Blu-Ray has won the Hi-Def war!
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Ben - I've read a lot of articles on Blu and your mentioning is the first I've seen that it's out selling DVD in the same time frame. A lot of industry people have been saying it's not going to catch on until those things I cited change. A story in the news today about some states planning a ban on big screen TVs to concerve energy (CA is one no less) makes me still wonder if it will ever catch on like DVD has.
Hi-Def DVD has been being sold since the mid 2000's and Blu was forced onto consumers then because many industry pros were saying HD DVD was better. I have no opinion either way because I wasn't in with either format. Blu has been the onlt high def format being sold for several years now and it still hasn't been selling the hard numbers DVDs were. To compare, DVD was being sold since 1997/1998 and it had caught on by 2000/2001 with the general public. To also compare, I got my first DVD player in 1999 for about 150.00 and at that time a disc was in the 30.00-50.00 range depending on what it was and who released it. A few years later they were selling very cheap player models for under 50 bucks, sometimes as low as 20 and the DVD titles were 20 or less. That's when your masses jumped on board because it went from being a luxury format to the dominating format. Blu has been a luxury format from the start just like laserdisc before it. It has yet cracked into the masses and I would disagree it has caught on faster than DVD from the examples I've given. Until the players and discs come down in price, and your average player is in the 300-400 range, and the titles are lower in price I can't see it taking over the format. You also have to consider that a lot of retail stores only carry a handful of Blu discs and I'd say even fewer than when DVD and VHS were doing battle. Most Wal-Marts and Targets (which is where a lot of Americans shop for such things) only have one shelf of maybe 20-30 titles (if that) and that's it. When DVD began you'd have a whole section of over a hundred titles to choose from at any given time. I also know a lot of industry professionals in film and who are film buffs who have the attitude that this is all just a gimmick until the next format comes along and they strongly debate if the picture truly is 6 times sharper. They also say they already have all the titles they want and aren't interested in upgrading their collections again. My attitude is more of an I'll probably get new titles from then on and upgrade only some films but not every single one. I have the same "problem" as you, Ben. When you have over a thousand discs there's only so many films you can rotate in during a year and some are just for reference. It's the steady rotation of films I believe will look better in hd that I'll probably upgrade but not the secondary titles.
Here is my other "beef" with blu. Blue has been used as the excuse why Disney DOESN'T put the care in it's releases as it once did. Now that it's here the content is pretty much the same. Now when DVD and Blu sell far more copies than laserdisc ever did how come they could do collectors sets for far less sales for LD than they can for DVD and Blu when they sell much more? They can't even be bothered with easily porting over all LD content that would easily fit. It's another reason I'm not impressed with this because you know they're holding back for yet another format.
Hi-Def DVD has been being sold since the mid 2000's and Blu was forced onto consumers then because many industry pros were saying HD DVD was better. I have no opinion either way because I wasn't in with either format. Blu has been the onlt high def format being sold for several years now and it still hasn't been selling the hard numbers DVDs were. To compare, DVD was being sold since 1997/1998 and it had caught on by 2000/2001 with the general public. To also compare, I got my first DVD player in 1999 for about 150.00 and at that time a disc was in the 30.00-50.00 range depending on what it was and who released it. A few years later they were selling very cheap player models for under 50 bucks, sometimes as low as 20 and the DVD titles were 20 or less. That's when your masses jumped on board because it went from being a luxury format to the dominating format. Blu has been a luxury format from the start just like laserdisc before it. It has yet cracked into the masses and I would disagree it has caught on faster than DVD from the examples I've given. Until the players and discs come down in price, and your average player is in the 300-400 range, and the titles are lower in price I can't see it taking over the format. You also have to consider that a lot of retail stores only carry a handful of Blu discs and I'd say even fewer than when DVD and VHS were doing battle. Most Wal-Marts and Targets (which is where a lot of Americans shop for such things) only have one shelf of maybe 20-30 titles (if that) and that's it. When DVD began you'd have a whole section of over a hundred titles to choose from at any given time. I also know a lot of industry professionals in film and who are film buffs who have the attitude that this is all just a gimmick until the next format comes along and they strongly debate if the picture truly is 6 times sharper. They also say they already have all the titles they want and aren't interested in upgrading their collections again. My attitude is more of an I'll probably get new titles from then on and upgrade only some films but not every single one. I have the same "problem" as you, Ben. When you have over a thousand discs there's only so many films you can rotate in during a year and some are just for reference. It's the steady rotation of films I believe will look better in hd that I'll probably upgrade but not the secondary titles.
