141 Children of Paradise

[movielocke]

since we're talking about the "magic" of film grain, which is more magical, the film grain of the original negative? The film grain of a contact print? The film grain of a second generation release print?

It seems a bit wishy washy to me to elevate film grain so highly without specifying which grain you want to see. Technology enables us to see the grain as it appears on the negative, but no person would have ever seen this 'magical' grain as we might see it on a bluray release. Even the editors and director, producers etc would see the "magical" grain in first generation contact prints, which will be a substantially different grain structure than found on the negative. most audiences would see prints that had a different grain structure still.

I think there's a big risk in sanctifying grain and the terminology used here in discussing grain most holy (hail) seems unhelpful or even counter-productive; when if you get into the details of grain it's going to be different depending on the heritage of the element you're observing.

I'm not defending this transfer, it's absolutely unfortunate that digital tools were used to destroy the image. I love it when grain is not fucked with in transfers, but I'm also aware that the grain of the original negative was never going to be viewed on a screen unless the negative cutter somehow rigged up a projector to run a negative and simultaneously reverse the image. Since that would never happen, I know that o-neg grain is not representative of grain seen by the filmmakers nor by audiences.

[zedz]

I think you're tying yourself in conceptual knots unnecessarily. The grain we want to see is the grain from whatever the print source of the digital transfer is. All we want is an accurate transfer of whatever film element was used, since that's going to be as good as it gets for that specific source. Hypothetical grain structures from other hypothetical sources don't need to come into it, though obviously the closer the source is to the original negative, the better it should be in terms of clarity and loss of detail from 'compounded grain' (if that's even a valid expression).

[Gregory]

What I'm hearing from most people in this discussion is not sanctifying the grain per se; it has more to do with the all-too-familiar problems involved in the removal of it, the attendant loss of detail, and the generally less film-like quality of the end product, but not because grain is being "elevated" to anything more than what it is. When I read people praising the presence of grain in a transfer, I think they're talking about something more substantial: the overall level of detail and fidelity to the source.

[MichaelB]

What I'm hearing from most people in this discussion is not sanctifying the grain per se; it has more to do with the all-too-familiar problems involved in the removal of it, the attendant loss of detail, and the generally less film-like quality of the end product, but not because grain is being "elevated" to anything more than what it is. When I read people praising the presence of grain in a transfer, I think they're talking about something more substantial: the overall level of detail and fidelity to the source.

Yes, absolutely - I certainly don't fetishise grain per se, and wasn't the least bit fazed by the news that MoC's The Passion of Joan of Arc isn't as visibly grainy as a lot of other 1920s Blu-rays: given that the source was an original nitrate print in surprisingly good condition, that's really not a surprise. Similarly, if the source was 65mm, or slow-speed 35mm, I'd also expect grain to be barely visible.

[movielocke]

What I'm hearing from most people in this discussion is not sanctifying the grain per se; it has more to do with the all-too-familiar problems involved in the removal of it, the attendant loss of detail, and the generally less film-like quality of the end product, but not because grain is being "elevated" to anything more than what it is. When I read people praising the presence of grain in a transfer, I think they're talking about something more substantial: the overall level of detail and fidelity to the source.

I agree, I should have just gone with a simpler post decrying the elevation of grain to magical status. it was the many repetitions of magic that caused me to type all that, and as someone else said, tied myself in conceptual knots.

It is worth remembering that not all grain is created equal, and giving it an aura of "magic" is unhelpful, imo.

[Gregory]

Peerpee used the word in two posts, and I believe no one else did. In the latter of the two he referred to "magical detail and depth" with respect to transfers with intact grain so I thought it was fairly clear that it wasn't about grain per se being "magic" but more a question of what's lost when it's treated as a problem and tampered with.

[peerpee]

It's "magic" that is lost when natural grain is removed and a computerised "regraining" is attempted. I don't think there's anything unhelpful about using this word in this context – 35mm film is as close to magic as we get in the real world. Degraining it removes so much, and then attempting to regrain it (with random grain) is not at all clever and should be discouraged as much as possible.

[David M.]

