Sleeping Beauty DVD AND BLU-RAY Discussion Thread Vol. II

[Blu_Gamma]

Disney's like George Lucas. Forget the purists, just cater to the "ooh shiny!" crowd. >_<

Then they'll come out with a "fully restored" edition, just to release another restoration a few years later </Cinderella>. It's insane.

So re-releasing Sleeping Beauty in an aspect ratio that it was originally intended to be projected in along with its original 4-channel stereophonic mix and a new 7.1 mix from the original 6-track recordings is somehow wrong? What planet are you living on?

[supertalies]

Did you guys see this?

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/110726/S ... oduct.html

I don't think I really like it...

[2099net]

But.. But... It opens like a book!

[Fflewduur]

Robert Harris has a conversation about the restoration with Theo Gluck, Director of Library Restoration & Preservation for the Disney Studios: read it <a href="http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/ ... l">here</a>.

[SleepingBeautyAurora]

I don't think I really like it...

I don't like it either.... but I like your avatar and signature.

[Marky_198]

Is there anyone here that's disappointed about the aspect ratio of the movie ?
I mean I do realise that it is impossible to present a movie like that into fullscreen without Pan and scan, but it still pisses me off when I see how small everything looks and the blackbars, God I hate blackbars.
.

I agree.

But some people think a cinema screen is the same as a home tv screen.

The makers intended the film to be shown on a cinema screen.
Apparently some people here don't want to see what the artists originally intended, with the clear faces etc.

And they tell themselves that just taking the whole screen that was intended, making it 40 times smaller and it's still the same.
Crazy.

[Marky_198]

So re-releasing Sleeping Beauty in an aspect ratio that it was originally intended to be projected in along with its original 4-channel stereophonic mix and a new 7.1 mix from the original 6-track recordings is somehow wrong? What planet are you living on?

\

It's not about the aspect ratio.
I't about the whole look of the film.

"this version is somehow wrong? What planet are you living on"

That's what some people said to me a few years back when the Sleeping Beauty SE came out too.
What planet are YOU living on to just believe this can't be somehow wrong, just because it's 2008?

[Blu_Gamma]

Is there anyone here that's disappointed about the aspect ratio of the movie ?
I mean I do realise that it is impossible to present a movie like that into fullscreen without Pan and scan, but it still pisses me off when I see how small everything looks and the blackbars, God I hate blackbars.
.

I agree.

But some people think a cinema screen is the same as a home tv screen.

The makers intended the film to be shown on a cinema screen.
Apparently some people here don't want to see what the artists originally intended, with the clear faces etc.

And they tell themselves that just taking the whole screen that was intended, making it 40 times smaller and it's still the same.
Crazy.

You do realise that even in a cinema aspect ratios vary don't you? The only reason you don't see "black bars" is because they open and close the curtains around the screen depending on the ratio of the projection. It's not like cinemas have different size screens for every aspect ratio a film is produced in.

Maybe you don't know what "artists originally intended" means, because it certainly doesn't mean cropping out a large chunk of the picture just to make it fill out your 16:9 screen.

[yukitora]

Marky: Just don't ever watch movies ever again Problem solved!

In other words you're saying movies should have never been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and should only ever be seen within cinemas. Nice...

[Disney Duster]

Thomas J, at first I also felt that way about the stuff covering the first disc, but listen! You aren't really meant to keep that advertising stuff in there, only a DVD guide or chapter insert. So just take all that stuff out. Then, when you remove the first disc, that's the only time you really need to look at the chapters, when your watching that first disc, so it makes sense to have it there under the first disc. And it saves on plastic by not having the extra plastic holder for the first disc and it saves on paper, and maybe helps the environment!

NO ONE has answered me yet. Did the original 2003 SE have an original wider aspect ratio for Grand Canyon, and the new PE has less picture than intended?!

[Jules]

Have any of you read this? It concerns the restoration and it's very interesting.

http://animated-views.com/2008/once-upo ... storation/

Look to the end for some news on upcoming Platinum titles and their restoration treatment. Apparently they're redoing Pinocchio. And future Platinum Blu-Ray releases will use the recent HD masters for films like Cinderella and Bambi. I don't think Disney Duster will be happy to hear that. And purists have some more bad news, because it seems that for films like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, the IMAX versions will once more be used in future releases.

[disneyboy20022]

Did you guys see this?

http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/110726/S ... oduct.html

I don't think I really like it...

