I haven’t watched a restoration feature like this in a while, but this was great. In our hyper-disposable, click-happy streaming centered world, this is the sort of thing that people need to know about and appreciate. There are skilled workers creating these films, as well as preserving and restoring them. I get the sense that many people have a vague feeling that since everything is digital now, it’s all free and easy. Even digitally made films require craftspeople to produce, and I think that the ownership of physical media connects us to these processes, and invests us in these works in a way that streaming doesn’t.
I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Robert Harris, the film restorer. He restored Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Vertigo, The Godfather, among others. We spent two hours talking about film but mainly about his work on Lawrence of Arabia, my favourite movie. It was amazing learning about his view of cinema. A huge honour and pleasure!
That is one of my top Blu Ray wishes! I just wish that Waters would get his head out of his ass about this though, because it doesn’t seem like he wants that to happen from what I understand, so idk how much hope there would be for a proper restoration/HD re-release... :(
Hopefully they don't extinct in the future. I'm worried that, now that everything is digital, in the future people won't even know how to properly do this stuff.
The only film that really perplexes me as to why they have not released on Blu-ray is Superman 2 they released all of the other ones with the exception of this film I don't get it
Is it true the 65mm negative of 2001 no longer exists, so the 4K scan had to be done from a 35mm print? Don't get me wrong, the 4K still looks great, but a velvetty-smooth, high-contrast 4K scan done right from the original 65mm negative would be truly astonishing. You'd feel like you're IN space.
@@kthx1138 Collaborating with a team at the FotoKem laboratory in Burbank, Nolan and Ned Price, Warner Bros.’ VP of restoration, first had to spruce up that material. According to Price, the lab spent more than six months cleaning the 50-year-old negative and checking the splices, which included removing a number of older, imperfect repairs. Then they made an answer print, color-timed it by closely adhering to the original timing notes and documentation, and finally made an interpositive and an internegative in 65mm for striking prints. (Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan’s director of photography on “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk,” had a hand in the effort.) -From and a Variety article on the restoration.
The negative exists for at least the theatrical cut, unsure if the deleted scenes survive in negative form. As of 1981, the negative was nearly destroyed due to the constant printing required by the film’s popularity. While 2.39:1 35mm prints exist and were the basis for many home video releases, the 2.20:1 ratio of the 2018 releases should be a dead giveaway that it was taken from a 70mm source. It actually turned out really good, it looks like it was just filmed. The whole internet disagrees with me, but I think the 4K is probably the best 2001 has ever looked. While there’s very little grain if any, it doesn’t look like it’s been DNR’ed to death. It actually looks very realistic.
Jeff, I appreciate that you do these types of videos. Showing how these films are preserved is very fascinating. It shows how much you care about 4k and the medium of physical media as a whole. Thank You very much for everything you do.
I wouldn’t say they preserver these films as much as they revive them. Preservation would mean that they wouldn’t change anything and that rarely happens.
@@Thecatdrums3 That's true, and that's why I for one appreciate the great work done on Jaws. Aside from selectively varying the brightness outside the windows of the Orca at night while the boys are exchanging scars and Quint tells his Indianapolis story, restoration artists didn't do a DAMN THING to alter the look of the original film the way it appeared in theaters in 1975.
As a movie lover and movie collector this gave me such a huge insight and appreciation to studios who put so much effort and time in restoring older movies, thank you for this Films At Home, I really loved this video.
Love the process of removing scratches. I can just imagine the processing that will be developed in 5 and 10 years to make another fix easier and eliminate a cumbersome problem. It shows the love and care that goes into a restoration. It is alot of work.Good Video 🙂😎
Star Wars 1995 restoration. As usual Lucas was ahead of the curve. They actually reshot many of the composites because he saved all the original props. The documentary is out there narrated by Howie Long. Must see for those interested in film.