Personally, I don't feel as strongly against regraining as that. It's one of those cases where you would likely only notice the process if it's done badly. But, you would need a hell of a good reason to go down the degrain/regrain route, and only for a handful of shots where there was no alternative. Doing it routinely would be insane.

[peerpee]

But you're regraining something that's been smoothed out and denatured from frame to frame to start with (because it's been degrained). You're adding a texture (no matter how good) to something that is now much less than what it was. So you're polishing a turd no matter how you regrain. It's not so much the "regraining" as the fact that *degraining* went on beforehand.

Obviously, there are situations where grain might need to be carefully subdued, but not completely removed and then regrained.

[movielocke]

as someone who has handled a lot of 35mm film elements in various stages (unexposed, exposed, processed, printed etc), I can assure you that 35mm has nothing to do with magic. Film is science and viewing a film print is an optical illusion that is enabled by the sorry limitations of the human brain, there's no more magic to it than there is to a common coin or card trick.

Naturally you know all this, but I think entering all these subjective associations of mystique to something that is knowable is quite silly, film grain adds to the image detail not because of 'magic' but for quite sound, knowable reasons. If you want to obscure those reasons, it just makes it easier for technicians who don't think film grain is magic to ignore the real, defensible reasons for maintaining film grain.

TECHNICIAN 1
Ugh! Look at all that grain, better wipe that crap out, so ugly!

TECHNICIAN 2
No, don't! It has a really great look.

TECHNICIAN 1 (laughing)
What?

TECHNICIAN 2
I mean, that film grain, it kind of has a magical feel to it don't you think?

TECHNICIAN 1
You're such an idiot. Hey everyone, Doofus here thinks film grain is Magical

Everyone laughs. Forever more, at that job, Technician 2 is continually mocked because of this event. Ignorance endures and bad practices persist.


****

TECHNICIAN 1
Ugh! Look at all that grain, better wipe that crap out, so ugly!

TECHNICIAN 2
No, don't! It adds a lot detail to the image.

TECHNICIAN 1 (laughing)
What?

TECHNICIAN 2
I mean, that film grain, any given frame it looks like a mess. But each frame is different, and when you play it back, those differences add up to a lot more detail for your eye to discern. Look play back this shot you just took the grain off of. It's smoothed out everywhere. Now play back the shot as it was originally, it's grainy, but look at all the extra detail in the backgrounds, in the clothing textures, and everywhere else. Now play back your shot, no grain, but most of the detail is gone too!

TECHNICIAN 1
Holy Shit. Hey everyone, Doofus here figured out that film grain is good, take a look at this!

Everyone is astonished. Forever more, at that job, Technician 2 is lauded, and eventually promoted.

[peerpee]

Movielocke, I think you're being a little pedantic. I described the effect of film grain as magical. I didn't suggest that it was outside the realms of science. The removal of grain, removes this "magic". It's pretty obvious what I mean.

Using the word isn't "silly" – I'm not "obscuring" any scientific reasons. Please try and read my Sight & Sound article "CRIMES AGAINST THE GRAIN" (December 2012) where I describe everything in non-mystical language.

[David M.]

But you're regraining something that's been smoothed out and denatured from frame to frame to start with (because it's been degrained). You're adding a texture (no matter how good) to something that is now much less than what it was. So you're polishing a turd no matter how you regrain. It's not so much the "regraining" as the fact that *degraining* went on beforehand.

Yes, that's where the damage lies. My point though is that in cases where there there's no other option, degrain and regrain done properly isn't always noticeable. There are good and bad ways to do the initial grain reduction and then the new grain sampling.

Again, I'm talking about when it's necessary, not doing it "because we can".

[Jeff]

The December Sight and Sound just arrived stateside a few days ago, and I hadn't had a chance to peruse it yet until I was prompted by this thread. Nick's piece on grain is absolutely essential -- explaining it in a way I where I think I finally understand what's happening. The whole issue is pretty great. There's a piece on The Passion of Joan of Arc by Michael Somethingorother that's exceptional too.

[feihong]

Couldn't help noticing how Lance has failed to turn up again to defend his baby after everyone responded to his first post. Maybe the arguments against his poorly-employed product are a lot to take in, but people here have been pretty categorical in their trumping of the "we did a good job on Children of Paradise" argument.