Neither do..though...that pop up book cover reminds me of the Cinderella III pop up cover that was a DMC Exclusive....

and not meaning to get off topic..however this info frightens me a bit regarding Fantasia...

So, what’s next, you ask!? After Pinocchio, “We are going to do the same thing to Fantasia that we’ve done to all these other Platinum titles. That means we’d go back to the original negative and scan it. Now, the interesting thing about this title would be, ‘what is the original version’, because there has been multiple versions of Fantasia . Well, we are actually beginning to research that because that would be next step in our queue. So right now we’re researching elements and trying to say, ‘What is the original Fantasia ?’ I guess, once our cleanup vendors get a hand on the picture it becomes easier, but we know how many different looks that film has, so, each piece is going to be like a whole new little test for them. So that will be a fun, difficult one. It will end up looking like these other ones.”

And for the audio? “I mentioned Terry Porter, our mixer, and he has gone back and I think remixed Fantasia for some of the different releases. And when I told him it’s coming up again, he was kind of like, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ That one, obviously, we need to confirm that we have the original sound and see if we can do something with that.”

Oh goodie Disney Is going to s going to do research....to find out which cut of the film of Fantasia is its original.....I think Fantasia will be doomed..

quick everyone contact Disney and tell them to look on a site called www.ultimatedisney.com

or

TELL DISNEY TO ASK US DIE HARD DISNEY FANS who are above 10 years old.........

[Jack Skellington]

Have any of you read this? It concerns the restoration and it's very interesting.

http://animated-views.com/2008/once-upo ... storation/

Look to the end for some news on upcoming Platinum titles and their restoration treatment. Apparently they're redoing Pinocchio. And future Platinum Blu-Ray releases will use the recent HD masters for films like Cinderella and Bambi. I don't think Disney Duster will be happy to hear that. And purists have some more bad news, because it seems that for films like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, the IMAX versions will once more be used in future releases.

I hope they change their mind about that, but they said that theyre gonna use the original cells of Snow White and Pinocchio right ?

[Disney Duster]

I can't get mad at you Julian but...I was waiting to post that information in a whole new thread to talk about the injustice of the Disney company not restoring things the right way and not giving us the right versions of the films!

Well, whatevs. The Cinderella restoration is wrong as I've discovered by myself and info given by others. The only remedy it seems is if somehow digitally they can fix it. Otherwise they'd have to do the whole thing over again, which they said they won't, at least for the next release.

Julian, how do you feel about all this? They know Beauty and the Beast looks different from how it did originally and that's still all they're giving us. Come on, look at the injustice!

[Jules]

I hope they change their mind about that, but they said that theyre gonna use the original cells of Snow White and Pinocchio right ?

Well, technically they're going to use the original nitrate negatives (I think) in restoring these films. rather then third and fourth generation prints, as they say they did in the past. I must question the Snow White restoration though. Doesn't the 2001 DVD say that Disney went back to the original "volatile" nitrate negative? Doesn't mention anything about it being a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a print.

[quote="Dusty Mike""]Julian, how do you feel about all this? They know Beauty and the Beast looks different from how it did originally and that's still all they're giving us. Come on, look at the injustice![/quote]

I must first add that I personally don't mind the "enhanced" version of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin or The Lion King, but I know that the original version would mean a lot to those who do. Hence, yes I feel peeved at Disney's decision. It's short-sighted and a slap in the face to purists. At the least they could include the original theatrical version and the IMAX version complete with Human Again on Blu-Ray. The discs have 50 friggin' GB of capacity ... there's plenty of space (moreover, Disney movies are mostly not very long).

As for the restorations already done, I think it would be a wise decision to regularly "revise" them, if they can't do a complete overhaul. Think of it like when a writer revises one of his/her books to bring it up-to-date. So for example, if people and industry professionals have cried foul over Peter Pan's colour scheme ... can't Lowry access the HD files of the said film and do some thorough colour correction? There's no need to rescan and reclean the film - it's the colours that need tweaking.

I think it's a good idea and a practical one too since starting a restoration from scratch is costly. I think that's how they can "digitally fix" Cinderella, as you said.

[Escapay]

Marky: Just don't ever watch movies ever again Problem solved!

In other words you're saying movies should have never been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and should only ever be seen within cinemas. Nice...

If you think about it, he *does* have a point. Some movies are better seen in a cinema than on, say, a 27'' 4:3 CRT television.

Still, the main point is that when a movie comes to you on home video, it's naturally not going to be the same size as watching it in theatres. So people should either accept that kind of compromise or go without. Or just get a big projector and project it against the wall or something.

