That is precisely the situation - and to add to the above, all the reframing from the film's native 1.66:1 aspect ratio to the final version's 2.35:1 was also carried out in post-production. And that includes frame-by-frame reframing within the shot - for instance, the "pulsing" effect that's designed to induce nausea in the viewer.tenia wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:20 amI also wouldn't be surprised if the film elements were fully digitalised and all the post-prod, editing and al happened in the digital realm then. This means going back to the film elements for the restoration would be akin to having to re-do everything on the movie, except shooting the material.
Talking of which, one of the digital special effects involved adding the silent witness to the tunnel in the first place...mhofmann wrote: ↑Wed Apr 21, 2021 2:32 amI get all that and the circumstances surrounding its remastering. Maybe I should be really happy Noé is staying faithful to the film's roots and not redoing the post-production, changing aspect ratio, selectively recoloring the movie, ore adding Jar Jar Binks to the tunnel.
To all intents and purposes, every shot in this film was digitally post-processed in some way, even if it only involved reframing or digital stitching. You're still clinging to your original notion "well, they do this with other films, so why not this one?", but I've already argued above that this is a mistake - regardless of the material that passed through the camera, this film is effectively a digital work, and needs to be regarded as such. (Hence my Pillow Book comparison - that was notionally shot on 35mm film, but it's ultimately a high-definition analogue video work.)Yet a few observations:
- Not every shot in this film uses visual effects, and most of the other post-production elements are regularly redone when restoring a new film scan from the negative (or other respective earliest) elements. So it might have simply been a question of budget, time, and/or willingness to do so, not a matter of impossibility. I'm probably OK though if the restoration philosophy was "can't get better than what people saw at theatrical premiere."
And in both cases of course it might be possible to reassemble both films from scratch, but to what end? What percentage of their audience cares so much about achieving picture quality that wasn't achievable at the time of production that would justify all this effort and (inevitably) vast expense? (Assuming the original film materials are even available in the first place, which may of course not be the case.)