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White Christmas (1954)
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Brent Gair
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 12:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
Now apply that reasoning to the inked and painted animation cells I mentioned.

The logic is unchanged.

"Grain removal" is a made-up term used to describe Digital Noise Reduction. DNR is a processes invented for processing electronic images and it has been adopted as a crutch for cleaning film. Electronic noise has a relatively defined size (defined by pixels) and forms along a grid like pattern. It is a modern electronic process which artificially removes the signature of random, naturally occurring collections of silver halide in the film emulsion.

I again refer to the sentiment of my earlier reply. You are entitled to prefer the electronically scrubbed version...it's pointless to tell you that you must not like it. Nevertheless, the electronic processing of an image to remove the artifacts of natural, natural organic chemistry creates an image that lacks the characteristic appearance of film. You can like it just like you can like a girl with a great boob job...just remember that you are not seeing the original product.

You can argue that it doesn't matter in an inked cell because an inked cell lacks fine detail and texture. My stance on the issue is that we should avoid creating arbitrary thesholds at which digital tampering becomes acceptable. One might say, "It's ok for an animated film cell, but not ok for certain movies". But there are a thousand places to create those subjective lines in the sand. Fast film stock will have heavier grain...so it could be argued that DNR could be used on fast film stocks. Third generation prints have more grain than second generation prints...so maybe it's ok to use more DNR for third generation prints. Maybe it's ok for this or ok for that. Everybody will have their own idea of where DNR is acceptable.

My opinion is that we should just NOT use DNR for attempts at grain removal. It's a technology that was never intended for grain removal at any level. If grain exists in film, then we should accept it's appearance...whether it appears in cartoons or classic live action films. Grain is a genuine, natural byproduct of chemistry...there is no reason that people should have an unfavorable reaction to seeing a natural element of film.
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The point under debate, I think, is whether you're arguing that the "original product" is the image on the film emulsion or the subject of the filming. An organic primary subject needs the surface detail retained to look natural. A painted animation cell has no such surface detail and is neither organic nor natural. If the process makes the screen image appear more like the original subject, is that objectionable, when the addition of film grain constituted a degradation of the original subject?

Suppose the animation had been "filmed" originally on hi-def digital media with no film grain. Would you add simulated film grain? Are you preserving the image of the actual subject or the appearance it had when projected on a theater screen? When you hold an original animation cell in your hand and examine the artwork, are you repulsed by its lack of surface texture and/or film grain?

Another point is whether the tool being used is digital noise reduction or digital grain reduction. I don't know if the latter really exists, but I would think that it's a matter of adjusting the DNR algorithm to obtain specifically a DGR tool. I don't think that would be beyond the technical capabilities of Disney or Sony or Adobe or whoever puts their staff on it. But then, I'm not convinced that DNR is that far off when applied to conventional animation artwork.

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Brent Gair
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 4:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
The point under debate, I think, is whether you're arguing that the "original product" is the image on the film emulsion or the subject of the filming. An organic primary subject needs the surface detail retained to look natural. A painted animation cell has no such surface detail and is neither organic nor natural. If the process makes the screen image appear more like the original subject, is that objectionable, when the addition of film grain constituted a degradation of the original subject?

Suppose the animation had been "filmed" originally on hi-def digital media with no film grain. Would you add simulated film grain? Are you preserving the image of the actual subject or the appearance it had when projected on a theater screen? When you hold an original animation cell in your hand and examine the artwork, are you repulsed by its lack of surface texture and/or film grain?

Another point is whether the tool being used is digital noise reduction or digital grain reduction. I don't know if the latter really exists, but I would think that it's a matter of adjusting the DNR algorithm to obtain specifically a DGR tool. I don't think that would be beyond the technical capabilities of Disney or Sony or Adobe or whoever puts their staff on it. But then, I'm not convinced that DNR is that far off when applied to conventional animation artwork.

The answer to point one is pretty obvious. The original product is the image on the film and not the subject of the filming. There's no debate about that. Theater goers never saw individual animation cells any more than they saw real actors on set. They experienced a FILM...a combined effort of many people to produce the product that they paid to see projected.

Grain is not a degradation of anything. I don't understand why some people imagine that it is. Honestly, it must be impossible to be a film fan when you look at a natural part of the film and see it as a problem. In the near 200 year history of film, grain has been and intrinsic part of the process. A few years ago, a band of people got it into their heads that grain was somehow a problem. I don't get it.

To the third point...of course you wouldn't add grain to a digitally recorded image. That is every bit as ridiculous as removing grain from a filmed image. The whole point of the excercise is to preserve the appearance of the original product be it film or a digital recording. The product is what people saw projected...not the raw files that were used as part of that projected experience. There is all kinds of post production work that contributes to the final product. Films have grain as a natural part of their chemistry. Digital images don't. Things should neither be added nor subtracted from an original work. That's the point: don't tamper with things.

Why would I be repulsed at the lack of grain in a painted film cell?? Painted film cells don't have grain. Don't tamper with the cell...just as you don't tamper with grain from the finished film that used the cells.

