantage of using all the available pixels (or image area on a film print) are light efficiency and sharpness.

Of course, the idea of cropping, and wasting a large part of the available image area is nothing new; we've been doing it for about 50 years for widescreen films, and it was proposed, but not generally adopted, in the '20s, as a cheap alternative to the wide-film processes then being introduced. I still think that it's a pretty dumb idea, unless you need a non-standard aspect ratio for some reason, e.g. the 2:1 35mm anamorphic reduction prints of 'The Big Trail'.

About the worst example I can think of would be the many scope films which were released in the '70s and '80s, as non-anamorphic 16mm prints, slightly cropped at the sides, and with the frame matted to something slightly wider than 2:1. Yet another reason why 16mm has a (undeserved) bad reputation.

Posted by Michel Hafner (Member # 3492) on 12-04-2005, 06:31 AM:

I have seen a 2K DLP projection of the digital master compressed to MPEG2 at < 100 Mbits. While the colors were gorgeous I did not like the appearance of textures in motion such as Dorothy's apron and the yellow brick road. I can't say what contributes how much but this MPEG2 stuff on a DLP which adds dithering noise/error diffusion artifacts plus the grain reduction on the digital master gives a combination that does not look right, not filmlike. Too noisy/pixelated/aliased. I would like to see the uncompressed 4K on the Sony projector for comparison.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-04-2005, 02:48 PM:

Indeed all this points to the fact that Digital projection has many more years to go before it becomes right. If they can't pull off a simple thing like PROPERLY showing this film then Digital projection has made zero headway, going to it for this format is actually a huge step backwards in quality. They should be borrowing a 4K prototype projector from someone to show this. Or..... this is very definately one case where it would look ALOT better just printed back onto film for release. The one good thing about this is that it has been scanned at this resolution so there is another form of protection that should be very long lasting for this classic.....

Mark

Posted by William F Green (Member # 3192) on 12-08-2005, 04:36 PM:

quote: Stephen Furley
I've seen this on quite a few films; 'The Constant Gardener', which I ran for two shows yesterday, for example. I think it looks horrible.

Hi Stephen,
Some of 'The Constant Gardener' (I'm literally about to make-up a print of this now after this message!) was shot on 16mm and so that 'look' is probably the grain of the 16mm after it has been 'enhanced' with a digital intermediate. With digital intermediates even film doesn't look like film anymore! This could all a conspiracy to make that harsh digital look the norm so nobody notices the difference between film and digital... [Wink]

WFG

Posted by Brian Guckian (Member # 1678) on 12-08-2005, 09:21 PM:

I think Brad said it best some time ago - that it should be "horses for courses" - film projection for film origination and digital projection for digital origination. Really, you can't make digital exactly replicate the look of film. When you think about it, film grain has an organic structure, and every single frame is different in terms of how the grain is ordered (I'm sure someone else can express this better, but you know what I mean). In contrast, the digital display systems have grid arrays of micro-mirrors etc. so that structure is lost.

But here's the rub - two years ago I too showed an IB print of "The Wizard of Oz". The heads and tails were ruined with longitudinal and cross scratches. Too late to get another print, but luckily it was in a mobile cinema in the depths of winter as part of a Christmas special programme and hardly anyone came! I reported it to the Distributor. With a digital version, these problems are obviously eliminated.

Re. your comments Stephen I think the problem with digital work of all kinds today is time. The big selling point is you can do things faster, but all that means is post-production schedules just get tighter. It's a no-win situation.