[In progress] "Heat" director's cut regraded

[Beber]

Hey, guys.

Back in 2015, during a Michael Mann retrospective, I saw a 35mm print of Heat. I was shocked to realize how warm and colorful Dante Spinotti's original cinematography actually was, something we never had on home video. It has since then become a desaturated, bland, dull, almost steel grey monochromatic mess. Actually that's why I didn't understand at the time, in 2008, when The Dark Knight came out, those claims that Heat was a major influence to it, except for the masked bank robbery, which is very classic in heist films and not exclusive to Heat anyway. Following that, the bad Blu-ray of The Dark Knight was released with wrong color grading. But then, at the same period, in 2015, I saw both Heat 35mm print and The Dark Knight DCP (which looks about the same as the remastered UHD), and then it hit me: their cinematographies are very much alike, with warm colors, lovely blues, cyans and orangy browns, etc. So, 10 years ago, I made my own saturation correction on the 2009 Warner Blu-ray of Heat to revive those colors. And now, I just revisited that in DaVinci Resolve, with a few separate corrections, and this is what I'm proposing to you today. It's mostly a saturation correction and a bit of contrast tweaking while at it. As I remember reading in these premises, @TheAluminumFalcon and @Setzer also attended a 35mm screening in a not-too-distant past and I'm sure it will ring a bell:






Now there's the case of these 2 shots:



These two shots, ever since the DVD era, share the same affliction, as they switch in color grading near the end of each. These are actually the clues that have convinced me that there never was a remaster, as when I saw the 35mm print, I was already very aware of that issue and made a point not to blink at those two moments to see what's what. And you know what? There is no such problem on those two shots on 35mm film. Meaning it's certainly not on the original elements that would be used to create a remaster. Since the Fox "remaster", they tweaked these two shots to soften the grading switches, but you can still see them if you pay attention. As it turns out, I was able to do just as good as Fox on the Pacino shot to make it almost unnoticeable, but I failed with the Amy Brenneman shot, so I swapped it with the UHD shot and colormatched it. I wish I didn't have to do that because the Fox "remaster" is quite a bit zoomed in, but hey, it's just one shot and I'll have to live with that.

And here's for the full overview:



I would very much like to do the same with the theatrical cut, but I don't have the skills to upscale in a satisfactory way the "detritus" shot from my PAL DVDs. If somebody still has the Alleycat project and is willing to share it with me, please contact me by PM and I'll gladly use that as basis as I remember Alleycat made that upscaled shot already.

[CSchmidlapp]

That looks absolutely amazing!
I agree with your opinion based on your research.
I love Heat and I'm going to hold off watching again until you have completed this.

I can have a go at upscaling the "detritus" shot if you can send me a rip of the DVD (I sadly gave mine away).
Not sure how it would come out, but I'll have a go.

[Beber]

I can have a go at upscaling the "detritus" shot if you can send me a rip of the DVD (I sadly gave mine away).
Not sure how it would come out, but I'll have a go.

I can do that. However, I only have PAL DVDs, so to make the same thing for the theatrical cut, I would need the NTSC DVD for the audio and even a full rip of it with video included to use as timeline. Or probably even better, the @alleycat project which is trimmed and adjusted to be in sync with the LD and has many audio options already synced to it.

[alexp2000]

Looks stunning! I’ve not been lucky enough to see this in 35mm but the trailer that Lucasgodzilla uploaded a while back was a decent indication of how good this film should look. Your colours look as close as anyone has got to that.

[PDB]

Looks good

[SHM]

Looks amazing tbh

[Beber]

Okay, so I was given alleycat's theatrical cut project. I'll see what I can do with it, possibly using the upscaled shot or shots in the "detritus" speech, and likely use it as a timeline guide to use the same audio options from LD and DVD.
Meanwhile, I checked my test encode of the director's cut on an OLED TV and I'm gonna reduce the color saturation level by 5%, as I went a bit too far.
Checking again the Fox Blu-ray, as it turns out, some scenes look quite all right, about on par with what they should be and not as dull as I recalled, but other scenes look very different and dull compared to a 35mm print, on top of being a zoomed-in transfer resulting in cropped sides. I'm still not convinced there ever was a remaster in 2017 and my guess is the marginal bump in quality, if any, is due to encoding from 2009 VC-1 standards to 2017 AVC and subsequent HEVC for the UHD.

[Beber]

I just recreated the theatrical cut based on alleycat's recreation of the Laserdisc timeline. I tried to upscale the "detritus" shot myself using different methods, but the upscale @alleycat made remains the better option, so I'll use that one. I did have to squeesh it a bit though, as the DVD it was taken from was stretched vertically, and I also zoomed in a bit to retain the same black bar thickness. I'll give it a test watch this week-end. It's coming together, pals.
Meanwhile, I asked for the Laserdisc track synced to the director's cut to include it as an optional track with all its "detritus" and "ferocious" glory, but if I don't get it, no worries, it will be included in the theatrical cut anyway from alleycat's project.