Jon Lyrik
04-08-2008, 08:21 PM
First of all, shut the fuck up.
Second of all, the film in question is There Will Be Blood. A film set around the turn of the century...in the arid sections of California...shot on 35mm.
Thirdly, and this is to the fucking DVD company and possibly the authoring company: take your goddamn mitts off the filtering tools.
Listen: film is meant to look like film. Grain is a natural process of film, not at all mutually exclusive to the look of a movie shot on celluloid. Every good cinematographer knows this and takes into careful consideration all elements that may come into play, especially on such a volatile format.
And Robert Elswit is definitely a good cinematographer--Blood won Best Cinematography. It's a sterling piece of visual work, and as I remember it in theaters, sometimes grainy and with minor damage on the print--whether due to the print or just from occurring on the master.
And, it's a fucking brand-new film. It was in theaters just three months prior to this release. And it was made and released by a major fucking studio for $25 million.
So why, in the name of fuck, does one need to erase all the fine detail, as if it was smeared in wax?
This is still a phenomenon even as we enter the HD/Blu-ray age. Ever buy a DVD from New Line, even an HD-DVD? A format that promises the highest resolution feasible yet on home video, yet they have imposed a standard to take every single film on their docket to be crushed of fine detail in the name of a totally smoothed-out, grain-less appearance.
Why this is, I don't know. Do people really appreciate turning every film into an episode of CSI, with digital scratch removal scrubbed through every frame? Are there no real quality controls? If I seem to be overreacting, it's because I love film, and especially a film like this deserves to be studied and looked at as originally intended, especially with the visual aspect being so integral.
And I'm tired of these DVD reviewers on sites that clearly don't know what the hell they are talking about and have no apparent knowledge of DVD mastering techniques. Out of all the DVD sites I looked at, exactly one mentioned the shoddy use of filtering tools on the film. If these are sites geared to huge geeks like me, why aren't real videophiles being used to examine what's coming out?
Second of all, the film in question is There Will Be Blood. A film set around the turn of the century...in the arid sections of California...shot on 35mm.
Thirdly, and this is to the fucking DVD company and possibly the authoring company: take your goddamn mitts off the filtering tools.
Listen: film is meant to look like film. Grain is a natural process of film, not at all mutually exclusive to the look of a movie shot on celluloid. Every good cinematographer knows this and takes into careful consideration all elements that may come into play, especially on such a volatile format.
And Robert Elswit is definitely a good cinematographer--Blood won Best Cinematography. It's a sterling piece of visual work, and as I remember it in theaters, sometimes grainy and with minor damage on the print--whether due to the print or just from occurring on the master.
And, it's a fucking brand-new film. It was in theaters just three months prior to this release. And it was made and released by a major fucking studio for $25 million.
So why, in the name of fuck, does one need to erase all the fine detail, as if it was smeared in wax?
This is still a phenomenon even as we enter the HD/Blu-ray age. Ever buy a DVD from New Line, even an HD-DVD? A format that promises the highest resolution feasible yet on home video, yet they have imposed a standard to take every single film on their docket to be crushed of fine detail in the name of a totally smoothed-out, grain-less appearance.
Why this is, I don't know. Do people really appreciate turning every film into an episode of CSI, with digital scratch removal scrubbed through every frame? Are there no real quality controls? If I seem to be overreacting, it's because I love film, and especially a film like this deserves to be studied and looked at as originally intended, especially with the visual aspect being so integral.
And I'm tired of these DVD reviewers on sites that clearly don't know what the hell they are talking about and have no apparent knowledge of DVD mastering techniques. Out of all the DVD sites I looked at, exactly one mentioned the shoddy use of filtering tools on the film. If these are sites geared to huge geeks like me, why aren't real videophiles being used to examine what's coming out?