There is a subject which just will not go away in Blu-ray world, threatening to become the anamorphic/black bars debate that would often dominate conversations on the then new movie format, DVD.
I’m talking: Grain
The recent release of Ghostbusters on Blu-ray has divided fans and film restorers alike. Robert Harris, perhaps the most prominent film restorer and historian, said of this release:
“The HD video master of Ivan Reitman’s 1984 Ghostbusters had the input of cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, and as such must be considered incontestable as far as a Blu-ray is concerned.
Those who saw the film theatrically 25 years ago, may or may not recall that the look varied from sequence to sequence. While some interiors seemed to have a pushed, grainy look, fully exposed exteriors appeared to have far less apparent grain. Some of the film is sharp, some parts lesser so.
Created from an archival 35mm interpositive, what has been delivered via Blu-ray is Ghostbusters as it originally looked, and I couldn’t be happier”.
Whereas Steve Roberts, a film restorer for the BBC said this:
” I have to add my name to the list of people disappointed by this release. To put it simply, the desire for purism has resulted in an inferior product, in my opinion.
Blur-ray is not a 35mm cinema projector. Why then is there this desperate desire to make the image look like it might have looked when projected in a cinema in 1984? The levels of grain are overwhelming in some of the scenes, so much so that they are producing visible compression artefacts, which on a system with the bandwidth of BD takes some doing! There’s also a lot of neg fading causing colour casts in certain areas of the picture in some shots, which would have been VERY easy to rectify in telecine.
I’m not against grain - far from it, in fact. But there are limits to what is acceptable. This release could have looked so much better if not for a rigid adherence to a nonsensical remit. People like Robert Harris have a lot to answer for, IMO”.
I have to admit, I feel that Steve Roberts attack on Robert Harris smacks of professional jealousy. However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, does he have a point?
I’m not so sure. This notion that restorers are trying to emulate projected film is clearly bobbins. Think about it - does any restorer want all the dirt, scratches, occasional skips and jumps, cigarette burns, light fall off at the corners etc etc to show? No, I don’t think so - no-one is trying to make a blu-ray presentation look like that.
What they clearly want to achieve is the look of a brand-new pristine print - and then to transfer that as cleanly as possible to disc. That, in my opinion, should include the grain - grain being the inherent photochemical structure of the film stock. Careful choosing of film stock to achieve a particular look has long been used by directors/cinematographers as a deliberate artistic/stylistic choice and, as such, that look should be preserved. If that means a film like Ghostbusters, which seemed to suffer, even on theatrical release, from varied quality film stock, has excessive grain then that is how it should look on Blu-ray - not some cleaned up version with no grain, crushed blacks, saturated colours and little detail - if that is what you want to see, Mr Roberts, perhaps you should buy the Real Ghostbusters instead. We’ve been down this road before and it leads to re-done special effects, horrible 5.1 versions of mono soundtracks and other liberties being taken with the source material. No, for me, the Directors/cinematographers intent is the final word - and that is what should guide any decent restorer. Re-done effects, re-dubbing etc should only be undertaken where film elements are damaged beyond conventional restoration, such as for the remaster of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
There are several contributing factors at play here that are pushing a lot of people’s expectations towards digital perfection every time;
1) Hype of the Blu-ray format. All the demo materials are pristine, carefully shot with no grain and vivid colour.
2) Careful selection of titles for early Blu-ray release. A deliberate ploy by Sony, I reckon, to release titles like Batman Begins, Cars, Spiderman 2 and other recent blockbusters, as these demonstrate the full ‘wow’ effect of Blu-ray. Avoiding releasing older titles which will not perhaps have the same vivid leap in image quality has helped cement this idea that every film on Blu-ray should look like a Pixar release!
3) Excessive use of DNR and boosted constrast on some releases in an attempty to make grainy films look like modern releases. Gangs of New York suffers from this, it looks awful with lack of detail and a waxy look to the actors faces.
Sure, I know that movie/home cinema fans have always demanded the most accurate representation of their favourite films on the best format available - going so far as to hunt out the letterboxed version of films on VHS, to taking time to explain why black bars are often still present, on DVDs viewed on widescreen televisions. I had hoped, in the UK at least, that accuracy had won out over lazyness or ignorance - unlike the US ‘full frame’ or ‘pan n scan’ DVDs never became prevalent - the lack of stupendously big 4:3 CRT’s helped us avoid such heresy!
Sadly, however, it looks like the battle for authentic presentation of movies will continue - and it’s up to all of us, once again, to shun poor releases and keep this topic current until the studios and public wise-up.
I sympathise with the argument you make completely, but I’m afraid that the masses will by and large be ignorant of most of these issues. And that means distributors will continue to churn out transfers that are artificially “enhanced” for HD to give people the ‘Wow’ factor they crave, instead of remaining faithful to the director’s original work.
To be honest I’m not sure even I, despite being aware of the problem, really understand the complexity of how new transfers are produced, and the resultant problems. There’s a lot of jargon here that baffles me (DNR, boosted constrast levels, crushed blacks, saturated colours, edge enhancement, haloing, etc.) and it would probably help the argument if some of this was explained somewhere or written in plain English. Then at least if people understood the problem, a wider public case could be made.
Perhaps someone’s written something already and a link could be provided…?
primus
July 6th, 2009
There is indeed a lot of technical jargon, I haven’t been able to locate a decent plain English explanation.
It’s probably impossible to educate the great British public - but if it’s the enthusiasts who make up the majority of the existing BD market (3.1m sales first half of 2009 v 99m sales of DVDS) then I guess we have at least have some voice with the studios - I hope it’s heard!
gizmo
July 6th, 2009
Thanks for publishing this interesting and well-written article. The grain issue, now much more apparent thanks to the superior resolution of Blu-ray, is something I’ve asked myself about on many occasions. I’m generally a purist and want OARs, original languages, etc., for many films where possible, but it has to be questioned whether an abundance of ‘grainy’ films on Blu-ray could, at least in these still early days, do more harm than good for the format given the aforementioned public ignorance. It’s worth noting that some home cinema equipment, if suitably featured, can do its own job of providing a digital noise reduction service so those inclined to feel annoyed with grainy Blu-rays might still be able to do something about it, to a small degree. However, I think this debate is something that proves that you will never please all of the people all of the time!
Paul
July 19th, 2009