Digital grain reduction doesn't exist...except that which also kills detail. As somebody who has twice had cancer, I use this analogy from an oncologist: "People think that is is difficult to kill cancer cells. That's not true. It is very easy for us to kill cancer cells. The problem is that we haven't found a way to kill cancer cells without killing a lot of healthy cells at the same time. "

It comes down to this: just don't tamper with things. Don't try to find a way to fix things that aren't broken. Don't try to improve the work of other people. Leave things alone. The leading cause of bad visual presentations is people trying to "fix" imaginary problems.

Grain doesn't requiring fixing. It didn't bother people in 1840. It didn't bother people in 1940. The fact that it it bothers some people today is of no consequence.
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In "cleaning-up" films it's not just the considerations listed but others that should be noted.

In Forbidden Planet there are lots of reflections of the stage lights on Robby's dome and on the wind shields of his 'vehicle'.

They could be removed by computer or replaced by CGI. By that would change the original film experience.

But I, for one, see no need for this.

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The primary purpose of VistaVision was to provide large negatives which would yield fine-grain 35mm prints for theaters.

Quote:
Grain doesn't requiring fixing. It didn't bother people in 1840. It didn't bother people in 1940.

Why, then, were they fooling around with VistaVision?

Quote:
Honestly, it must be impossible to be a film fan when you look at a natural part of the film and see it as a problem.

I don't know that I would classify myself as a "film" fan in that sense. Probably something more along the lines of "story that happens to be presented on film" fan. When I'm watching a movie, it's not the "film" I'm interested in. It's the story and the accompanying visuals. The limitations introduced by the film (the image recording medium) and the movie-making process are more of a distraction. I'm more interested in how I imagine the final presentation might have appeared if it had been unfettered by the limitations of the process. Whenever I watch 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Disney, 1954) I can feel sand between my teeth. I may not have seen the actual artwork used for an animated feature, but I have seen clear blue skies and polished surfaces of chrome and optical glass firsthand. No grain. Film grain is not there because somebody wanted it there. It's there because they couldn't get rid of it. The ongoing effort to minimize grain has existed almost as long as photographic film itself. VistaVision was one such attempt.

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
In Forbidden Planet there are lots of reflections of the stage lights on Robby's dome and on the wind shields of his 'vehicle'.

They could be removed by computer or replaced by CGI. By that would change the original film experience.

I guess that hinges on how conscientious the director or the DP is, and/or how hopeless the challenge appears to be. Here's a screen grab from 20,000 Leagues showing only partially successful attempts at blocking a few reflections with flags stuck on the viewport dome.



It would have been pretty hopeless to try this in FP. This brings up another question: If we know it was the original intention to block the reflections, are we justified in helping them accomplish this with our improved tools? (Never mind. I know the answer.)

Today we have simultaneous theatrical releases of movies in multiple formats: digital, conventional film, Imax and "fake Imax", 2D and 3D, etc. Which audiences are experiencing the true movie? When they go to purchase their home copy, what are the chances it will be mastered from the same one they saw in the theater?

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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud, we must be on the same mental wave length. We just watched, White Christmas (1954), Holiday Inn (1942), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) and Christmas In Connecticut (1945)!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Wayne, I agree with you completely.

The idea that film grain shouldn't bother "film fans" is puzzling. The quality of the image is extremely important to movie lovers, which is exactly why the movie industry has spent millions of dollars to improve the quality of the image for the last hundred years!

Black and white was replaced by color. Academy ration was replaced by wide screen. 35mm was sometimes replaced by 70mm to give audiences an even sharper, grain-free image in special showings of big budget movies like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I saw Star Wars in 1977 in 70mm and was astounding by how sharp and grain-free the image was. When I saw it again a few weeks later in 35mm, I noticed the difference. Speed Racer was the first digitally projected movie I saw at a theater, and I was astounded by the picture quality.

Audiences don't want grainy, blurry images when they watch a movie. That's why they pay big bucks at Imax theaters and for Blu-ray versions for their home systems.

When HD TVs began to replace the old CRT televisions, people happily joined the revolution and started buying bigger and better plasma and LED televisions to get that great high definition picture.

Naturally, film grain is not created by the same thing that caused the old TVs to be fuzzy, but they're both annoying aspects of the viewing experience, and technology has gradually eliminated both.

In view of the dedicated efforts to improve the picture quality of movies and televisions, not to mention the enthusiastic way the public has rewarded these efforts by willingly paying more and more for movie tickets and home theater systems, it seems obvious that people have always been bothered by film grain in scenes where it's especially noticeable.

Modern films have all but eliminated it. People like that. The film industry knew that making movies look sharper and less "film-like" would please the ticket-buying public.

Therefore, I would respectfully disagree with this statement.


Brent wrote:
Grain doesn't require fixing. It didn't bother people in 1840. It didn't bother people in 1940. The fact that it bothers some people today is of no consequence.

