TMP-DE fully restored in 4K…it’s about time!
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
The true horror is when you go to watch a film at someone's house and find they have motion smoothing and edge sharpening set to max.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that either. I'd rather watch something in the 'normal' frame. I'm a big Alfred Hitchcock film fan and a lot of his pre-1950s films were in 4:3 frame, there was no widescreen in his early movies, so I'd just rather watch it the way it was filmed. And it looks awful stretched out, everything is distorted and talk about adding 10 lbs LOL.
It helps most TV are black to begin with, so that sorta camouflages the black bars anyway. I don't even notice them most of the time.
Is this referring to the original masters? My wife was just watching it on DVD?
My wife has gotten used to watching with the bars. Or at least she doesn’t complain about it. My mother in law on the other hand… Oy!
Some theaters released it that way. I’m not sure the 48fps version was ever released on blu-ray but I know for a fact you wouldn’t see it on a DVD.
Ok. I was just confused by the equipment comment. Someday I'll just take an AV class so I actually understand what people are on about.
No issues in asking questions. That’s how we learn, right?
Yeah all home video releases of the film have been the standard version because DVD/Blu-ray isn't capable of supporting the high frame rate The Hobbit used.
It's just an interesting cinematic dead end, a but like how you can't see Cinerama films in the original format.
That is not correct. The 133-page shooting script, dated mid-July 1978 had a newly-written third act that had continually evolved since the May 1978 revised draft. I’ve seen the documents from Paramount’s own files and have copies in my collection, so I don’t know where this myth keeps coming from.
This is a carry-over from another forum but I really wanted to share it here.
After watching the new Director's Edition over and over and combing a lot of details with a fine brush, I decided to pop in the 2009 blu-ray disc of the theatrical version to see how it compared. David C. Fein talked a lot about the new color grading of the film with quotes like,
"All the color grading for the theatrical was done in four days, which is not a lot of time! We were able to bring a little bit closer to what it should be when we did the original director’s edition."
"Any other film has the ability of going to any format in the future and not have that same problem. The color grading in this new edition of the movie is specific, and is different than what everybody has seen for all those years because it wasn’t finished at the time."This is definitely the kind of news I was hoping for after the 4K UHD of the theatrical cut. But after watching some of the 2009 footage, I find myself at a loss. Some of these shots in the new Director's Edition don't look good at all.
Take this sequence of the final Klingon Battle Cruiser getting vaporized. Here's two 4-frame GIFs to help illustrate what I'm talking about.
'2009 Theatrical'
'2022 Director's Edition
You see how the color and brightness levels are a lot more consistent in the Theatrical version? In the shot where the Klingon Cruiser is slowly being consumed, everything goes incredibly dark and the lightning effects go from blue to a more purplish color. Not how the cloud in the background looks like someone turned it's lights off while it's still lit in the theatrical version. And when the Cruiser is completely engulfed, the silhouette effect is a completely different shade. And yet, the effect reverts to normal after the quick shot of the Klingon Bridge.
This doesn't look right. Why would this middle shot look so different from the previous and subsequent shots? It doesn't make any sense. And the bad news is that there are other shots that don't look right either. Much of it stems from what looks to be dialing the saturation up quite a bit. A lot of sharp details on computer screens now come off as fuzzy and blurred.
I'm going to go through other instances and see if I can't find any more examples. I just can't see how more time color correcting a film like TMP would result in certain areas looking worse.
I noticed that shot had been darkened, too, but looking at it now, I think I see the intent. I'm guessing the idea was the make the energy effect seem to be so bright, the camera (or the person developing the film) had to step down the brightness of the shot to keep it from blowing out. I'm curious how it plays in HDR, which may be where the change originated.
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I find that hard to believe since the shot following the Klingon Bridge shows the energy effect back to its normal brightness and proper colors before the ship disappears. And if the goal was to not have the effect look blown out, why make the shot look so different in both brightness and color? This alteration just doesn't make any sense.
I have a copy of a script right here, with multicoloured pages for the first two-thirds of the movie (pp 1-74), and a version of "In Thy Image" ending (75-133), but still in white because it is not yet replaced by revisions. But it is Spock in place of Xon. And that last section is similar territory as covered by the ending of "In Thy Image". The real Ilia returns at the ending but Decker doesn't send her a message. Nor is the burnt-out "light bee" (that was the first Probe) located. Captain Lebuto (a black female) and the Voice of Nogura are also present on Earth at the end. Yes, it is "a newly-written third act", but it is almost identical to the ending of "In Thy Image".
Which part of my comment is "myth"?
I already had a full "In Thy Image" mimeoed script (from Lincoln Enterprises) to compare it with, and it has the original ending featuring Xon, and Tasha the Probe (the "light bee" now in Ilia's form), and Ilia returning to life at the end, while Decker transcends with V'ger. And then sends Ilia a message that he will find a way to return.
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I was not using the 2009 disc as a reference to how the new Director's Edition should look. I believe two things can be wrong at the same time and there is definitely something wrong with both editions. I just thought it was weird how the new Director's Edition somehow looked worse in certain areas compared to the 2009 transfer. If the intent was to make this film look the best it possibly could back in 1979, that is not what we got here because there are many instances where the color grading ruins many of the original effects.
And in some cases, some things were applied to the new effects shots that make the whole seem off. Have you ever seen a movie from the 70s that used dark vignette borders on the top and bottom of the screen to convey a bright sunny day in San Francisco? No version of TMP that showcases an Earth establishing shot, even in the old Director's Edition, ever used such an effect. And yet here it is in this new Director's Edition. And here's a bonus round. That vignette effect is not present in the liner notes of the recent TMP soundtrack release.
Your wording made it seem like Paramount approved a script that was only half written and the other half was pages taken straight from the TV pilot draft, that’s why I was confused.
It's good to see that our knack for finding fault and being disappointed in the most trivial details of something have not eroded or overtaken by being abnormally happy that we have a nice, new version of a film that was never "finished" properly as released.
My faith in the BBS is restored.
My faith in the BBS is restored.