[AidanKing]

The December Sight and Sound just arrived stateside a few days ago, and I hadn't had a chance to peruse it yet until I was prompted by this thread. Nick's piece on grain is absolutely essential -- explaining it in a way I where I think I finally understand what's happening. The whole issue is pretty great. There's a piece on The Passion of Joan of Arc by Michael Somethingorother that's exceptional too.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. The December Sight and Sound seemed to me to be a particularly good issue, with these two articles being the highlights. The revamping of the magazine has been a triumph in my opinion. I found Nick's article to be especially useful in explaining the difference betweeen BluRay and DVD and the issues involved in dodgy transfers: I've finally realised that there's no point in saying that the DVD looks OK on my limited equipment as an alternative to a problematic BluRay.

[kuzine]

Couldn't help noticing how Lance has failed to turn up again to defend his baby after everyone responded to his first post. Maybe the arguments against his poorly-employed product are a lot to take in, but people here have been pretty categorical in their trumping of the "we did a good job on Children of Paradise" argument.

Well, to be fair he did say

I will check back in a couple weeks.

[jojo]

Degraining movies is a 24/7 job, fellas! So many movies, so little time.

[HistoryProf]

Couldn't help noticing how Lance has failed to turn up again to defend his baby after everyone responded to his first post. Maybe the arguments against his poorly-employed product are a lot to take in, but people here have been pretty categorical in their trumping of the "we did a good job on Children of Paradise" argument.

perhaps he's having computer problems. clearly his spell check was on the fritz when he first attempted to defend his software.

For the record, i'm kind of in the middle on this. I think the blu ray looks fine in motion, and is an improvement on the 2002 DVD and very much enjoyed watching it. I understand the complaints, but I think people are blowing things out of proportion just a tad. Of course I want these great films to look as good as they possibly can and I agree that this could have been done better, but i don't agree that it's a ruinous catastrophe like some here seem to. My enjoyment of a beautiful film was not diminished one bit. That doesn't make some of the suspect choices okay....but it's hardly the end of the world.

That said...if Lance is going to make any attempt to answer to the fierce rebuttals he received, I hope to god he learns to spell. That post is brutal for a few reasons....basic errors chief among them.

[jindianajonz]

perhaps he's having computer problems. clearly his spell check was on the fritz when he first attempted to defend his software.

I don't think it's fair to harp on his spelling skills. I know a lot of very smart people who are excellent at their jobs but have horrible typing/spelling skills (they are called "engineers"). I was able to understand what he was saying perfectly fine (even if I may disagree with some of it) so his spelling isn't a barrier to his communication. In fact, I kind of appreciate the fact that he was willing to give us some off the cut remarks, rather than regurgitating a well-manicured statement from PR filled with fluff and buzzwords but with very little in the way of content.

[RossyG]

Yes, I don't care about his spelling, either.

It's the fact that he's unwittingly a cultural vandal whilst believing to be the exact opposite that's more of a concern.

[Gregory]

Most browsers have built in spellchecking now, and when there are something like 18 misspellings in a single post, it's especially cumbersome to read. I don't see any of our regular members being called out for this, though, so it seems unfair to have this problem pointed out repeatedly about a visitor's post.

[Mr Sausage]

Most browsers have built in spellchecking now, and when there are something like 18 misspellings in a single post, it's especially cumbersome to read. I don't see any of our regular members being called out for this, though, so it seems unfair to have this problem pointed out repeatedly about a visitor's post.

Have we ever treated new members fairly around here?

[David M.]

perhaps he's having computer problems. clearly his spell check was on the fritz when he first attempted to defend his software.

I don't think it's fair to harp on his spelling skills. I know a lot of very smart people who are excellent at their jobs but have horrible typing/spelling skills (they are called "engineers"). I was able to understand what he was saying perfectly fine (even if I may disagree with some of it) so his spelling isn't a barrier to his communication.

I was about to post the same, taking pot shots over spelling seems a little silly given that we can understand the posts clearly. It's hardly text speak.

