The Evil Dead: Color Regrade with the 1st Jap-LD?

[bendermac]

Would it be possible to regrade the current Blu-ray ( only 4:3 aspect ratio version) to the old japanese LaserDisc?
The look of the movie works so much better, then the later version, which I think is the actual color settings of the theatrical release.

The original mono audio from the laserdisc was shared by zeropc and synced by jj666 on another board and on ot.com

I don't know how the 2nd japanese LaserDisc transfer looks like, but it surely has a digital mono track.
I'm unsure however if it's the original theatrical mix. But maybe someone can help here, if a project like this is possible.

What do you guys think?

[PDB]

I actually looked into this as a project a year ago. Doing exactly what you said 1.33 hd version color corrected to the old "blue" ld. And adding the mono track.

Only problem I had was that I felt in order to do it justice I would also have to remove all of Sam Ramis "fixes". Like Rob Tapert on the bridge, the crappy moon matte, etc. At the time I wasn't sure my skills were there to do it.

Let me see if I can find the test shots I did

[IcePrick]

If anyone's interested, there's an online auction for the Japanese LD with digital audio. Current bid is at 13-ish dollars.

[PDB]

Found some of my test shots:

BD/BD regrade


I also remember this project:
http://www.bookofthedead.ws/website/the_..._dead.html

Which was SD but seems to be the same goal

[DoomBot]

That looks pretty sweet PDB, this project needs to happen at some point in time.

[PDB]

Thanks Doombot, perhaps in the future after my many, many projects are done.

[The Aluminum Falcon]

Test grade looks pretty excellent, PDB. Worth revisiting methinks.

The Book of the Dead project to which you linked was uploaded to MySpleen a couple of weeks ago. It's lovely, with original mono and title reinstated, but in SD. All the digital tweaks are undone; with permission from the disc's creator (which could be unlikely due to the fact that he's only trading and not freely distributing it AFAIK), it might be worth considering asking if you could upconvert his theatrical recreations of specific shots (eg. Rob Tapert in frame). The obvious alternative would be to recreate these theatrical shots yourself in full HD.

However, the project doesn't attempt to recreate the (probably) theatrically accurate color grade of the Herald Videogram LD.

[PDB]

Test grade looks pretty excellent, PDB. Worth revisiting methinks.

The Book of the Dead project to which you linked was uploaded to MySpleen a couple of weeks ago. It's lovely, with original mono and title reinstated, but in SD. All the digital tweaks are undone; with permission from the disc's creator (which could be unlikely due to the fact that he's only trading and not freely distributing it AFAIK), it might be worth considering asking if you could upconvert his theatrical recreations of specific shots (eg. Rob Tapert in frame). The obvious alternative would be to recreate these theatrical shots yourself in full HD.

However, the project doesn't attempt to recreate the (probably) theatrically accurate color grade of the Herald Videogram LD.

Thanks Falcon. I will get to it just got to get a lot off my plate first.

I didn't know that project was on the spleen. Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to get it. His earlier Evil Dead treasure series is how I got a copy of the LD, of course. I'll have to ask him about using his project as an upscale base (I was going to use the Elite DVD). I would like to try to matte in the missing pieces rather then replacing HD shots

Not sure if it is theatrically accurate but the blue color timing of the Herald reminds me of the older Evil Dead 2 more bluer color timing. I was trying to upscale the open matte like Back To The Future but the macro-blocking is terrible. I'm getting closer to a better picture with Doombot helping out:

[IcePrick]

6 hours left on this auction: http://www.tradera.com/item/1303/2582660...ss-1-st-ld

In case someone wants the digital audio track. Only one bid so far.

[spoRv]

This afternoon I watched both Evil Dead I and II on laserdisc (Elite Box Set and blood red Elite single disc).

I didn't remember the first was so bad... I mean, the first time I watched it, it was almost scary, but nowadays it looks cheap, cheesy, campy (add your preferred word here); fun indeed, but not as mush as the second one - cheesy, too, but in a "professional" way!

Color wise, the first is very natural, so maybe it has the same open matte BD grading, hence useless for an eventual project; II was quite natural, too, and it's widescreen - a well done one.

I strongly remember a dog who pissing fire (maybe on the first movie), and the boyfriend's head chopped in half, and him still walking, and the half chopped head on the floor blinking (in the second movie); none of these shots were in the laserdisc... have I imagined them, watched them on some trailers, of there are some versions (probably TV) with them?

Last words: just today I linked the "hello, another!" to a techno song which I can't remember the name (it's a sample, and the song keeps repeating it for quite some times); the other is "groovy!" and "swallow this!", which are spoken by Earthworm Jim!