Remastered 4K, 3D Titanic steams towards cinemas

James Cameron has confirmed that the 3D version of his 1997 epic Titanic will hit cinema screens on 6 April next year. In a statement, the director said: "There's a whole generation that's never seen Titanic as it was meant to be seen, on the big screen. And this will be Titanic as you've never seen it before, digitally …

[Nev]

I'd rather watch a turd get flushed...

... in 3D.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty good, actually

And certainly better than the turgid Blade Runner (director's cut or otherwise), which remains *inexplicably* popular amongst a certain subset of aging males.

[Steve Gill]

nice troll there

purple hair and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

@Steve Gill

Cheers! I'm gunning for 30 downvotes, after which I'll award myself a Friday beer.

(and at least I'm honest enough to use the right icon)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that you need an excuse for beer

One more for the beer count, ;)

[Olafthemighty]

@AC

Nice. Have another!

[Anonymous Freetard]

Can I be the first, but undoubtedly not the last to say

It'll still be a steaming pile of crap no matter how many different techniques they apply to it. Only the mythbusters can polish a turd.

[Qtoktok]

True

But that's not going to stop the evangelising Cameron rolling it in 3-D glitter.

[Sarev]

Enough already...

Can people stop whining about 3D movies inducing nausea and headaches... yes, maybe a very few people get that side-effect but the same can be said for any activity, there will be moaners complaining about the very same from roller coasters, driving fast, sex and just about any other enjoyable activity you could name.

It's a stereoscopic movie. Just let the rest of us sit back and (try to) enjoy the thing in the same way we do for any other movie. Yes, many of them are turds; that's for the viewer to decide. Get over yourselves.

[Qtoktok]

Hmm...

I'd find your argument easier to take if you weren't applying it in defence of 3D Titanic.

[Sarev]

Tiny minority

Ouch, touched a nerve there... Presumably, you're not dumb enough to go to a 3D movie _again_ after the effects the first time around? Thus, the number of people who actually experience these effects at any given screening is surely a tiny minority of the people present. And if you don't like it, you can watch the 2D version.

And no, my argument clearly isn't in defence of Titanic 3D. It's a response to every mention of 3D films being accompanied by people moaning about the effects stereoscopic content can have on a minority of people. My response is "enough already".

[Rattus Rattus]

@Adus

"The point is, people who can enjoy a movie in 2D without any ill effects can not enjoy a 3D movie in some circumstances."

So go see your films in 2D and stop bitching about them also being available in 3D for those of us who do like that.

That said, if 3D's not done properly, right from the start of filming, it's shit. And I wouldn't go see Titanic whether in 2D or 3D cos it's also shit. However, can the whingers please shut the hell up about how other people watch their films. I've never seen a 3D film in any of my local cinemas that wasn't also available in 2D, so it's not like you're missing out.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Rattus

Or even how's about you stop bitching at people with legitimate concerns about the way movies are being made/sold to us.

Have a closer look at the screens the 2d versions are being shown on. The 3d always get the biggest/newest screens with lots of time slots since that's the print they are promoting the most. All the 2d versions I have seen have been thrown into the dirty small screens along with stupid timeslots.

[Stephen 5]

No thanks

The only movie of Cameron's being remastered for 3D cinema I would want to see is Aliens... That would be awesome.

Titanic can go hit an iceberg.

[Marvin the Martian]

If re-shot in 3D, yes.

But with this ad-hoc 3D sauce? Let's first see if it works.

I can imagine a process being reasonably successful on large structural shapes [such as ocean liners], I can't figure out how to do small dappled surfaces [like bony aliens].

[rpjs]

I thought...

...that Dances With Smurfs *was* Aliens in 3D

[Monty Burns]

I suspect its for me at least, its extra

The extra charge for 3d over the non-3d is one reason I suspect many won't go and see them. Why exactly? Its the same projectors, the same screen..... oh and one pair of crappy plastic (passive) glasses!

