Ambassador

I think you've explained yourself and your position better in the above paragraph than in your many previous posts throughout all the colorization threads around here. So I feel like I finally have a better sense of your logic.

Of course, I must confess that I still don't buy it -- not even from the point of view of empowering the consumer. Most specifically, your analogy that it's "not unlike the pleasure one feels at dusting, polishing or restoring a damaged piece of furniture or repairing a favourite toy" seems to me particularly false, since there's a huge difference between restoration and re-imagination. As does your claim that it's "not very different from an artist's habit of transforming the usual and the expected into the unusual and the unexpected" -- since works of art themselves aren't generally designed to change (or be changed by other hands).

Of course, having read Walter Benjamin too, I agree entirely with your first sentence, but I don't think that the multiple layers of mediation necessarily eradicate the intentionalities of the creator(s) of individual films -- or the "specialness" or "aura" or privileged nature of that intentionality. It's just like the photography of Matthew Brady or Ansel Adams; however many times they are copied, there is still an original negative that all of those copies should more or less correspond to.

What I find most intriguing about your position is the degree to which it reminds of the early surrealists. All of your alterations to the original seem to be designed to produce something new/different from the original work. If that's true, then I think there's some merit to your arguments. However, I think that it's necessary to frame what you're doing explicitly as creating something new -- and not watching an "improved" version of the origianl. (Which is how Legend and most other fans of colorization seem to pose their efforts -- to varying degrees.)

At the same time, I also find your desire to find a chance to "experience differently" the "films you like [and] have seen so often" a bit puzzling. Again, due to different conceptions of aesthetic experience. To me, part of the appeal of art is being able to return to something that exists in a finished state and finding that whatever "different experiences" you have with it are due largely to changes within yourself over time. Or if I find that I'm no longer getting anything worthwhile out of one of what used to be my favorite films (such as, say, North by Northwest, which I've perhaps seen too many times), then there are literally tens of thousands of other movies just waiting to be watched. I guess my point being that I'd just as soon watch a different movie than watch a colorized or otherwise altered version of a movie I already know in order to achieve a "different" experience.

At any rate, I genuinely appreciate your response. Like I said, I feel like I have a much better sense of what your logic is. But it's a logic I just can't buy myself.

baracine

Ambassador, I do consider the timid changes (colourization, different aspect ratios, improved sound) I submit the precious original (and its "aura") to as improvements. I remember the thrill I had when I first heard portions of The Wizard of Oz soundtrack remixed in genuine stereo from the available recording stems on an old laserdisc (the That's Entertainment boxset if I recall correctly). And which one among us has not thrilled to a perfectly wonderful and unexpected restoration of a favourite film? Or hearing a soundtrack that has been cleaned up and stripped of its pops and hisses and other monstrosities? Or seeing a film on a larger screen? Or with increased definition, whatever the process? Or even in an improved transfer? Or just the ability to zoom out of the picture to eliminate overscanning?

About the aura of a film:

When I was 14, my Jesuit College's cine-club presented Hitchcock's Vertigo in a 16 mm 4x3 B&W print. I remember being so very proud of my analysis of the film in front of the whole class the following day, talking about its music, its script, its various levels of meaning, up to the point where I mentioned the mysterious quality of the black and white photography and the image composition. That's when our teacher politely coughed and mentioned that the film had been shot in colour and VistaVision, that our College couldn't afford a colour widescreen print, but that he was sure some of the original photography's qualities were still visible in the print we were shown. (Red faces all around...)

Alfred Bergman

From Wikepedia and from Barry Sandrew. Capra was angry about don't get the money he want, since the movie was already public domain and Colorization Inc would not pay hin as he wanted. So he got hoywoody friends and started a moviment against colorization using creative rights as argument. But in reality was a "monetary rights" moviment.
Directors are people usually as many person in society, despiute of marterpieces they made. ANd like many peple they like money a lot. If colorization would pay hin well, he would not mind to add crayons all aorund. Remambering Colorization Inc by the time of this incident had a very rudimentary analogic technology with very poor results, limited color number, poo resoltion, and even so Capra would colorize with them if could get a good perfcentage of profit.

Ambassador

For some reason, my post wasn't actually showing up, so I've just reposted it:

vs.

Once again, you're blurring the difference between restoration and re-imagination. I'm all for restoration: cleaning up the soundtrack of the damage it has acrued over the decades, watching the film on the big screen or in an HD transfer, etc. I don't consider creating a stereo or dolby digital soundtrack out of a mono soundtrack, or creating color where it didn't exist before, or altering the original aspect ratio as "restoration" (or, as I'm sure you well know I'll say, even necessary). A case in point, of course, would be those silly canon blasts that replaced the gunshots in the opening scene of the "restored" version Vertigo. That wasn't restoration at all, and immediately took me out of the film because it didn't belong (and I knew it, from previous viewings).