[AidanKing]

Yes, and they're obviously inadvertent tyops rather than actaul speeling errrors.

[Lance]

Greetings my new grain purist friends (and foes),
I can assure you that many of my cohorts in business would think me an insane madman for jumping back into the middle of this wolf pack to defend my comments/honor or retort to those add-ons that have compiled since my first post, etc, but I promised to do so out of both honest respect for what I do, and respect for the time and passion you all have taken here as well, I can only promise to do my best.

ON THE TOPIC OF SPELLING...
I could not agree more. Bad spelling is poor form, and I owe you all sincere apologies; that was not a reflection of the amount I care or respect your time, but actually quite the opposite – do understand I was typing with a beet-red face, with steam shooting out of my ears, angry as I am sure all of you have been from time to time, trying to convey my thoughts on a late Friday afternoon (after having been working to keep my small business going in a tough economy) without fundamentally offending people (a skill a few on this list lack, BTW; blatant name calling is a larger reflection of poor form than bad spelling ever will be). After 30 minutes of typing a passionate rebuttal (and, admittedly, an average-at-best technical response after a long, long work day) and a fast re-read I was ready to get the hell out of my office and have a beer (thank God for beer). It is never easy to be the source of piled-on ire – in fact, it has not happened to us so it was a strange and nearly out-of-body experience. I am a mechanical engineer (and yes, a human being as well), but I do care about spelling. I admit it was a shameful effort on the first go, but I assure you this response will be (neeerly) error free, so let us move on.

ON MY RESPONSE
There are so many responses, accusations, rebuttals, and inputs here please forgive me that I will not call out any individuals, I will simply do my best to respond to the spirit of the concerns. If I miss something, I am not purposely avoiding answering any direct questions, unless they are obvious insults which deserve no response from me or anyone else. We should be above this.

ABOUT ME
I am human. I care about film as much as anyone on this list. I do not care if you believe me. I do not care if you lay a thousand tons of proof at my feet to the contrary. If I did not care I would not be in this business. I am a purist, only of a different ilk. I am open-minded. I admit when I am wrong, am adamant when I think I am right, and am smart enough to know I may learn something tomorrow that completely changes my thought process or how I view the world. I am spiritual but no extremist. I employ about 10 people with good work, and I listen to critics and praise alike. Respect my space and I will honor yours. Come at me drooling with a hammer and I will defend myself. Come at me with a pen and paper and I will listen.

ON THE TOPIC OF MY COMMENT ABOUT USING THE TOOLS AT THE TIME
I appreciate some of the historical context here. I agree and disagree. I have been involved with some very interesting restorations of many flavors (let us leave out the technical for now and speak solely philosophically). I can assure you that the filmmaker’s intent has always been to tell a great story first, grain is not why filmmakers make movies, it is a fortunate (yes I LOVE grain) byproduct of the technology for which they tell them at the time they produced the film. Film is a wonderful medium to tell it, but sadly it is on the out. I have made indy films myself, it is how I started in this business; I shot a feature on a CP16 with B&W reversal. It was both an artistic choice and a budgetary limitation, in truth it was a combo of both. I know how it feels to hear the sound of film going through a camera; it is like hearing the heartbeat of magic itself. I then edited this film myself over 5 years before screening it in NYC two days before the World Trade Centers were destroyed – I believe completely that I have a destiny in film that was forged with my own mythological journey - a story very long and interesting but I will not bore you with it. I struggled with the film and the edit tools, I struggled with image quality and I wondered how artists were going to possibly make anything that looks as lovely as those films of yester year with the video tools? So I invented Cinnafilm in my basement – a technology initially designed to make video look like film – and I carved it by hand out of technical stone for 8 years until it worked. It worked so well that we added the ability to remove noise as well, and then ARRI found us. I tell you this so you know that an ARTIST at heart created it.
So here is a question – did the filmmaker catching the imagery of WWI in the trenches with his 18 fps camera really want it to be super chunky and at a poor frame rate? A: of course not; he just wanted to live through it and get the film back to the museum. If we can repurpose that material so it is watchable for the eons, then we all have contributed a priceless gift to the race of humans of which I am a proud to take a small part.
I am sure some of you will go off the handle about how crazy I am, egocentric, etc – be my guest. You will do so regardless of what I type here because you are the kind of person who looks for any human flaw regardless of how petty (spelling, for exmmaple) to make your point that only a barbarian could be behind the curtain. But a few of you will begin to understand that the force that guides this technology and the impact it is making is well beyond me or my company, it is a needed tool so cope. At some point we have to move on to cell phones from the ones plugged into the wall. We have to move on from horse draw carriages to cars. Fact is, the human race moves forward with or without the ones who sit and pout. If you spend all your time on a topic like film grain levels on one single film you will miss the big picture and the amazing things happening to the whole industry. I mean, I can take a 5D camera, a copy of Adobe Premium, my Dark Energy for After Effects, and I can cut a film that looks as amazing as anything in the theater next year. The stories are coming in floods and we need them to save us, and they will look terrific if people take the time to do them right. That excites me.

