A batch of catalog titles turned up in 4K with HDR and it is a strange spread. Con Air, Speed Racer, Sleepers, Deep Blue Sea, Eraser and Drop Zone, sitting alongside The Ninth Gate and Fight Club. That is three or four completely different problems being addressed with the same tool.
The mid nineties action films are the ones I am curious about. Con Air, Eraser and Drop Zone were shot on film with the heavy diffusion and warm grade that was fashionable then, and a decent new scan usually buys you two things. Grain that finally resolves as grain rather than mush, and highlight detail in explosions and sunsets that the old transfers crushed flat. HDR does real work there in a way it does not on an already flat modern digital grade. Deep Blue Sea is the awkward one, because so much of it is composited water and late nineties effects work, and a sharper master is not always kind to that.
Speed Racer is the odd one out entirely. Shot digitally with colours already pushed past anything SDR could carry, so it is arguably the title here that has been waiting on HDR the longest. Whether they used a fresh grade or wrapped the existing one decides the whole thing, and that never appears in a press listing.
Fight Club has previous form in this argument, since Fincher is precise about how his films are graded and earlier transfers have been picked apart for years.
Has anyone compared any of these against whatever version they already owned? I mostly want to know if the HDR pass is doing genuine work or just lifting highlights.
The mid nineties action films are the ones I am curious about. Con Air, Eraser and Drop Zone were shot on film with the heavy diffusion and warm grade that was fashionable then, and a decent new scan usually buys you two things. Grain that finally resolves as grain rather than mush, and highlight detail in explosions and sunsets that the old transfers crushed flat. HDR does real work there in a way it does not on an already flat modern digital grade. Deep Blue Sea is the awkward one, because so much of it is composited water and late nineties effects work, and a sharper master is not always kind to that.
Speed Racer is the odd one out entirely. Shot digitally with colours already pushed past anything SDR could carry, so it is arguably the title here that has been waiting on HDR the longest. Whether they used a fresh grade or wrapped the existing one decides the whole thing, and that never appears in a press listing.
Fight Club has previous form in this argument, since Fincher is precise about how his films are graded and earlier transfers have been picked apart for years.
Has anyone compared any of these against whatever version they already owned? I mostly want to know if the HDR pass is doing genuine work or just lifting highlights.