An interesting anecdote, but I'm not sure what it proves. I remember watching -- and learning to love -- lots of great widescreen movies in their pan-and-scan versions on TV when I was growing up: Bridge on the River Kwai, Zulu, the Sergio Leone westerns, etc. Obviously, they're so well constructed that their qualities still shine through various forms of butchering (editing for commercials, pan-and-scan, etc.). Now that I can see them regularly as originally composed and intended, I appreciate them even more, and I'm not sure that I'd ever want to go back to someone else's version of what they're supposed to look like. In fact, I guess my eyes have gotten so used to the way certain directors frame their shots, that something really seems awry when I see their widescreen films in pan-and-scan (and sometimes even in open matte).

So perhaps what I mean by "aura" is partly just a sensitivity to certain styles of framing and composition. At any rate, I'm willing to trust and privilege most directors' original intentions, despite whatever flaws there might be.

Cameron

whats the point in bumping this thread when there is another thread where you posted the exact same thing.

Cameron

Some people will never care about preservation of film. They don't care about aspect ratios, added f/x, remixed sound, or colorization. That's fine, but I do. In that same note, I have little respect for the opinions of someone who talks about film, but does not only cherish but protects those original intentions.

kingtopher

Seriously, could you run your posts through a spellcheck or something. That's hard to read.

Poo resoltion?

baracine

I obviously care a great deal about the preservation of film and aspect ratios. It is you who doesn't care about added f/x, remixed sound or colorization.

See what I did here? I preserved your original intention but corrected the syntax and grammar.

baracine

That 4x3 reduction of Vertigo was not properly pan-and-scan (which hadn't been invented), since the VistaVision image is originally 1.5:1 (two 4x3 frames one on top of the other)

and can be shown in any ratio from 1.66: 1 to 2.1:1 according to the choice or whim of the projectionist, 1.85:1 being the "preferred" ratio.
So the original composition is pretty well preserved, even in 4x3. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaVision). And it could even be argued that it conveys more information about the original composition than the 1.85:1 "preferred" version. What was more telling was the absence of colour which made the film extremely murky but which didn't strike us as odd in those days when colour was an exception and TV was in black and white and we were used to "decoding" black and white films more than colour films. What is really remarkable is that I and my fellow teenage sophisticates were really impressed by this film and were able to discuss it intelligently without the added benefits of widescreen colour projection.

A great deal was made of those two poor "cannon blasts" but when you play the old mono soundtrack and the new 5.1 foley one after the other, the difference is really minimal, once you take into account the spatialization of 5.1 as opposed to the turgid, gelatinous nature of a mono mix. The same goes for those two "too loud" cushions being thrown on the floor by James Mason. This criticism is meaningless when you compare it to the painstaking effort that had to be expanded to reconstruct the whole sonic landscape so that stereo music could be inserted and the film restored. I personally care more about Bernard Herrmann's precious original stereo recordings than I ever will about those two miserable rooftop gunshots. And you make it sound like they were inserted maliciously, whereas the Vertigo restoration was probably the most important single act of genuine love, adulation and respect for a piece of film that ever came about in the history of cinema.

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Julie Walker

The mono mix on Vertigo does sound much better than the 5.1 mix and the difference is quite drastic!

Listen to the volume levels of the dialogue for example in the scene with Stewart in the ladies apartment at the beginning. The mono mix,the dialogue is at their natural audible level and rings true. The 5.1 mix,the dialogue and other audio effects are much lower and sound false.

In fact,I recall reading Robert Harris describing how they had to salvage the audio on Vertigo for the remix. And since the available audio stems were full of hiss and noise and the dialogue was not available on its own mix. So to hide the music and effects in the audio,they recorded it at a much lower volume level. Then overlaid new effects and music to 'enhance' the audio to 5.1. And it's all quite complex and technical. But basically it shows they should have just left it alone and restored the audio in mono as best that they could.

You may think mono audio sounds terrible compared to 5.1. But that could not be further from the truth. It's quite easy for me to appreciate a films original mix,whether it be mono or 5.1. I'd rather have good original audio,than a distracting altered mix. And 99% of the time,since someone who was not apart of the original production is not overseeing the audio remixing. The choices the audio technician makes to create the 5.1 mix are not always in line with how it should sound.