First of all, I think it did bother movie audiences in the past. Of course, that's just a guess, because none of us were alive and going to movies in the 1940s. So, the above statement is just an opinion.

Second of all, I don't really care if it did-or-didn't bother people in the past. I want my movies to look sharp and grain free now, and I'm certainly not alone.
Very Happy
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

^^ Brent's original point was that using DNR to make older films look less grainy also removes fine details in the image. Remember the cancer analogy?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I had to go back and re-read that part, and Brent makes an excellent point.

Whenever I use Paint.net to restore or enhance a jpeg, I use the noise reduction feature in some cases, whether it be from photographs or scans of comic book artwork.

When doing so I have to be careful not to lose details along with the grain. Sometimes this means manually selecting the grainy area and omitting the areas that have details I want to keep. That means I don't have to "throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Unfortunately, grain removal from motion picture film can't be handled as selectively as that.

However, Brent's cancer analogy brings up an interesting point.


Quote:
"The problem is that we haven't found a way to kill cancer cells without killing a lot of healthy cells at the same time"

Medical science is striving to improve the treatments for cancer so that healthy cells won't be affect.

Likewise, technology is making advancements in the photographic process.

Decades ago, B&W photos could only be colorized by hand, a rather crude process. But now we have moderately successful ways to turn B&W movies into color versions. Computers are able to apply selected colors to different areas of the digitized movie image, even when these areas are moving around, changing shape, and varying in size.

Obviously what I'm suggesting is that even though grain removal processes in the past have unfortunate drawbacks, it's very possible that today (or in the near future) the process will become selective enough to remove the grain without affecting the details.

I realize that such a process will probably require a certain amount of hands-on management the way colorization does, so that the computer program can be directed to the areas which need to altered.

For that reason, Brent is absolutely right that we can't just "switch on" a grain removal function and clean up a DVD.

But I for one hope the time and money will be spent to modify and improve future DVDs and BDs that suffer from significant amounts of grain in certain scenes, such as several of the best FX shots in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

In the scenes which required Harryhausen to combine a filmed background with the cyclops, the model looks great, but the background is a snow storm of grain! Take my word for it, the screen shot below doesn't do the problem justice. When you watch the movie, that grain is flying around like a blizzard!

It's a terrible distraction from the beauty of these amazing scenes. Sad



]


The screen shot above is from the DVD. On the Blu-ray it's even worse! It's so bad I just mailed mine to Tim Edwards and bought the DVD, hoping it wouldn't be as bad. It wasn't . . . but as you can see, it's still a mess! Shocked

In the picture below I used Paint.net to selectively reduce the grain in the sky behind the cyclops. It makes a huge difference. Hopefully a process will be developed that can do the same kind of selective enhancements for motion picture film.




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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Film grain shows up most noticeably in the sky or other fields of low detail and largely uniform color, just as in the image of the cyclops above. Bud cleaned up only the sky because nothing else in the frame needed it.

I'm guessing that the same type of programming used to colorize b/w movies could be applied to color movies for selecting areas of sky or any other low-detail regions and "cleaning up" the grain only in those areas.

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Custer
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't say I've watched any Christmas films lately, but, while Butch has been watching Bob Hope's The Lemon Drop Kid from 1951 starring Bob Hope, last night I watched The Seven Little Foys, also starring him, from four years later. I've also recently watched Cover Girl from 1944 starring Gene Kelly, and Magic Town from 1947 starring Jimmy Stewart... movies I'd recorded off the TV a while ago. The set-top recorder/box was getting a bit full, so watching them gets it below 95% of its capacity again...

Given that Magic Town is based upon the then-new science of public opinion polling, does that make it a science fiction movie...?
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Custer wrote:
Given that Magic Town is based upon the then-new science of public opinion polling, does that make it a science fiction movie … ?

I would say yes. The Seven Little Foys (M-G-M 1955) is one of my favorite films. Not ony stars Bob Hope as Eddie Foy, Sr, but James Cagny reprises his role of George M. Cohan from Yankee Doodle Dandy (Warner Bros. 1942).



And supposedly Charley Foy is telling the story. Actually it was Eddie Foy, Jr.'s voice!



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Custer
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 7:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The dance scene with Bob Hope and James Cagny, in The Seven Little Foys, was great, indeed, and Hope held his own there. It was Cagny's only scene, as he wasn't in the story as such - but memorable. And George Tobias had a good role - known best as Abner Kravitz in Bewitched, of course.

Most of the shots of Hope & Cagny doing their table-top dance routine are rather blurry "screen grabs" - but I did find this more official one:


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2018 11:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This first-rate trailer is narrated by the great Art Gilmore, the voice we love to hear in so many sci-fi trailer from the 1950. Very Happy
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_________________ White Christmas - Trailer


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

On Christmas Eve, Gord Green and I shared this movie while chatting in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy room, and we enjoyed it thoroughly!

The experience reminded me how much I miss All Sci-Fi's Friday Live Chats from a few years back, during which we share great movies on a regular basis.

I wish we could start that up again. It was a great experience for all the folks who attended, and I really miss it.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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