4k physical releases

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  • #216845
    rspencerw
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      I’ve recently taken up the hobby of 4k disc collecting. There are many of Roger’s films that have released on 4k, and they look incredible, but some of the omissions are titles that would look stunning on an OLED tv. I’m curious if there’s any chance that we’ll ever get 4k disc releases for titles like “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Prisoners,” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

      Thanks a heap for any information, and thank you for the podcast, it is such a gift.

       

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    • #216851
      dmullenasc
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        Most films mastered in the 2000s at 2K are not going to get re-scanned and re-color-corrected for 4K, they are going to up-sample the 2K master to 4K (as what happened for the 4K “Lord of the Rings” remastering, I think only a few shots were redone at 4K from scans of the negative). On a UHD disc, though, you could see some difference if it is an HDR version since the old masters still have a log version to work from. In particular, movies with extensive 2K visual effects work or time-consuming image manipulation are unlikely to have the budget to redo everything at 4K (even Peter Jackson couldn’t do that.) However, movies that had a more normal color-correction process using a 2K D.I. might be redone in 4K if the studio feels that they are preserving it for archival reasons and the title was profitable enough to be worth the investment.

        I think in particular it would be a challenge to re-do “O Brother Where Art Thou?” again at 4K from new scans of the original negative because of the extensive color-correcting involved. However, I could be wrong — David Fincher has been talking about a new 4K remastering of “Seven” from the original negative, but that isn’t a movie that had a lot of post manipulation or VFX other than the original prints using a silver retention process.

        As a point of reference, a lot of money was spent remastering all seven years of the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV series to HD even though the live-action was shot on 35mm film, because it was a VFX-heavy show that originally saved time and money by doing the work in NTSC video. So all the VFX had to be redone in HD. In the end, it seems that the studio has not recouped its investment yet, so a similar remastering to HD for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Star Trek: Voyager” have been put on hold. Which is ironic considering all these shows were shot in 35mm partially to “future-proof” them for HD!  So it’s the same problem for VFX-heavy features mastered in 2K – the non-VFX shots in 35mm could be rescanned and remastered in 4K but few can afford to redo all the VFX work at 4K. So in some cases, it’s simpler to just upscale the 2K master to 4K. Most of the color-correction work at this point would be spent in making a HDR version if they have a master in log gamma to work from.

        • This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by dmullenasc.
        • This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by dmullenasc.
        • This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by dmullenasc.
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