Blade Runner International Cut Regrade (Criterion Collection Laserdisc)

[PDB]

This project has been retired and will be superseded by this one:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-1442.html



Blade Runner International Cut  (regraded to the Criterion Collection Laserdisc - v1.0)

Project Info:

Just wanted to get this project that I'm working on up on Fanres. The genesis is here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.c...pic/17070/

This was originally an experimental regrade to an old pan and scan LD until Jonno provided me with a capture of the vastly superior Criterion Collection laserdisc of the International Cut. So now it is a regrade to that laserdisc.

Video:
2013 Blu-Ray of the International Cut (IC) regraded to the 1989 Criterion Collection (CC) Laserdisc (LD)

Audio:
1. PCM 2.0 (from the Criterion Collection International Cut LD-Narration)
2. Dolby Digital 5.1 (from the Warner Bros International Cut BD-Narration)
3. PCM 2.0 (from the Warner Bros Director's Cut LD-No Narration mixed with the IC's Laserdisc PCM 2.0 and parts of musical score to fill the gaps)

Subtitles:
English (From the BD converted to SRT and SDH parts removed)
French (From the BD converted to SRT)
Spanish (From the BD converted to SRT )

Output:
MKV compatible within the spec for a 25GB BD

Pics:

MKV Pics (Final)


BR/BR regraded to the CC LD




Thanks:
Jonno: for capturing the Criterion Collection LD
Doombot: for advice, help and testing
Buster D: for the various LD soundtracks
StarThoughts: for the music score to fix the ending
captainsolo: for information about the film and a 35mm showing

[spoRv]

Blu-ray colors are quite good, but still prefer the laserdisc... it's great (and strange, too) to see how much laserdisc is still important these days!

[PDB]

Blu-ray colors are quite good, but still prefer the laserdisc... it's great (and strange, too) to see how much laserdisc is still important these days!

I really like both. Sometimes the BR is better, sometimes the LD. Since I have the BR, I thought what the hell, lets try the LD's colors in HD. After seeing that the LD more closely matches the 35mm print was just icing on the cake.

Its funny I abandoned laserdiscs (glad I saved the player) when DVDs came out only to go back to them and develop a re-appreciation for all their awesomeness. I partly blame you for that, spoRv

[spoRv]

I was lucky because I'm so picky... I didn't like the quality of the first DVD editions, and so I decided to not sell my laserdiscs; at the contrary, when prices dropped drastically, I begun to collect them'all... and happy to be "guilty"!

[PDB]

I think it was the whole switching discs that did in lds for me. When I was trying to sell people on how great laserdisc was over VHS the counter point was always " you have to get up to switch discs"?

Well that and analog noise. I've come to appreciate that look now compared to the modern digital look but that was a big selling point for DVDs for me. No more analog noise and composite junk (tbc, rainbows, etc)

[guiser]

Why is it that each with successive format (LD -> DVD -> BR) the potential quality increases, but in so many cases the actual quality decreases? One would think that the people doing the transfers would get better at it over time.

Some possible explanations, they don't really care all that much (my vote), some specialized knowledge is lost about the original colors or process, original versions have been damaged or destroyed, and meddling (the most infuriating of all).

Back to the thread at hand: are the brightness changes a result of the LD being brighter or the BR? The brightness feels better to me in the BR shots with the color being better in the regraded ones. But I typically don't have a great memory for these things. My most remembered views of this was long ago on TV and I remember the broadcasts being quite dark (could have been the old TV we had or simply bad settings though).

[jonno]

Guiser's asking why modern HD transfers are so infrequently faithful to the original releases in terms of colour, and he's right.

It seems that the two situations that come up the most often these days - particularly with the high profile studio releases - is uncorrected negative transfers (see Mad Max 2) and revisionist "but this is what we really wanted" type thinking (Alien and Aliens, Se7en, Star Trek II, Exorcist, Blade Runner FC etc etc).