ON THE TOPIC OF GRAIN MANAGEMENT
This is optional. Everything done to a classic title is. Restorations can be done well, they can be done poorly, they can be done so no one even knows about it (DE allows users to dial down by a % to lower the heaviness but not alter the original structure one bit), or it can simply not be done at all. Who’s to say how it is done? You all? Who made you the judge of all things restoration? Was this something ordained to you by (fill in your deity of choice)? I was not aware that optimizing and saving content had to go through your special committee prior to distribution so that the rest of us inferior masses could simply enjoy the content. I will certainly let the studio heads know of this new procedure. I guess it must be because you are paying the bill for the restorations so that the films don’t simply age into oblivion – that must be it. Question - are scratches and dust specks also the original artists’ intent? Is grain management more important than story? You see, I can be snarky too – but it lowers my credibility. I apologize for the above commentary.

ON CHILDREN OF PARADISE
Again – I saw the 4k master at the Academy and it looked terrific. I hope it transferred well to blu-ray. I had never seen it before. I was enthralled with the story, and enamored with the characters. I still have visions of it in my head.
NOW – that being said, I am going to totally razz myself here. I am the biggest Star Wars fan in the universe to my knowledge. If one frame changed a tiny bit I would be up in arms and pretty worked up, I don’t have time to be on forums to complain about it, but I would at least facebook it ten times. I saw the re-mastered versions – and guess what, they tinkered with the film grain, and it does not look as good as I would like (they did not use our product set). But I ask, which is the higher offense – that or the digital re-do of Greedo shooting at Han first? To me, I spend my vitriol on the re-formation of Han Solo’s character by that one ridiculous redo, because the story has been affected and that is far more upsetting to me. I say all of this to tell you I do understand your concerns as people who are true fans of these films, they are valid and while I disagree I accept the complaints as important.
Finally – I have heard you all loud and clear. I appreciate the concerns and have processed them. I have soaked them into my psyche. I hope you have taken equal time to consider my side – and, hopefully, as open minded people you may understand that in some areas of assumption you are technically incorrect. I am an engineer. I design components for rockets on the side. I know the difference between technical correctness and incorrectness – it is not opinion here. Grain management can be done well with our tool.

ON THE TOPIC OF WHAT WE REALLY DO AT CINNAFILM
We are a software company. We sell two toolsets – Dark Energy, and Tachyon. Dark Energy is a dustbuster and a texture management toolset. DE is used in a variety of places for restoration and for modern digital cinema. Tachyon is a format converter and broken cadence corrector, along with a scaler and proper deinterlacer. Both of these tools employ a real time motion vector engine that is, to my knowledge, the best on market. We employ a variety of techniques both spatially and temporally with real time feedback to ensure that image quality is optimized – image quality is our #1 focus. We have done literally thousands of tests and have saved material from being tossed in the can. We are not the only ones in this business, either. We always get better at what we do. I am going to personally spend some more time next year ensuring all of our users are trained up again – this is a result of this thread and discussion (who said complaining never got you anywhere!). But be aware more training does not mean anything other than that. In the end the film owners make the calls on how things are restored. If you have further beef, talk to them.
I have seen a ton of ARRI scanned content of very old prints – sometimes they look awful in the higher resolution (due in large part to aging), some almost unusable. I can assure you that removing grain, then working on it, then putting back the original grain or new grain is a technique that works well if done right. You all will have to simply accept that as fact. If you are that opposed, go work for those companies, become the restoration managers, then convince them and the film owners that the aged, dirty prints are the original artist’s intent. Choosing me as the sole point of your pain only gets you long, and hopefully well-spelled, diatribes that sound more like random ramblings from a crazy man in the mountains than a good rebuttal.