Here is my other "beef" with blu. Blue has been used as the excuse why Disney DOESN'T put the care in it's releases as it once did. Now that it's here the content is pretty much the same. Now when DVD and Blu sell far more copies than laserdisc ever did how come they could do collectors sets for far less sales for LD than they can for DVD and Blu when they sell much more? They can't even be bothered with easily porting over all LD content that would easily fit. It's another reason I'm not impressed with this because you know they're holding back for yet another format.
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Sorry, I need to refute your points:
The Digital Bits has <i>often</i> cited articles that state that Blu-ray's adoption rate is faster than that of DVD. Here’s just one from last summer:
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6572676.html
Blu-ray has been the only hi-def format for just over a year--- certainly <b>not</b> “several years”. Toshiba just gave up on HD DVD in February 2008.
http://gizmodo.com/357957/toshiba-kills-hd-dvd-official
Blu-ray is nowhere near the “luxury format” that laserdisc was. LDs could cost $100 per movie, and generally sold for $30-40--- and that was fifteen years ago. That would be a lot more in today’s dollars. Plus, laserdiscs could never be found in Wal-Mart, but my Wal-Marts certainly have Blu-ray discs (though certainly less so than the electronics stores, so far; but they’re not hard to find!). And Blu-ray players can be had for under $300 now (and sub-$150 players are rumoured for later this year).
http://www.amazon.com/Blu-ray-Disc-Play ... =193640011
Personal feelings and anecdotes don’t really count here. The fact is, Blu-ray is a success, even if you and your friends don’t feel it’s worthwhile or affordable for you yet. I’m not trying to convince you to upgrade. That’s a personal choice. But people need to stop passing false info about how Blu-ray is a failure or can’t succeed. It’s simply not true when you look at the numbers. Now, if you were to state that the world economy presents a problem with adoption, you’d likely be right. But player prices have dropped, and discs are easy to buy, with better sales all the time, so your points don’t hold up.
The Digital Bits has <i>often</i> cited articles that state that Blu-ray's adoption rate is faster than that of DVD. Here’s just one from last summer:
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6572676.html
Blu-ray has been the only hi-def format for just over a year--- certainly <b>not</b> “several years”. Toshiba just gave up on HD DVD in February 2008.
http://gizmodo.com/357957/toshiba-kills-hd-dvd-official
Blu-ray is nowhere near the “luxury format” that laserdisc was. LDs could cost $100 per movie, and generally sold for $30-40--- and that was fifteen years ago. That would be a lot more in today’s dollars. Plus, laserdiscs could never be found in Wal-Mart, but my Wal-Marts certainly have Blu-ray discs (though certainly less so than the electronics stores, so far; but they’re not hard to find!). And Blu-ray players can be had for under $300 now (and sub-$150 players are rumoured for later this year).
http://www.amazon.com/Blu-ray-Disc-Play ... =193640011
Personal feelings and anecdotes don’t really count here. The fact is, Blu-ray is a success, even if you and your friends don’t feel it’s worthwhile or affordable for you yet. I’m not trying to convince you to upgrade. That’s a personal choice. But people need to stop passing false info about how Blu-ray is a failure or can’t succeed. It’s simply not true when you look at the numbers. Now, if you were to state that the world economy presents a problem with adoption, you’d likely be right. But player prices have dropped, and discs are easy to buy, with better sales all the time, so your points don’t hold up.
(Post Edited because the Original Was "Just Too Garsh Darn Long" to quote Goofy... Besides, Rand covered most of the points I wanted to make in his shorter, much more nicely-put Gettysburg Address. Read a book if you don't understand that last comment, folks!)
