I’m starting to lean more towards the colorization comparison. I’m even seeing HDR pop out and messing with the image on more modern films now given a new 4K makeover and HDR grade. I just watched the UHD of ghost protocol, and while the new scan was great and miles ahead of the old Blu-ray, the HDR grading frequently distracts and there are many moments that I think take you out of the film. The SDR Blu-ray is a relief to switch back to in those moments in spite of how dated it is. It’s of course been a long while but I did see a print of that theatrically and I certainly would’ve noticed images and shots having major pop out light and color affects like crazy. I don’t think any catalog film should have HDR applied to it unless someone goes through and meticulously does a shot by shot grading by hand. I’ve seen a few so far be done really well like the BFI Get Carter or arrow’s new release of Croupier.

While some of it may have the aspect of looking at a theatrical release print it’s more like you’re doing a raw scan and seeing a presentation that is not how you would see it theatrically. It’s most notable whenever you have bare light bulbs, flashlights, car headlights
anything that’s a white source: such as a stack of papers on a table or a lamp, or sunlight coming in through a window, and especially any titles or credits that are white. Those stand out, like a beacon which of course kind of makes you avert your eyes for the titles of Raiders and Crusade. And paramount or someone screwed with the Raiders titles so now the South America credit comes up in the wrong place and stays on too long.

Sony can be really bad about their HDR grades. That led some people to dub those transfers as being hit by the Sony light cannon. If you look at the arrow UHD of Flatliners, you’ll see a beautiful new 4K Sony scan of a rather lovely looking film that’s been treated like crap on video…… But is ruined by a horribly Intense HDR Dolby vision grade on all the light sources. There’s several instances of car headlights that cross the screen or bright flashlights and worst of all flashing in some of the vision sequences where suddenly your TV becomes a freaking strobe light in your face.

Flatliners is a very dark movie, its kinda obvious the lights are gonna stand out lol. It looks awesome on my projector.

(2023-07-30, 01:51 AM)captainsolo Wrote: And paramount or someone screwed with the Raiders titles so now the South America credit comes up in the wrong place and stays on too long.

I've watched it recently, in 4k for the first time, and I knew the appearance of "South America" was different somehow! Thanks for confirming it.

It's like classic effects where wires were used, but it was understood that film grain in the printing process would hide them. (Ugh, saw an HD version of Audrey Hepburn's 'Love in the Afternoon' not all that long ago and a cabinet that luckily swings open now has visible wires killing the scene.)

Similarly, Disney's animation cell colors were selected based on how the look would change after being filmed.

A camera negative scan brings out wires that are intended to be hidden and then have to be digital removed (if they care to spend the money on it). Cells being used as a color references is also wrong.

Yeah, sometimes HDR looks good, but is it right? It just seems unlikely it was ever expected that the HDR on film was intended to be seen by audiences.

I don’t like wire removal but when it uncovers things originally hidden and intended to be covered by generational loss that’s one thing.

The Indy shots literally have the matte lines ripped out and on some shots the inconsistent effort of it looks so dodgy or you still see artifacts of the lines or blue screen bleedthrough. All the depth and texture of a lot of the shots are now diluted or gone. Some things look smeary.

There’s not supposed to be flatness in all the matte shots of Temple. Now the infamous dodgy Zeppelin shots in Crusade look REALLY bad. Funnily enough they removed the matte line on Vogel with his fist in the air but now there’s a sort of bright halo around him which is magnified by his edges now looking sharp and rough-so they actually made the shot worse!


I also think they did some degraining on particular shots like closeups and in some sequences the grain varies wildly from shot to shot.

I can’t not see all the big amounts of noise and artifacts in the skies where they’re most visible. Look at any sky shot in Raiders and you can’t unsee it.

I’m glad I put the South America credit in my video. I had to go back and add it because I just kept finding stuff even after I recorded my review.

HDR shouldn’t cause shifting an audiences focus on any random part of the frame that was unintended. That’s what’s happened nowadays and I’m sure the cinematographers would be losing it if they were still around.

Ghost Protocol has a good example. Towards the end when the team is sitting on a plane and discussing the final act plans there’s a two shot sitting at a table. In the HDR grade the brightest thing is the stack of blank papers on the far side of the table. For that scene your whole focus is drawn to the unimportant stack of papers instead of the characters or the actual plans being laid out.