[Canceled] Die Hard 2 35mm Regrade (The 35 Project)

[PDB]

Great point.
And well worth exploring

But don't quote me on that, I could be way off on that theory.

PDB, you can reduce the pink skintone on McClane in the police van, increase saturation so that the back "wall" looks more greenish gray. In the precinct, after coming back from Harlem, you can add more brown to his skintone, especially on the wider shot that still looks too pink and you can add a touch of gold so that Zeus glows with that increasing browns. Also, not a scene that you have shown us yet, but I recall the scene inside the Feds' van when the agents show McClane and Zeus pictures of Targo and Peter Krieg. You have a panning shot from McClane to Zeus shaking their heads to answer "no": that panning shot doesn't show a pink guy, then a brown guy. It shows 2 shades of brown skintones, Zeus being far more brown obviously and McClane being dirty after the subway bombing.

It would be interesting to see how it'd look with your instinct of balancing the whites.

I can try some of that. Saturation is simple, skintones are harder but I have so LUTs I want to try. Getting rid of more pink means going greener (opposite on the color wheel) but I think I can take care of it in the highlights, so hopefully won't change the picture too much. Let me try a few tests.

At a certain there will have to be a bit of compromise since its going to have to be one color correction for most of the film.

I only encoded a test file up to the precinct conversation (Lag-AVI) since I didn't want to waste hard drive space if I couldn't get close to your description. If the next few tests go well, I'll encode the whole movie (although I should finish the audio sync on DH2 first )

[PDB]

Slight test:

BD/V1/New V2


This is the same skintone LUT, color adjustment and saturation boost for both

[Beber]

Argh ! Too bad it's the same for both ! I'd go with the 2nd one for the inside of the police van, but with the 1st one in the precinct. In the 2nd one in the precinct, he suffers of jaundice, right? How does it look on Zeus' face?

[Beber]

Another hint I can give you is that the Cinergi logo in front of the film is not blue but cyan-blue, and so are the underwater shots near the end, when McClane and Zeus swim back to the surface after the boat explosion. But I suppose you already went that way since you're on the green side of the spectrum.

The same goes with Speed, that I saw on 35mm a week before Die Hard 3. The Speed title sequence has cyan-blue inscriptions and not total blue like on video.

[PDB]

Argh ! Too bad it's the same for both ! I'd go with the 2nd one for the inside of the police van, but with the 1st one in the precinct. In the 2nd one in the precinct, he suffers of jaundice, right? How does it look on Zeus' face?

That is green added to the skin tone to reduce the red/pink and then green peeled off in the highlights. The orange in the second is there with the picture from the startbut pulls slightly yellow with the green added. I can try to reduce the green to get a balance betwwen the two shots.

Let me get a pic of Zeus from that scene.

Another hint I can give you is that the Cinergi logo in front of the film is not blue but cyan-blue, and so are the underwater shots near the end, when McClane and Zeus swim back to the surface after the boat explosion. But I suppose you already went that way since you're on the green side of the spectrum.

The same goes with Speed, that I saw on 35mm a week before Die Hard 3. The Speed title sequence has cyan-blue inscriptions and not total blue like on video.

Let me grab that example too. Was Speed greenish also? Or more blue?

I am happy to see how much a little contrast can make the picture sooo much better. The BD picture is so flat since there is no contrast. Just putting a little in means you get details back like the wrinkle's in Willis' forehead.

[spoRv]

I think now saturation is right; as usual, I'm nearly impossible to satisfy, color wise, so it would be nice to see a setting between V1 and V2 for the first pic of the last comparison...

[Beber]

Yes, Speed tends to lean on the green side of the spectrum, but I'd say not as much as Die Hard with a Vengeance. Overall, Speed on Blu-ray or DVD looks quite faithful to its intended look, meaning that I wasn't shocked by the 35mm look of it. It wasn't night and day. It was tealer, yes, greener, yes, and on video it is most likely too red with the usual pinkish skintones, but overall, I'd say that Speed on video is in the ballpark.

[PDB]

Ok less green in the skintones and less saturation than v2 but still more then v1

BD/Regrade test v3


and more:

[DoomBot]

Love the skintones! You can really see the magenta in the white shirts on the before shots next to these regrades.

[CSchmidlapp]

Love the skintones! You can really see the magenta in the white shirts on the before shots next to these regrades.

I agree.
It looks fantastic.
Perhaps you should release the LUT as an 'early video master corrector LUT'. I know Id apply it to a few in my collection