[Test] My Thread of Random Color Comparisons

[alleycat]

Sorry to hijack your thread LucasGodzilla, I can make a new thread if preferred. But a project I am looking at tackling is Blind Dead 3 - The Ghost Galleon. It's been released by Blue Underground on DVD and most recently by XT Video on Blu Ray. However I've read that both these releases have incorrect color.

The way I heard it was a lot of low budget films of the time shot nighttime scenes in the day and then applied day for night filters to make it look like they took place at night. There are three scenes in Ghost Galleon, one for example is at the end when the dead are walking out of the water, that according to this person are supposed to take place at night.

In both the Blue Underground DVD and XT Video Blu Ray they take place in daylight, so this person says both of the transfers are wrong. He says the evidence of this is a 35mm german theatrical print he's seen and also the German DVD, which was taken from that print, as they both have these scenes with nighttime filters. Also the fact that earlier on someone mentions that the dead can only come alive at night so the scenes with them walking out of the water has to take place at night - but these older movies don't always follow logic I guess.

Blue Underground and XT Video both used the US print, so at this stage I guess either the US print is wrong or the German print is wrong. The Spanish print seems to be lost as no one has used it. There is a DVD in Spain but I suspect it's a bootleg of the BU disc. There is also very expensive Spanish VHS and Betamax releases, I guess those are taken from the Spanish print.

So currently the only known available version with the nighttime filter is the German Disc, but I'm really not sure about using it for a regrade. Any thoughts? BU is top German is bottom.

[LucasGodzilla]

Interesting given the amount of flip flopping between the two with shots that are blue and others that aren't with little conistency on when.

I do want to lean towards the German release being the more accurate one given Blue Underground tends to make their transfers from OCN as often as possible which can easily cause issues without knowledge that scenes are meant to be color timed and graded differently. It IS possible that between regions prints were timed differently but I doubt it. Besides, in many frames, the German release has nicer colors and look more sensical with lanterns that aren't tinted blue but still have blues in the shot (EG: The last frame comparison)?

I'd say go ahead with the regrade since it's not only been confirmed to be accurate on at least German 35mm prints, but it'd at least present the current HD master with a new way of viewing?

I wish I could help further but unfortunately the collector I know doesn't have this movie in the collection (only has Tombs Of The Blind Dead on Fuji) so it wouldn't even be possible to theoretically rent a print and maybe partially scan it or something as confirmation.

[alleycat]

Interesting given the amount of flip flopping between the two with shots that are blue and others that aren't with little conistency on when.

I do want to lean towards the German release being the more accurate one given Blue Underground tends to make their transfers from OCN as often as possible which can easily cause issues without knowledge that scenes are meant to be color timed and graded differently. It IS possible that between regions prints were timed differently but I doubt it. Besides, in many frames, the German release has nicer colors and look more sensical with lanterns that aren't tinted blue but still have blues in the shot (EG: The last frame comparison)?

I'd say go ahead with the regrade since it's not only been confirmed to be accurate on at least German 35mm prints, but it'd at least present the current HD master with a new way of viewing?

Great thanks for your thoughts, I think I may end up making a two disc set, one with the untouched colors and one with the german regrade. Especially as the blu ray doesn't include the Spanish language track, so I'll sync that from the BU disc and port over the English subtitles as well. What would be really nice would be a way of including the original Spanish opening and closing credits, but the only place they could possibly exist would be the Spanish VHS/Betamax.

[alleycat]

So this is the untouched Blu Ray:



And this is the corrected blu ray using the German color



But we are beginning to think this might be an upscale of the BU disc. The color is the same, the dirt and dust are identical and it has exactly the same number of frames:

BU DVD:



XT Blu Ray:



BU released the DVD back in 2005, does anyone know how they were doing scans back then? Was HD scanning a thing? I'm wondering if XT Video could have got hold of the scan that BU used, if it was a HD scan, as opposed to upscaling their DVD. It's definitely not a new scan.

[spoRv]

BU released the DVD back in 2005, does anyone know how they were doing scans back then?

There were HD scans way before 2005 - mid 90s IIRC - so it could definitely be an HD scan.

[LucasGodzilla]

I wouldn't be surprised if the master is in HD either, but I also wouldn't be surprised the German blu-ray is just doing an upscale rather than using the original HD master.

Also, does the entire German print have that red-cast look to it? If it does, it might be actually fading, but at the same time, it could just be doing a German Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh to possibly negate the tungsten stock look?

[LucasGodzilla]

Completely forgot that I could've just made a thumbnail collage of the MP4 of Halloween 3 to showcase the colors so here we go.

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever tried syncing LD audio of the movie to the Shout! Factory blu-ray?

[PDB]

I like those H3 colors a lot more than the official ones.