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In the middle of intermission here at Arclight Hollywood.
The sound may be the real revelation here.
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“The original 35-millimeter six-channel soundtrack had decayed beyond repair, so Mr. Nolan sourced audio from a 35-millimeter preservation element made in the 1980s — a format rarely, if ever, used anymore.”
My guess is this soundtrack source was originally intended for duplication into six-track Dolby Stereo.
Nolan kept the levels and dynamic range way up. It’s a real “wall of sound” experience. All the Man-Apes screeching and growling simultaneously are great.
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Your post reminds me of how disturbing the ape sequence was on the big screen when I saw it around 1975. That is one of those effects that really loses something at home.
Hmm, I may have to go see 2001 the next time it pops up at the cinema. Sounds like a fun experience you had there.
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Posted: |
May 20, 2018 - 5:31 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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from today's (print) NY Times--
Christopher Nolan’s Version of Vinyl: Unrestoring ‘2001’
By Sopan Deb
Christopher Nolan was 7 years old when he went to see Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey” in London with his father. He was gobsmacked.
“You sit there and you just go, ‘This is a film that’s not observing any conventions,’” Mr. Nolan said in a phone interview from Los Angeles.
Four decades later, Mr. Nolan has himself been compared to Kubrick for a similarly meticulous approach to filmmaking and a taste for ambitious productions like “Interstellar.” He shrugs off those comparisons — Mr. Nolan said he’s just a fan — but for his latest project, he put himself directly in Kubrick’s shoes. On Saturday, he’s going to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time to screen a restored 70-millimeter print of Kubrick’s seminal work to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
But calling it a restoration, Mr. Nolan said, isn’t quite right. He prefers “unrestored.”
Mr. Nolan set out last fall to recreate the experience audiences had in 1968, allowing moviegoers today to see the epic exactly as Kubrick intended. His goal meant there would be no digital manipulation in the new version but the occasional visible scratch would be allowed to slip through. In a world of high-definition and 4K resolution, Mr. Nolan is, in effect, time-traveling to the days of analog. Think of it as listening to a classic record on vinyl, with pops and all.
Mr. Nolan has long been a passionate proponent of the 70-millimeter format. His war drama, “Dunkirk,” was shown in 70 millimeter at more than 100 theaters across the country last year. “It’s not about nostalgia,” Mr. Nolan said. “It’s a totally different way of watching a movie, and it’s in danger of being lost.”
Paradoxically, Mr. Nolan got involved in the Kubrick project when he was remastering the films in his own library last fall, digitally restoring them in 4K Ultra High Definition.
Ned Price, the vice president of restoration at Warner Bros., was working in the same lab on a similar update of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Mr. Price asked Mr. Nolan if he wanted to see copies of the original prints, the film industry equivalent of offering a historian access to an ancient manuscript.
In 1999, as part of a preservation project, Mr. Price’s team had made an “interpositive” of the film — essentially a protection copy of the original camera negatives, made up of 20 reels tucked away in a Burbank studio. To accomplish this in less than a year, the Warner Bros. team carefully cleaned the original negatives, removed old repairs and created new interpositives. The negatives, from which the preservation copies were made, were slightly shrunken and had some color fading. That was where the work stopped. The copies of the original reels were meant only for preservation, not for distribution.
But they were still in good enough shape that an intrigued Mr. Nolan approached the studio about continuing the work that had begun almost two decades ago. He proposed taking it one step further: recreating the 1968 theatrical release. Warner Bros. readily agreed.
Mr. Price and Mr. Nolan began by making duplicate negatives and then initiated a complex method of color correction. This process required some imagining of what Kubrick would want, with prompting from the faded source material.
“If the filmmaker intended the walls to be sort of green and you try to make them white, then other things will be problematic,” Mr. Price said. “The flesh tones will go off. The whites will turn magenta. Strange things will happen. To a certain degree, you have to listen to the camera negative itself.”
There was a singular aim to view the film in its first cinematic form. Instead of fixing several tears in the original negative, the team thought it would be more authentic to retain them. The original 35-millimeter six-channel soundtrack had decayed beyond repair, so Mr. Nolan sourced audio from a 35-millimeter preservation element made in the 1980s — a format rarely, if ever, used anymore.
During the process, Mr. Nolan discovered new quirks in “2001” that even he, a fan of the movie since childhood, hadn’t noticed before. For example, when Dave Bowman, the astronaut played by Keir Dullea, deactivates the supercomputer HAL, the machine asks Bowman if he’d like to hear a song (“Daisy Bell,” from 1892.) Before the restoration (or unrestoration), Mr. Nolan thought Bowman acquiesced to break the tension. But after dozens of viewings since the fall, he has found another motive: aggression.
“He’s saying, ‘Sing it for me,’ because he wants to be sure that he’s actually killing the computer as it sings,” Mr. Nolan said. “He wants to hear it disintegrate. I just never felt that. I never spotted that before.”
