World of Wong Kar Wai

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1051 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:04 pm

Full disclosure: I prefer the second set of timings to the magenta ones. As does Wong. As does Ritrovata (or whomever) I guess. As the article stated, color preferences may vary across race or gender or a million other things. As weird as it may seem, some people actually prefer the color of a nice lager to that of a cheap rose (wine). Rose is out, don't ya know?

Monkey Ballz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1052 Post by Monkey Ballz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:03 pm

Walter Kurtz wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:26 pm
I've enjoyed the tens of thousands of posts about Ritrovata's grading and Wong's revisionism and all the bitching and moaning about why the damn graders or timers or grader/timers don't correct/grade/time the colors just the way everyone wants for everyone's individual solipsistic pleasure. Most enjoyable are the comments that express how someone just can't understand how somebody can see color any differently than you can because it's goddamn objective!

As in---
Monkey Ballz wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:11 pm
Here's what I don't understand: The color spectrum is quantifiable, yes? It is used, for example, to determine the elemental composition of stars and planets millions of light years away, and there are color standards for all sorts of other industries, from the medical field to brand identity... there are devices which actually measure colors, right? What's the problem here? ... ... Seriously, though, WTF?

Um. Here's WTF.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ame-colors

Here's a brief excerpt:

We sometimes think of colors as objective properties of objects, much like shape or volume. But research has found that we experience colors differently, depending on gender, national origin, ethnicity, geographical location, and what language we speak. In other words, there is nothing objective about colors.

It would be rather surprising if there were no variation in how we experience colors. The number of cones (photoreceptors) in the human retina is not constant. Sometimes cones are present in large numbers, and sometimes they are barely present. And this difference has been observed in so-called normal individuals who react in the same way to color stimuli.

The fact that the number of cones in our eyes varies considerably suggests that the brain must be able to automatically adjust the input from the retina. So, individual variations in color perception may not purely be a matter of the nature and number of the cones (or photoreceptors) in the retina. It can also be a result of the fact that people with different numbers of cones calibrate the input from the retina in different ways.

One approach to test for variation in color vision is to test for variations in color judgments and color discrimination abilities. Such tests have demonstrated vast variation across perceivers exposed to the same color stimulus. Malkoc and colleagues, for example, found that what some people pick as their best example of red is what others pick as their best example of orange. The researchers only tested for individual differences, not for differences in gender, national origin, ethnicity, geographical location, or native language spoken. But other research points to variations of this kind.

For those interested, here's a handy little link to Malkoc's (et.al.) paper-----

https://openaccess.dogus.edu.tr/xmlui/b ... sAllowed=y

But hey, carry on with all the solipsistic tirades that ignore science. They are a source of daily mirth. But then again, what do I know about color? From 2017 through 2020 whenever I saw the President of the United States I saw the color orange.
Oh damn! I thought we were talking about colors... not Colours of Benetton. I'll poke around (in the dark, I guess) and see if I can find the appropriate thread. (By the way, Psychology Today is not a peer reviewed scholarly source... though I wouldn't mind attending one of their "conferences" at their Cayman Island headquarters!)

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1053 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:29 pm

Monkey Ballz wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:03 pm
By the way, Psychology Today is not a peer reviewed scholarly source... though I wouldn't mind attending one of their "conferences" at their Cayman Island headquarters!
The PT article was primarily based on a peer reviewed scholarly source that was not only cited in the article's references... I also provided the link to the peer reviewed scholarly source myself. Yeah, I know. Reading comprehension is a bitch.

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domino harvey
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1054 Post by domino harvey » Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:35 pm

I'd say this is veering off course, but honestly, changing the topic of this thread feels like the kind of revisionism WKW himself would be on board with

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1055 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 8:46 pm

That was funny DH. BTW... I thought it would be interesting to see how semi-civilians on the lot out here in LA would view the two color gradings provided up thread and I chose the first pair with Leung facing the wall. I used a new mini-iPad indoors in front of a window on a bright sunny LA afternoon with the brightness at about 62% and using factory settings. I asked six different secretaries, drivers and other people down 'below-the-line'. The consensus in the first photo was that Leung's shirt was pale blue, he was sun-burned and someone had poured grape juice all over the rock. The six people were unanimous in preferring the second version as more natural.

Maybe it's because of the golden summers out here and the Ritrovata sunsets.

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feihong
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1056 Post by feihong » Tue Oct 05, 2021 9:59 pm

As someone who's seen ITMFL somewhere between 8 and 12 times in theaters, I can say for certain it never looked like it did in the World of Wong Kar–Wai boxset screencaps.

