The Lord Of The Rings Extended - Page 176

Which scene has missing orcs?

Well, I scanned through every orc scene I could find, compared it to the old transfer, and I'm happy to report that all my orcs are intact. And scanning through it I was once again struck by how lovely the EE looks in comparison. So yeah, no problems over here.

This one:



http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/index.php?art=full&image=3&vergleich=lord_of_the_rings_1_bd1&lossless=0#auswahl


Fire and foliage detail is also lost here:



http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/index.php?art=full&image=7&vergleich=lord_of_the_rings_1_bd1&lossless=0#auswahl


In this scene near the end of the movie, the EE has one last distracting tint change (the water and trees suddenly change from green to blue) then the rest of the movie is relatively stable:

That scene is dark (it is night, after all) but perfectly visible. The river scene? That's really reaching... it's color graded along the narrative arc anyway. The second Sam gets pulled out of the water, the colors are warmer and more saturated, coinciding with the music cue.
Edited by 42041 - 1/30/13 at 9:25pm

Some detail is probably "lost" at one end of the spectrum or the other (or both) in almost every shot in every movie. This doesn't mean that it isn't supposed to be "lost".

I don't think they mixed it up. The one with the teal cast and lower black level should be the EE. The greens, reds, and browns have been robbed in this shot, which is an example of why I keep saying the "blanket green tint" statements are blown out of proportion compared to these other issues.

You think it is weird that the TE looks better than the EE? In those shots I prefer the TE 10 out of 16 times (keeping in mind the attributes I think will be important in my theatre not the computer screen).
Edited by AVfile - 1/31/13 at 9:01am

Artistic intent, apparently, not being among them.

No comment, except wrong forum for that.

Why does it bother you so much that I have an opinion?

It doesn't.

Can't say I was surprised. I dug that one up because I remember watching the EE and thinking it looked weird. Maybe you can check it out and report back?

By the way I'm digging these shots up based on my memory what I saw in a normal viewing session, without pausing or comparing anything, just sitting back and watching the movie. People might not agree with me, but the point is I was distracted enough by these scenes for them to stick in my memory. Most of this thread is about blanket green tint, which didn't really bother me, so I thought I was adding something new and useful to the discussion.
Edited by AVfile - 1/31/13 at 11:27am

I'd like to know how long they actually spent on this remastering project. I don't recall ever hearing about it until very close to the release date for the EE blu-ray set. There is a major assumption that just because they sat down to do it, they accomplished everything they envisioned and finished on time and within budget. In my experience projects rarely go that way, so I'm sure compromises were made regardless of post-mastering error (blanket tint, crush or whatever).

PS - I think that the fact that I prefer the dated TE in many instances to the shiny new EE speaks volumes about my respect for artistic over technical qualities.
Edited by AVfile - 1/31/13 at 11:27am

This is a common reaction to changes made to specific scenes in material one is otherwise already familiar with. The disconnect is in your apparent conclusion that, because you noticed the changes made to these scenes, that those changes are necessarily incorrect or problematic.


However, we're talking about a film which, inescapably, is art. We can talk about science all we want, but we have to recognize that we're talking about it within a context that also includes variance for artistic decisions.

If you don't think that a scene might be very dark for perfectly artistic reasons, I'm not so sure.

He didn't say they were incorrect, he said they were distracting and he preferred the other ones, and has been suspicious of their correctness. You know, it is okay for someone to not like a piece of art that you do.

I'll bring up the Star Wars example again. LOTS of people hate the revisions, even though we know they are all artistic intent.

In the case of FOTR, its is okay for someone to hate the changes too. However, in this case we don't even know if the darkening of the image is actually artistic intent or not, and there's technical evidence that suggests it isn't.

Even if Jackson came out and said it is exactly the way he wanted it, it would be one of the few times I strongly prefer the old color timing vs. the new, enough to change the way I watch it.

It is possible for someone to have an appreciation for artistic intent, yet still hate certain pieces of artwork.

He posted screenshots with comments about elements that were "missing" from them. That's not calling them incorrect?


Of course. I also know the difference between liking a piece of art and liking a piece of art only when it's been adjusted to meet your personal expectation as an individual viewer.

He never said they were missing, that was someone else. He said he couldn't see them because it was too dark.
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to get at here. I think everyone knows that there's a difference between "liking something the way it is" and "not liking something the way it is."

How is that anything but a semantic difference?


My point is that I'm not sure you can really say that you like a piece of art if you don't enjoy it the way the artist is presenting it to you and you add your own filtration/changes to watch it with different colors.

I don't know how long they took doing it, but if memory serves, the re-grade/full DI happened several years ago, not right before the release of the BDs. At least, that was the info I read a while back...

According to an interview with the DP, a full DI of Fellowship was produced between the release of Two Towers and the post-production work on ROTK, though seems like they didn't make a corresponding HD master at the time (or at least it never made its way to Warner Home Video). Might be what we're seeing on this disc.

If an artist presents a piece of art in more than one way, how many pieces of art is that? If I like one cut of Blade Runner, but not another, does that mean I like Blade Runner or I don't like Blade Runner?

In the past, different presentations of art were clearly labeled and distinguishable from one another. Before the movies, there were plays, and it was certainly possible to like the performance one night and hate it the next night. The first edition of The Hobbit was different than later editions. If you go to a used book store, you can get whichever one strikes your fancy (although the first edition may cost a bit more...). Now, I happen to like The Hobbit either way, but if someone claimed to only like the first edition of The Hobbit and couldn't stand the changes Tolkien made in the later editions, I don't think it would be accurate to claim they weren't really a Hobbit fan at all, simply because they only liked one of Tolkien's presentations. Now, if they only liked a fan-edited version of The Hobbit, you'd be on to something, but considering all the color adjustments we're talking about are just an attempt to recapture an earlier presentation and not an attempt to add anything original, it's simply not comparable.

Maybe its not, depending on how you interpret missing, but "orcs have been removed in the EE, therefore it is incorrect" is much different than "I'm distracted because I can no longer see the orcs on my TV in this version where I could in every previous versions" Well, so much for anything that's ever been adapted, then. And if that's the case, I guess no one can like this film because Jackson has changed elements of Tolkien's story and replaced the imagination with actual pictures looking the way he wants them to.

Either I am an artist myself making an adaptation, or Jackson is a thief and adulterater.

That, and there's a difference between doing your own thing, and liking something the way it was vs. a revision by the same artist.

Jackson's movies are "fan-edited" versions of the books.

That's right, and if you claimed to only like the movies and not the books, there would be some truth to the statement that you're not really a LOTR fan.

I said it was a problem. They don't normally go to the trouble of remastering movies to take away details like that.

It's possible I understand, but still a problem because the detail was previously available and now they are hiding it.
Edited by AVfile - 1/31/13 at 8:03pm

How much of the Mona Lisa do you see if they turn off the lights? The Mona Lisa still exists, it's just that one's subjective experience is influenced by the environment (which includes any manipulation of the original before it reaches one's eyes). Everything is relative and influenced by factors outside of our control.