[In progress] Dracula (1931) - Original Movietone Aspect Ratio & Green Tint

[koberulz]

The existing Blu-ray is clearly off-center, as it's not matted correctly for its original 1.2:1 aspect ratio. It was also released theatrically with a green tint. Attempting to recreate both.

[Johnny-5]

Looks nice! Interested to see the final result.

[Turisu]

Interesting project. I'd heard that Frankenstein was originally green-tinted but had no idea that Dracula was as well.

That green is quite garish though. Do you have any kind of reference for the shade of green that it should be? There was a project attempting to recreate the silent version of Dracula which included the original green tint here:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterk...423e5df92d

Apparently that guy used a Kodak colour card of the era and some accompanying reference frames from another film to get close to how the original green may have looked.

[koberulz]

It's a Kodachrome Verdante LUT, but I've tweaked the luma a little because by default it was blowing out the brights way too much and the blacks weren't anything approaching black at all. If I just run with the LUT, it looks like this:

[Turisu]

I see what you mean about the blacks. But still personally I prefer the tint in the untouched shot.

[koberulz]

I think the whites are more of an issue than the blacks.

Original/tint only/tint with white adjustment/tint with white and black adjustment

[koberulz]

Potential middle ground:

[Turisu]

Middle ground looks good to me. Is the source the 4K UHD?

[koberulz]

It's the old Blu-ray. I don't have the new discs, nor do I have an HDR-compatible editing setup.

[BDgeek]

Personally, I think the last shot is definitely the best.

If you can get a hold of the UHD, it's much superior to the BD. You can check the comparison at caps-a-holic

Even converted to SDR, the UHD source should yield better results than the BD;