OT: Variations in "film quality."

Jessariah67 wrote on 1/19/2004, 8:38 PM
Totally OT here...

I was watching some "deleted scenes" features on a few DVDs recently and noticed that the overally quality of the film is (and sometimes audio) is far worse/dull/grainier than the "finished film. Having never worked in film, I'm curious as to what causes that? Is it simply the work print quality vs. the negative cut, or is there some other step in the process that puts a sheen on it? I could see it being similar toa video color/level correction, but the the whole image overall is much "clearer" as well.

Again, just curious.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/19/2004, 9:07 PM
That's because they encode the 'extra' material at a much lower bitrate in order to get more on the disk. ie; film is encoded at 6M while extra is encoded at 3M.
Watch your bitrate display on your DVD player if you have one, you'll see this immediately.
filmy wrote on 1/19/2004, 9:39 PM
Depends on the film and what not but here is the overall workflow -

A film is shot and dailies are made. The editor will get copies of these dailies. The dailies are mormally one pass, which means they are color corrected on the fly. The editor cuts the film and at some point everyone looks at the first rough cut - scenes are cut, moved and otherwise played with. This goes on for a few more times...ok, maybe more than a few...and the film is finally put out there for people to see. Chances are this will be a first color timed work print. This may also be telecined, or dumped out to tape from a NLE these days. It is still not final. To cut to the chase - what you see on DVD's is normally the final timed, mixed answer print and these days it is even further color corrected for DVD. What most of the extras are is material taken from video rough cuts, first assembles and in some cases straight from the dailes - "alternate takes" for example, and in some cases the material is taken from video recorded on the set via the video tap on the camera. Extra material can come from anywhere but most of the time it looks different because it was not taken form the 'final' product. Sometimes this material is worked on, as in "restored" films or "direcotrs cuts", but most of the time it isn't, it just is what it is.