CB,
The players are going down in price faster than the discs, for sure, but even on that front a lot of the earlier Blu-Ray discs can be had for under $25 now. I see sales on discs like Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Enter The Dragon, and a whole lot of other discs for $20 -- sometimes $15 -- all the time now.
Sure, the newer discs still retail $29 or better but what do you expect for a relatively new format? Look online for better deals on newer software. You're not going to find those deals in-store all the time.
Even DVD took a while to go down $20 or less! The $19.99 DVD didn't happen for at least the first five years of DVD. In the time before new-release $19.99 DVDs became standard, a bunch of online stores competed viciously against each other with 40 and 50% discounts! Most of them went out of business because they weren't able to pay their bills at those discounts. That won't happen again with BD, and certainly not in a recession.
As for complaining about multiple re-releases and repackaging, get used to it. That's been going on for years and has been successful in many cases. The media companies are going to keep on doing that as long as they can get newer consumers to buy discs and collectors who already own previous releases to go after the newer releases. That was also true on VHS, too. The practice didn't start with DVD.
LD was a failure as a mass-market technology, no doubt, so it almost had to be promoted with occasional deluxe box set releases for its few collectors. It really only sold to a very small collector's market in Japan and the US. The efforts of one Japanese company (Pioneer) are what kept it alive for close to 20 years. BD is being aimed as mass-market and mass-market doesn't get all the extras that an elite format does. The costs in many cases are too high. I've seen tons of boxed DVD sets (ex: Ten Commandments, Gone With The Wind) go on sale for huge discounts at Wal-Mart from time to time. Even then, the losses aren't that high as long as we're talking (3-4 cent-to-manufacture) DISC-ONLY sets and NOT deluxe boxed sets packed in with books, lithographs and 12-inch discs that cost $6-$7 to manufacture!
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The people "in the industry" pooh-poohing Blu-Ray are mainly the people that thought HD-DVD was the format to buy and Microsoft's PR department. (Microsoft had its own reasons for wanting BD to fail. They really didn't care whether HD-DVD took off or not.) They were wrong and can't own up to backing the wrong horse when said-horse didn't even have the support of the majority of Hollywood studios even before WB became BD-exclusive. They continue to lie about the BD/HD-DVD situation to this day. It's fairly well-documented. Some of these guys even worked for Circuit City and we all know how that story ended!
Don't let your own biases blind you to the reality. Sure, BD is expensive, but most technology was when it was brand-new and some companies maintain expensiveness as part of their image (Apple, Lexus, Mercedes, etc.). BD is here to stay for many years. In the mean time, enjoy your DVDs because the older technology will continue to co-exist with BD for quite a while, too. That's why BD players were made backwards-compatible with DVD.
CB,
The players are going down in price faster than the discs, for sure, but even on that front a lot of the earlier Blu-Ray discs can be had for under $25 now. I see sales on discs like Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Enter The Dragon, and a whole lot of other discs for $20 -- sometimes $15 -- all the time now.
Sure, the newer discs still retail $29 or better but what do you expect for a relatively new format? Look online for better deals on newer software. You're not going to find those deals in-store all the time.
Even DVD took a while to go down $20 or less! The $19.99 DVD didn't happen for at least the first five years of DVD. In the time before new-release $19.99 DVDs became standard, a bunch of online stores competed viciously against each other with 40 and 50% discounts! Most of them went out of business because they weren't able to pay their bills at those discounts. That won't happen again with BD, and certainly not in a recession.
As for complaining about multiple re-releases and repackaging, get used to it. That's been going on for years and has been successful in many cases. The media companies are going to keep on doing that as long as they can get newer consumers to buy discs and collectors who already own previous releases to go after the newer releases. That was also true on VHS, too. The practice didn't start with DVD.
LD was a failure as a mass-market technology, no doubt, so it almost had to be promoted with occasional deluxe box set releases for its few collectors. It really only sold to a very small collector's market in Japan and the US. The efforts of one Japanese company (Pioneer) are what kept it alive for close to 20 years. BD is being aimed as mass-market and mass-market doesn't get all the extras that an elite format does. The costs in many cases are too high. I've seen tons of boxed DVD sets (ex: Ten Commandments, Gone With The Wind) go on sale for huge discounts at Wal-Mart from time to time. Even then, the losses aren't that high as long as we're talking (3-4 cent-to-manufacture) DISC-ONLY sets and NOT deluxe boxed sets packed in with books, lithographs and 12-inch discs that cost $6-$7 to manufacture!
