"The Fountain" Blu-Ray Quality...terrible :-(

[Brian Broz]

I just picked up The Fountain on Blu-Ray and although I enjoyed the film in the theatre, I'm confused why the quality is so poor on Blu-Ray (playing back on PS3 admittedly).
The picture is soft, colors very muted, and incredible amounts of noise in the blacks (more like a posterization)...any standard def DVD bought in the last 5 years looks better upconverted than this movie.
I realize the "look" of the film is very different from Casino Royale, Babel, or The Departed (other discs I own) but those Blu-Ray movies look fantastic, and are most definitely HD.
Has anyone else seen or experienced this?


Brian Broz

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The film was shot on push-processed 500 ASA stock (low-con Expression 500T) with diffusion filters (ProMist) so a certain desaturated, grainy patina to the image was intentional - but sometimes this plays havoc with video compressors and whatnot.

I've noticed that many movies with a grain or noise texture (like some of "Superman Returns", shot on the Genesis but with some noise problems) don't play well on some LCD monitors, for example.

"The Fountain" went through a D.I. so what gets released on HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, and DVD should be the original digital master just tweaked in a color-correction suite for video color space and then downconverted (plus any reframed versions are made for pan & scan, etc.) and compressed.

As far as the grain, it was intentional -- in fact, the DP told me that he had to shoot efx plates without the push-processing for the efx people, who told him they could match the graininess of the non-efx shots, but ultimately they didn't, hence why the movie has some variation in grain levels. But the intent was for a certain specific grain level through out.

But it sounds like this has interacted badly with whatever compression they used for the disk, and perhaps the black level was mis-set somewhere in the line.

 

[Policar]

Weirdly, I saw part of this in 4X3 on an airplane and thought it looked super clean. They must do some massive noise reduction for airplane movies.

David, do you have any articles about the cinematography in The Fountain? I thought it was quite beautiful. Was it really rated at 1000ISO?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I doubt you'd see the grain even of Super-16 on an airplane's TV monitor...

He pushed 5229 (500T) one-stop but that doesn't necessarily mean he rated it at 1000 ASA. He could have rated it at 640 or 800 ASA, for example.

There was an article in the Nov. 2006 issue of American Cinematographer.

 

[Policar]

Great, thanks for the tip. I've got to get a subscription but the gear envy drives me nuts.

 

[Tom Lowe]

This sucks to hear. The Fountain was my favorite movie last year. Of all the movies from '06, this is the one I was hoping for most in HD.

 

[donatello b]

"noise in the blacks (more like a posterization)..."

if you are seeing posterization i would more suspect something about your viewing system ??


last week we were looking at some 2k scans on digital projector - there was severe banding in darks when we attempted slight CC ... turned out to be wrong LUT was applied ... once the LUT was changed it looked very good & we had good range of CC without artifacts ...

 

[Sam Druckerman]

I'm not surprised to hear the DVD is a disappointment.

FWIW.... I saw The Fountain opening weekend in a new theater in Century City (AMC), and I was actually pulled out of the story several times by the amount of grain/noise in the images. It's a personal thing, I know..... but that much grain/noise just kills the "suspended disbelief" experience I love about watching films. Like a said, that's just a personal preference. I understand there's a lot of people who feel different.

After reading David's comment about the efx grain matching issues, I wonder if Matthew Libatique was disappointed with the final outcome. My guess is he is. I'm not dissing Matthew Libatique, I'm just suggesting that as artists we try things and experiment.... sometimes we like the results and sometimes we don't.

 

[Tom Lowe]

I saw The Fountain on a very average mutliplex screen, and while the image was kind of soft, the grain issues did not bother me at all. In fact, I thought the picture looked amazing.

The only part that didn't look right to me was that opening sequence in the "jungle"... it looked more like a sound-stage jungle than a real one, which might be due to the fact that the film's budget was slashed from 70 million USD to 35 million when Pitt dropped out. That also is the fault of the art department, etc, and not just Libatique.

 

[Sam Druckerman]

Tom, I loved what they were trying to achieve... But, as an example... I don't believe they intended to have all that noise in the blacks.... I think some things didn't go as planed (surprise). And I'm not blaming anyone.

I think your point about the budget cut speaks volumes.

 

[C.H.Haskell]

When I saw the fountain in a full size cinema I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the results the filmmakers were achieving with the textures etc.

Very disappointing to here about the poor quality of the Blu-ray release of the picture but I must admit I am not surprised. So far every blu-ray title I have picked up has produced tons of noise that simply drives me crazy, so bad that I would stop watching. (ps3 on plasma display)

Current day DVD quality so far outdoes my tiny blu-ray collection and I am hopping this changes for us HD filmmakers looking for a realistic home that can handle the content that we are delivering. (Soon to be RED content)

I understand it’s a new medium and just hoping they work out the compression details for future releases.

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

After reading David's comment about the efx grain matching issues, I wonder if Matthew Libatique was disappointed with the final outcome. My guess is he is.

I wouldn't read too much into that -- I'm sure Matty is rightly proud of the movie, which I told him was one of the best photographed films of the year. I was merely asking about the variations in grain in the release prints considering he shot the movie on one stock, which is when I heard about the efx not being pushed one-stop. He may have been mildly disappointed in that aspect alone, the matching issue, but I think he was just explaining something to me from a technical standpoint, that it's hard to fake grain in post despite what some efx people promise.

