Restoring a RCA 21CT55

[etype2]

Ben: Thanks and to your comment. I read a few reviews of The Red Shoes and wanted to see it for myself, so I just saw the movie for the first time recently.

Wayne: Thank you. I agree, The Red Shoes is subtle in color application and Oz does have a wide range of colors. I think the color gradation of Shoes, for lack of a true technical color description on my part looks very good to my eyes. I read that Natalie Klamus objected to adding color in movies just for colors sake. She wanted things "refined" in color films. Those are her words, not mine.

Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.

[benman94]

Originally Posted by etype2

Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.

This is precisely why, for comparison's sake, bars or a color videotape can't be beat. There are too many variables when restoring a Technicolor film; each restoration, each print, each DVD/Blu-Ray/LD release will look slightly different. The nicest "Wizard of Oz" I have, in terms of color timing, is on a CAV LD. It was sourced from a then-surviving, now-lost, 1939 35mm print. It has the very dense look that projected IB Technicolor prints exhibit.

It's hard to say what you're seeing on the digital restorations.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

...
Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.

I don't see anything unusual in the scene where the witch first approaches the house and says "Who killed my sister?" But when she goes back to get the slippers and turns to say "They're gone!" the lighting is much harder, her costume is very dark with almost no detail, and the house is very out of focus. This appears as if it may have been a process shot (the house an image on a rear-projection screen) for some reason. I wonder if the original shot was no good and they had to recreate it later after the set was struck.

A note on the Red Shoes restoration. If you could see the original prints they had to work with, you would not believe it. Every frame had mold splotches and damage that looked like water puddles, and variable fading from frame to frame. During the showing, Warner Bros. of course did not give details of their software, but they did indicate it took months of work by hundreds of people directing the operation of the software by eye. Does the DVD have a special feature on the restoration? I'm heading off to smile.amazon to order a copy.

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by etype2

Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

Just now catching up with his thread. It's been years now since I heard an explanation for the 2-second 'fuzz' scene in Oz. It seemed plausible then, and I have always accepted this -- albeit now sketchy -- explanation. It simply was 2-seconds that had been recovered from a crappy old 16-mm print found somewhere in Europe . Again, details may suffer, so if this sparks a recollection, please update.

Pete

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis

Just now catching up with his thread. It's been years now since I heard an explanation for the 2-second 'fuzz' scene in Oz. It seemed plausible then, and I have always accepted this -- albeit now sketchy -- explanation. It simply was 2-seconds that had been recovered from a crappy old 16-mm print found somewhere in Europe . Again, details may suffer, so if this sparks a recollection, please update.

Pete

I just tried looking at the DVD in still frame mode. Unfortunately, the data rate must be somewhat low in order to get the special features on the disc. This means that the grain doesn't show very well, and comes and goes in blocks of artifacts. So, I looked at the Blu-ray version. The Blu-Ray shows the grain in all its glory, and it doesn't seem to change character on her face in that shot. (By the way, I am surprised at how much grain is in the highlights, as I thought most photographic processes are grainiest in the mid-tones.) Also, when she holds her head still momentarily, there seems to be full resolution in her features including the catchlights in her eyes. Her costume is a bit darker than in the surrounding scenes, but I think that's due to the oblique lighting also (the whole movie looks darker on the Blu-Ray than on the DVD on my setup).

So, to my eyes, it still looks like a process shot with very oblique lighting to prevent shining on the rear projection screen.