Hey, guys.
For those who don't know this non-movie, most likely most people here except for some French members, La Classe américaine is a comedy montage of scenes taken from the Warner Bros. catalog and dubbed by real French dubbing actors to fit a new story... which basically rips off the premise of Citizen Kane.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321715/
"The project started when Warner agreed to leave the French TV channel Canal+ to use its 4000-movies catalog free of charge and rights for a month (except some of them, like Clint Eastwood's ones). The directors Michel Hazanavicius (director of Academy Award winner The Artist) and Dominique Mézerette, who already did two short movies using the same way, enjoyed very much that decision and they picked their choice amongst the whole bunch of flicks. The whole job was done in six months."
This now cult-classic French comedy has only been broadcasted twice on Canal+ back in 1993 and once in the 2000s on another channel in France. Most people have discovered it on the Internet with poor quality VHSrip copies and original Betacam copies, until Sam Hocevar reconstructed it using DVDs of the original movies. (See the list here on Sam's website: http://cyclim.se/flims.html)
Now, it's been years since this DVD-sourced version has been made, and now, more and more of the original movies exist in HD. So, since Sam Hocevar's site has not been updated for years, I guess he's too busy to undertake an HD reconstruction, so I was considering giving it a shot. I'm currently harvesting all the HD movies I can find, and the DVDs of those I can't find in HD. The idea would be to use DaVinci Resolve for editing and color grading. This would be my first attempt at editing. Now there is a catch: some shots use special effects, such as split screens (see here at 13:27 and 14:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44WKAtZLjI&t=193s) fade-ins for flashbacks, loops so that a shot replays itself backwards, and even a mask to hide a character. So there's some challenges here.
Sam went with a constant 1.78:1 aspect ratio, since all movies have various aspect ratios. I would rather go with a 2.00:1 aspect ratio to less butcher the framing of scope movies. Also, Sam didn't seem to have done color correction, so I would like to do some to better sell the illusion with consistency in shots taken from different movies. I guess I would do it in 720p because of DVD upscales to better blend in and the cropping of the scope ARs to 2.00:1.
You can watch the original on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44WKAtZLjI&t=193s
And the DVD-sourced reconstruction here, with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJdW0oqGX1c&t=54s
For those who don't know this non-movie, most likely most people here except for some French members, La Classe américaine is a comedy montage of scenes taken from the Warner Bros. catalog and dubbed by real French dubbing actors to fit a new story... which basically rips off the premise of Citizen Kane.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321715/
"The project started when Warner agreed to leave the French TV channel Canal+ to use its 4000-movies catalog free of charge and rights for a month (except some of them, like Clint Eastwood's ones). The directors Michel Hazanavicius (director of Academy Award winner The Artist) and Dominique Mézerette, who already did two short movies using the same way, enjoyed very much that decision and they picked their choice amongst the whole bunch of flicks. The whole job was done in six months."
This now cult-classic French comedy has only been broadcasted twice on Canal+ back in 1993 and once in the 2000s on another channel in France. Most people have discovered it on the Internet with poor quality VHSrip copies and original Betacam copies, until Sam Hocevar reconstructed it using DVDs of the original movies. (See the list here on Sam's website: http://cyclim.se/flims.html)
Now, it's been years since this DVD-sourced version has been made, and now, more and more of the original movies exist in HD. So, since Sam Hocevar's site has not been updated for years, I guess he's too busy to undertake an HD reconstruction, so I was considering giving it a shot. I'm currently harvesting all the HD movies I can find, and the DVDs of those I can't find in HD. The idea would be to use DaVinci Resolve for editing and color grading. This would be my first attempt at editing. Now there is a catch: some shots use special effects, such as split screens (see here at 13:27 and 14:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44WKAtZLjI&t=193s) fade-ins for flashbacks, loops so that a shot replays itself backwards, and even a mask to hide a character. So there's some challenges here.
Sam went with a constant 1.78:1 aspect ratio, since all movies have various aspect ratios. I would rather go with a 2.00:1 aspect ratio to less butcher the framing of scope movies. Also, Sam didn't seem to have done color correction, so I would like to do some to better sell the illusion with consistency in shots taken from different movies. I guess I would do it in 720p because of DVD upscales to better blend in and the cropping of the scope ARs to 2.00:1.
You can watch the original on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44WKAtZLjI&t=193s
And the DVD-sourced reconstruction here, with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJdW0oqGX1c&t=54s