Blade Runner is a strange one, since the 'archival cuts' are theoretically straight scans with no messing, but they're demonstrably different to release versions - otherwise this project wouldn't be necessary! We can be sure that the studio didn't rebuild them from the o-neg, so there shouldn't be an inherent timing issue, and you'd hope that no-one felt the need to make 'creative' adjustments to those versions (that being the purpose of the Final Cut), but the changes are there nonetheless.

It's a real shame that this continues to happen, particularly when labels like Criterion and Arrow show how easy it should be to simply present films as they were intended (though they're not without their own issues; Criterion's Scanners and Thief both received new gradings, both times because the directors were involved. A familiar story.)

[PDB]

Well, I should as always put a disclaimer on these projects. That I don't think my version is right and the blu-ray (BD) is wrong. I don't have enough evidence to back it up. So that's why I always treat these projects as alternatives to the commercial BD. If you have the BD (which you should to have this project) here is another version of how the movie looked in the the past, pure and simple. Not this is right and that is wrong.

Having said that, Jonno pretty much covers my thoughts and feelings on the matter pretty succinctly. There are two reasons for change, modern tinkering or non-colored timed negative (OCN) scans. The OCN often will not look like a theatrical print since color timing is done further down the chain. So if the scanner doesn't color the negative scan then it only looks like the negative not a theatrical print.

I believe that Blade Runner's TC, IC and DC cuts are pure scans from the OCN or IP(s) with little to no color timing (contrast would of definitely been changed). That is great because you get to see what the OCN looks like and it looks great. But that might not be how a theatrical print looked in '82.

The thing is Jonno's capture of the Criterion Collection laserdisc (LD) looks different. Not in every scene but more then enough to cause you to think. The BD transfers lacks the LD's blues and yellows. Could that be theatrical print color timing? Maybe but it could also be video manipulation at the time. But then Jonno gave me a capture of the Warner LD of the DC and it has a lot of the same blues and yellows. Coincidence? Maybe but then you look at those pics from the 35mm LPP print I posted on the OT. Some match the BD very well but most match the LD better. And there is that blue that again is missing in the BD transfers.

So I think that the BR scans look like the OCN/IP and not a theatrical print. That it is missing blue color timing and maybe yellow. Could I be wrong? Sure easily. That's why I always say treat this as an alternative version.

Back to the thread at hand: are the brightness changes a result of the LD being brighter or the BR?  The brightness feels better to me in the BR shots with the color being better in the regraded ones.  But I typically don't have a great memory for these things.  My most remembered views of this was long ago on TV and I remember the broadcasts being quite dark (could have been the old TV we had or simply bad settings though).

The capture Jonno gave me has a lot of brightness in the blacks so first thing I did was pull the contrast to better match the BD. But even matching, the thing is the LD and BD are different. If you notice the true black in the pics matches pretty well but the LD has different highlights, mids and darks but also different colors that show up better in the dark. In that Rachael crying pic, even when I try to add significant additional contrast (more then the BD) you can still see her ear. Its just the nature of the LD's transfer. Its just different. So there is a balance, I want the contrast of the BD (which is far more then a OCN would ever have) but preserve the look of the LD. Too much and it becomes a crushed, manipulated mess (which some might say it is now   ) and the colors then become inaccurate to the LD.

[Stamper]

Agree, I just thought the archival versions on the Blu were already about the same as the LD. Apparently not. My guess is like for Aliens, the LD was color timed to look good on tube scans.

So in essence, the project might be worthy, as a preserv of the original home-video timing. For complete completists lol. I'm not sure the video was accurate to the theatrical prints thought, there were always shifts and adjustments when they were scanning for the VHS market.

[spoRv]

I was forced to resurrect old CRTs, and when put in direct comparison with LCD, using old media for CRT and BD for LCD, color grading are not that different... indeed, many old versions issued on VHS, LD, DVD have (almost) the same color grading of the BD - apart the small difference due to rec601/709... so, I think the few we are talking about have different issues... for examples, revisionism, teal&orange trend, different light used to capture the film, new digital color grading Vs old chemical color timing etc.

Just my 2c, for what it's worth... back to topic now!