Toho's Godzilla 4K Restoration Project

[smagal]

Is it too much work to make those wires disappear on 4K restoration?

[Malchik]

Is it too much work to make those wires disappear on 4K restoration?

Probably more than Toho is willing to spend. You have to pay some guys to digitally erase the wire frame by frame. I believe that weird blur Toho applied to their Hi-res versions was a half-assed attempt to hide wires.

[Chrispy_G]

Digital wire removal has been done for decades...the cost to do it to old Godzilla films would be pretty negligible when you consider what time/money/effort goes into these restorations. Especially the frame by frame removal of specs, scratches, dirt, and damages...stuff that literally gets painted out frame by frame. Wire removal would basically amount to an extension of that 'touch up work'

The question becomes more of a cinematic "moral choice"...do we want the films to look and sound as good as possible in regards to how they were finished back when they were made...or do we want to enhance them and make them BETTER than they ever were, to tweak and enhance and refresh them?

Wire removal seems fairly harmless, but then it becomes a question of "well where do you stop?" I'm sure they could digitally touch up bad composites and matte lines? Everyone will have a different opinion on exactly where the 'line' should be drawn in terms of 'what is a clean up and enhancement of what is there, and what is an alteration that twists the purity and changes the work?'

I've seen some people throw fits about color grading for some classics. As if old standard def TV presentations or poor VHS and DVD transfers somehow had the magical key to the definitive color palette of the film, and anything that doesn't match that is somehow some grand alteration of the integrity of the film. People will swear up and down "This isn't what it looked like in the theaters X years ago"....as if their memory of that presentation is PERFECT, or as if that theatrical presentation was 100% without a doubt exactly how the filmmakers wanted it.

You get the original Directors and Cinematographers coming back and doing color grading on their own films, and fans are trying to say they 'destroyed' the look of the movie.

SO YEAH....it is all a slippery slope. If Toho wanted to remove the wires, sure, fine. It isn't like there aren't still a TON of dated effects work in these movies. It isn't like everything is 100% convincing and amazing and JUST THE WIRES are the only things that ever takes anyone out of it.

[miguelnuva]

This makes no sence. At 4k you will see all the wireworks. It will destroy the magic completely.

I can see the wires now on the 2004 DvD versions, including Megagurius.

[Malchik]

This makes no sence. At 4k you will see all the wireworks. It will destroy the magic completely.

I can see the wires now on the 2004 DvD versions, including Megagurius.

Megagurius had no excuse. Except for shoestring budget, I guess.

[Gailah 1966]

This makes no sence. At 4k you will see all the wireworks. It will destroy the magic completely.

I can see the wires now on the 2004 DvD versions, including Megagurius.

Exactly! 4k means it will get worse. You will be able to see the wires sharp and clear like never before!

Added in 4 minutes 24 seconds:

Hate to be the bearer of bad news: you could see the wires in the theater when they were shown on 35mm…. (And on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu Ray).

Is a quality 4K scan higher quality/more detailed than what audiences saw in the theaters when these films came out? Almost certainly. But why wouldn’t you want the highest quality scans done and made available? The information is there in the celluloid, even if not all of it made it up on the silver screen.

Well it depends on what release you saw.
There were some steelbook DVDs available where the whole movie was slightly lightend up so you couldn´t see the wires anymore. I remember that in "Son of Godzilla" it was a genius work in re-mixing the pictures brightness and colors because in this movie they used a lot of wires.
I don´t think that the resolution of a VHS was that high to see wires. At least I can´t remember but I do have some VHS and I could check it

[canofhumdingers]

My point was the wires have always been there, from day one. And you can see wires on some of the vhs transfers.

Will 4k scans make them more obvious? Probably. But it also makes EVERYTHING more visible. Which is a good thing. Make the highest quality scan possible and follow good preservation/restoration practices with respect to DNR, color correction, etc. and put it out on home video. If you personally find the clarity or sharpness distracting in some way (such as visible wires) there’s plenty you can do on your end to decrease the image quality. But the goal should always be to preserve and make available as much data as possible from the celluloid. Don’t hamstring a release just because you never noticed the wires or the peep holes in Godzilla’s neck.

[goji1986]

If it’s on the OCN (original camera negative), the director and staff saw it and what’s there is their original intent.

[canofhumdingers]

If it’s on the OCN (original camera negative), the director and staff saw it and what’s there is their original intent.

Well, that’s not exactly true either. They definitely worked within the confines of their medium and understood what was likely (or unlikely) to show up on screen in the final product. They certainly shot with generational loss from the film printing process in mind.

But what they originally intended or wanted and what wound up in the final product was a compromise between original vision, what was physically possible, and what was realistically achievable within real world constraints (time, budget, technology of the time, etc.). I’m certain Tsuburaya would’ve made every wire invisible if he’d had his way. But the reality is they are there and can be seen sometimes.