The restoration of the film negative was done before he created the Special Editions? What I wouldn't give to get a 4K transferred right off those pre-Special Edition negatives, if Lucas would ever release his Vader Force stranglehold on them. The desire to control is a path to the Dark Side, George. You must train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
At least someone else knows that they were edited before 1997. They were edited in 1991-92 for the 1993 Definitive laserdisc release, and both US presses of that had issues. (The Japanese issue however was perfect.) The 1995 VHS tapes and laserdiscs were the same version used for the 1993 discs. While ESB and ROTJ were unedited until the Definitive job (aside from pan-and-scanning, of course), ANH was first edited a month after its release, when a mono track was created using different elements than the 4-track Dolby Stereo mix on most prints. It was then edited again at some point between 1978 and 1981 to include “Episode IV A NEW HOPE” at the beginning, and then the soundtrack was remixed again for a 1986 home video release.
While the only Bond movies I know on 4K are Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time To Die, I believe that they are under the control of Disney. Fox got MGM, and Disney got Fox. Uh-oh. As for The Godfather, vague rumors have it that they’re coming out next year.
Hi Jeff. Great vid again. I just subscribed to your channel. I have watched a lot of you content in the last couple of months, so why not! I have a ton of DVD and Blu-ray, but I stopped collecting a while ago. With my new Ps5, my appetite for physical media has reignited and you reviews are always helpfully. Keep up the good work.
Great video. The biggest issue with Jaws and movies of that era was the crappy Kodak stock that simply did not stand the test of time. ( Just like audio tape of the era turned sticky after a few years, requiring the reels to be baked in an oven to copy to digital. The sound reels for Superman II required this for the Donner Cut.) Despite the cost and difficulty of Technicolor, it was not as subjected to fading as it was more of a printing process. However there are issues of the three individual strips warping over time at different rates requiring a lot of time to fix during the restoration. What one technology is better at the other less so. Up until the 70's and the rise of home media, the studios didn't really care about their legacy. So much has already been lost.
super interesting topic for a video.... Vinegar Syndrome deserves so much more credit for print restoration for a small distribution house they really pushed 2k & 4k print restoration before anybody else was doing it (Then Arrow, Shout Factor, Severin, etc. did it a lot more) now everybody is quick to add **Brand new 4k restoration of the film in there special feature section
This is a great video you made!! Love the creating process of how these companies restore movies to upgrade them. It makes me feel more proud of my physical media collection.
I remember a good restoration video I saw back in 2013 or 2014 on youtube from sony studios about the restoration of Lawrence of Arabia. it went into technical and interviewed people who worked on the restoration. I haven't been able to find the clip since.
It's on the Lawrence blu-ray and most likely 4K. I love how they even fixed the grain stretching problem during the trek toward the Nefud desert where the sun was so hot it literally burned the film negative in the magazine!
This was a very good and interesting video. Thanks for giving me the knowledge of how much time and effort all the studios put in restoring their films. I have a physical movie collection and it only makes me appreciate it more.
I'm kind of surprised how you didn't mention one of the most famous and intensive restoration projects in film history. And that's Criterion's restoration work on Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, & The World of Apu). Which is a very famous trilogy of films that come from India in the late 1950s. Where the fascinating story about this film restoration is how the original film reels went through a really terrible building fire where the building that the films were stored in ultimately ended up burning down. And the reel itself was either completely burned or was basically glued to itself, almost anyone would throw it away with the condition that it was in. Some super famous and important person in the Oscars Academy requested that every single inch of the film reel be saved, regardless of the condition that it was in. Then Criterion stepped up and did some kind of magic that they were able to restore to beautiful 4k quality. Which required several fascinating and time taking processes to recover on top of the processes that you explained in this video. I recommend looking into it, it's again a miracle at how they were able to salvage the films and restore them to 4k quality.
I want the other cuts or at least the international cut of blade runner on 4k. Sometimes I like to watch it with the voice over. Gives it more of an old detective film vibe.
