BD 88 Wake in Fright

[kneelzod]

saw this in a new 35mm print (from the alleged "restoration," a word that comes far too cheap these days) and it was beautifully grainy, so the liberal DNR of the Blu-Rays seems to have been applied for home-video only. it's really a betrayal of the film's aesthetic, all the more galling since the director himself doesn't seem to notice.

Thanks, Jonah. I saw the new 35mm print in 2010 and I honestly can't remember how it differed from the abominations on Blu-ray and DVD.

[kristophers]

it's really a betrayal of the film's aesthetic, all the more galling since the director himself doesn't seem to notice.

In the commentary on the Moc, he praises the restoration numerous times. It was strange to me because its obvious something went a bit wrong with it.

[swo17]

The film restoration and the BD transfer are two separate things. As has been indicated earlier in this thread, it seems like the something that went wrong happened after the restoration.

[whaleallright]

I would swear that there's an interview somewhere where Kotcheff praises the "restoration" of the film on Blu-Ray and professes not to have noticed, much less bothered by, the excessive DNR.

[med]

I would swear that there's an interview somewhere where Kotcheff praises the "restoration" of the film on Blu-Ray and professes not to have noticed, much less bothered by, the excessive DNR.

And here is that interview!

The relevant part:

Let me ask a related question. One of the other complaints directed to the restoration is about what's usually called "DNR" or "digital noise reduction", which is the general label applied to the group of digital tools used to remove noise or grain. The complaint is that faces are too smooth, beard stubble is blurred, and everything is too "clean" compared to the film's original look. Generally, people raising this objection didn't see the film in 1971, but you did. What is your reaction?

I have never advocated DNR, nor did I hear from anyone that it had been practiced on the print or when they made the Blu-ray. Now that you've brought it up, I'm going to address myself to it and make some inquiries. I have a copy of [the Drafthouse Blu-ray] and I'm going to screen it from that point of view. But it was not a policy that anybody advanced. I certainly didn't. To me, the worse that people's faces look, the better. Anybody connected with this film knew that the rougher it looked, the better. So I don't think that anybody practiced it. I'm very surprised if it would have this quality. The picture strove for the opposite quality. We wanted people to look grizzled, burned out, worn out. No smooth handsomeness was required, because of the life that was lived out there.

[tenia]

To be fair, every single piece of document linked to the restoration itself I've read have the same poor look, and with all BDs over the world having the same over-processed look, I'd have a hard time thinking 3-4 different labels over the world, with very different histories quality-wise (some of them having excellent slate) would do exactly the same destructive digital processing and get the exact same kind of issues on their BDs.

Maybe something went wrong after the restoration, but it seems to me it's most certainly baked on what has been sent to the labels, before they started doing their BDs.

[MichaelB]

To be fair, every single piece of document linked to the restoration itself I've read have the same poor look, and with all BDs over the world having the same over-processed look, I'd have a hard time thinking 3-4 different labels over the world, with very different histories quality-wise (some of them having excellent slate) would do exactly the same destructive digital processing and get the exact same kind of issues on their BDs.

The idea is so ridiculous that I'm amazed that anyone would entertain it for a millisecond. The labels in question obviously worked from the same source master and had no alternative (at least not one that wouldn't have drastically pushed up production budgets on a commercially risky title).

[kristophers]

The idea is so ridiculous that I'm amazed that anyone would entertain it for a millisecond. The labels in question obviously worked from the same source master and had no alternative (at least not one that wouldn't have drastically pushed up production budgets on a commercially risky title).

That's why it is so strange to hear him say some of the things he does about it. If I remember correctly he and the editor even go as far as to say they can now see things they never saw before, and that the film was much darker previously.