Saving Private Ryan blu-ray picture problems

[Dan Turner]

Hi - sorry if this is something that has been discussed before, I did do a forum search before writing this, but I couldn't find any reference to the issue i've got.

I got a copy of SPR for christmas and despite generally being excellent I did notice a strange issue with the picture near the beginning, after they have taken the beach head, and again briefly towards the end as they are fighting their retreat to 'the alamo' on the other of the bridge. It seems as if the bright areas of the picture (fire, sky etc) bleed/streak into the darker areas.

It's quite strange and quite hard to describe. It's only SPR that I've ever seen it on and 99% of the film is unaffected, it's just those 2 scenes. The odd thing is that I'm sure I remember seeing the same thing in the beach head scene when I watched part of it on Sky Movies HD a while ago.

Has anyone else seen the same thing and is it a known defect of the HD transfer / the original film? If it's been identified as a problem and there is a replacement scheme (like the earlier audio-sync problem that I read about) then I'd like to get my copy replaced. On the other hand if it's an accepted 'quirk' of the original film then that's fine and it won't bother me. Just curious because I'm sure other people must have seen the same thing and thought it odd too.

Thanks.

 

[nads]

it is the way it was filmed.

same at the cinema and on the DVD.

 

[Dan Turner]

Thanks Nads. It's strange. It certainly doesn't look intentional.

 

[iainl2005]

I got the special edition DVD and it done the exact same, thought it was faulty until I seen it on SKY movies and it was the same.

 

[Tom Moreno]

nads:
it is the way it was filmed.

same at the cinema and on the DVD.

Actually (sorry to be a bit pedantic) it's a post production process they did on the film stock at technicolor. SPR was the first film that they tried this new technique of de-saturation to to give the film it's vintage feel and this process has been subsequently used on several period pictures since. On the original DVD release in the US they included a note about it on the rear of the DVD cover to assure buyers that there was nothing wrong with their equipment.

 

[Anonymous]

To be even more pedantic

its actually not entirely to do with the bleach bypass effect used (and SPR was certainly not the first film it was used on, e.g. Se7en (1995) and many films prior to this used this effect) Its more to do with the fact that Kaminski had Panavision strip the protective coating off of the lenses used, to make them closer to those used in the 40s. This meant that "without the protective coating, the light goes in and starts bouncing
around, which makes it slightly more diffused and a bit softer without
being out of focus." Most importantly, the shutter angle on the camera was altered from the usual 180 degrees to 90 or 45, "In this way, we attained a certain staccato in the actors' movements and
a certain crispness in the explosions, which makes them slightly more
realistic" The fire flare effect is caused by a combination of these latter two techniques, whereby the out of sync shutter causes the film to move before the gate is shut, causing the bright light to be smeared across several frames, causing this effect. The idea was to replicate what happened to war reporter's cameras in the war, where explosions would knock the camera's shutter out of sync, causing this effect accidentally.

Sorry to be (more) pedantic, I wrote a essay on Spielberg's cinematography while at uni and had to read up on this

 

[Dan Turner]

Cheers Todds - that's what I call a proper explanation!