@@MentalDeviant Yes! The international cut is my favorite cut of the film, has the added moments of gore AND the Deckard narration with the happy ending of Deckard and Rachel driving in the countryside. I just find it a bit more emotionally satisfying. Ford was definitely honing and refining his Bogartian presence in Blade Runner, that brooding, alcoholic "thing".
I heard a rumor that the UK 4K release had all of the cuts in it. Also, as for the poor-quality of the voiceover, rumor has it that Harrison Ford intentionally did a bad job because he didn’t want to do it.
Fantastic video! Thank you :-) This is what I have been looking for in a long time - in depth knowledge about 1080p to 4k transfers. I think the studios should be more transparent about their remastering and transfering of 4k movies. It is not easy to know whether a 4k movie has a good or bad transfor or has been remastered properly.
Look, man! Sometimes(too often, actually), 4K makes the movies even worse than they were in the cinemas(original 35mm. filmtape) or on DVD/Blu-Ray. For example:The new "StudioCanal" 4K King Kong 1976 is way too dark(night and indoor scenes) and people's skin tone is way too orange... It's actually worse, much worse than I expected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for this video, it's exactly what I've been looking for. I'm curious about 4k films that haven't been released on blu-ray, but are available via streaming. In cases like this, does Amazon have access to the originals and does their own restoration? Or does the movie studio do the restoration and then lease it to Amazon to distribute? Or is it just Amazon doing a lazy upscale of the existing 1080p source?
So out of curiosity I was trying to figure out how a 2 or 4k restoration blu-ray would look on a 4k panel and I ended up getting your video on google! I have only had FHD, and had wanted UHD since I heard about it but since then life as we know just happens, and I could never just get enough to get another tv or monitor for either my gameroom or my livingroom. Jaws is absolutely one of my favorite movies of all time so seeing those clips of how clean they made the film was truly awesome man! My wife ended up surprising me this year and preordered the Samsung Odyssey Ark monitor for me and now my mind is going a million miles an hour lol. Is it safe to say that I would get some sort of general upscaling for all my blu-rays and some sort of new experience with them or do I have start a UHD collection now? lol
Awesome, Knowledge.. Far as Sound I was Shocked that they still use DD 5.1. Now I know y. Atmos & DTS:X is Expensive. U do hear the difference between those Top sounds vs DTS Master Audio. Now we know money will spend on Top Sound can't be upset when u don't it - Stay Safe, Be Safe!!!!
I still say the initial blu ray release is one of the finest restorations. Course this comes from being used to seeing the horridly framed version from TV for years and years.
I love the restoration that was done in 1990 to Lawrence of Arabia with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and restoration done to Spartacus with Stanley Kubrick they both used from original negative
When Lawrence Of Arabia was restored, the negative was in awful shape. When the restoration in the late 80s was done, and new negatives and prints were made, the original negative was deemed “officially dead”. However, it was preserved anyway. That “dead” negative was the source of the 2012 restoration and the Blu-Ray and 4K that followed.
I have the blu-ray (non-4K) and love it. It's amazing they were able to do what they did. My favorite restorations tend to be the ones shot on 65mm film - you can often get the most detail out of those. In fact, it's a crime that all the educational (short) IMAX-originated films (i.e., not 35mm movies printed to IMAX) aren't just released to blu-ray and 4K; they're just screaming for a release.
I know there are people that want a film to be exactly like their first exposure to it, but when Universal finally fixed the skipping audio of Swan Lake at the start of Dracula, it was such a big deal for me lol
I really appreciate all the videos you make about 4k, they have really helped me make an informed decision whether to upgrade to it and if its worth it for me!
They used the new master on TV last night, and even on TV it was the best I’ve ever seen it. Downscaled to 720p, with Dolby Digital 5.1 playing through my stereo surround system, it was amazing. Guaranteed this will be an amazing 4K.
thanks, this is exactly what I wanted to know! 500k for a picture restoration and 100k for atmos is defo no joke. That's why we often see english in atmos and german only in 5.1 here
Great video Jeff. Good stuff. Sad but understandable why so many movies will never get the love they deserve. That would be an awesome job to have. To bring back to life great movies. I think I would bring back some classics like the Marx brothers, About and Costello, Westerns. There's so many. Blood in blood out. The Car etc. 👍👍 Thank you.