*************************
The people "in the industry" pooh-poohing Blu-Ray are mainly the people that thought HD-DVD was the format to buy and Microsoft's PR department. (Microsoft had its own reasons for wanting BD to fail. They really didn't care whether HD-DVD took off or not.) They were wrong and can't own up to backing the wrong horse when said-horse didn't even have the support of the majority of Hollywood studios even before WB became BD-exclusive. They continue to lie about the BD/HD-DVD situation to this day. It's fairly well-documented. Some of these guys even worked for Circuit City and we all know how that story ended!
Don't let your own biases blind you to the reality. Sure, BD is expensive, but most technology was when it was brand-new and some companies maintain expensiveness as part of their image (Apple, Lexus, Mercedes, etc.). BD is here to stay for many years. In the mean time, enjoy your DVDs because the older technology will continue to co-exist with BD for quite a while, too. That's why BD players were made backwards-compatible with DVD.
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Speaking as someone who started buying laserdiscs in 1986 ..
I lived in rural North Florida at that time, and I had to drive well over 20 miles to the nearest store that even carried laserdiscs. The nearest store with a 'decent selection' of LD's was a 300+ mile drive. As stated above, the price per-disc was rather steep; US$50 for a single-disc movie was not uncommon. Imported (and un-translated) anime LD's -- when they could be found -- were nearly twice that cost.
And this was over five years into the lifetime of the LD format.
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Blu-Ray compares far more favorably with DVD in price-point, availability/shelf-space in retail stores, and consumer adoption than with similar comparisons to LD.
Regardless, DVD is not going anywhere anytime soon .. there are still hundreds of DVD titles being released each week, with no sign of slowdown. Blu-Ray does have a firm 'foot-hold' in the home-video market, however .. so, the two formats are destined to co-exist for a while.
I lived in rural North Florida at that time, and I had to drive well over 20 miles to the nearest store that even carried laserdiscs. The nearest store with a 'decent selection' of LD's was a 300+ mile drive. As stated above, the price per-disc was rather steep; US$50 for a single-disc movie was not uncommon. Imported (and un-translated) anime LD's -- when they could be found -- were nearly twice that cost.
And this was over five years into the lifetime of the LD format.
-------------------
Blu-Ray compares far more favorably with DVD in price-point, availability/shelf-space in retail stores, and consumer adoption than with similar comparisons to LD.
Regardless, DVD is not going anywhere anytime soon .. there are still hundreds of DVD titles being released each week, with no sign of slowdown. Blu-Ray does have a firm 'foot-hold' in the home-video market, however .. so, the two formats are destined to co-exist for a while.
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I would also add, if it hasn't been clarified above and I missed it in my skim-read through, that BD has always been the quality format of choice. HD-DVD was lagging behind in what it could get onto a disc when the upgraded BD specs were announced, BD promised more once the Java apps were modified, and most of the studios were behind BD, or at least BD and HD-DVD, while only two or three holdouts remained clinging on to the already dead HD-DVD format.
Ed...practically everything in your original reply to me was factually wrong and biased by your personal opinion!
Ed...practically everything in your original reply to me was factually wrong and biased by your personal opinion!
Hate to pour gasoline on the arguments, but when some stuff is legitimate it has to be raised ---
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/ ... 40909.html
Jahnke talks about what bugs him about the format. Bill Hunt addresses his own criticisms in his daily column which syncs up with that bugs me the most about home video now in general but the BD-specific issues are very troubling.
Multiple releases are a fact of life. It's up to the consumers to decide what to buy and if they get tired of it, they can make the studios pay by not buying things they already have!
Right now, I'm most concerned about audio quality -- many BDs don't have lossless audio -- and the scrubbing of film grain from releases of earlier movies.
This has become an issue with Disney BD releases of its earliest animated features. We've had two re-issues that apparently feature film grain removal (Pinocchio and now Snow White which was infamous for this in its last DVD incarnation) and there's no sign that other studios have learned from this, either.
