1175 Inland Empire

[pistolwink]

I mean, David Lynch can do whatever he wants to his own film, but this is pretty clearly (as much as the Wong Kar-wai "restorations") a significant revision, such that the images (to my eyes anyway) look more like what folks might expect from contemporary HD digital than what was generated by the prosumer DCR in the mid 2000s.

[onedimension]

I'm not hating it. Subtle, nothing drastic like early Warner DNR

[swo17]

I guess the difference here is that if you want to see a true original version of the film, earlier home video releases are perfectly adequate

[tenia]

More screenshots from the new version at Blu-Ray.com

Differences of screencaps resolution aside (etc), some of these new caps really looks awful. I know this is DV trying to be improved, but the William Macy cap, the rabbit one and the last Dern one just looks like an extremely sharpened picture with only sometimes an underlying sense of definition, reminding me of the Terminator 2 4K schizophrenic rubbish that both looks quite detailed but also totally unnatural from a technical standpoint.

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.)

If I'm not mistaken, the important element of the workflow remains the raw recorded output file. If your sensor is HD but you're recording in SD, then you're stuck to SD anyway. It'd be like using an incredibly good microphone to record an orchestra but only to record on a crappy audio-tape : you're still stuck to a crappy audio-tape in the end, and it's extremely likely a not-so-good microphone who have suited such an output format.

[Finch]

The comments about the film's ugly look must have gotten to Lynch if they are really trying for an AI assisted upscale or he genuinely likes the results. Hopefully he lets Criterion have the original transfer too but with the colors on the Blu-Ray matching his Rhino/Absurda DVD. If this upscale is the only version ending up on the final product, I'm likely going to get the US DVD.

[RIP Film]

I’m going to be that guy who thought the original dvd looked bad when I watched it on a standard def TV, and whatever Lynch is doing is already inline with the metallic digital aesthetic of the film. To me it seems the scaling just blew up all the flaws while also bringing in some much needed resolution to the faces (artificial or not). The biggest point of concern though is the color, with compositions like the William H. Macy shot falling apart without the stronger reds.

[Finch]

Yet more caps

Color comparison US DVD> UK BD > new US release

[soundchaser]

I may just stick with my Rhino DVD if the saturation is this wonky throughout.

[hearthesilence]

Did they add a light layer of simulated film grain to the new mastering? I kind of looks like it when I compared the black & white hallway shot, the talk show shot, and the close-ups of Laura Dern (like the one with her credit on-screen). There is a logic to it since they did make film prints of this movie. I can see Lynch wanting to simulate that, but doing it in a way that preserves as much data from the original master as possible.

EDIT: Ah, should've checked upthread.

And it does also look like artificial grain has been added to keep things like skin from looking too plasticine.

Yeah, it really eliminates the blank smoothness video has when something's blown out and all the data's past the point of clipping. It is more pleasing to the eye IMHO. I actually kept my old DVD of Hoop Dreams for similar reasons since it keeps all the work they did to simulate a film look even though doing so degrades the image.

[dadaistnun]

Maybe I missed it, but where are these screenshots from the "new US release" sourced from?

[dekadetia]

They're from Janus's website: https://www.janusfilms.com/films/2039

[dadaistnun]

The images in Finch's first link have no corresponding images on Janus's site, though; I wonder they might be comparing the dvd to the UK blu-ray. The comparison in the second link (from the "Rabbits" set) could have been grabbed from the new trailer, which I believe is the only look we've had at the restoration so far.

Yet more caps

Color comparison US DVD> UK BD > new US release

[dekadetia]

My mistake, I thought we were talking about the earlier comps. I think you're right that this particular set of caps are DVD to Blu, they don't appear to be AI upscaled at all (though they do appear to have light grain added to them). AI would've likely done more to resolve the pixelation in the shot of the man, tree and house.

[yoloswegmaster]

Trailer for the remaster.

[yoloswegmaster]

Touring Poster:




List of theaters that will be showing the new remaster starting next month.

[Finch]

Trailer for the remaster.

I actually quite liked this trailer though it gets points deducted for spoiling the best scare in the film. If you haven't seen the film yet, I'd skip this clip.

