Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Raiders of the Lost Ark (2012 LieMax 2k down-res)

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Posted by Geoff Jones (Member # 3668) on 09-08-2012, 09:54 PM:

Saw Raiders at the AMC Orchard in Broomfield, Co at 4:45.

It was great to see Raiders on the big screen again, and my 8-year old daughter had fun.

But it looked pretty lousy. It's ironic that I had to pay a premium price ($15) for such crappy picture quality. (This was my first LieMax.) Dark scenes had a muddy, low contrast look. Detail was missing. I could see the pixel structure at times.

We were on the 2nd row. I imagine it probably looked less bad in the back half of the auditorium.

The aisle lighting cast light on the bottom corners of the screen. It never really detracted from the experience, but seemed sloppy.

Audio was solid.

There is some sort of mastering problem a couple of times early on in the Peruvian temple, most noticeable during the tarantula scene. It looks like the two projectors are slightly out of synch. I know that isn't (probably) what was happening, but that's what it looked like. The issue has been reported at other showings.

It was nice that it wasn't altered. The title is still Raiders of the Lost Ark, despite what the marketing materials may say. And it seemed that the truck-over-the-cliff change introduced in 2008 was restored to the original version.

I wish there had been more promotion for this. There were only about thirty people there. Though I doubt there were that many at the other movies showing at the time.

So yeah, Raiders on the big screen: [thumbsup]

LieMax:

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 09-09-2012, 04:06 PM:

My wife and I watched Raiders last night, and our show had the same problem with the tarantula scene. It wasn't the entire image, just the tarantulas on Indy and Sapito. Very distracting.

It's been the busiest title at my theatre the past two days, and we spent the previous month hyping it up in our newspaper ad, with fliers at our customer service desk, with trailers on every show on every screen (even 2016: Obama's America) and during the welcoming speeches we do in front of busy shows.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 09-09-2012, 07:51 PM:

You do audience greetings? Nice!

[thumbsup]

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 09-10-2012, 02:38 PM:

I counted at least five other instances where the image appeared blurry/out of focus on a specific part of the screen/image

- the aforementioned tarantula scene, Satipo (Molina) is double imaged
- Marion walking down the stairs before meeting Sallah (blurry)
- Indy and Marion standing to the left of Sallah, as he introducing them to the boat's captian (the two are blurry)
- Marion and Indy standing walking down the stairs at the Government building, following the shot of the Washington Monument (the two are out of focus)

matte shots/2nd unit/SFX shots:
- The shot of the seaplane (lacked sharpness)
- the nazi's and the jeep falling down into the chasm. (blurry)
- the Washington Monument shot (looked washed out)

for a 4K remaster, the IMAX edition was very lacking and embarrassing to say the least.

the 5.0 audio though was a knock out!

the trailers before the feature were what you expect from digital projection, so this wasn't a projector issue, it seemed like someone over at IMAX was out to lunch when creating the master harddrive of 'Raiders'

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-10-2012, 06:33 PM:

I wonder if the Blu-ray release will have the same visual discrepancies, perhaps even some in the second and third movie.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 09-10-2012, 07:43 PM:

The tarantula scene always looked like that.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 09-11-2012, 10:09 PM:

quote:
- the aforementioned tarantula scene, Satipo (Molina) is double imaged
- Marion walking down the stairs before meeting Sallah (blurry)
- Indy and Marion standing to the left of Sallah, as he introducing them to the boat's captian (the two are blurry)
- Marion and Indy standing walking down the stairs at the Government building, following the shot of the Washington Monument (the two are out of focus)

The Sapito scene with the spiders as I said always looked like that. I imagine there was some sort of layered effect there to add more spiders or something.

Marion walking down the stairs comes out of a cross-fade.

Indy and Marion standing to the left of Sallah - the extreme sides are both out on this shot. There are a few focus points they move to on this shot but everything central to the scene stays in focus.

Marion and Indy standing walking down the stairs at the Government building - focus pulling wasn't quite right there although the camera's down quite low and looking up at them so it would have been tricky.

matte shots/2nd unit/SFX shots - I loved the shot of the plane starting. I didn't realise for quite a few years that it was even a matte shot.

In any case, all the above mentioned 'issues' were in the original release. I love the fact it has not been played with. It would have been so easy to go back and remove the tree stump they blew out of the bottom of the truck to try and flip it after Indy shoots the driver...but they didn't.

It's got some flaws, but I'm glad they're all still around.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 09-14-2012, 08:51 AM:

you can obviously see the trench under the truck that Indy uses to climb under the moving truck.

I never noticed til now, that when Indy goes to untie Marion from the tent a fly lands on his nose.

also... when Indy and Marion escape the well of souls, he moves the giant block (which it's shadow bounces - I find that visual flaw hysterical) but to the right of the exit there's a worker just lying ('sleeping') there and he doesn't wake up

looks like some theaters have added regular (non-IMAX) screenings starting today.