[Retired] The Dark Knight (Regrade and Imax Restoration)

[nafroe]

While I didn't hate the BD colors, yours look far improved, PDB! It will be nice to have a fully integrated IMAX version. Thank you so much for the hard work!

[spoRv]

Yep, very beautiful (and much needed, I add) regrade! Well done PDB!

[CSchmidlapp]

Wow. Awesome. Very excited.

[PDB]

Oh wow, I didn't realize the official BD transfer leaned purple/magenta *that* much. I don't understand how nobody ever complained about this, once I started noticing it on transfers it became almost as annoying as badly done/overly revisionist teal/orange. Just look at the Joker leaning out of the police car...

Oh its a really bad transfer. Looks like its 15-20 year old transfer with its EE and tint push

While I didn't hate the BD colors, yours look far improved, PDB!  It will be nice to have a fully integrated IMAX version.  Thank you so much for the hard work!

Yep, very beautiful (and much needed, I add) regrade! Well done PDB!

Wow. Awesome. Very excited.

Thanks guys!

I should point out here that I can't guarantee these are theatrically accurate colors. I just took all the information I had at hand (35mm pics, trailers, the prologue, reports about the filming, etc) and combined them into what best matched those source.

Actually I had two different paths. That the Dark Knight was very yellow and very green for the day shots and harder blue for the night shots. That results in (Caucasian) skin tones that are more orange-y then the blistering red of the BD. That felt more 35mm to my way of thinking. Overall the result is a more colorful looking Dark Knight. That was the thought behind this grade.

I also have a bunch of circumstantial evidence that DK was just very green and blue and that the skins tones are whiter/paler the the orange of the other grade. I built this one out in totally but didn't render it because it was VERY green and blue and I thought people would dislike that. Here are some pics from it, compare it to the previous pics:

[Image: m3ZVqAe.jpg]

I think I comfortable in saying that DK is probably missing some green from the picture. Regardless I'm sticking with the first grade for now.

[CSchmidlapp]

Purely out of interest; what colour is the 'bank safe' in your regrade from the prologue?

Here is a video I put together of all the souces i own when I was putting together my 'abandoned' project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-2AZ60...e=youtu.be

[PDB]

Rendering right now and can't check but I'm 90% sure it was still green like the BD and not blue like the screener. I was ok with that since I found this Imax frame awhile back

[CSchmidlapp]

Sweet. Never saw that frame before, answers a very old question

[TServo2049]

I'll have to go dig up my report on that IMAX screening I saw a couple years ago, I think it's on OT, and probably in CSchmidlapp's thread.

[PDB]

Yeah I'd love to hear it

[TServo2049]

Ok, here is what I wrote:

"OK, I just saw an IMAX print screening of TDK, and the colors do look in line with the more "green" images [from CSchmidlapp's tests]. Maybe not as green/yellow, but certainly not as pink/red as the Blu-ray. Either blue/teal with some green, or yellow/orange/brown, in line with how I remember the film looking in 35mm in 2008."

"Just as I recalled from 2008, some scenes like Bruce and Alfred in the penthouse after Rachel's death, and Joker in the holding cell, were almost entirely blue/teal.

"On the other hand, the chaos at Loeb's memorial didn't look as obviously green as the trailer screenshot shows (but neither was it as warm as the Blu-ray). Same with Joker with the machine gun, I don't believe it was *as* green/yellow as the trailer, more the gold/brown we associate with a lot of the streets-at-night scenes in BB and TDK. (Though again, not as warm/reddish as the other screenshot.) Not sure how much was my eyes automatically white-balancing, I just didn't perceive it as THAT greenish-yellow."

"[The bank vault] looked bluish to me. Maybe closer to cyan. Possibly teal. But it didn't look green."

"the Begins version [the prologue transfer on the BB DVD] is closest to the IMAX print I saw. The 35mm scenes inside vaults later in the film looked much the same.

"The IMAX print may have even been a teeny bit less green than the Begins IMAX clip. But it was definitely cyan/teal, it was NOT green like the other two clips.

"I also definitely recall the blown-out white skies in the outdoor scenes. I also seem to recall the outdoor shots of the clowns being slightly colder too - a bit more blue/teal, not as much yellow in the skies, maybe even more of a "bleached out" look to everything."

"there are lots of parts in the DVD screener that remind me of what I saw on the IMAX print (though the blues sometimes go too blue when they looked more cyan on the IMAX). And as I said, my memories of the 35mm prints line up with the IMAX (though my memory could be unreliable)."

"The bank robbery does look very good [on the screener]. Basically as I remember it... [I don't know if this was a specific reference to the vault, or the robbery in general.]

"I will warn, I'm not sure that the white balance on the screener is theatrically accurate in ALL scenes. Specifically, at least some of the Bat-bunker scenes have a blue cast to everything, when I always remembered the ceiling lights being essentially pure white. That's my memory of the 35mm, and what I saw in the IMAX."

My current observation about that IMAX frame: Yeah, that seems to match with my memories of 2 yrs ago, though I do believe that modern film stock (at least Kodak) has a yellow bias, so a raw unprotected image of a frame may not look the same as the same image run through a projector. That yellow-greenish bright area above the clown should probably be closer to white - though probably not 100% pure white. The scene does have a cast to it, after all, but in the brightest parts of the image I wouldn't think it would appear to be so dim that color casts would be immediately noticeable even in the brightest areas. Still, it feels like white always had just a subtle tinge to it when I'd see film projected, especially when I'd see film prints after the advent of DCP and my eyes had gotten accustomed to white being white in digital...

...the point I was trying to make was that it wasn't green, but the screener probably was *too* blue. I'm glad I posted those notes, I knew eventually my memory of the screening would get cloudy...