Proposal: The James Cameron Project

[Stamper]

See it's not that all blue cast. Look at the color of Reese T-Shirt.
There's some green in it. Also the T-Shirt of the worker is not all blue.
Even the darkness is blue in that matched shot. Their fleshtones are also blue, that's what makes it looks off to me.

I don't think it's just my mac screen, but the blue is really strong in Beber's shot.
Though that's why you post samples, to get some feedback and find the right balance.

You need to adjust, the color matching tool will only get you halfway there.

Rob's T2 scan is also clearly doctored, the colors are just... weird. Yes T2 had some blu cast removed, in the bar opening scene for example, but it wasn't everywhere.

[Beber]

Well, the Japanese LD also has its own limitations of its time that prevents it to replicate the print 100% accurately.
I know the colormatching isn't perfect automatically right away. It'll take some refining. I have already found another setting to obtain better skin tone, clearer, whiter, like on Reese's neck. But that's beside the point... at this point. First and foremost, it's the accuracy of the 35mm source that needs to be cleared.
As for the bar scene in T2, it's not as blue as you've claimed it to be for so long using an all blue frame from the making-of. I saw a print in the Grand Action theater in Paris in ~2014, and if it were that blue, I definitely would have noticed such a drastic difference. It's not on the 35mm scans either. Those replicate more accurately what I saw in Paris.

[Stamper]

I remember clearly the blue cast, but this was a 70mm print, and we we know prints can vary! After all, even mixes vary over the releases.

It's vivid because my first reaction when I saw the Laserdisc was "they got rid of the blue in the bar scene" and it came out when T2 was still in theaters in France.

I think comparing to the LDs and also other versions over the different formats, you will pretty much see how to balance your project and nail it.

[Beber]

Maybe it's a difference between 35 and 70mm, then. That's a head scratcher for accuracy, then. 'Cause it depends on which print people saw...

I wish Dre's new version of his tool was already available, 'cause I can't do anything with Silence of the Lambs and Running Man. No matter what, any setting I try, nothing works. At least, with T1, I get a good start for each shot I've tried it on so far.

[Stamper]

Prints would always vary a bit, especially between formats as the source would be different.
Remember it wasn't DCPs back then, and the workflow would change according to the released format.
On other remarks, I think the new UHD pretty much makes the eye scene work better.
Does work was done to get the fleshtones matching better between the puppet and Arnold?

[Beber]

And between Fuji, Kodak, Eastman and whatnot, it can vary as well, so I read. For instance, in my T2 experience, at the top of the ladder in the steel factory, it was very yellow and almost no orange at all just like on the "HDR" 35mm scan. However, the SDR version of the same scan has very much orange in it. Go figure!

I don't know about fleshtones between Arnie and the puppet. It could just be that Arnie now has an artificial Park Road rotoscopic face that transitions better to an actual artificial prop.
The scene is ruined anyway by the addition of a CGI scalpel blade that has no place in a 1984 movie. What's next? Mona Lisa wearing a Kangol beret, eating French fries out of a carton with the McDonald's logo on it? Oh, sure, I'll go to the Louvre to see that in a heartbeat!

[zoidberg]

Quite a few of the Terminator home releases were taken from release prints. The widescreen non-THX Image LD and the Japanese PILF-1297 LD, as well as the Virgin UK VHS. They all differ in their look. I think the THX LD was the first IP-sourced transfer.

It's interesting the 35mm had a 'yellow tint' which got removed. The 2001 re-issue print I have seen a few times has warm highlights (for example the 'Hemdale presents...' text at the start of the film). I know it's a re-issue print but honestly the colour is to die for

[dvdmike]

Quite a few of the Terminator home releases were taken from release prints. The widescreen non-THX Image LD and the Japanese PILF-1297 LD, as well as the Virgin UK VHS. They all differ in their look. I think the THX LD was the first IP-sourced transfer.

It's interesting the 35mm had a 'yellow tint' which got removed. The 2001 re-issue print I have seen a few times has warm highlights (for example the 'Hemdale presents...' text at the start of the film). I know it's a re-issue print but honestly the colour is to die for

Same with T2 and the original squeeze disc

[Stamper]

Just saw this on FB. The original french VHS for The Terminator had the localised titles front and back, same as the original prints. The fonts are different and they changed the Terminator logo (I suppose to avoid having "the" in the front), which is the same as the early french posters.

[Beber]

So weird. I've never seen it like that on TV back in the day. Plus the voice-over doesn't even say the exact same thing: this text is missing "(les cendres) du feu nucléaire", is missing the "(Mais) l'ultime combat", and the voice says "Il sera livré" instead of "mais sera livré".
Was there even a voice-over on this VHS? 'Cause the reason to have a voice-over is precisely to avoid making an on-screen French text in the first place. That's very weird to have both when it's not like that in the original English version.

Is it really from VHS and not TV, with that white rectangle bottom right corner though?