As for the article Jules pointed out, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but it sounds like it's basically saying that their previous PE restorations were (intentionally?) not up to par with what could have been done, and that thanks to ever-evolving technology, they can get it closer and closer to...well, something of higher clarity/quality/etc. I'll wisely not say anything else on it until I read the article.

albert

[Marky_198]

Thanks for the article Julian, she mentioned some interesting things.


"And what’s really great about this is not only the image was sharp, but because it’s shot on black and white film stock, it doesn’t have any fading issues that we get in this current color negative."

I don't really understand this.
If it's shot on black and white film and they used that ones for Sleeping Beauty, then where do the colors come from they used?
So they are recoloring?

"Sometimes, we’re going, ‘You know what, you need to clean that up because the tunic is crawling.’ It’s a choice. and we do make choices about fixing images, certain problems that there might be in the film. If something is not the original intention of the film makers, we go back and we fix that. The perspective is, if the animators had the ability to fix that mistake, then they would have.
We try to make what works best for the film because they didn’t intend for there to be paint problem, but again, whether you take too much grain off, it starts looking plasticky. If we took out every single bit of paint crawl it starts looking really flat.”

I don't like this. It's not up to this new generation of people to decide what works best for the film. The patches of paint looked like that because the original filmmakers did it that way. They wouldn't have done it differently, because they didn't. It's not what they made. It's not the real film from back then. If the filmmakers "would have" had the ability back then that they have now to design a better prince in Snow White they would have done that too. But they didn't.
They should keep it that way and respect that.
And about the grain thing, Cinderella for example looks really plasticky and flat. I'm glad they know what happened.

"But, certainly, if you ever saw the film in the movie theater when you were a child, or if you have the DVD or the VHS, you haven’t seen that information on the left and right"

So this is NOT what was shown in theatres back then.

"But the difference really was, instead of using, you know, a piece of film several generations away from the original, we went back to the original. So you’ve got all the data, all the sharpness, all the color saturation"

So what do they do with it now? They scan it to a computer, let it run through all this different programms, adjusting things, clean it up, scan it into "a digital file which is totally cleaned up - dust cleaned-up, grain management - all of that is done" which makes it miles away from the original negative as well.

[Escapay]

"And what’s really great about this is not only the image was sharp, but because it’s shot on black and white film stock, it doesn’t have any fading issues that we get in this current color negative."

I don't really understand this.
If it's shot on black and white film and they used that ones for Sleeping Beauty, then where do the colors come from they used?
So they are recoloring?

I'm likely going to muddle this up as I don't remember the full specifics...

It's prism-based colour separation system that was (and I think still is) used for photographing on three-strip cameras. The colour signal/light is fed through the lens of the camera and then through a prism, which will split it into three different records: red, green, or blue, and these records are photographed on black and white film stock. The three strips are aligned and combined, and its signal/light is fed back(wards) through the prism, with the separate colors "rejoining" together to make a colour print.

I know they discuss it at length in a restoration piece for a movie, but I can't remember which, so I'll have to check.

albert

[CampbellzSoup]

Ok at first I could kind of see your point Marky, but you've really gone above and beyond now.

I'm pretty sure they are not recoloring it they also if you keep reading the interviews talk about how they layer the RBG levels.

What you saw left and right of the picture actually WAS in the movies, however only certain people were able to enjoy such viewings as is the case with IMAX cinemas now a days.

I really think that if the painters made a mistake they were not able to go and fix it without great costs unlike now a days. So for someone to clean up the animation defects is not intrusion by any means...

If they went and redrew, or redubbed something I can totally see your point Marky, but they are not doing anything at all that is taking away from the film as it was intended to be.

[drfsupercenter]

From the few parts of the DVD I watched, I'd say it looks OK...

It's not so much just Sleeping Beauty as it is any of their digital restorations - many of them are WAY different than previous versions (look at Cinderella... some say Peter Pan is weird as well), and they almost take out too MUCH of the noise and grain to make it look the way it did back then.

As I've said on my other posts - there's a very fine line between them looking good and being over the top, and Disney seems to cross that line quite frequently. I know people will argue with me, but if the colors have been mostly consistent throughout the years (Cinderella's colors were pretty similar on all the VHS and laserdisc releases, as far as I can tell) and all the sudden it changes... what makes people think it's "correct"? Surely they could have "fixed" it sooner... you don't need a computer to change the colors of stuff!

@Escapay, did I get the right answer to your second hint?