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

[spoRv]

I like it!

[Koopa Luath]

So do I!

[CSchmidlapp]

I personally think this is spot on considering the refrences one has to work off at this time.
The only opposing evidence to this is the final TV spots that match the BD.

There was certainly a point where this film was stripped of it's green.

Now purley philosophising here, when the 35mm assets we're put through the IMAX processes, this stripping of the green may have occured (for whatever reason) and subsequent home video masters we're created from this. (I can imagine the suits argueing that they had spent all of this money on creating these high resolution imax versions, and why not use them on the new high resolution Blu Ray format) The 2:40:1 versions also retained this.
But this does not explain the observations by people who saw it in IMAX (who say it was stunning!) so further correcting was applyed on it's way to the small(er) screen, still using the IMAX processed footage as there master. (Dark Knight Rises transfer looked great! so why?) Footage in documentarys produced later, still show the colour grade and problems associated with the BLU, so Im pretty sure it's in there (go to) master.
This also would exclude both the 35mm and DCP from these changes.

It really puzzles me why these desisions were made, and ive gone around in circles (like many here) trying to understand why.
Its personal preference time really, (and again due to the evidence we have all collated over the years) mine is this/your colour grade.

P.S Thanks for the shout out good sir, it has been a pleasure being apart of your project

[xportz]

This looks great! I have a constant image height Cinemascope screen, unfortunately, so the IMAX scenes are outside my screen boundaries. Has anyone done a restoration of the 2.4:1 cinema experience yet? I cropped the top and bottom 140 pixels of the Blu-Ray and re-encoded it myself, but I imagine this isn't accurate to the theatrical 2.4:1 version. At least it isn't for The Dark Knight Rises AFAIK.

[TServo2049]

Oh yeah, I forgot I gave the rip to CSchmidlapp back in 2015. The rip is/was sitting on my MEGA cloud, I just kept forgetting to put the link here. Thanks for getting it to PDB, Commodore!

I do wonder if it wasn't totally green. I always thought this cam rip looked too warm. And I still swear the 35mm prints had SOME blue, closer to teal (greenish teal?). The IMAX grading didn't conflict with my memories of 2008 35mm, but even without seeing it on video between 2008 and 2015, memory decays over time. My only remaining clear memory is of the final Joker showdown having that Cameron blue look - I just remember the searchlights when he's hanging by his feet being blue.

What I wouldn't give to attend a 35mm print screening, I wonder if WB even rents out the 35mm anymore. (I'm not even confident that a DCP presentation would still be from the 2008 DCP.)

[CSchmidlapp]

Thanks TServo2049.
I was 99% sure this was your rip. I grabbed alot of material around the time

[TServo2049]

Well, it's not really my rip, I'm just the one who tracked down the NZB and downloaded it off Usenet. But I know what you meant.

[PDB]

Yeah the amount of blue is a question for me too. My other grade from page 3 has a very blue look but in reality I don't know how much to go with if much at all. The cam still has blue in it but not nearly the degree of the BD. Imdb does say that TDK was shot and printed on Vision 250 and 2383 which does have a green look to it. It might be the IP is very blue and then printed the movie becomes more teal or green but I'm guessing.

[Tomlinson Holman]

Hello!

I have seen that your and many other projects here are trying to get colors close to the ones shown in cinema. Digital Cinema uses a color space of DCI P3 and analog film has a color space even bigger than that.
If I am not mistaken, the projects here end in the color space of blu-ray, which is REC.709 and much smaller than DCI P3. Are there any thoughts using a P3 color space for projects here?

[PDB]

Hello!

I have seen that your and many other projects here are trying to get colors close to the ones shown in cinema. Digital Cinema uses a color space of DCI P3 and analog film has a color space even bigger than that.
If I am not mistaken, the projects here end in the color space of blu-ray, which is REC.709 and much smaller than DCI P3. Are there any thoughts using a P3 color space for projects here?

It's an interesting idea but the problem is the original matieral is in 709 so converting and grading in p3 isn't going to make a lot more gradiants of colors magically appear. And although there is some benefit to doing that most people are watching these projects on a 1080p tv that's not capably of displaying p3.

It's just easier to use p3 or even rec2020 when there is more access to 4K matieral and more people have 4K tvs or at least computer displays capable of displaying the full color gamut.