But the original Criterion blu ray hews much closer to the color I saw in those screenings. So I can't say all these external references, straw polls of random people and whatnot, make much difference to me. The film has been made deliberately different than what I've seen of it in the past. Even if there is no way to achieve some sort of platonic color grading here, one could approximate what had in most cases been present when the film was released, and they chose to do differently. That might not be a deal-breaker for some, but it's part of the enormous deal-breaker here for me; the whole set is a giant deal-breaker, full of deliberate alterations I don't care for.

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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1057 Post by Monkey Ballz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:15 pm

So explain to me, Captain Klutz: All those propeller-headed dweebs (God bless 'em) whose entire livelihoods involve calibrating high-end visual displays -- do they adjust calibration based on the intended users' "gender, national origin, ethnicity, geographical location, and what language [they] speak" as preposterously stated in that Psych-out Today article? Or do they utilize - believe it or not - tools that identify specific colors via light refraction?

That's the issue here: If everyone (individuals, not demographic targets) sees color differently (which, yes they do) then chroma meters and their like could and should be used to standardize this stuff. That one film can be graded so many different ways (often repeatedly approved by the same director or cinematographer) may prove your point about varied reception; the fact that these different receptions can be measured lends credence to mine: that the tools exist to quantify the creation and reproduction of color.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my informal survey of my co-workers about the true hue of the golden arches. Piss-yellow or 70s Smiley-Face? Debate of the century!

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1058 Post by Walter Kurtz » Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:33 pm

Monkey Ballz wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 11:15 pm
the true hue of the golden arches. Piss-yellow or 70s Smiley-Face?
Obviously piss-yellow, Monkey Brains! But after a Corona, not an Extra Stout.

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jegharfangetmigenmyg
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1059 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Oct 06, 2021 12:01 am

Just for the record, I don't think that this discussion is about colour perception. I was complaining about the monochromatic look of the epilogue and its lack of dynamics / colour range, something definitely brought on by a heavy use of filtering. So, when we say something looks piss yellow, the piss yellow is not really the problem, the lack of colours that are not piss yellow is.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1060 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Oct 06, 2021 12:36 am

Refrain from childish name-calling, per the forum rules.

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tenia
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1061 Post by tenia » Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:29 am

It has nothing to do with perception, especially since colors, in our cases here, can be analyses through color channels, RGB values etc, but uniformisation across movies.
Even if you're color blind, since these gradings replicate the same signatures again and again, you'll spot them nevertheless.

So the question is just why we're accepting what basically looks like a new era of structurally uniformised gradings within some labs output (a certain "yellow" with Ritrovata, a certain "blue" with Eclair, a different certain "blue" with Fox, a subdue brownish creamy palette with Paramount, etc) while pretty much everyone agrees the same uniformity, though in magenta, was wrong. It's a double standard, but also a lesson not learnt.

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1062 Post by Walter Kurtz » Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:11 am

Sorry, Dark, for seeming to lower myself in response to someone calling me Captain Klutz. I didn't read his name closely enough and thought his last name was Brains. It didn't dawn on me that anyone would ever name themselves after the sexual organs of a furry little primate.

Feihong, if makes perfect sense to mourn the loss of the color grading that was there when you first loved (and continued to love) a film. And jegharfang, you are entirely correct that the flat color range is extremely subpar. I just may have been overreacting to so many months of people ragging on Wong and Ritrovata and green and yellow.

I'm not the worst timer in the world as more than one of my DP's has a nom for films we have jointly timed in post and the buck stops with me. And my films have a tendency for being warmer than most. Sorry for introducing philosophy and philosophy of the mind and concepts like qualia. Weirdly enough I'm conversant in both quantum mechanics and philosophy of the mind. I'm also pretty good at composition but I suck at lighting. Thus I have great love for my DP's.

I was making a sort of joke earlier about golden summers and Ritrovata sunsets in LA but maybe there's a kernel of truth in there. We were talking a bit about color perception earlier but maybe what is paramount is color preference. Is it possible that directors and DP's and grader/timers in sunnier climes have a warmer preference than those in cooler climes? Do Angelino and Mediterranean directors/DP's/graders naturally prefer warmer timing than Londoners, Berliners and Japanese because they are used to golden colors throughout the day/months/year?

I'm off overseas for a shoot, then post, then media and all that crap. Hope I've cheerleaded enough for Klein. It's been fun.

PS: Sorry for using only your first name, Dark. I didn't want you to think I was name-calling. Ciao.

