rsortor
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Greetings everyone!
My favorite movie, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR recently was released in a limited-edition blu-ray in China. This film never had a decent transfer to DVD, most of them being letterboxed standard 4:3 frame. A French release was 16:9 but had no English subtitles and the transfer was again, sub-par. No DVD had the stereo audio except a German release that I have not acquired. While the new blu-ray was a BIG improvement on every other presentation, the transfer is much too bright, colors are hued greenish, English subtitles are sloppy and the audio tracks (Mandarin and Cantonese) are mono down-mixes. My Special Project for this film: Color/exposure correction, synching the stereo Cantonese audio from the Laserdisc, new subs placed as low as possible (mostly within the lower matte) and fixing a few digital anomalies like this annoying little spot mask that appears in a few shots near the center top of the frame:
I'm using the Tai Seng laserdisc for the stereo audio. I'll compare some frames from that LD with the blu and my color correction.
LD below:
Raw blu-ray rip:
My color timing: (I haven't done the subtitles yet)
While color timing my fan-fix of this transfer, I'm constantly in awe of the craftsmanship on display in this film. Even though THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR was the huge prestige film from Hong Kong in 1993, lavished with a much higher budget than typical productions, it was still made for a fraction of what ordinary Hollywood features were afforded. I'm speculating here but it seems like this blu-ray transfer received no color correction at all! I also have to wonder if the release prints themselves were photo-chemically timed to lean toward the cyan for that bluish pallette so common in HK films of the early '90s. If there were blue gels on the lights or blue camera filters, I wouldn't see so much natural color that's coming out from this HD transfer in many scenes. I'm grateful that the exposure is too bright, otherwise, if it weren't bright enough, the blacks would be crushed. As it is, I've only noticed one shot that had the brightness blown out and it was a quickie during the climactic transformation flashbacks. Another culprit for the varying levels within scenes is that doggone atmospheric smoke on-set that had to be a major annoyance for the cinematographer! The smoke would diffuse the light to varying degrees. It seems to have dissipated during a single scene's shots & set-ups. It was probably impossible to maintain any kind of lighting continuity with that crap wafting around. Anyway, here are some more before & after pics:
This was the worst offender, a shot that clearly was run through an optical printer to get the freeze-frame and fade out.
For the record, I've edited four features and countless shorts, trailers, show reels and featurettes over the past three years, including a huge restoration job on an old movie so this is a walk in the park! Luckily, I don't have any paying gigs at the moment so nothing held me back from ripping this blu and diving in! I've done a couple of fan-edits in the past but they never really went anywhere beyond my home theater. This time, it's a big deal because THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR is long overdue for a proper HD presentation. The film has a lot of fans world-wide and the blu-ray was limited to a measly 500 copies!
My favorite movie, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR recently was released in a limited-edition blu-ray in China. This film never had a decent transfer to DVD, most of them being letterboxed standard 4:3 frame. A French release was 16:9 but had no English subtitles and the transfer was again, sub-par. No DVD had the stereo audio except a German release that I have not acquired. While the new blu-ray was a BIG improvement on every other presentation, the transfer is much too bright, colors are hued greenish, English subtitles are sloppy and the audio tracks (Mandarin and Cantonese) are mono down-mixes. My Special Project for this film: Color/exposure correction, synching the stereo Cantonese audio from the Laserdisc, new subs placed as low as possible (mostly within the lower matte) and fixing a few digital anomalies like this annoying little spot mask that appears in a few shots near the center top of the frame:
I'm using the Tai Seng laserdisc for the stereo audio. I'll compare some frames from that LD with the blu and my color correction.
LD below:
Raw blu-ray rip:
My color timing: (I haven't done the subtitles yet)
While color timing my fan-fix of this transfer, I'm constantly in awe of the craftsmanship on display in this film. Even though THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR was the huge prestige film from Hong Kong in 1993, lavished with a much higher budget than typical productions, it was still made for a fraction of what ordinary Hollywood features were afforded. I'm speculating here but it seems like this blu-ray transfer received no color correction at all! I also have to wonder if the release prints themselves were photo-chemically timed to lean toward the cyan for that bluish pallette so common in HK films of the early '90s. If there were blue gels on the lights or blue camera filters, I wouldn't see so much natural color that's coming out from this HD transfer in many scenes. I'm grateful that the exposure is too bright, otherwise, if it weren't bright enough, the blacks would be crushed. As it is, I've only noticed one shot that had the brightness blown out and it was a quickie during the climactic transformation flashbacks. Another culprit for the varying levels within scenes is that doggone atmospheric smoke on-set that had to be a major annoyance for the cinematographer! The smoke would diffuse the light to varying degrees. It seems to have dissipated during a single scene's shots & set-ups. It was probably impossible to maintain any kind of lighting continuity with that crap wafting around. Anyway, here are some more before & after pics:
This was the worst offender, a shot that clearly was run through an optical printer to get the freeze-frame and fade out.
For the record, I've edited four features and countless shorts, trailers, show reels and featurettes over the past three years, including a huge restoration job on an old movie so this is a walk in the park! Luckily, I don't have any paying gigs at the moment so nothing held me back from ripping this blu and diving in! I've done a couple of fan-edits in the past but they never really went anywhere beyond my home theater. This time, it's a big deal because THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR is long overdue for a proper HD presentation. The film has a lot of fans world-wide and the blu-ray was limited to a measly 500 copies!