Added in 8 minutes 52 seconds:
Heck, if Tsuburaya had his way there wouldn’t be any wire at all because Godzilla would’ve been all stop motion like King Kong.

[goji1986]

Well, that’s not exactly true either. They definitely worked within the confines of their medium and understood what was likely (or unlikely) to show up on screen in the final product. They certainly shot with generational loss from the film printing process in mind.

But what they originally intended or wanted and what wound up in the final product was a compromise between original vision, what was physically possible, and what was realistically achievable within real world constraints (time, budget, technology of the time, etc.). I’m certain Tsuburaya would’ve made every wire invisible if he’d had his way. But the reality is they are there and can be seen sometimes.

Added in 8 minutes 52 seconds:
Heck, if Tsuburaya had his way there wouldn’t be any wire at all because Godzilla would’ve been all stop motion like King Kong.

Without a doubt, if every filmmaker had an infinite budget and all the time in the world, every imperfection could be massaged and worked out. But the beauty of filmmaking is its chaos and unpredictable results.

Seeing the films in 4K is as close to seeing what Honda and Tsuburaya saw when they locked the edit. All the imperfections were seen and approved.

I’m not against movies being “fixed” later on, but there’s two criteria that must be met: 1) the director must still be alive or have left copious notes, and 2) the original version is STILL accessible and given equal treatment. Best example is Spielberg’s Blu-ray for Close Encounters, which allows you to watch one of the three versions of the movie. Bad example is too easy but yes, the Star Wars OT.

[Legion1979]

If Toho erases the wires and imperfections I guarantee that eventually they'll be the default versions and you'll never see the original masters ever legally released again. Like Star Wars.

What sane human being would want that?

[TomPenny]

Where in the world can I watch the Biollante 4K Remaster? Completely out of resources!

[miguelnuva]

If Toho erases the wires and imperfections I guarantee that eventually they'll be the default versions and you'll never see the original masters ever legally released again. Like Star Wars.

What sane human being would want that?

What would so wrong with erasing just the wires?

[canofhumdingers]

It’s revisionist. It’s using modern technology to artificially alter a piece of history in a way that wasn’t possible when the art was created.

And as Legion points out, it creates a dangerous slippery slope where the revised art/history becomes the default available version and people begin to accept it as the original without even knowing it’s been altered. I already see this with Star Wars. I’ve met people who had no idea the version they were watching was NOT what audiences saw in 1977. They knew nothing of the many changes the film has been through and never realized the crummy cgi was added 20 years later (and continued to be altered with each new home video release).

[goji1986]

It’s revisionist. It’s using modern technology to artificially alter a piece of history in a way that wasn’t possible when the art was created.

And as Legion points out, it creates a dangerous slippery slope where the revised art/history becomes the default available version and people begin to accept it as the original without even knowing it’s been altered. I already see this with Star Wars. I’ve met people who had no idea the version they were watching was NOT what audiences saw in 1977. They knew nothing of the many changes the film has been through and never realized the crummy cgi was added 20 years later (and continued to be altered with each new home video release).

THIS. Art/film is a time capsule of when it was made. Trying to alter it for modern sensibilities because effects might seem “dated” is a terrible and dangerous practice.

Imagine the sheer rancor and outrage if a museum decided to “fix” an imperfect brush stroke on the Mona Lisa, or added detail to a Monet painting because, “impressionism is an outdated art form and people today demand hyper realism and perfection”. Same concept applies to film.

[Legion1979]

I love being able to get that little peek behind the scenes. There's a shot during the final battle in DAM where you can clearly see a wire attachment on the back of one of Ghidorah's wings. Then a few seconds later the camera movies too high for a split second and you can see the top of the backdrop.

I LOVE stuff like that. For a moment you feel like you're there in the set watching along.

[canofhumdingers]

Things like that are certainly charming and interesting. But sometimes home video shows too much of the frame. One of the releases of Son Of Godzilla (maybe the criterion Blu ray?) repeatedly shows the studio lights and ceiling in the top of the frame above the background matte painting. But the truth is, at the theater the edges of the frame would be masked off if the projector was set up properly. Same with all those ugly splices that flash at the bottom of the frame on several of the criterion discs. If properly matted, the edges with all those imperfections would be hidden.

[Legion1979]

Well that's different. Criterion opened the mattes way too much.

[canofhumdingers]

Yeah I wasn’t arguing with you. Just adding to the conversation. You can probably tell by now that film preservation and theatrical and home video presentation are hobbies I am rather passionate about.

[John Schuermann]

Fwiw, I'd have no problem with "fixed" versions being out there as long as the original always remains in circulation. Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Orson Welles and many others have gone back and revised works. In each case, they kept the originals in circulation so that we could always revisit them.

Playwrites revise plays and composers revise music all the time too. To use Star Wars as an example, you can hear numerous revisions John Williams made to what used to be the opening of the original 1977 soundtrack album (the main titles essentially spliced with part of the end titles).