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The 'Toy Story' You Remember

animationobsessive.substack.com

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Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#81

Post by sersi »

squigz wrote: post #47
qingcharles wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. What you're hinting at is that a lot of original 35mms are now getting scanned and uploaded privately, especially where all the commercial releases on Blu-ray and streaming are based on modified versions of the original movies, or over-restored versions. These can be especially hard to find as the files are typically enormous, with low compression to keep things like grain.…

> I see them mostly traded on short-lived gdrives and Telegram. Someone tell this community to share over BT. Aint nobody got time to keep up with which platform/server everyone is on and which links are expired and yuck.

The main reason they are not shared as widely is that there's a bit of conflict within the community between those that really want to stay under the radar and not risk being targeted by copyright owners (and so try to keep things very much private between the donors who funded the 600-900 usd cost of the scans) and those who want to open up a bit more and so use telegram, reddit and upload to private trackers.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#82

Post by opello »

toast0 wrote: post #67
opello wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bumped on this too, since 1994-1995 was about the time when multi-gigabyte hard drives were readily available and multiple full motion video codecs were being used in games, albeit for cut scenes. Theater projector compatibility makes complete sense.

In 1994-1995, all the pieces for digital cinema were there, but they weren't integrated, and there were no installed projectors. The Phantom Menance was shown digitally.... on two screens. By the end of 2000, there were 31 digital cinema screens in theaters. Digital cinema went with Motion JPEG2000 with high quality settings, which leads to very large files, but also much better fidelity than likely with a contempora…

> In 1994-1995, all the pieces for digital cinema were there, but they weren't integrated, and there were no installed projectors.

I agree with that. The article's quote from Pixar's "Making The Cut at Pixar" book was that the technology wasn't there (computer chips fast enough, storage media large enough, compression sophisticated enough) and I--along with the comment I replied to--disagree with that conclusion.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#83

Post by CGMthrowaway »

afavour wrote: post #37
Torn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie Elf, where the book publisher is informed that a printing error means their latest book is missing the final two pages. Should they pulp and reprint? He says, > You think a kid is going to notice two pages? All they do is look at the pictures. I’m quite sure bean counters look at Disney kids movies the exact same way, despite them being Disney’s bread and butter. With Star W…

Steve Jobs' type attitude vs Bill Gates type attitude (in the 90s). Or, Apple vs Microsoft.

The Disney of yesterday might have been a bit more Jobs than Gates, compared to the Disney of today.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#84

Post by sefrost »

MangoToupe wrote: post #39
bpiroman wrote: post #38

wtf happened to Simpsons on Disney+? looks like it's zoomed in.

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.

I believe this is the best example of the problems that can be caused:

https://x.com/TristanACooper/status/1194298167824650240

Open both images and compare. The visual joke is completely ruined with the cropping.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#85

Post by sersi »

postalcoder wrote: post #77
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 35m…

Famously CRT TVs didn't show as much magenta so in the 90s home VHS releases compensated by cranking up the magenta so that it would be shown correctly on the TVs of the time. It was a documented practice at the time.

So, yes the VHS is expected to have more magenta.

Anecdotally, I remember watching Aladdin at the movie theatre when it came out and later on TV multiple times and the VHS you saw doesn't correspond to my memories at all.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#86

Post by CGMthrowaway »

Now there is the problem where many of my friends will take one look at a movie I started on the TV and say "ew, I don't like this movie, it's old" They don't realize they feel that way, viscerally, is because it's shot on film. How do I get people to watch film movies with me? They are far better anyway on average than many modern movies (from a storytelling, moviemaking pov, to say nothing about the picture quality).

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#87

Post by behringer »

eviks wrote: post #69
qingcharles wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. What you're hinting at is that a lot of original 35mms are now getting scanned and uploaded privately, especially where all the commercial releases on Blu-ray and streaming are based on modified versions of the original movies, or over-restored versions. These can be especially hard to find as the files are typically enormous, with low compression to keep things like grain.…

> with low compression to keep things like grain. But you have algorithmic grain in modern codecs, so no need to waste so much space for noise?

This grain looks extremely fake.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#88

Post by richrichardsson »

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.

I'm this particular instance though it's not really about time, it's studios not wanting to pay what I imagine would be a relatively small amount to do the conversion. It's not going to be a frame-by-frame laborious process.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#90

Post by sph »

Affric wrote: post #51
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.

It’s really been the driving force of modern life for centuries at this point.

Centuries is stretching it. It’s central to industrialisation, Taylor, Ford, etc. The relentless pursuit of efficiency and technique. Its anti-thesis is art for art’s sake.

In modern tech circles, the utilitarian mindset is going strong, now that the hacker ethos is dead and it’s all about being corporate friendly and hireable.

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