[therewillbeblus]

It doesn't provide context for the scare, so I doubt it'll do anything except take away novelty from a memorable image, if anyone remembers the trailer anyways a couple months down the line. Still, you probably know if you want to see this film already if you haven't, so no real point regardless

[yoloswegmaster]

Notes on the Remaster:

Inland Empire was shot in SD 4x3 480i29.97 on DV tape. After being captured, the footage was edited in the same format in Avid. The footage was then converted to HD 16x9 1080p23.98 and input into Clipster for remote DaVinci 2K grading. During this process, a Teranex converter was used to treat video noise on selected shots. With the digital-intermediate (DI) master complete, it was output to 35 mm film and HDCAM-SR tape.

In 2021, the HDCAM-SR source was recaptured and upscaled to UHD/4K 16x9 via numerous algorithms in Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI software. Those tests were compared against the original HD video master as well as a 4K scan of the first reel of the 35 mm digital negative.

From these tests, director David Lynch chose the upscale made using the GaiaHD algorithm and footage that had first been downscaled back to SD in order to throw away false detail introduced during the original HD conversion and allow the most effective use of the AI upscale (footage upscaled directly from the HD was less noticeably “4K-looking”).

After the entire movie had been processed, it underwent quality control for image-breaking artifacts, such as faces becoming garbled. Several shots were flagged and then redone using the next best Gigapixel setting.

Once the upscale was complete, the 4K image was brought into DaVinci Resolve for a new color pass to manage color balance and saturation as well as add a slight layer of grain.

The audio presented for this release was remastered in January 2022 by the film’s original rerecording mixers, Lynch, Ron Eng, and Dean Hurley. Working from the original 5.1 mix stems, careful scene-by-scene adjustments involving noise reduction, dialogue levels, and overall dynamics decisions were made under Lynch’s supervision. This new mix preserves the overall color and channel assignment of the original mix, which by design maintained a “front heavy” delivery of the mix’s energy, with intentionally minimal surround activity.

The DCP was authored using the easyDCP plug-in for DaVinci Resolve

[tenia]

I wonder why they didn't simply directly upscale the 480i source to 4k (maybe because it makes clearer this is quite non-sensical from a technical stand point) instead of upscaling the HDCAM-SR of the upscale.
It almost looks like this project was aiming at having the longest list of intermediate elements instead of going straightest to the source.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I wonder why they didn't simply directly upscale the 480i source to 4k (maybe because it makes clearer this is quite non-sensical from a technical stand point) instead of upscaling the HDCAM-SR of the upscale.
It almost looks like this project was aiming at having the longest list of intermediate elements instead of going straightest to the source.

From the sound of the American Cinematographer article, the only post-production done in SD was the raw edit and cropping to 1.85:1, with all the color correction, motion stabilization, and other unspecified "fixes" being done in HD or 2K. So I guess Lynch decided that this bizarre HDCAM-to-4K-to-SD-to-4K process was preferable to redoing all of that.

[tenia]

That's the only explanation I could think of, but still think it's weird since (I don't think I'm mistaken) the restorations of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Dr, sourced from the OCNs, had to go through the grading processes and any other stuff, so that would have been tasks to performed on Inland Empire if it was a more traditionnally shot movie in this regard.

It seems also strange as they could simply have upscaled to 4K from the HDCAM-SR tapes, but instead chose to go from HD to SD only then to go back all the way up to 4K (the claim to "throw away false detail introduced during the original HD conversion" looks placebo to me - it's possible it might instead generate other issues because of having so many intermediate distorsions applied).

This reminds me of what Second Sight did on The Babadook, which was to go back to the original final 2k files rather than the 1080p one for the upscale, in order to bypass any distorsion applied at the (slight) downscale step. Here, it looks like the exact opposite and the restoration team might actually have had to work to compensate for stuff introduced during the original HD upscale workflow, but I wonder how much new issues might be generated here instead.

[moonboot]

It would be nice to get the "room to dream" dvd scene as part of this new release.... It's a musical piece with the guy from the short BBQ scene, and two of the girls from the group of hookers.

The scene implies that they maybe sometime in a studio writing original music. I don't think an official ost was ever released, am I right?

[jordan-r]

There was a soundtrack and a score (the score only ever got a digital release).

https://www.discogs.com/release/1077437 ... Soundtrack
https://www.discogs.com/release/3687198 ... ture-Score

[Stefan Andersson]

On Inland Empire (+ trailer):
https://hyperallergic.com/722181/inland ... storation/

[MitchPerrywinkle]

I just rewatched this film last summer, but I'm tempted to make the trip to see it in a cinema. I got the trailer for the restoration before Memoria at IFC Center and while I'm not holding out on the revisionist stance to make the film's visuals any more pleasing to the eye, I'm very keen to hear the film's sound design in a theatrical setting with a decent speaker setup.