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Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

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Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#151

Post by dylan604 »

nullify88 wrote: post #73
b112 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and its cousin the shaky cam. "Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for better cinema!" Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in one scene.

A great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital Shootout. I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes top down. Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3 seconds.

Modern live music edits are like this as well. When the guitarist is rocking a solo, I don't want to see the back up singers or the lead singer in rapid fire edits. I want to see the guitarist.

The top down John Wick scene had me flabbergasted in the theater. The choreography, the camera tracking, the flame thrower like shells from the shotgun all just made for one incredible scene that as you say definitely goes against modern editorial styles.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#152

Post by rjmunro »

nullify88 wrote: post #73
b112 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and its cousin the shaky cam. "Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for better cinema!" Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in one scene.

A great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital Shootout. I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes top down. Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3 seconds.

Reminds me of Adolescence on Netflix - 4 episodes, each nearly an hour, with no cuts.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#153

Post by dylan604 »

sgt wrote: post #67
foobarbecue wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I see overcompression on a lot of shows. Dark scenes and star fields tend to make it obvious. Three Body Problem was the worst -- I imagine it would have been consistently visually spectacular if they hadn't compressed it to shit. I've seen it on Apple TV too though-- e.g. really visible on Silo title screens. Love, Death and Robots on Netflix quality was great.

And sometimes you just hear it. They compromise on everything, and a lot of people won't complain if the audio quality is low.

We actually had the opposite idea, where we'd steal a few kbps from the video to increase the audio. If you hear poorly compressed audio, the video feels bad too. Hearing clean audio made the video feel better. However, this was way back in the early days where 700kbps total bitrate were on the high end pre-AAC

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#154

Post by MrRadar »

MisterTea wrote: post #102
xattt wrote: post #82

Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…

> Were studios really that reckless with their properties? Some were. Once the film made its money in the theaters it was then put in a vault and forgotten about. The theaters were supposed to return the release prints but sometimes the projectionist would "lose" them. The studio vault those films sat in sometimes catch fire or water leaks in. If the originals are destroyed then hopefully a few release prints are flo…

It doesn't even take destruction of the property to keep media locked up forever, sometimes even just IP rights. For example original Brave Little Toaster film has never seen an official release in HD because it was produced as a joint venture and nobody has (apparently) been willing or able to hammer out a deal between the various rights holders for a new home video or streaming release.

In 2023 a 4K scan of a theatrical print was uploaded to Youtube and despite the slightly rough state of the print it remains the best quality you can view the film today. There's even a pinned comment under the video from the original director thanking the person who uploaded it to Youtube for preserving their film!

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#155

Post by HideousKojima »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #142
gnomesteel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shows like The Simpsons that were only made for broadcast never had a film negative. It was likely mastered to analog tape.

They're solidly pre-digital. Somewhere, the individual frames were drawn/painted on cel, were they not? In principle, remastering should still be possible.

Assuming the cels weren't lost or destroyed. Or auctioned off to fans/collectors, as was often done: https://www.animationconnection.com/original-production-cels

In fact there's an episode of the Simpson's where Bart buys an Itchy & Scratchy animation cel and is disappointed when it's just a segment of Itchy's arm (or something like that).

EDIT: https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Itchy_%26_Scratchy_animation_c...

The cel had Scratchy's arm, and it was in the episode "Lady Bouvier's Lover" (S05 E21).

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#156

Post by alias_neo »

voxadam wrote: post #61
alias_neo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blu ray is 25GB per side, so max 50GB for 2 layers Are pressed Blu-Rays limited compared to writeable ones? I have 100GB BDXL blanks (single-sided) I use as one of the archives for my family photos/videos. Couldn't a film BluRay also be 100GB on a single side?

Plenty of movies have been released on BD100. Very out of date list: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=294596 On a site that I am a member of there are nearly 1300 BD100 rips available.

Interesting. I was looking back at my BluRay collection (physical) the other day, looking for a UHD movie to test with, and in my memory, all BDs with UHD, but to my surprise, very few of them were actually UHD, with most just being HD (1080p). I doubt there's in in my collection that are BD100; could I even play them? Currently using a PS5 as my BD player, and PS4 and PS3 before that.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#157

Post by nailer »

api wrote: post #98
nailer wrote: post #97

Sneakers could absolutely be remade with the box being a quantum computer. ‘No more secrets’ being breaking all the pre-quantum encryption.

I wouldn't fully remake it. It's a classic. Just watch it with that explanation in mind. It makes it more plausible. Maybe what the mathematician did was crack a gigantic outstanding problem in scaling quantum computers that allowed e.g. extraordinarily effective quantum noise reduction at scale.

I do the same thing with Prometheus - I watch the Weyland TED Talk before the film and view the film as a man that considers himself a god trying to meet god.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#158

Post by Henchman21 »

xattt wrote: post #82

Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…

Tell me you haven’t worked in entertainment without actually…

My experience in entertainment has given me the following perspective: be happy anything gets made. The entire industry is so awash in drugs, egos, and money that pushing ANYTHING out the door is an accomplishment.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#159

Post by gnomesteel »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #142
gnomesteel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shows like The Simpsons that were only made for broadcast never had a film negative. It was likely mastered to analog tape.

They're solidly pre-digital. Somewhere, the individual frames were drawn/painted on cel, were they not? In principle, remastering should still be possible.

I shouldn't have said never had a film negative. They likely scanned hand-drawn cells to film, then transferred that to tape. At the time they likely saw the NTSC tape as the master.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#160

Post by myself248 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #145
throw7 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you love the movie Hackers? I submit there are two camps of moviegoing nerds: those who love Sneakers and those who love Hackers. I will admit though, many many years later I softened to the sheer goofness of Hackers (which offput me much initially).

I love both, for similar but different reasons. Hackers captures the naive idea of the scene really quite well. It's goofiness allows the naivety to remain, past the overwrought characters and Hollywood's downright misunderstanding. It feels like it's accidentally great. But then again, maybe it just tickles to the surface the sense of wonder I had way back then.

Accidentally great, yeah. If I allow myself to believe that the producers of Hackers knew they were making a spoof of Hollywood hackers in general, I can sit back and enjoy it as a masterpiece.

But at the time, that was not at all clear. And I'm still not actually convinced. It certainly wasn't marketed as a comedy; it seemed to be drinking the same drama-aid as The Net and other breathless wankery at the time. In which case it's a terrible movie that only becomes watchable as an exhibit of wankery.

This feels like a special case of "suspension of disbelief".

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