[No Longer Available] The Ring Original DVD/DVHS Colors (Quick Project)

[zoidberg]

What is interesting about the video and the AC article (to which the video refers constantly) is neither mention colour timing or in the video's case minimise the timing process to some minor corrections. It's worth noting that the colour timer was none other than Dale Grahn (Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator etc). Here's a short video clip where he talks about creating the look from what he describes as neutral photography:



So make of that what you will. He also talks a little about The Ring and other films on this podcast.

By all accounts there is a UHD release on the way, so it will be interesting to see if the grading changes again.

[PDB]

You've piqued my interested in checking this out - would you recommend the dtheater version?

I can't say which is more theatrically accurate but I like the DVD/DVHS transfer better. I think its a little bit more fitting for the film.

The BD has a green-yellow tint that looks like a modern film transfer. Kind of that L'Immagine Ritrovata look. The green works but the yellow makes the movie feel a bit warmer then it should. The green-blue of the DVD/DVHS feels more like the rain, environment and mood of the film. But that is just my opinion.

Sorry for the necropost for this project but I thought this was a cool video explaining the color timing of The Ring

Something I saw that was incredibly fascinating was how at the 20:39 mark, the first alternative variant of the filtering that he deemed too mild looked remarkably similar to this older master of the movie.

It genuinely makes me wonder how this experiment would've looked if the guy tried to also print his negatives with the RA-4 process since I imagine those photo-paper blowups would've resulted in a better viewport than the edited digital scans—especially since it'd perpetuate the "hands-off" analog focus.

Not to mention the whole subject of contrast as a result between ECN2 and C41 is fascinating in this sort of context (I'd imagine C41 RA-4 would be more accurate since it'd likely add back the contrast that RA-4 lacks in comparison to proper Kodak 2383 / 2386 printing).

It does bare more then a passing resemblance to the DVD/DVHS transfer. I found the whole thing interesting  as I would of assumed it was a DI all along, even as early as 2003. If not, my next guess would be a mild cross-processing. I use to cross-process slide film all the time and often you would get a very green look. It's just cool to see what they were able to do with filters (and gels and color timing?). Very Bava/Argento.

Yeah, him doing the last bit in digital is disappointing but understandable given today's environment. The original youtube video is fun experiment and it is cool to see how far he got but ultimately you are going to be hard pressed to duplicate a multi-million dollar production's cinematography. But I appreciate the effort and learned a few things.

I didn't know they took movie 35mm stock and cut it down for stills. Kind of want to break out the old Canon and shoot with it. Been a long time since I thought about film processing and pull and pushes. I would of assumed shooting on Vision wouldn't be that fun as its meant to have a "neutral" , low contrast, low grain look for scanning. Part of the fun, nowadays, in shooting film is the look.

What is interesting about the video and the AC article (to which the video refers constantly) is neither mention colour timing or in the video's case minimise the timing process to some minor corrections. It's worth noting that the colour timer was none other than Dale Grahn (Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator etc). Here's a short video clip where he talks about creating the look from what he describes as neutral photography:

So make of that what you will. He also talks a little about The Ring and other films on this podcast.

By all accounts there is a UHD release on the way, so it will be interesting to see if the grading changes again.

Great find. I understand any pre-DI film was going to need color timing no matter what. Filter look or not. That's just the nature of the beast. It does sound like he is saying the look was done in color timing but I wouldn't call the look anything close to neutral. Could he be saying that they wanted a neutral timing look because the filters were doing all the work?

Ultimately, Grahn's description at the end does sound a bit more like the DVD/DVHS (aka the blue part) then the BD but that could be splitting hairs.

Might have to revisit this project if that UHD has the BD's look.

[zoidberg]

The way it sounds to me is that Grahn said the original photography was neutral (from a timer's perspective) and it was the timing that gave it the look (he mentions that the look intensifies during the scary scenes). I suppose a green filter on it's own would not be far off from uncorrected fluorescent light, and that can be dialled out during timing.

If you were to ever resurrect this project I'd be interested in grabbing it PDB, I've looked around all over for the DVHS 1080i but couldn't find it.

[PDB]

If you were to ever resurrect this project I'd be interested in grabbing it PDB, I've looked around all over for the DVHS 1080i but couldn't find it.

I'll put it on the short list.

[PDB]

I was finishing up another project and starting on this. Going to polish up the DVHS a little bit and get rid of some of the artifacts.

Question: the original project was synced to itself (the DVHS), I was considering syncing this redo to the BD to get the audio from that but that would mean dumping the DVHS logos and bumpers. So what do people prefer DVHS bumpers or BD sync?

[zoidberg]

I'd say preserve the DVHS logos/bumpers, add a delay to the BD audio. Should please everyone

[stwd4nder2]

I'd say preserve the DVHS logos/bumpers, add a delay to the BD audio. Should please everyone

I second this

[PDB]

Message received, let's see if I can do that. In the mean time pics from the UHD were posted and it seems to be the green/yellow transfer

[PDB]

I took a pause on my Abyss DCP project because I screwed up something and needed to figure out how to fix it. In the meantime I've been working on The Ring DVHS v2. In the time since the original project I've learned more about compression removal so this should be a lot better in that regard. I've also done a bunch of fixes to problems introduced with the original MPEG-2 encoding that I'll go over later. Its not perfect (still things to fix) but should be much better then the original project.

Some WIP pics