As far as the Blu-Ray DVD goes, I have no idea. When I looked at the DVD of my own work on "Akeelah and the Bee", I was dismayed at some of the compression artifacts in it, worse than most store-bought DVD's have.

 

[Weston Ford]

Thats too bad. I was really looking forward to seeing this in hd.

 

[Yash Keough]

Yeah I saw this film at the Toronto Film Fest and while overall it didn't blow me away (though it had some great scenes I thought) it was beautifully shot. Loved it the space scenes are pretty incredible!

 

[Policar]

Tom, I loved what they were trying to achieve... But, as an example... I don't believe they intended to have all that noise in the blacks.... I think some things didn't go as planed (surprise). And I'm not blaming anyone.

I think your point about the budget cut speaks volumes.

The thing is, you've got the dailies. Maybe one or two grainy shots (I'm looking at you Superman Returns) will be an unintentional disspointment, but you don't choose an aesthetic for a film, shoot the film that way, then turn around and think "oops" unless you are very, very careless.

Although I still haven't seen the whole film yet (it's a long, long story....) what I've seen of The Fountain looks incredibly pretty. I love the grainy look. I think In the Mood for Love and 2046 (both shot by Christopher Doyle I think) also have some pushed nighy shots (that somehow maintain strong saturation) and those are some of the prettiest movies I've seen. I think Days of Heaven was pushed one or two stops even, and it may be a bit grainy but its overall look is just mind-blowing.

Even big budget action is now tending toward high iso photography: War of the Worlds, Transformers (night scenes), Spiderman 3 (entirely 500T, I think...), Batman Begins...

 

[Sam Druckerman]

The thing is, you've got the dailies. Maybe one or two grainy shots (I'm looking at you Superman Returns) will be an unintentional disspointment,

I agree.

My bad..... My point, which I didn't make as clear as I could have was...

If you're counting on post professionals to do work they say is possible, in this example the efx people saying they could match the grain, and in the end they can't or don't.....

To me.... that would be a disappointment.

And.... if that failure led to some weird noise in the image, to me .... that would be even more of disappointment.

To be fair, I really don't know what caused that noise. So, I really shouldn't try to discuss the cause of it here.

But, I do know that any thing that pulls me out of a story and reminds me that I'm watching a movie is real... disappointment to me.

Man, I'm sorry I chimed in here at all now. I don't want to be the guy who is overly critical. I have been around the arts my entire life and I know better than most the challenges, hardships, and pitfalls of being an artist. I think that the film has some exceptional imagery. As a narrative it didn't have the same impact for me as the way Requiem For A Dream did, which I Loved.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Matty Labatique is a risk-taker in the best sense, which is why he is in such demand as a DP. And "The Fountain" looks gorgeous.

But one of things to remember about push-processing a whole movie is that labs are not consistent in the amount of density that results from extended development (it's not an exact science), plus working closer to the toe of the negative, you can have other minor variations in exposure and development produce greater variations in grain and blacks. A good example would be seen in the prints of "Eyes Wide Shut" (before it was degrained for DVD), which was a movie that was pushed two-stops throughout, but is not consistent in grain level. These variations are more dramatic with a two-stop push though - a one-stop push is pretty safe these days.

This lab variation (combined with human error exposure variation) is one reason why most people might push one-stop but only underexpose by 2/3's of a stop, as density "safety net".

One reason why Labatique used the lower-con Expression stock for "The Fountain" (though it is a bit more grainy than normal 500T stock) is that he had a lot of warm lighting in the film and he didn't want the shadows and faces to pick-up too much red in them. Lower-con stocks tend to be more pastel.

 

[Alexander Nikishin]

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?

The Prestige looks absolutely beautiful on Blu Ray.

Underworld: Evolution also looks gorgeous but as a film in general it isn't the greatest.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl are said to have the best transfer to Blu Ray yet.

Some others;

Planet Earth: The Complete Collection
Saw III
Terminator 2: Judgment Day

For anyone interested, here's a website dedicated to blu ray releases...
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/

Haskell, what sort of HDTV do you have btw?

 

[Michel Hafner]

Current day DVD quality so far outdoes my tiny blu-ray collection and I am hopping this changes for us HD filmmakers looking for a realistic home that can handle the content that we are delivering.

DVD stinks compared to BR or HD-DVD. Some early BR discs had subpar transfers and MPEG2 compression, but were still far ahead of DVDs. Naturally the higher resolution means the noise/grain is far better resolved than on DVD and therefore more visible. And some displays do no favours to that at all.

 

[Ken K]

Can anyone generate a list of titles that look amazing?

There are constantly updated lists of HD-DVD and Blu-ray titles and how they look at AVSForum. They are put into tiered categories based on various factors and the PQ is pretty much decided democratically. It's a good way to avoid certain movies though, like The Fifth Element, which they happen to be re-releasing later this year.

HD-DVD Ratings:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=705387

Blu-ray Ratings:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=753726

Most HD-DVD titles are encoded with VC-1 and most of the titles Sony encoded for Blu-ray were MPEG-2. Now Sony is using AVC/H.264 and some studios are using VC-1 for discs that are Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

I picked up The Fountain on Blu-ray this weekend but haven't checked it out yet. I loved the movie and even knew it was getting some bad picture quality reviews, but it's just too good to pass up.