Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Has anyone seen The Godfather DCP?

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Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 02-13-2012, 09:08 PM:

We are playing "The Godfather" on February 26th as part of our classic movie series. Paramount has a new DCP edition. I wonder if it's worth the extra $50 bucks to book this instead of just playing the Blu-Ray?

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 02-14-2012, 10:55 AM:

I try to avoid watching projected bluray - DCP's have better colour, contrast and sharpness. The DCP edition must be making the rounds since there is a poster for 'The Godfather' being shown on the XD screen over at the Egyptian 24 on March 1st. Since the bluray hidef transfer was done at 4K, I'd also assume the DCP would look closer to the high transfer data rate than bluray resolution.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 02-14-2012, 11:26 AM:

If it's anything like the Blu-ray transfer, or the new 35mm print I saw, I'd say yeah, it'll look fantastic.

Robert A. Harris has outdone himself on this one.

AJG

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-14-2012, 11:38 AM:

I've seen an original dye-transfer print within the last couple of years and can say that it looks better than any of the other options. Not that this is really a surprise. Get one of these from an archive, if possible.

Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 02-14-2012, 06:55 PM:

Thanks for the input. I booked the DCP version today.

Scott, Paramount told me they don't have a 35mm print available for this date (or maybe at all or maybe just not for us who knows). I can see that the dye transfer print would look great, but I wonder if the optical sound would even come close to that of the DCP version?

Steve

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-14-2012, 10:37 PM:

The 35mm dye transfer prints were SRD. I ran one.

Posted by Jock Blakley (Member # 6552) on 02-14-2012, 10:53 PM:

There's an IB print in Australia that we show every now and again. Very nice piece of work... I imagine they'll junk it now they've got the DCP, that's what they did for BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

(that said, the prints of TIFFANY'S weren't that nice and were too yellow, and the 4K DCP is very very good)

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-15-2012, 05:32 AM:

quote: Brad Miller
The 35mm dye transfer prints were SRD. I ran one.

Not the originals.

Do _not_ get the 25th anniversary reissue prints. Those are terrible. The recent restoration is good, but the originals from the 1970s are better.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 02-16-2012, 12:39 AM:

Question I have is: I ran the original release that summer of 1972 as a first run feature in a changeover house, (obviously, an IB print and mono optical sound) and now hear that the releases comes with a SR-D sound release.

Are these new SR-D releases, a stereo print and wonder how the studio did a stereo mix since the original releases were just in mono?

Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 02-16-2012, 07:13 AM:

I recently played True Grit (1969) and it appeared that the studio inserted a stereo track of the opening music but left the rest of the soundtrack alone.

Posted by Paul H. Rayton (Member # 1817) on 02-18-2012, 11:44 AM:

On many, MANY older movies, the studios recorded the music tracks in stereo, even if the ultimate release prints (at the time) were to be in mono. Think music from the soundtrack albums, for example. So the stereo masters from much of that era still exist (called "stems", as in parts of the movie), and can be brought back for another go-round, esp. now that stereo sound is almost demanded in every possible version and venue.

There are prints now of "A Clockwork Orange" with full digital stereo audio music, even though that movie never had any stereo playdates when it first came out in 1971. And, IMHO, even though it's a bit "revisionist" to say so, that electronic music sounds amazing in the updated version.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 02-18-2012, 01:37 PM:

Many/most major studio productions dating back to the '40's were multi tracks mixed down to mono, so depending on the archiving there's a good chance of recovering something akin to stereo if anyone wanted to.

Posted by Jock Blakley (Member # 6552) on 02-18-2012, 06:37 PM:

The same with the DCP of TAXI DRIVER - the dialogue is the standard mono, but they went back to the multi-track masters for the music , did a 5.1 mix, and it sounds absolutely phenomenal.

Actually the other film that really surprised me was MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL - the new print we show is in SR-D and they really had a spot of fun (in a good way) with that mix.

And now that they've found the multi-track (or at least stereo) masters for CONAN THE BARBARIAN... [Wink]