Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2021 9:06 pm
A page for Inland Empire has been added to the Janus site
Page 21 of 25
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:38 pm
"See, not everything really needs a UHD release."
Re: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:07 pm
I wonder if that would be an early version of the monologue talking about the character's past to a non-speaking investigator figure (NSFW: Language).Big Ben wrote: Thu Sep 02, 2021 1:12 am Laura Dern did a an interview a few months ago where she talked very briefly about Inland Empire and that it "was coming from Criterion or something." This discussion revolved around a filmed monologue or something she did with the implication that the initial test or whatever would be on the disc. Rabbits too would no doubt be on there as well.
The most important thing about an Inland Empire release (apart from it being in UHD of course
) is that it will hopefully have "More Things That Happened" on there, which is a collection of deleted scenes turned into a second almost feature length piece that is just as good as (if not better than) the main film. More Things That Happened feels like a wonderful piece in which to spend longer luxuriating in the Lynchian atmosphere without any concession to having to think about the demands of narrative propulsion, such as there was in Inland Empire, at all.Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:57 am
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 6:36 am
This makes 0 sense.
First to downscale the HD upscale instead of just, well, using directly the SD footage.
And then to upscale this to 4k.
First to downscale the HD upscale instead of just, well, using directly the SD footage.
And then to upscale this to 4k.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 7:04 am
That account is super jokey, is there a source on what they're saying there?
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 11:31 am
They are also claiming that the Quinoa extra has been upscaled by AI:
The quinoa footage was also upscaled to UHD/4K in Topaz Lab's Gigapixel AI software with a new 5.1 sound mix by recent Screen Slate contributor Dean Hurley.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 1:07 pm
I concede I haven’t yet seen if this is verified anywhere.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 2:15 pm
Regardless, we have the cheap UK BD as a fallback if they wind up botching this.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 2:48 pm
True or not, this has me curious to feed a segment of the Absurda SD release to Topaz just to see what effect it has. I've been playing around with this software for a while and the results can be interesting in situations where no better alternative exists. They're different enough from the source, though, that one would certainly be wise to not sell off previous editions.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 2:54 pm
If this turns out to be correct, hopefully Lynch will let them include the original theatrical presentation too. The description above makes me think of the horrid Lumiere and Melies in 4k 60fps uploads to Youtube.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:17 pm
That comment regarding the restoration of the "Quinoa" extra and remixing it to 5.1 does feel like a joke.
As you can see, most of this informal segment is shot in near complete darkness and the audio is just Lynch talking with a moody synth as a music bed (sure, I guess you could have the synth track swirling around the viewer if you wanted, but the current stereo mix does the job fine for what it's worth).
As you can see, most of this informal segment is shot in near complete darkness and the audio is just Lynch talking with a moody synth as a music bed (sure, I guess you could have the synth track swirling around the viewer if you wanted, but the current stereo mix does the job fine for what it's worth).
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:39 pm
The Quinoa post is obviously a joke, but the other one seems serious. From my understanding, miniDV doesn’t hold very well and is starting to deteriorate from tapes of that era. Additionally, the HDCAM master is probably the one used for color grading which was then transferred to 35mm for most theatrical viewings (I know I saw it as such back in the day). I’m more curious about the tech specifics and process and how that will effect the viewing. The Sony cameras used on the film shoot at 29.97fps, so some sort of wizardry had to be done to convert it to 24fps for film or 23.97fps for HDCAM. But I would not be concerned about the image looking like those 4K/60fps Lumiere clips. At the end of the day, it’s still miniDV and you’re working with the limitations of that. I assume the transfer has more to do with the look of and fidelity of the video format than anything else. I never got rid of my old Absurda DVD of this, so I’m curious to see how it compares.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 4:22 pm
American Cinematographer ran an article back in the day that covers those specifics:The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:39 pmI’m more curious about the tech specifics and process and how that will effect the viewing. The Sony cameras used on the film shoot at 29.97fps, so some sort of wizardry had to be done to convert it to 24fps for film or 23.97fps for HDCAM.
Spoiler
These [MiniDV] tapes were up-converted to 16x9 24p HD through a Snell & Wilcox Alchemist Platinum and laid off to D-5. “With 60i footage, you’ve got 60 real fields,” notes Broderson. “Every field is adjacent to the next and they all have motion. So if you just remove the extra frames, you get an obvious stutter, and if you just blend them all together, you get a very soft look. The Alchemist uses a sophisticated motion algorithm to make everything look smooth in 24p.”
An online HD conform was completed from the D-5 tapes on an Avid DS Nitris, using Lynch’s DV tapes as a guide track, along with EDLs from his edit. “Everything was captured nonlinear with the Nitris,” says Broderson. “Within that environment, we did a lot of fixes, like motion stabilizing and paintboxing, along with the editing. The ability to do that is a big advantage over a linear online system.” The final Nitris conform was output to Sony HDCam SR tapes.
The color correction was completed tape-to-tape in a da Vinci 2K suite by FotoKem colorist George Koran. “David made the decision to do a tape-to-tape correction rather than a digital intermediate [DI],” says Koran. “He comes from the film telecine world, so he’s used to the terminology; he knows what to ask for and what we can do. We tried a lot of different looks and densities. David let me play with colors, and I would come up with suggestions. For example, on the Poland sequences, we went for a heavy Tobacco-filter look, almost a rust color. We also applied some grads to darken the top portion of the frame.”
[...]