Until I pick up either The Day The Earth Stood Still or Casablanca on BD, I can't be sure that those films were left alone (grain-wise), either.
Extras are a concern, too, but I could do without BD-live and really just want deleted scenes, trailers, documentaries, and still galleries. Audio commentaries are hit-and-miss unless it's the filmmakers and they bring some insight into it... otherwise, I might as well be watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The same stuff we got on DVD before that started getting mucked with is what I want. I can do without books and lithos that I could buy from Disney online if I wanted to thank you very much.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/ ... 40909.html
Jahnke talks about what bugs him about the format. Bill Hunt addresses his own criticisms in his daily column which syncs up with that bugs me the most about home video now in general but the BD-specific issues are very troubling.
Multiple releases are a fact of life. It's up to the consumers to decide what to buy and if they get tired of it, they can make the studios pay by not buying things they already have!
Right now, I'm most concerned about audio quality -- many BDs don't have lossless audio -- and the scrubbing of film grain from releases of earlier movies.
This has become an issue with Disney BD releases of its earliest animated features. We've had two re-issues that apparently feature film grain removal (Pinocchio and now Snow White which was infamous for this in its last DVD incarnation) and there's no sign that other studios have learned from this, either.
Until I pick up either The Day The Earth Stood Still or Casablanca on BD, I can't be sure that those films were left alone (grain-wise), either.
Extras are a concern, too, but I could do without BD-live and really just want deleted scenes, trailers, documentaries, and still galleries. Audio commentaries are hit-and-miss unless it's the filmmakers and they bring some insight into it... otherwise, I might as well be watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The same stuff we got on DVD before that started getting mucked with is what I want. I can do without books and lithos that I could buy from Disney online if I wanted to thank you very much.
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Of course, there's a big difference between annoyances and sales figures. Adam raises good points, but they don't involve Blu-ray failing as a format in a retail sense.
Lossless audio, film grain, missing extras, etc. <i>are</i> legitimate issues, but do not threaten adoption of the format on a large scale. For every disappointing release, there have been a number of great or even awesome ones--- just like DVD. And, the average consumer simply isn't all that aware of all those other issues. They just know about getting a better picture. Which is fine.
DVD had bumps in the road too--- look at how long it was before anamorphic widescreen became standard, for example. And the first DVDs were mostly devoid of extras, or had rehashed laserdisc transfers. And DVD managed to survive those legitimate criticisms just fine.
It's good to have this dialog, though. I'm all for making Blu-ray as good as it should be.
Lossless audio, film grain, missing extras, etc. <i>are</i> legitimate issues, but do not threaten adoption of the format on a large scale. For every disappointing release, there have been a number of great or even awesome ones--- just like DVD. And, the average consumer simply isn't all that aware of all those other issues. They just know about getting a better picture. Which is fine.
DVD had bumps in the road too--- look at how long it was before anamorphic widescreen became standard, for example. And the first DVDs were mostly devoid of extras, or had rehashed laserdisc transfers. And DVD managed to survive those legitimate criticisms just fine.
It's good to have this dialog, though. I'm all for making Blu-ray as good as it should be.
Oh,
I think Blu-Ray (why does everybody like to hyphenate it?) is far from a failure now. It's secure.
Recordable BD will take a few more years and price cuts to take hold but it'll eventually overtake DVD-R/-RW as the recordable optical disc format of choice. I don't think, however, that we're going to see standalone BD-Recorders in North America like Japan has. The American entertainment industry is doing a good job of blocking convenient hi-def recorders that aren't glorified hard drives without built-in burners. It's virtually impossible as it is now to get a standard-def DVD-Recorder with built-in hard drive in stores. I think I got mine just before the axe started falling on that bit of hardware and my model was one of the cheaper (but good) ones, too! People are so used to paying under $120 for a decent DVD players and get sticker-shock when they have to pay over $200 for any kind of video player.
I'm a bit more concerned about some of the bad habits studios are falling into with the lack of extras from certain studios and the overhyped push on BD-Live which frankly I'm not crazy about.
