Bleach Bypass

The bleach bypass was originally done on all the prints rather than the camera negative. Consequently, as neither Mike nor I were involved in the transfers, none of the previous digital versions of 1984 truly reflected the original. I did oversee the Criterion version so I would say it is more faithful to our original intent.

Usually when a movie used a silver retention process for the release prints, the transfers for home video use the camera negative (or a timed color interpositive made off of the negative) that is “normal” and the look of the silver retention print process is created digitally in the color-correction — mainly by increasing contrast in the shadows, making the blacks deeper, and lowering saturation.

If the skip bleach process had been done to the camera negative, then it would be baked in but some of the effect is a little different than when done to the release print. The silver grains in camera negative are larger than in print stock (since print stock has a very low ISO), and the increase in density from leaving silver in the negative causes the highlights to get hotter rather than the shadows to get darker.