Have you seen the Peter Jackson WW1 doco They Shan't Grow Old? Probably the best restoration work ever. There is a great extra on the disc of the process involved.
Considering how much money Disney have, it's a travesty they don't put more effort into their 4K Movies. If they made them better then they'd easily make their money back
I think there is some worry that some 4K releases are merely upconverted 1080p films. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to be the case as the majority are undergoing 2K/4K/8K rescans of their source. Although not every or even most 4K releases under go a restoration.
While some movies don’t exactly need 4K (like something digital or something that has the same impact regardless of format), other ones lose impact on lesser formats and with less work put into them.
Thanks so much for covering this great topic, Jeff, my favorite! I especially love what colorists do, taking a badly faded image and restoring its proper color and contrast brilliance, matching this brilliance shot-to-shot.
Wow. Going forward I won't be complaining about no Atmos on catalog titles anymore now knowing how much it costs! I have a 5.1 setup anyways so no biggie! 😅
I heard Don Coscarelli's The Beastmaster is finally getting a 4K release, which is great, because John Alcott's cinematography is gorgeous. After an exhaustive worldwide search, Coscarelli and his team of archivists weren't able to find the original negative, which they presumed was mislabelled and thrown into a dumpster, but they did find a first-generation print, the next best thing, having almost as high of resolution, color quality and contrast range to work with.
It is actually already out and released through Vinegar Syndrome. For the most part it looks excellent. There are some scenes the grain is very thick and some frames where obvious damage can be seen.
@@jjchmiel78 That's cool--I like grain. I think the Dar growing up scenes were shot in anamorphic (you can tell by the squished out-of-focus bokeh in the backgrounds) and printed down to 1.85:1, which means yet one more step in dupe printing and thus more grain. There are a lot of night scenes in Beastmaster too, lit only by firelight, which required very fast film, before Kodak introduced their T-grain emulsion, probably push-processing too, hence grain.
@@kthx1138 Surprising most of the night scenes look fine. Vinegar Syndrome breaks their releases down by reel number instead of chapters. Most of what I consider not pristine is reel one. They have a disclaimer before the film about original negatives not being available and using the best interpositives they could find. The packaging is limited edition but still available. That set is nothing but spectacular. If you are a Beastmaster fan I highly recommend the splurge.
I don’t know if if’s piecework or if these people are salaried, but I absolutely agree. However, the Dolby and DTS are each per-piece, since you’re more paying for the name than you are for the content.
From what I hear, any MGM Camera 65/Ultra-Panavision 70 film would cost that much, including Raintree County. That’s one of the reasons it hasn’t made its way to any digital format.
Really interesting video Jeff. I know from my personal experience scanning old 35mm photo negatives into my computer, there is a lot more labor involved than one might think.
Any chance of 4K for Clash of the Titans or Voyage of Sinbad? Might have trouble converting Ray s Stop Motion Animation As opposed to a CGI release Any Boutique Studios feel up to the challenge??
Great video, lots of people don’t realise that the classic movies you can see now are usually in FAR better quality than they could ever be seen at the time. As a kid who was there and very interested in VFX, I can tell you that many 80s movies’ original effects were actually pretty ropy and they have quietly fixed them. Ghostbusters in particular; HUGE improvement.
Film restoration has been something I’m interested in for years. As for the wet gate process to reduce scratches during the scan, the people involved actually need to be extra careful. Some film restorationists choose not to use wet gate scanning because the final image is less sharp though at the advantage of less visible scratches. Also, there have been some horror stories of the wet gate process actually damaging the prints after and causing issues when the film is put back into storage.