[Brian 6]

@Monty Burns

U really think that producing a film in 3D doesnt cost any more that producing one in 2D, SERIOUSLY ????

[Andy Nugent]

re: cosy

"U really think that producing a film in 3D doesnt cost any more that producing one in 2D, SERIOUSLY ????"

Which other films have the ticket price linked to the production cost? Do low budget films for £1 to see in your cinema and the summer blockbuster £10?

Generally if you spend more making a film you hope to make the money back by selling more tickets, not by making the tickets more expensive. Why should 3D films be treated any differently?

[Richard IV]

@Brian 6

Once you take into account the amount most 3D films seem to save on things like decent writing, yes.

[Goldmember]

Actually...

... 3D projectors are different to 2D. Not that I'm a fan of 3D particularly.

[David Gosnell]

Screens

Furthermore the screens themselves require upgrading in most cases, so as not to mess up all the careful polarisation upon reflection of the light. Still compatible with 2D, but all extra costs...

[Code Monkey]

Woo-hoo!

I'll go along, see if they miss the iceberg this time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough...

... it's the only film I've ever been to see twice at the cinema. And in both cases I was leaning over to the side, along with everyone else in the cinema (galaxy quest style) willing it to miss the iceberg.

Funny how even tho I know what happens to Titanic, each time I watch it I still hold my breath and lean to the side at that point.

[Eponymous Cowherd]

Oh no!

that is all

[Daniel Voyce]

Urgh

I just vomited in my mouth a little

[Mark #255]

Oh for f^h crying out loud

Mark Kermode's 5-second review still stands out as the perfect description of this film:

"There's this ship. It sinks."

[Huntsman]

I for one

welcome Winslet's wabs in the 3rd dimenson.

[Marvin the Martian]

Can't get much worse, can it?

Never in my life 4h79min felt as long as sitting through that film.

As I recall, I was excused [my mate, a merchant marine, couldn't stand to see sinking ships; our missuses would go together] but then someone ruined that excuse [he went to make up for forgetting an anniversary]... Agony.

The goggles, they weren't invented yet but they would have done nothing!

[serviceWithASmile]

actually

that's 5h19min

[Patrick O'Reilly]

Two Things

3D Boobs! : Kate Winslet does get 'em out.

Post Processed 3D = Waste of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kate Winslet in 3D?

Does it for me!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's what you like

Jude (1996) would be a *lot* more interesting

(assuming the 3D process really works!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look

Another 3D film nobody wants. It was crap in the eighties and its still crap now.

[Qtoktok]

Yes, but

Films are always crap several years before they're made (released in 97, in this case).

I'd normally blame the lack of music, but the absence of Celine ****ing Dion's brain-scouringly awful sonic vomit can only be a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...

Kate Winslett nude in 3D...

still not worth it

[envmod]

i've said it before and i'll say it again...

3D is shit.

[Bassey]

Re: i've said it before and i'll say it again

"3D is shit."

Just because people have made shit films in 3D doesn't make 3D shit. "Closer to the Edge" was fantastic in 3D. It can be done. It just takes the right subject and a decent director/cinematographer.

Of course, I'd rather drift across the North Atlantic clinging to piece of wreckage than sit through Titanic again.

[Jason Hall]

@Bassey

So... what you're saying is that 3d is a gimmick for silly stuff/sports/boobs/etc?

Because it certainly adds nothing to the story/plot/acting/or in fact *anything* that usually makes a movie good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Worth seeing in 3D

If only for the scene near the end where Leonardo diCaprio sinks further and further away from the viewer into depths of the North Atlantic.

(Have I given anything away?)

[Justin Bennett]

4k

Most interesting (certainly not the film) is that he's converting it to 4k, ready for when bluray dies and 1080p looks like NTSC in comparison. Is the death of the current formats already planned? What will/can replace bluray with capacity for 4k images?

