Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The 'Toy Story' You Remember

animationobsessive.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 348 posts

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#71

Post by toast0 »

redwall_hp wrote: post #46
MangoToupe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simpsons was originally made in 4:3. Many people don't like watching with large black bars to the right and left, so they show a cropped 16:9 version. People complained because this is occasionally a problem and ruins a joke, so I believe you can opt into either.

A similar crime against taste as the pan-and-scan "fullscreen" DVDs of the early 2000s. If I want to pay to watch something, don't crop out a chunk of what the cinematographer wanted me to see...

Pan and scan wasn't a DVD innovation. Most VHS releases were pan and scan too; DVDs at least commonly had widescreen available (many early discs came with widescreen on one side and full screen on the other... good luck guessing if widescreen on the hub indicates the side you're reading is widescren or if the otherside is widescreen so you should have the widescreen label facing up in your player.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#73

Post by d--b »

I just showed Toy Story to my kids. It looked really bad. Mostly textures and lighting.

I wonder if artificial grain would actually make it look better.

Like when the game Splinter Cell was released, there weee two additional ‘views’ simulating infrared and thermal cameras. Those had heavy noise added to them and felt so real compared to the main view.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#74

Post by happymellon »

mer_mer wrote: post #53
hekkle wrote: post #6

I'm surprised they can't just put a filter on the digital versions to achieve a similar look and feel to the 35mm version. It is clear that the animators factored in the colour changes from the original media to 35mm, so it seems a disservice to them to re-release their works without honouring how they intended the films to be seen.

You can, that's what Pixar did while creating the film. From the article: > During production, we’re working mostly from computer monitors. We’re rarely seeing the images on film. So, we have five or six extremely high-resolution monitors that have better color and picture quality. We put those in general work areas, so people can go and see how their work looks. Then, when we record, we try to calibrate to the film…

> Then, when we record, we try to calibrate to the film stock, so the image we have on the monitor

Except, as they say, the high grade monitors were calibrated to emulate the characteristics of film.

If we can show that D+ doesn't look like the film, then we can point out that it probably doesn't look like the calibrated monitors either. Those army men are not that shade of slime green in real life, and you'll have a hard time convincing me that after all the thought and effort went in to the animation they allowed that putrid pea shade to go through.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#75

Post by theshackleford »

globular-toast wrote: post #62

I find a lot of the stuff I remember from decades ago looks worse now. Toy Story in particular I watched when I got a projector after I'd seen Toy Story 4 and it looked bad , almost to the point I wish I hadn't tarnished my memory of it. Similar things have happened with N64 games that I cherished when I was little. I don't buy that it's a real degradation due to different presentation methods. I'm sorry, but no matt…

> Same with CRTs. Sure, it's a different look, but my memory still looks better.

I don’t have this issue and never have. For whatever reason I’ve never “upgraded” them in my mind, and they look today exactly as I remember them when played on period hardware.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#76

Post by opello »

redwall_hp wrote: post #46
MangoToupe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simpsons was originally made in 4:3. Many people don't like watching with large black bars to the right and left, so they show a cropped 16:9 version. People complained because this is occasionally a problem and ruins a joke, so I believe you can opt into either.

A similar crime against taste as the pan-and-scan "fullscreen" DVDs of the early 2000s. If I want to pay to watch something, don't crop out a chunk of what the cinematographer wanted me to see...

David Simon talked about this for the HD release of The Wire:

https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

It seems like the video examples are unfortunately now unavailable, but the discussion is still interesting and it's neat to see the creative trade-offs and constraints in the process. I think those nuances help evoke generosity in how one approaches re-releases or other versions or cuts of a piece of media.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#77

Post by postalcoder »

nappy wrote: post #50

It's a surprisingly common error where someone picks up an old 35mm print and assumes it is somehow canonical... Besides whatever the provenance of these prints are (this gets complicated) the reality is that these were also made to look at best as they could for typical movie theater projector systems in the 90s. These bulbs were hot and bright and there were many other considerations around what the final picture w…

I think the entire premise of the article should be challenged. Not only is 35mm not meant to be canonical, but the 35mm scans the author presented are not what we saw, at least for Aladdin.

I've watched Aladdin more than any as a child and the Blu-ray screenshot is much more familiar to me than the 35mm scan. Aladdin always had the velvia look.

> Early home releases were based on those 35 mm versions.

Here's the 35mm scan the author presents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuhNnovKXLA

Here's the VHS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpJB7YJEjD8

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#78

Post by sersi »

jama211 wrote: post #60
nappy wrote: post #50

It's a surprisingly common error where someone picks up an old 35mm print and assumes it is somehow canonical... Besides whatever the provenance of these prints are (this gets complicated) the reality is that these were also made to look at best as they could for typical movie theater projector systems in the 90s. These bulbs were hot and bright and there were many other considerations around what the final picture w…

It’s an interesting and valid point that the projectors from the time would mean current scans of 35mm will be different too. However, taking for example the Aladdin screenshot in particular, the sky is COMPLETELY the wrong colour in the modern digital edition, so it seems to me at least that these 35mm scans whilst not perfect to the 90’s are closer to correct than their digital counterparts.

And as someone who is part of those conservation communities that scan 35mm with donations to keep the existing look, a lot of the people doing those projects are aware of this. They do some color adjustment to compensate for print fading, for the type of bulb that were used in movie theatres back then (using a LUT), etc...

I do find that often enough commercial releases like Aladdin or other movies like Terminator 2 are done lazily and have completely different colors than what was historically shown. I think part of this is the fact that studios don't necessarily recognise the importance of that legacy and don't want to spend money on it.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#79

Post by eviks »

vasco wrote: post #59
dclowd9901 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can we get away from this mindset as a society, where craft and art are sacrificed at the altar of "it's not monetarily worth it." There's a fucking lot of things that are not worth it monetarily, but worth it for the sake of itself. Because it's a nice gesture. Or because it just makes people happy. Not to sound like some hippie idealist, but it's just so frustrating that everything has to be commoditized.

You can sit down and recolor the movie frame by frame and release it on torrent yourself, it'll make many people happy. It won't be worth it monetarily but since you're annoyed it doesn't exist and money isn't a factor... It's always easy to complain about others not being generous enough with their time, but we always have an excuse for why we won't do it ourselves.

You can't do that since besides time you also need knowledge/skill. So the final difference could be between "an extra 1% of the budget" at a corporate level vs "and extra 10% of your life to become a professional and fix a video, and also break the law in the process". Pretty easy to see how it's not just "an excuse", but a bit more fundamental issue

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#80

Post by ZiiS »

Torn wrote: post #20
etempleton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could, but it would require some work to get it right. This is very similar to conversations that happen regularly in the retro game scene regarding CRT monitors vs modern monitors for games of a certain era. The analog process was absolutely factored in when the art was being made, so if you want a similar visuals on a modern screen you will need some level of thoughtful post processing.

Disney 100% has access to colorists and best in class colour grading software. It must have been a business (cost cutting) decision?

Disney do pay for industry leading colorists. They chose to favour a more saturated look for Aladdin et al. It is reasonable to prefer either. I can't imaging what happened to the greens in the Toy Story examples if they are accurate.
Post reply on HN