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tenia
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1063 Post by tenia » Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:19 am

Again, the issue isn't having uniquely warmer or colder photos, but that some labs are uniformising their gradings whatever the movie is. Otherwise, we would at least see some overlapping between the labs' results but there isn't. Some labs' output are clearly aside pretty much everything else, which is why I talk of color signatures : because they're specific, recognizable and attributable.
Ritrovata's gradings aren't just warmer : they're uniformly recognizable over hundreds of movies, and all these movies are now sharing common palettes of colors
Eclair's gradings aren't just bluer : they're uniformly recognizable over hundreds of movies and are now sharing common palette of colors.

And while I can understand some movies having almost identical color palettes, it's hard to link hundreds of movies together like this, when they're spanning more than 40 years and several countried.

That's not this new look that we're questioning, but it being surprisingly widespread in very similar fashion over all these movies. At some point, it just looks like whetever the movies these labs will grade, they'll look like this.
And honestly, it's quite accurately the case.

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jegharfangetmigenmyg
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1064 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Oct 06, 2021 4:12 am

With regards to the restorations in the WKW set that has been ritrovata'ed: Could it be, as I speculated earlier, that Ritrovata simply did their work, and then afterwards Wong added filters to / removed colours from select scenes, gave his thumbs up and signed off the project? If so, then clearly he is less to blame for the general look of these transfers than he is for altering these selected segments of his films. As many of these "director approved" transfers have the same look, it seems that most, if not all, directors, either don't view the films through, or else only look at clarity and detail level before approving...

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tenia
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1065 Post by tenia » Wed Oct 06, 2021 5:02 am

It's still hard to know precisely what they're shown, if the final color signature has been applied, if they're shown the reference elements side by side with the restoration or just the restoration, so basically, we can't know if they're signing off the signature or not, and if they do, if it's because they're not seeing it or choosing to ignore it.

But it's a fact that having a referee doesn't prevent the signatures to be applied, as there are several examples showing such cases.

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jegharfangetmigenmyg
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1066 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Oct 06, 2021 5:18 am

Wow, that's such a bummer. I didn't know that there were examples of them applying their signature AFTER a director had given his/her approval??

If they just kept these alterations to specific eras and not spread them over 40 years and different continents, the reasoning would be somewhat justifiable, I guess. I just find it mind-boggling that they would spend so much time doing their pristine restorations and then adding this almost watermark signature on top of it afterwards to such a degree that I think there's something wrong with my display. Would be very interesting to hear something about their reasoning from the horse's mouth.

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tenia
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1067 Post by tenia » Wed Oct 06, 2021 5:54 am

I might have misexpressed this : we don't know if that's the case, but there are several examples of Ritrovata'd or Eclair'd movies despite the restorations having received an approval or having been supervised by someone more or less related to the movie. I don't know if this means this was applied AFTER the approval/supervision or if the seal of approval was given despite it, but it means nevertheless that an approval or a supervision doesn't prevent these signatures.

For instance, Thérèse's restoration has been supervised by Cavalier, but there isn't a single doubt who graded the restoration. That's why I'm also tracking done in my article about these gradings : because it shows it's not referee-related.

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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1068 Post by pistolwink » Thu Oct 07, 2021 8:52 am

Replying to "Walter Kurtz": Saying that not everybody perceives color the same is not the same as saying that "color" is an entirely subjective attribute and that any attempts to discuss it and compare impressions are in vain. There is obviously considerable intersubjective agreement (here and elsewhere) about the differences between two sets of images whose colors are appreciably distinct from one another.

Your point about Trump would be apposite, perhaps, if this all came down to one woman or man at a restoration house with very idiosyncratic color perception that was informing her or his company's color-timing practices. But these restorations go through multiple levels of QC — there are likely dozens of eyes on them before they are seen by the general public.

(What's more, I think most of us can agree that Trump isn't simply emblematic of the subjective nature of [self-]perception. He seems to me like a uniquely mentally stunted and self-deluded human being.)

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tenia
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1069 Post by tenia » Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:48 am

Yet, the rumor is that the madness over Fox Deluxe restorations being blued/tealed to death is the work of a grand total of 1 man.

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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1070 Post by jsteffe » Thu Oct 07, 2021 10:08 am

tenia wrote:
Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:19 am
Again, the issue isn't having uniquely warmer or colder photos, but that some labs are uniformising their gradings whatever the movie is. Otherwise, we would at least see some overlapping between the labs' results but there isn't. Some labs' output are clearly aside pretty much everything else, which is why I talk of color signatures : because they're specific, recognizable and attributable.
Ritrovata's gradings aren't just warmer : they're uniformly recognizable over hundreds of movies, and all these movies are now sharing common palettes of colors
Eclair's gradings aren't just bluer : they're uniformly recognizable over hundreds of movies and are now sharing common palette of colors.