[Iain 4]

4k is just the digital master

Everyone with an ounce of sense (so, that's everyone other than George Lucas, who doesn't want his Star Wars trilogy to look embarrassingly better than the prequels he shot digitally at 1920x1080) is scanning and mastering at 4k these days where possible. The difference is visible on big cinema screens, and a nice bit of anti-aliased scaling down to Blu-ray resolution looks nicer than from a 2k source too.

The biggest quality problem being faced is that even if you're not Lucas testing out shoddy new camera tech, a lot of late 90s to mid 00s films went through a 2k digital intermediate, and so the source data just isn't there. That's why the current Blu-ray of The Fellowship Of The Ring looks all waxy; a straight comparison between the Bridge of Khazad Dum shots in it and the beginning of Two Towers shows a huge difference as the tech had come along in that time.

As for Titanic, it's quite fun in a spectacularly dumb way once the ship starts sinking, so I might grab a 2D Blu-ray (somehow I've manage to lose VHS, DVD and even Laserdisc copies to other people over the years). But I hate 3D films, so I'll skip the cinema run.

[Disco-Legend-Zeke]

Just As In Still Photos...

...always shoot with the best quality/resolution you can afford.

When the digital format was being specified, the SMPTE did tests of cinema resolution and determined a projected 35mm image in an average theatre was equivalent to 800 TV lines of resolution in 4:3 aspect ratio., approximately 1600 pixels. A few hundred pixels were added for wide screen, and 1920X1080 was concieved.

The big loss of resolution in projected film was the optical losses during the editing process. The motion picture industry moved to laser scanning the original negative, then doing post production digitally, and scanning the finished movie to either a printer negative or to an "interpositive" from which the printer negatives were struck.

Some of the early scans were at 1920 or 2K, but 3K and then 4K followed. The jump in quality was immediately visible on the screen and even in DVD's which were suddenly so much sharper that makeup which had been crafted to overcome the poor resolution of film became visible enough to annoy.

Lucas used the Sony Cine Alta camera for episodes II and III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CineAlta) and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars) I ran a quick comparison of episode i and episode II and noticed the live action charactors in episode I were not as sharp as the CGI people . In episode II there is a better match between live and CG charactors. (YMMV)

In the case of Titanic, and most "film" films, the negatives have been carefully preserved, so rescanning at an improved resolution and rendering from the original Edit Decision List provides an upgrade path. Certainly not cheap, but doable.

As digital cameras reach 4K and beyond, much production is now being shot digitally, and Sony 's F65 8K Digital (which has 4K green sensors) indicate that the trend will continue.

[John 62]

1920x1080

also has the side effect of being at the limit of bandwidth for broadcast TV infrastructure (all that co-ax and related equipment they use in prod&post). As the TV producers upgrade their infrastructure to better quality kit, and possibly fibre, that will enable larger-scale adoption of denser image formats.

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint me wearing this. Wearing *only* this

There's one scene that could be improved with 3D, anyway.

[tony]

A Title

As if millions of habs suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

[ratfox]

As long as people buy, 3D remastering will go on...

AAAAANND OOOOOOOOONNNN.....

[breakfast]

Wherever you are...

Maybe they can shift that awful Celine Dion song as it should be possible for viewers of a 3D version to judge whether people are near, far...

[Tim Jenkins]

B*stards

Now y'all done gone spoilt the plot for me....

[Robin]

Hubba Jubba

I didn't read the article properly, but Shite-anic in glorious 36D? Ace!

[Alex Walsh]

shiver me timbers

Kate Winsletts's Bolivian airbags in the glorious 3D that God intended? Where do I prebook a seat?

[DrXym]

As it was meant to be seen?

Seeing it on the big screen is one thing. Seeing it in a bastardized form where 2D elements are draped over a 3D model for an unconvincing crappy diorama effect is quite another.

[hokum]

@Brian 6

So the cost of a movie should determine its ticket price?