Prices aren't all that bad across the board. There are still some decent films -- older catalog titles, of course! -- that can be had for $15 now and deals still show up once in a while. Right now, DeepDiscount is doing a 42% off sale on Blu-Rays. If I had the cash, I'd probably get a disc now... Mostly films I've skipped on DVD for a variety of reasons that look tempting on BD now. If a format is being hyped at Wal-Mart and Target, you know it's here to stay.
I think Blu-Ray (why does everybody like to hyphenate it?) is far from a failure now. It's secure.
Recordable BD will take a few more years and price cuts to take hold but it'll eventually overtake DVD-R/-RW as the recordable optical disc format of choice. I don't think, however, that we're going to see standalone BD-Recorders in North America like Japan has. The American entertainment industry is doing a good job of blocking convenient hi-def recorders that aren't glorified hard drives without built-in burners. It's virtually impossible as it is now to get a standard-def DVD-Recorder with built-in hard drive in stores. I think I got mine just before the axe started falling on that bit of hardware and my model was one of the cheaper (but good) ones, too! People are so used to paying under $120 for a decent DVD players and get sticker-shock when they have to pay over $200 for any kind of video player.
I'm a bit more concerned about some of the bad habits studios are falling into with the lack of extras from certain studios and the overhyped push on BD-Live which frankly I'm not crazy about.
Prices aren't all that bad across the board. There are still some decent films -- older catalog titles, of course! -- that can be had for $15 now and deals still show up once in a while. Right now, DeepDiscount is doing a 42% off sale on Blu-Rays. If I had the cash, I'd probably get a disc now... Mostly films I've skipped on DVD for a variety of reasons that look tempting on BD now. If a format is being hyped at Wal-Mart and Target, you know it's here to stay.
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...the spelling of "Blu-ray" is not a mistake, the character "e" was intentionally left out so the term could be registered as a trademark.
The correct full name is Blu-ray Disc, not Blu-ray Disk (incorrect spelling)
The correct shortened name is Blu-ray, not Blu-Ray (incorrect capitalization) or Blue-ray (incorrect spelling)
The correct abbreviation is BD, not BR or BRD (wrong abbreviation)
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Yep, just like LaserDisc should be written like that, technically, since it is abbreviated to LD. Sometimes it is two words, but most of the official logos have it as LaserDisc.
With Blu-ray, it took me a while to get used to it not being BRD (still makes more sense to me!) or to not capitalise the R in Blu-Ray (again to my old-schooling eyes like it should be), but I guess it's Sony's format and they can advise the correct written forms.
BD...I quite like it...it's like a new LD.
Very good points from Adam Jahnke on the <I>concept</I> of BD. The one thing I hate right now is the sluggish nature...but then DVD was like that. And while I feel (and said) that the non-grain approach to Pinocchio and Snow White almost robbed the images devoid of all life, they do look amazing, and better than Walt would have seen them. If he'd had that technology to present his films, you know he would have gone with it.
With Blu-ray, it took me a while to get used to it not being BRD (still makes more sense to me!) or to not capitalise the R in Blu-Ray (again to my old-schooling eyes like it should be), but I guess it's Sony's format and they can advise the correct written forms.
BD...I quite like it...it's like a new LD.
Very good points from Adam Jahnke on the <I>concept</I> of BD. The one thing I hate right now is the sluggish nature...but then DVD was like that. And while I feel (and said) that the non-grain approach to Pinocchio and Snow White almost robbed the images devoid of all life, they do look amazing, and better than Walt would have seen them. If he'd had that technology to present his films, you know he would have gone with it.
BD... The girl-next-door you took to the prom!
BTW, Ben, what do you mean by lifeless but images still looking better?
Kind of contradictory, isn't it?
I like clean film, myself, but prefer some grain as opposed to "video look." I'm not crazy about the pure clean look myself. Some grain is fine.
P.S. -- I had a chance to finally watch "The Notorious Bettie Page" on DVD and liked it very much still. I did see it in the theaters when it was released. The filmmakers did an incredible job mimicking technicolor in the full-color scenes of the film. (Technicolor film hasn't been produced for decades in the US and as far as I know a lot of the working equipment was sold to China.) For whatever reasons, whenever they transitioned to color Gretchen Mol's look and performance convinced me even more that she was channeling Bettie Page in those scenes.