Warner Bros. actually built a special scanner for their restorations of Gone With The Wind and The Wizard Of Oz, the former of which it’s frankly a miracle it still exists, the latter of which survives in its original negative form for the Oz scenes and the internegative for the Kansas scenes. It scans the reels at 8K resolution at a speed of less than one frame per second, with minimal contact with the reels and perforations and no contact with the frame at all. This was created because photochemical restoration requires physical contact with the film, where a digital restoration doesn’t. These scanners have been used for hundreds of restorations over the years, including by WB, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Criterion, Shout! Factory, and several others.
Wow really enjoyed this review on film restoration. Being a movie enthusiast this has given me a great insight on all the hard work and money involved really amazing with what they do.
Great video if there is interest I would like to see a video on soap opera effect on movies. I see alot of TV's that come straight out of the box with setting on so soap opera effect is on.
My projector came set up with motion smoothing on and I thought my projector was just rubbish for about a year until I heard about the soap opera effect. Looks amazing now with just a few settings changed. No idea why they do this.
@@johnyoung7763 I agree I went to my sisters and they were watching Braveheart and it looked like it was shot with a home camcorder I was like WTF is this
£30-40, $30-40 per 4K Blu-Ray i can understand why it's expensive as a lot of work goes into restoring a film ready for 4K Blu-Ray, it's very time consuming as they have to go through each frame and it requires a team so not your average joe type of task but a more difficult one.
IMHO...this completely justifies the price of $50 to even $100+ for certain digitally restored 4K films. We are extremely fortunate to (still) have a physical media market to enjoy these classic films, and despite the recent push into digital only cinema I sincerely hope this industry practice of digital 4K releases of digital restorations will continue to happen.
Very interesting topic. I was also wondering how studios choose which film to upgrade to 4k and you touched on that so I appreciate that. I have the JAWS 4k release and watched the fascinating making of videos that accompany the film. I have THE BIG TRAIL on blu-ray and they did not do a very good job of getting rid of some of the scratches so now with the new technology they can do a 4k upgrade and clean that film up and add HDR and that would be great for this epic film from 1930.
Thanks for taking the time to make this. I've been on a kick buying 4K DvDs and I'll get excited thinking of a movie. "OH! Aliens 4K!" To my surprise, No Joy. I'm actually now aware there is a 4K Remaster coming for Aliens in 2024 so this is great! Anyways - This video has 100% cleared up why I might not find one of MY favorites coming up.
I knew about the work that goes on in film restoration having watched a great doc on the Guns of Navarone one about 20 years ago (must have been a new DVD) but I didn’t realise how much it costs 😮 I hope the work can continue 🤞🏼😃
9:15 If a typical 2-hour *movie* costs between $100K and $500K just for the visual restoration, let alone the audio restoration, it REALLY gives me an appreciation that CBS spent the money and went through the effort to not only restore SEVEN WHOLE SEASONS of Star Trek: The Next Generation for blu-ray, but RE-CUT and RE-COMPOSITED EACH SHOT OF EACH OF THE 176 EPISODES - AND remastered the audio in 5.1 digital sound! There'll probably never be another physical media project like that ever!
Just showing Universals Jaws restoration footage on the special features and other features from different movies doesn’t count as you explaining about film restoration. It’s just lazy tbh bro!
You should consider reviewing the 4K Apollo 11 documentary from 2019. it has incredible restored 65 mm shots of the rocket, astronauts, crowds ant of cause the launch. These 65 mm have never been seen before.
Very interesting for me, as are all your videos that I’ve seen-thanks. Love the subject of the detail. I want to give you a little bit of feedback: please get a better mic. Also please edit down your script to about 50% of what it is. There’s a lot of repetition and redundancy from sentence sentence and paragraph to paragraph. Trust your audience to get it the first time: no talking for just the sake of talking. Keep it tight. Also you might consider mixing up your vocal inflection, you tend to talk in a long monotone. Content is king, as always, and it shines through any criticisms I have. Again, thank you very much
The first documentary I saw on youtube about restoration was Star Wars. I had no idea how bad that had got in terms of condition. I was shocked. That was partly the reason why they were rereleased in 2007?