So a background piece of audio that is lower in the original mix. May call attention too itself in the remix by being brought up louder into the forfront. This changes the mood and atmosphere of a sequence. And great attention to detail in audio of all volume levels is used in many films to convey a specific mood. So by altering the volume levels of the dialogue,music and effects. You are altering the mood of the film. And many times that can severely take away from the experiance.

Ambassador

It's comments like this one, in comparison with this one:

that really gives me the impression that you're reading too much into specific passages of my comments and not actually understanding the whole of my argument. I merely gave Vertigo as an obvious example -- of audio retinkering. I didn't even cite it as example of pan-and-scan. (You'll notice that my examples of pan-and-scan were all films that were shot in 2.35:1 or so, such as Bridge on the River Kwai, Zulu, etc.)

At the same time, I didn't say that the rejiggered gunshots were inserted "maliciously." Ignorantly, perhaps. At any rate, they're a mistake, and the original DVD should have either have been corrected or at least have given us the option of choosing between soundtracks.

As my previous post should have made clear, I agree with this supposition, but also submit that your impressions and discussion of it would naturally have been richer if you had been able to see it in its original glory. I think we're pretty much on the same page here.

This is a matter of opinion. I don't have much of a problem listening to mono recordings, be they motion picture, Benny Goodman jazz recordings, or early recordings by Rachmaninoff or Caruso. Is it as rich as stereo or Dolby Digital? Of course not. But neither is it as rich as listening to live music or stage plays. But I can enjoy what we've got just fine without fake rejiggering.

This is also a matter of opinion. One could easily cite the restorations of Lawrence of Arabia or Spartacus as being more influential in drawing attention to the need for -- and audience for -- large-scale restorations. Of course, I realize that both LoA and Spartacus are problematic from a purist standpoint, since both involved recutting the films and inserting newly recorded dialogue. My point, in the end, is that you don't really do your argument any favors by making such sweeping generalizations.

But I don't essentially disagree with you about the importance/necessity of film preservation and restoration. All I can keep doing is saying that there is a very clear dividing line between trying to recreate the creators' original intentions and re-imagining them in various other ways.

baracine

The "background piece of audio" in question here is Bernard Herrmann's magnificent musical score and as it takes center stage in all the crucial scenes in the movie, I think it's a good idea to hear it in stereo and in better fidelity that was possible before. And the 5.1 dialogue is just fine. The 5.1 mix in general is extremely loud and has to be toned down compared to the mono mix. And the mono mix has to be turned up to be as audible as the 5.1 mix, which also turns up the background noise.

I'm afraid you were misinformed. The restorers worked from an isolated dialog track and from a composite music+sound effects track. The dialog is always recorded separately on a sound source separate from the composite music+sound effects track. Otherwise, they couldn't export the film and dub it in different languages. The foley had to be redone because of the decision to replace the original music + sound effects track with a stereo recording of the music. Theoretically, they could have kept the original foley in the non-music scenes - and they did, for example, in the scene in Elster's club with the subdued conversations in the background. But most of the time, the sound effects (traffic, etc.) - which are very discreet in this film - had to be made directional. e.g.: the traffic outside the Argosy bookshop. The only scene where they kept the original mono mix was in the cemetery scene because the original music recording for that scene hadn't survived on tape in either mono or stereo. But they didn't just take the optical music+sound effects track they had, which was considered too damaged. They hunted around the world and finally found a relatively pristine track on a Spanish language copy of the film.

The original mono soundtrack shows strident voices with lots of background noise. The clean-up was done very well in the digital domain and leaves the voices sounding much more natural. If I have any criticism about the new soundtrack, it is that the "turgid, gelatinous" nature of the original mono mix was heavy in the lower register, which gives at times more momentum to the bass in Herrmann's music and an overall sense of doom. E.g.: The strings when Scotty gets out of his car in the alley behind the flower shop were much more ominous in the original mix because the whole mix was bottom-heavy and there are many other such examples. And yet, both the mono music mix and the stereo tapes were a product of the same recording sessions.

Alfred Bergman

I remamber the film restorer, Robert Hqarris, saying that Alfred Hitchcock got a bad advice about preserve his films. The preservation was about camera negatives and dupes. But the soundtrack components, several separeted tracks, wasn't preserved and this got problems about reralise the films with bether soud or doubling with quality.
There was other ditails about the mess-up advice for preservation. I will try to find the article.

PatrickMcCart

Vertigo really isn't that big of a restoration compared to others. That's reserved for Kevin Brownlow's restoration of Napoleon... spending over 30 years of his own time and money slowly piecing together a 6 hour film.