That Mr. Nolan found something new after all these years is not surprising to Katharina Kubrick, the daughter of the celebrated director. She recently caught a continuity error in the film she hadn’t seen before, although she wouldn’t say what it was. She said Kubrick would have been thrilled that Mr. Nolan was putting the same care into his film that he would have.
“I think it’s awesome actually,” said Ms. Kubrick, who will appear with Mr. Nolan at Cannes. “This is a movie that’s a half-century old and the fact that people are still fascinated, arguing about it and debating it and that it influenced many directors and filmmakers is nothing short of incredible.”
Stanley Kubrick’s films never played Cannes while he was alive (he died in 1999), and so far neither have Mr. Nolan’s. “I love the idea of going for the first time with an acknowledged masterpiece of another filmmaker,” Mr. Nolan said with a laugh. “I would say that’s a low-stress way of going.”
After the newest (oldest?) version of “2001” has its premiere at Cannes, it will open in select theaters in the United States on May 18. This fall, Warner Bros. will release a 4K version of the film. But it’s the analog version — stripped to its roots — that fascinates Mr. Nolan: “What I want audiences to take away is what I took away when I was a kid seeing it.”
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Unless you screen it in a Cinerama venue you can not 'recreate' the original experience.
Folks like Nolan are hung up on the idea of 'film' ..
I wish we would go back to the term " motion pictures ".
The art form is about individual frames of imagery projected on a screen that create the ILLUSION of motion. 'Film' is just one way of transmission. Like the zoetrope which used paper or flip books.
Do we want to hear music on wax cylinders?
Brm
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One visual you may have never registered before: lead man-ape Moon Watcher’s second-in-command has a balding forehead. Never saw that before!
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In the middle of intermission here at Arclight Hollywood.
The sound may be the real revelation here.
Your texting while watching?
Shame [ding..ding]
Brm
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As for Nolan’s handling of the imagery, the contrast is way up compared to any previous 2001 I’ve seen. It has denser blacks, some colors that look different (those lounge chairs outside the Space Station V Hilton aren’t red anymore.) and some grainy areas that weren’t so previously.
All this in service of a 2001 that has many other details I hadn’t noticed before.
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I will travel up to 90 minutes to see it in 70mm, don't have much faith that a print will show up in the Tampa Bay area. Perhaps in Orlando.
No dice on Tampa or Orlando, Howard. Coral Gables. Not even an Atlanta run. Here’s the list. Same as the Dunkirk run, I’ve been informed.
http://www.in70mm.com/news/2018/one_movie/index.htm
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ZOUNDS that would be a hike.
SF has a screening coming up.
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Posted: |
Jun 22, 2018 - 2:48 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In celebration of its 50th anniversary, Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey is coming to 4K Ultra HD on October 30.
Building on the work done for the new 70mm prints, the 4K Blu-ray with HDR presentation was mastered from the original 65mm camera negative, and produced in close collaboration with award-winning filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, Dunkirk). The 4K Blu-ray includes a remixed and restored 5.1 DTS-HD master audio track, as well as the original 1968 six-track theatrical audio mix formatted for 5.1 DTS-HD master audio.
The premium packaging also includes a remastered Blu-ray disc with the feature film in hi-definition, a Blu-ray disc with the special features in hi-definition, a Digital version of the feature film, and a collectible booklet and art cards featuring iconic images from the film.
4K BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES AND TECHNICAL SPECS:
NEWLY REMASTERED HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
Audio Commentary from Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood
Remastered Blu-ray with Commentary from Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood
The Making of a Myth
Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001
Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001
2001: A Space Odyssey - A Look Behind the Future
What Is Out There?
2001: FX and Early Conceptual Artwork
Look: Stanley Kubrick!
11/27/66 Interview with Stanley Kubrick [Audio Only]
Original Theatrical Trailer
Premium Booklet
Art Cards
Subtitles: English, Latin Spanish, Parisian French, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese
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Over at Home Theater Forum, film preservation specialist Robert Harris is plenty miffed that 2001 didn't get a full 4K restoration/re-release.
Having seen the Nolan supervised print, I can understand Harris's trepidation about splices, tears and snow, though I loved the slight "grindhouse" feel to the print.
The phrase "building on the work done for the new 70mm prints" surely means Warner Brothers took the Nolan curated print and digitally cleaned it up.
I suspect Robert Harris still doesn't think all this was done correctly.
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Both Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese endorsed digital. That's good enough for me by a long chalk.
I'm with you, Heath, though the theatrical re-release wouldn't have happened without Nolan's involvement, in my estimation.
Oh, and don't forget the editorial alterations, not including any re-cutting, that Nolan has introduced. I'll leave the real 2001 junkies to figure out what those are.
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