ON THE TOPIC OF OPTIMIZATION
OK this is one topic I know very well. Besides selling a texture management tool we also sell tools for transcoding and standards conversions – a very, very tough technical achievement. We also sell tools to help remove broken cadence patterns, and we have helped restore a lot of original content that was very poorly transferred on telecine last century. So all-in-all, I can confidently say our company is on the forefront of restoration that matters on a large variety of content. We work tirelessly with studios and broadcasters to help them get the very best frames out of some of the worst situations. But we are the tech company – the real work is done by the amazing artists in the post houses that tirelessly work with a wide variety of tools to save older content. They are the true heroes doing amazing work and I give ALL the real credit to them.

FINAL STATEMENTS
Cinnafilm’s de-noiser is the best on market for re-texturizing. If it is used incorrectly, as with any digital toolset, it can damage the image. If a company wants to denoise an image they will do so with or without us, and you should hope they use Dark Energy instead of an inferior toolset. You get what you pay for in this business.
Your comments about detail loss are completely out of context and technically incorrect. Looking at individual frames on the internet is a ridiculous method to evaluate a technology properly and make valued opinions on, it actually makes you sound more like a harping complainer than an expert in your field, which I doubt some of you are. The best way to really evaluate any toolset of this nature is to sit down in a real DI suite with a 50 foot screen (not sit at home with an ipad and stale coffee) – that is where I cut my teeth in this business and sold this tech to the people who know what they are talking about. I have never sold Cinnafilm with website samples; no one that knows anything about this business buys technology without going through months of proofing evaluations. I have seen MORE detail come out of an image using our tech than is lost – you don’t believe me and frankly I don’t care. If you want proof let’s meet at a DI suite in Los Angeles and I will show you personally - but until that happens your arguments are simply incorrect and baseless, and I doubt many of the folks on here have any idea about how any of this technology really works, or are involved with restorations first hand.
If you don’t like what the owners of a film are doing with the film then contact them. Contacting me is like telling me you are mad at me for inventing better scalpels for the surgeons. It’s the surgery that is your rub, not the scalpel. Dark Energy is meant to be the finest texture toolset – not some big wash and bake like “we don’t care how it is done as long as it looks terrible” tool. Grain management should be with a very delicate hand (like color) and ONLY when it is value add to the overall presentation. It can be done beautifully or harshly. I prefer the former. I cannot control either.
I love grain; I have a passion for it. Grain is not noise to me – it is a beautiful pallet of randomness that makes each frame a gem. I love it so much so I started a company and forged a place for it because it needed to be done PROPERLY. I think before you knock our grain modeling you should check it out. If you saw Act of Valor, we helped remove the compression noise of the 5D content and modeled new grain so believable when it was first projected folks did not know it had never gone film out. Are you telling me their vision was to keep the awful compression noise? Fact; cameras are almost gone to 100% digital, so is distribution. And they do not look as good as film, IMO. So do you want plastic faces and buzzing noise for the next 1000 years? I sure as heck don’t’. My focus is on retaining the quality of digital cinema and Cinnafilm exists so we can enjoy good looking imagery for years to come, and it also exists to help save the amazing work from last century when there are few other options. This is the big picture, folks. I suggest you take the whole picture into your mind’s eye and sleep on it.

At some point the spirited discussion ends, and we all move on with our lives. I have a business to run and I truly appreciate the commentary, even if it is rough and spiteful in parts. Bottom line, if you don’t like the blu-ray, then don’t buy it. Move on and find something else to complain about, there will always be something.
With sincerest respect,
Lance