Not to knock the efforts of Mr. Harris and Mr. Katz, but they had the full financial and archival support of Universal, among others (AMC, Hitchcock's estate). This is the case with nearly any major studio film. Brownlow was constantly having to go behind people's backs at points and often doing stuff that could have put him in serious legal trouble.

Vertigo, and other film restorations backed by major studios are indeed treated with love and respect for the most part.

Premise

Was there ever a recall over the audio problems? The four loud pops are rather annoying. Is there a Paramount contact I could ask about this? Thanks.

Rob

Has anyone seen this yet? I just found it when I searched Amazon to find the 60th ann. edition, after reading this thread.

http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Life...2852386&sr=1-2



[UPDATE]: Oops, just saw the thread on this very DVD.

Rob

"A pox upon me for a clumsy lout."

ken_572002

Yikes...that's a lot of cabbage for a colorized film currently in PD. Not sure how Legends can justify such a high MSRP...seems it will hurt sales on their part.

Carcosa

Ah....didn't see the front end as being a Wikepedia quote. I will have to check this myself. Seems to be more of an opinion than fact.

Carcosa

If you are refering to the colorized / b&w combo....well no, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is not a PD movie. It was at one point but the rights were secured by Republic Pictures some time ago and have since past to Paramount.

Barry Sandrew

Hey Ken, It's not a Legend Films release. Paramount Pictures is releasing it November 13th. This is a newly restored black and white HD transfer and new color using the Legend Films' 48bit colorization process. This is likely the definitive B&W and colorized DVD of IAWL until DVDs evolve to film resolution. Currently only the standard definition release is available. I have no idea when they will release the HD versions.

Carcosa

Maybe Ken is getting this mixed up with the SCROOGE release...Legend Films IS releaseing a colorized and b&w restoration of the 1935 version of this film, which IS in the public domain but has yet to see a definitive home video release.

ken_572002

My apologies for thinking 'Wonderful Life' was still in the PD. While I have enjoyed almost everything that Legends has put out, I will have to pass on 'Wonderful Life'. Just doesn't seem to be the type of movie that should be colorized.

That said Barry...when can we expect to see more of the 'John Wayne In Color' releases? Those films are MUCH more enjoyable, in the colorized format...

Carcosa

I'm really not interested in ANYTHING that is colorized for the most part (just not my thing) BUT Legend does a great job with it's restorations so we always get a top quality B/W version with everything they release....pretty smart marketing on their end....so the new SCROOGE release is a must buy for me.

As far as IAWL, the current version is just fine.

Alfred Bergman

Hey, look that, a digital HD restoration of Nosferatu:

http://eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/catalog...-nosferatu.mov

http://www.kino.com/video/news.php?news_id=57

But they didn't replaced the missing frames, since most missing frames was available in other footages, prints, but with inferior picture quality.
Lucciano Berriatua was the film restorewr for the reconstruction of the film, and prefered to not use the best footages in somes scenes, since the best footage was shorter for some scenes and he didn't weant a abrupt change in image quality. The restoration of Chaplain Keystone shorts used a similar approuch, and they demonstrated that a long lower quality footage was placed for the entire scene, and a short version of the same scene, with more image quality, was left due be not complete.
I prefer to mix the quaity and lower quality footage in a same scene, even that this create a fall in picture quality allong the scene. Matching the contrast and gometry of the frame, with some sharpness adjust to the lower quality footage, helps to ride the image quality hiccup.

Thos digital restoration of nosferatu was based in the reconstrunction of the film by Lucciano Berriatua, and so follow this same principle. Lucciano foun a print of superior quality in the Cinematheque Francaise, bether than any other print of nosferatu, and he spent years and years trying to find that (I think was shot from original camera negative, so a fisrt generation print).
Some segments was deconposed, and there was some censored cut scenes not available in this quality print. Those segments was replaced with footage from toher prints, and that's why some scenes are really very good, and others just so-so. So the censor cuts, deteriored segments, wa s the reason, together with their decision of not allow image quality changes allong the same scene when possible.

For me they could have replaced the missingf frames at least, since if balanced by digital filters to get more sharpnes (since the frames was available in lower quality footage) and match contrast and geometry, the change in quality would not be much noticeable. The scene when Orlock rises after suck blood from Huter, have some missing frames that should be replaced. See the trailler in the link above.

The tinting seens to have some few different choices for this new digitally restored version, compared to the earlier Kino DVD. It's the third different tint of the movie in a reestored edition, since the earlie Kino DVD had diferent tinting than Image Entertainment DVD. The carnivorous plant scene was yellowed in the eraly Kino DVD, and in those clips are tinted and toned getting a gradient from red to orange.