[Help] The Thing (1982) -> Best Mix?

[spoRv]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php...st12697975

The 70mm "spread" transfer was done at night at Goldwyn sound by Bill Varney alone after we had completed the 35mm mix ( they were already mixing another film during the day ). I said "transfer" because as I remember there was essentially no remixing done. This was a technical process done over 4 evenings performed by Varney and a couple of technicians in the machine room. I was there, and remember him standing at the console, setting things in motion and then leaving until the reel was completed...

So it seems I was not wrong at the end!

[zoidberg]

I've been trawling the Shout thread elsewhere and there seems to be plenty of (admittedly) anecdotal evidence that the original (ie non-anamorphic) Thing DVD has a 5.1 track with mono surrounds which sounds closer to the 4.1 track than later 5.1 mixes. It is not unreasonable to suspect the Signature LD's 5.1 track would be the same as the non-anamorphic DVD's (but possibly better). Also no-one is complaining of the surround channel of the 4.1 being missing anything, if anything they are too 'hot' (and of course there was a mastering error in early batches which put the surround out of sync). Is it possible that the fold-down matrix has redirected some out of phase content from the front discrete L-R channels (which would have the effect of opening up the soundstage, hence the 'spread') into the rear channel? Hence the additional surround content in the 2.0 mix

[spoRv]

Yep, the DVD 5.1 is almost the same as the Shout 4.1 - apart LFE.

And it's very possible that the laserdisc AC-3 is the same; but frankly I strongly hope to be wrong!

About the surround upmix: I admit that it could be that some pars could be more present than a real 4(5).x discrete track, still it's not possible that one section is completely there on 4.1, then the next seconds are not, then again yes... I mean, this is a manual intervention of a technician that decided what to cut (better, silence down) instead of wrong upmix.

[allldu]

Hey, @spoRv, somebody at bluray.com replied to the matter of too busy surrounds on your 2.0 upmix as compared to 4.1 surrounds:

"I think what you're seeing here are possibly simply the limitations of "matrixed" surround formats. That "extra surround" is likely out-of-phase music or other stereo effects that the surround decoder is sending to the rears. The discreet mix would not have this problem, obviously, since all the channels are completely separate, but "Dolby Surround" and other such matrix surround formats by their very nature would have some "leakage" where sounds would be steered to the rears occasionally simply by virtue of them being "out of phase" between the two stereo channels.

Chris"

Also this:

"I’ve seen the 70mm print projected in Chicago a few years back. The surround channels were not that active."

[spoRv]

Yep, I saw... preparing the answer!

[spoRv]

Updated article: http://blog.sporv.com/disentangling-the-thing

[BDgeek]

Great article, thanks a lot spoRv!

Despite being a huge JC fan, The Thing was never among my favorite of his movies.

The UHD gave me new appreciation for it, and your article sealed my understanding of the movies history, specially on home video.