I'm not saying the B & W scenes were bad by any means but there was an additional energy in those full-color scenes. There were times I thought I was looking at the real Bettie Page instead of an actress dressed and made up to look like her. The resemblance was uncanny in the full-color scenes.
BTW, Ben, what do you mean by lifeless but images still looking better?
Kind of contradictory, isn't it?
I like clean film, myself, but prefer some grain as opposed to "video look." I'm not crazy about the pure clean look myself. Some grain is fine.
P.S. -- I had a chance to finally watch "The Notorious Bettie Page" on DVD and liked it very much still. I did see it in the theaters when it was released. The filmmakers did an incredible job mimicking technicolor in the full-color scenes of the film. (Technicolor film hasn't been produced for decades in the US and as far as I know a lot of the working equipment was sold to China.) For whatever reasons, whenever they transitioned to color Gretchen Mol's look and performance convinced me even more that she was channeling Bettie Page in those scenes.
I'm not saying the B & W scenes were bad by any means but there was an additional energy in those full-color scenes. There were times I thought I was looking at the real Bettie Page instead of an actress dressed and made up to look like her. The resemblance was uncanny in the full-color scenes.
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I thought Mol did an exceptional job in that picture.
On "lifeless but looking better": watching Pinocchio I was struck that I was <I>really</I> seeing the artwork for the first time, devoid of any distractions. It was quite beautiful. But that the same time, I felt a lack of warmth or tangibility...the removal of all the hand-crafted "analog" nature of the film had left an amazingly clear image, but one lacking any sense of its vintage or any of those slight imperfections that "used" to make it what it was.
That kind explain it?
On "lifeless but looking better": watching Pinocchio I was struck that I was <I>really</I> seeing the artwork for the first time, devoid of any distractions. It was quite beautiful. But that the same time, I felt a lack of warmth or tangibility...the removal of all the hand-crafted "analog" nature of the film had left an amazingly clear image, but one lacking any sense of its vintage or any of those slight imperfections that "used" to make it what it was.
That kind explain it?
Ah!
Gotcha -- I see.
That's the nature of digital... So mechanical.
It has its advantages over analog but it's definitely not the most natural look, either.
It's sort of like the differences between coloring by hand and film photography versus digital coloring and digital film.
The real reasons people transition to digital is convenience, easy erasure and coloring, and the fact that you can skip the process of film development for photography. (For drawings, it's very easy to save the original drawings on a lower layer in any compositing/pixel paint program and be able to reference it without worrying about losing it when a mistake is made. So, so much easier to fix problems digitally!) Sure, it makes it easier to correct mistakes and you don't have the problem of overexposure or going outside the lines as it were and marring a drawing but it does lack "the human touch."
One good thing that has arisen are scratch and grain filters. As long as they're not overdone, they can do an excellent job of making digital film look more natural to the eye. It's a pity that the only uses most film makers have for these film filters are to age new film stock/digital film to make it contemporary with the old newsreel look or to match visual effects to live-action...
Gotcha -- I see.
That's the nature of digital... So mechanical.
It has its advantages over analog but it's definitely not the most natural look, either.
It's sort of like the differences between coloring by hand and film photography versus digital coloring and digital film.
The real reasons people transition to digital is convenience, easy erasure and coloring, and the fact that you can skip the process of film development for photography. (For drawings, it's very easy to save the original drawings on a lower layer in any compositing/pixel paint program and be able to reference it without worrying about losing it when a mistake is made. So, so much easier to fix problems digitally!) Sure, it makes it easier to correct mistakes and you don't have the problem of overexposure or going outside the lines as it were and marring a drawing but it does lack "the human touch."
One good thing that has arisen are scratch and grain filters. As long as they're not overdone, they can do an excellent job of making digital film look more natural to the eye. It's a pity that the only uses most film makers have for these film filters are to age new film stock/digital film to make it contemporary with the old newsreel look or to match visual effects to live-action...