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

[TServo2049]

There are also 35mm film cells on eBay, though they look to be from a flat adapted-scope (letterboxed) trailer. But it's still 35mm, rather than a video transfer...

[Stamper]

The screener has basically the 35mm scope colors, more or less due to bad compression.

[TServo2049]

It's a poorly balanced transfer in places though, I do not remember the bat-bunker stuff being blue like that. I remember a very neutral clinical white look. The IMAX print I saw matched this, very white with a minute hint of yellow-green (which is also a general result of Kodak film base IIRC?)

But I agree that the screener is surely closer. I also have a German cam rip I saved from Usenet, would that be of any help? It's two AVIs, intended to be burned to two CDs, so the quality likely isn't too good, but cam rips fade into oblivion when better sources come out so I'm lucky to have saved it at all.

[PDB]

It's a poorly balanced transfer in places though, I do not remember the bat-bunker stuff being blue like that. I remember a very neutral clinical white look. The IMAX print I saw matched this, very white with a minute hint of yellow-green (which is also a general result of Kodak film base IIRC?)

But I agree that the screener is surely closer. I also have a German cam rip I saved from Usenet, would that be of any help? It's two AVIs, intended to be burned to two CDs, so the quality likely isn't too good, but cam rips fade into oblivion when better sources come out so I'm lucky to have saved it at all.

I'd like to take a look at the German cam. Problem with the screener is that many of the 35mm/70mm frames I found kind of contradicted the screener. Like the screener have the vault room blue but the 70mm having it green like the BD...

[Stamper]

That is because the screener and full 2.35:1 versions had their own, better color timing.

[TServo2049]

I don't remember having a problem with the IMAX color timing, even with the odd look that DMR'ed 35mm footage always has. The color seemed to match my memories of seeing it in 35mm, but we're talking about 7 years from seeing it in 35mm to seeing it in IMAX, and another 2 years from seeing it in IMAX to today, so it could be my memories that are the problem? I remember the vault being teal or blue-green, not totally blue like the screener but not wholly green either. But as I said, memories are not infallible.

BTW, when you say 70mm you do mean IMAX, right? Or did TDK have a limited 5-perf 70mm run like Interstellar did?

We really need to get our hands on a 35mm of this someday...

[zoidberg]

We really need to get our hands on a 35mm of this someday...

I think Christopher Nolan went to each cinema it played and asked for his film back.

[TServo2049]

I think Christopher Nolan went to each cinema it played and asked for his film back.

That's a funny picture in my head.

Anyway, I'll have to dig up that German camcorder rip. I may actually already have it uploaded somewhere.

[Stamper]

Those were DCPs (Iknow I saw a DCP of the 35mm full widescreen version, at a press screening) so there exists a perfect version somewhere.

[PDB]

CSchmidlapp was nice enough to provide me with the German cam. I'd like to point out that CSchmidlapp has been very generous and provided me with a lot of materials and help for this project..

The cam does look like a cam but it does have an interesting look. So what I did was try to first fix the cam a bit. I fixed the black level back to black and then fixed the gamma and shadows.

Orig/Corrected


http://i.imgur.com/wqwSo9B.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/90606yQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iZCcfyq.jpg

Couple of interesting things I can see from looking at the cam. First is it looks a lot like my alternative color grade, the one I did off of just looking at trailers. It seems to be closer to the cam then my Imax release. The big difference with my alternative grade was that it has more blue.

Regardless, it seems TDK is missing a lot of green. So for a test, I tried to regrade my existing project to this cam.



The biggest thing to me was that the blistering red skin tones are gone and replaced with something a bit more human. Also the white balance is much better. Overall I like it a lot but it still needs some work (contrast, saturation, etc)