Raiders of the Lost Ark 4K "Restoration": Flawed?

Hello Mike.

You seem to be incredibly well enlightened on this subject, as I have inferred from your posts. I am technically a noob looking for answers but I have the same sentiments.

Can you believe that I hadn't watched the Indiana Jones series ever! It just never happened. And then about two weeks ago I finally saw them back to back- all 4 of them. And it only reaffirmed by stance that there is something "not right" with films made after 2000. Now that is a broad statement and the number of times my friends have called me a snob is not even funny. So I just keep my mouth shut.

The original 2(and the 3rd to some extent) have a certain vibe. And this couldn't be blamed on nostalgia as I had not even seen the films in my childhood. Their look is cinematic and yet the characters and their antics befit what we do in everyday life.
The latest one looked like a video game with its glossy high definition look and the characters seemed like how every recent films portray them: something I cannot relate to.

I watch a ton of older "lesser" known films-from the 70s all the way to mid 90s. I love their feel. They're atmospheric without even trying. I have scrounged the internet trying to find variable reasons as to why this is so and the usual opinion are:

1.)They were made cinematic; shot on sound stage mostly.
2.)They were lit well.
3.)Most importantly -the film stock of that era, of that time. So, somehow even if you can procure a 16 or 35mm I doubt you could recreate that atmosphere now.

The technicalities from what I understand is:
color grading is done digitally now. I learnt a lot on the side by side(Keanu Reeves) documentary. So whilst Tarantino might abhor the thought of films being screened digitally I don't think that's a problem at all. However....color grading will add that teal look I feel. Even if the movie has been shot on film(Spielberg still does) and if it is color corrected digitally it'll get that glossy look.

What do you think?

PS- Just got done watching The Thing and Body Heat.

Hi rish and thanks!

Yeah, I think color-grading absolutely has a lot to do with it. Jaws was made 6 years before Raiders, on similar Eastman film stock, and it received a PERFECT, properly color-graded 4K transfer. Why then does the later Raiders look inferior to the earlier Jaws? I think somebody at Paramount or Lucasfilm thought it would be a brilliant idea to brighten Raiders up and add that warm tone, when the movie, especially in those daytime desert sequences, looked plenty bright and warm already.

The blown-out highlights on Raiders are my primary concern. Yeah, I don't like the yellow-orange teal either. Look at the old 2003 DVD of Raiders. There you'll see the film closer to how it appeared in cinemas. Lowry Digital Studios, who I believe performed both transfers, even made a point in 2003 that "a proper film transfer is largely about the highlights; you have to preserve the highlights". They blew it this time.

Like I say, I hope the problem isn't that the highlights are gone in the original negative! That would be a travesty! Since Jaws holds its highlights perfectly well, and it was made 6 years before Raiders, I'm inclined to believe the negative of Raiders and all the information on it is still intact.

Also, it's important to mention that the latest installment in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was not photographed by Douglas Sloccombe, who lensed the first three Indiana Jones movies and is sadly no longer with us. It was photographed by Janusz Kaminski, who has been Steven Spielberg's cinematographer ever since he shot Schindler's List for the director. Kaminski certainly has a talent with light, but in my opinion he was unsuccessful in faithfully rendering Douglas Sloccomb's rich Technicolor look. His high key light was in fact TOO high, too bright, even brighter than the surrounding daylight in some instances, resulting in unnecessarily flat contrast that looked fake, worse than the old Republic serials of yore which inspired George Lucas to reinvent this modern-day genre re-hash. So the cinematographer and his over-lighting was the reason Crystal Skull didn't have the look of the older Indy adventures.

Temple of Doom, shot by Sloccombe, by comparison is downright dark, especially inside the temple itself, with just little hints of "Frankenstein's monster" light coming up from underneath to light our villain the high priest Mola Ram's face, light presumably coming up from fiery volcanic fissures beneath him. Despite the film's flawed story, the lighting is a masterwork.

Here's a picture quality comparison site for "Raiders":

http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/multi_comparison.php?disc1=1520&; amp;disc2=1519&hd_multiID=760#auswahl

Bravo, ck100; thanks! The comparison link shows exactly what I mean.

For anyone else who is interested: After you've clicked on ck100's link, click on the little "1920x1080 Fullscreen Comparison" text in blue on the upper-right of each "preview" screenshot image, wait for the image to become big, then toggle the cursor using your mouse back and forth on an edge of your computer screen to see the difference.

I don't know why transfer/restoration artists didn't use the old DVD source as a benchmark reference for what the film is supposed to look like. It was beautiful! Technicolor rich in bright sequences, properly murky in dark sequences, with a wide color pallette between warm yellow and cool blue!