Koran used a Teranex box to enhance the image quality from the HD up-conversion. “In my suite, I can program the Teranex from shot to shot, adjusting the sensitivity of the noise reduction and changing the aperture to increase the sharpness. We’re also able to smooth out the inherent grain of DV, but you have to be careful to avoid artifacts. You can easily go too far with sharpening, and then it starts to look artificial. We created a pretty good group of presets for the movie during our initial tests.”
Inland Empire was recorded to 35mm on Arrilaser recorders from two HDCam SR tapes at 1920x1080. “First, we took the final tapes into our DI suite and applied a custom look-up table [LUT] that was designed to make HD material look right on film,” explains Broderson. “In the DI suite, we could screen digitally — with the LUT applied — using a Digital Projection 2K DLP projector. We’d then record it with the Arri and look at the film version. David watched the digital and film projections, and he thought the match was spot-on.” The final output was made on Kodak Vision Premier 2393.
Re: Janus Films
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 7:12 pm
Would be fun if the original Rabbits-episodes were included. There were three series on davidlynch.com: Dumbland, Rabbits, and the always forthcoming Axxon N, the latter I assume morphed into this movie. Would love to know more about Axxon N, and if any of it was ever completed in it's original form, it would make for a great inclusion. I very much doubt it will happen, though. As long as they port the extras from the original Absurda DVD, I won't complain.Big Ben wrote: Thu Sep 02, 2021 1:12 am Laura Dern did a an interview a few months ago where she talked very briefly about Inland Empire and that it "was coming from Criterion or something." This discussion revolved around a filmed monologue or something she did with the implication that the initial test or whatever would be on the disc. Rabbits too would no doubt be on there as well.
Re: Janus Films
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 8:21 pm
I'd buy the INLAND EMPIRE release to get RABBITS, if nothing else.Forrest Taft wrote: Thu Mar 10, 2022 7:12 pm Would be fun if the original Rabbits-episodes were included.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:04 pm
If Criterion is playing it as safely in the realm of political correctness as they seem to be these days, I doubt we're ever getting Dumbland
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:08 pm
More screenshots from the new version at Blu-Ray.com
Since the Studio Canal/Optimum Blu-Ray has a different grading than the Rhino/Absurda DVD which Lynch reportedly supervised himself, we can forget about the UK DVD and Blu-Ray for any meaningful comparison. The grading of the new CC BD should be more like the Absurda disc.
Since the Studio Canal/Optimum Blu-Ray has a different grading than the Rhino/Absurda DVD which Lynch reportedly supervised himself, we can forget about the UK DVD and Blu-Ray for any meaningful comparison. The grading of the new CC BD should be more like the Absurda disc.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:40 pm
WOW. I'm impressed there was that much more detail in the DV tapes. On the other hand, it's more likely that says more about the poor job Studio Canal/Optimum did on their BD.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 5:46 pm
I'm no expert but isn't it more likely that that level of detail in the new screencaps is sort of artificially created through the AI upscaling, rather than being inherent to the source tapes?hearthesilence wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:40 pm WOW. I'm impressed there was that much more detail in the DV tapes. On the other hand, it's more likely that says more about the poor job Studio Canal/Optimum did on their BD.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 5:50 pm
It sure looks like it to my eyes. The shot of Grace Zabriskie does not resemble typical miniDV noise to me.TraverseTown wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 5:46 pmI'm no expert but isn't it more likely that that level of detail in the new screencaps is sort of artificially created through the AI upscaling, rather than being inherent to the source tapes?hearthesilence wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:40 pm WOW. I'm impressed there was that much more detail in the DV tapes. On the other hand, it's more likely that says more about the poor job Studio Canal/Optimum did on their BD.
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:14 pm
I thought it had more to do with the sensor rather than the recording format? Like whether it's SD or an HD camera, if the sensor is actually capable of grabbing more info than what it's actually recording, you'll see a huge improvement compared to a camera that's incapable of doing that. I know I've seen it with an HD camera capturing to SD vs. a standard DV cam and even with a camera that reportedly had a sensor that was like 4K outputting to HD vs standard HD cams. (The model names escape me.)
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:51 pm
This is almost certainly correct. That's why you're seeing it really excel on things like faces in closeup, hair, patterned cloth, etc. -- the AI has a better sense of what those things are and what should be there. Note the wide shot with the rabbit costume in it benefits comparatively little. And it does also look like artificial grain has been added to keep things like skin from looking too plasticine.TraverseTown wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 5:46 pm I'm no expert but isn't it more likely that that level of detail in the new screencaps is sort of artificially created through the AI upscaling, rather than being inherent to the source tapes?
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:58 pm
Yes, but also no. The sensor on the camcorder can certainly make a difference, particularly in low light settings, but miniDV has its own form of compression built in to the tape. Lynch used a fairly standard DV camera on Inland Empire — it really should look like (artfully composed) miniDV.hearthesilence wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:14 pm I thought it had more to do with the sensor rather than the recording format? Like whether it's SD or an HD camera, if the sensor is actually capable of grabbing more info than what it's actually recording, you'll see a huge improvement compared to a camera that's incapable of doing that. I know I've seen it with an HD camera capturing to SD vs. a standard DV cam and even with a camera that reportedly had a sensor that was like 4K outputting to HD vs standard HD cams. (The model names escape me.)
Re: Forthcoming: Inland Empire
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 7:02 pm
If the new detail is artificially fabricated, I guess I'll have to wait for some video to get released, just to see how the integrity of the work holds up (i.e. when faces move, do the details move with it seamlessly or does something look off)