And while I can understand some movies having almost identical color palettes, it's hard to link hundreds of movies together like this, when they're spanning more than 40 years and several countried.

That's not this new look that we're questioning, but it being surprisingly widespread in very similar fashion over all these movies. At some point, it just looks like whetever the movies these labs will grade, they'll look like this.
And honestly, it's quite accurately the case.
Yes, and the notion that it's all down to subjective impressions somehow doesn't hold water. You can measure the images with waveforms and scopes to see exactly how the LUTs shape the image in relatively consistent and measurable ways. (Otherwise the labs wouldn't be using them!) For instance, you can see how the blue channel gets chopped off at the bottom in some restorations - hence the loss of shadow detail. The black crush may not be present in the original master when it's printed onto film stock or in theatrical projection - that I don't know. But it's definitely present, and frequently so, by the time the restorations get released on home video. See Chris's review of DEATH IN VENICE on this website for an example.

P.S. - I haven't looked at them with scopes, but you can see some loss of shadow detail in the screen capture comparisons above for IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.

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jegharfangetmigenmyg
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1071 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Thu Oct 07, 2021 4:54 pm

jsteffe wrote:
Thu Oct 07, 2021 10:08 am
P.S. - I haven't looked at them with scopes, but you can see some loss of shadow detail in the screen capture comparisons above for IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.
I don't think that my screenshots are a good resource to look for shadow details. I posted them in low-res because the only intent was to illustrate the extreme yellow grading that gives the epilogue a monochromatic look. But what you certainly CAN see, even though they are lo-res, is that the clouds in the first screenshot has been almost completely clipped in the new restoration.

If you want to take a closer at some hi-res screenshots, there are some at Caps-a-holic: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=15676&d2=15678&c=5963

What I can say is that the shadow detail level is completely off lots of times during the film, especially in the famous staircase scenes.

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jegharfangetmigenmyg
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1072 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Oct 13, 2021 3:20 am

I'm continuing to go through this box, so yesterday I watched Chungking Express, and it's a whole different experience than In tht Mood for Love. Overall, it looks great, however, I had the same feeling that I had with Days of Being Wild; that it was just too dark, resulting in crushed blacks and loss of details in many scenes. Wong had also clearly had his way with the colours throughout, but a least I wasn't annoyed by obvious uses of digital filtering. Also, as I hadn't seen the movie before, I didn't notice the altering of the intro titles. What I can say, is that the extremely digitally looking (and ugly, I think!) end titles were a very jarring way to end the film experience. I have no idea why he thought this was necessary.

Finally, and this a big one, especially for me, some scenes again definitely looked Ritrovata'ed. As I mentioned earlier, it's not as obvious here, since most of the film takes place at night time and in the dark and since Wong has been altering the colours himself in many places, but I had the feeling that in the scenes where he hadn't obviously been fumbling with the colours, the look was indeed "Ritrovata". Specifically, all the scenes that take place at the Chungking Express food stand. They are of course brightly lit, and they have the trademark Ritrovata yellow/golden look. For reference check out screenshot 2, but also the other internal ones, especially 11 on Caps-a-holic: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=15680&d2=15679&c=5964

Also, of course, white shirts turn yellow/golden in screenshots 11 and 13, and the exterior light in number 14 is suddenly golden. It's clearly not as bad as in ItMfL, but I would say that the Ritrovata trademark is definitely there. However, the worst thing about this master is definitely it being to dark, black crushing and loss of details (check out the loss of detail in screenshots 1, 3 and 5 for reference). And again, if my theory holds true -- that Ritrovata has being doing their trademark goldening and thus clipping before re-graded the films and further clipping dynamics and detail -- then no wonder the end result has so many problems.

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omegadirective
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1073 Post by omegadirective » Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:45 am

I just got this set for my birthday.
Good lord! That book!
What the hell is up with the pages? Who on earth thought these uncut pages with art inside was a good idea?
Terrible!

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feihong
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1074 Post by feihong » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:53 am

omegadirective wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 5:45 am
I just got this set for my birthday.
Good lord! That book!
What the hell is up with the pages? Who on earth thought these uncut pages with art inside was a good idea?
Terrible!
Interesting. I have a Christopher Doyle photo book from around the time of Happy Together which had uncut pages with the art inside as well. Maybe a producer or designer on the box had that book as well.

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swo17
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Re: World of Wong Kar Wai

#1075 Post by swo17 » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:00 am

Welcome to the Wacky World of Wong Kar Wai!

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