Police Story III colour regrade/correction

[Serums]

Update - still tweaking:

[CSchmidlapp]

Those screens look great!
Have you added some more blue?

I downloaded the clip also and it looked good in motion.

If you want to render off a work in progress for a 2nd pair of eyes let me know

[Serums]

Thanks. I did add a little more blue, yep. I noticed that the second half of the scene where Ka Kui and Pau meet up with Pau's gang still has a slight green tinge to it. I'll have to correct this before I can fire off a render, as it sticks out like a sore thumb    But I feel it'd definitely benefit from a fresh look, so I'll get that done ASAP.

[CSchmidlapp]

It looks great sir. Well done on this great project.
What you have done here is exactly what needs doing with 'A Better Tomorrow'.
White balance with some scene by scene tweaking. That master also is in need of some more 'blue'.

It does make me question what the actual 35mm release prints look like (Maybe these 4k remasters a correct!).
Ive had many discussions here about 'color characteristics' introduced by certain film stocks and in particular 35mm release types.
Do they color grade there Inter Negative to take these 'characteristics' into consideration?
And if so, are they wrongfully color grading there video masters to match the source there scanning from? (Which in many cases is a interpositive or Inter Neg.)

I'm unsure if they even cared about such things on some of these era HK flicks to be honest.
Alot of them we're very cheap, slapped together very haphazardly with no respect for the original elements and no thought to there life after there initial releases.
We in the west (certainly in the U.K), had alot of our VHS transfers sourced directly from what looked like 35mm release prints and we're lucky to get even that in some cases.

[Serums]

Appreciate that. I'm still getting there, so far what I've done has been more of a blanket regrade if you will, but now that I understand more of how Davinci Resolve works I'll be able to make those individual corrections. In regards to 'A Better Tomorrow', I'd be happy to give a shot once this is done with, if it doesn't step on Colek's project. I've just been lucky with 'Supercop' to have a few different versions available to go off of (the US print was on Youtube). I also heard recently that the HK laserdisc Cantonese track was actually a fake stereo track, which would (possibly) mean that the film was originally mixed in mono.

A valid point. I would have been inclined to think that VHS/Laserdisc releases would be colour accurate (since in some cases little time had passed from the theatrical release) but then we don't know what (if any) tweaking those underwent prior to release. Likewise, the release prints might look like what is released on DVD/Blu-Ray, but in this case (and possibly for most/all L'Immagine Ritrovata jobs) they may perhaps not be accounting for certain 'colour characteristics' if their masters have that common yellow/greenish tint to them, as it's no doubt impossible that all of these films reflected that particular grading in the first place.

Exactly. As we know, back in the 70s onwards (probably before, too) HK filmmakers assumed that these films' lifespan would be a theatrical release and nothing else. When it came time to release them on VHS/VCD/Laserdisc, any colourists working on the release mightn't have had an idea of how the film was supposed to look. I'd be curious to compare those VHS transfers to shots from a 35mm print to see if there is some overlap, but that mightn't be the easiest thing to accomplish now.

[Serums]

Just a bump. Progress on this is still ongoing, but I'm running into a bit of trouble getting Resolve to export it. As soon as/if I can resolve this issue (no pun intended) it should be close to completion.

I've since received the stereo LD track, which sounds quite good. Still waiting on the mono track.

[Serums]

Back on track with this one - the Resolve project had somehow become corrupted. I've started fresh and am almost done with it, just tweaking the subs at the moment. Still don't have the mono LD track, so I'm unsure whether I'll release this just with the stereo track (and the mono track separately later on) or hold out.

[PDB]

Glad to see you up and running again. If you need it I might still have the Deltmac DVD mono.

[Serums]

Thanks for that, PDB. I'd be content to just release this as is (in terms of audio) as I'm still waiting on the laserdisc mono to be synced.

Do you roughly remember how the Deltamac mono sounds?

Here's an idea of where I'm at, in terms of correction:

[PDB]

Well the LD is probably better but if it doesn't come through I have the DVD.

Your regrade looks pretty good so far.

If I were to change one thing, I would decrease the saturation a bit but otherwise looking good so far.