Brilliant logic there, Captain Business. You go have a long hard think about why that's a stupid idea.

[Brian 6]

@hokum

Its not an "Idea" It DOES cost more to watch a 3D movie, the production cost IS higher, AND OF COURSE the production cost is recouped through ticket sales. Thats how its actually done. Im living in the real world, your just living in a (3D??)fantasy. If no one was prepared to pay extra to watch a 3D film then no one would be making them.

[DrXym]

The problem is

Many movies that claim to be 3D aren't shot in 3D at all.They're shot in 2D and then a post production house digitally manipulates the 2D image by means of a scene model / depth map into a left + right eye view. It certainly does add cost to production but it absolutely doesn't mean it's worth paying extra in the cinema to see it. In most cases the effect is so shoddy that the 2D version is the better movie.

One also has to ask why should the cost of production determine the price you pay to watch the movie. By that logic we should be paying 10x the cost to watch Titanic as some indie movie given how much it costs to make a blockbuster.

[Iain 4]

Why just with 3D, however?

Yes, 3D costs more to shoot in 2D. But it's a relatively minor aspect of a film's overall production cost. Both at the cinema and on DVD my viewings of Primer (budget $7 000) cost the same as Titanic (budget $200 000 000). 3D conversion is chump change by comparison.

[serviceWithASmile]

oh well, look on the bright side

maybe hollywood will busy themselves playing with 3d remastering rather than raping decades-old classics and reimagining them.

one can hope...

[Maxson]

Is this really a movie that gains anything major from better image quality?

Seriously? I thought it was all deep and important and a fantastic piece of cinematography or whatever...the only thing that's going to be "epic" about this is how much money Cameron will make....

I just don't get it with Cameron, he's made some amazing movies, some of them using cleverness and skill in place of CGI effects and now he's just throwing fistfulls of rendered rubbish at you in 3d and people buy it.

Why doesn't he remaster Alien in 3D at 4k? That's something that might benefit from 3D and a bit of modern day polish (it still looks fantastic considering the alien is a 7 foot tall guy in a rubber suit).

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god no

I got dragged to the original with my then girlfriend. I remember the highlight of the film (Kate's tits being a big disappointment) was when the ship goes vertical and some GGI bloke flies into a bit of metal with a comedic BOING. Then I remember shouting out loud "hurry up and die" to leonardo, then blessed darkness.

Coming round, all the men in the audience had looks of joy then pain as they tried to stand using their now ruined arse muscles and every woman was blubbering.

I'll be fucked sideways if the wife thinks I'm going back.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think *THAT* was bad.

I got dragged to 'PHILADELPHIA' by my then girlfriend.

"Sure, I'll go with you" (Thought balloon: Oh FFS! But, Christ, is she hot or what?)

Here's to women, and all we have do to please them!

AC for obvious reasons.

[MJI]

I dragged then GF to a Star Trek film

I think we saw 3 or 4 films 1 romcom 1 SciFi 1 comedy, can't remember 4th.

And I haven't been to cinema since!

BTW I married her

[MJI]

I remember the DVD release

And Cameron expected huge sales but failed.

1) It was in letter box and not wide screen so poor picture.

2) It was overpriced - over £20.

3) It came out nearly the same time as The Matrix which was a must purchase for early adoptor DVD player owners.

It was very funny to see this. Matrix was AFAIR £16, anamorphic widescreen and was a clever film for at least one watching.

One rule of Matrix - there were no sequels

[whats the point of kenny lynch?]

too hard

you'll all either lying or have no heart. i had a tear in my eye at the end of titanic, thought it was great cinema, just not a great film...should look great if they sort out the obvious cgi crew and the 'skating' issue.

and blade runner does need 5 minutes chopping off.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And talking of Kenny Lynch

Why don't they remaster Eraserhead in 3D. Or was that David Lynch?

[BongoJoe]

"Painstakingly"

quite

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunantly...

... these idiots are to keen on "remastering" from 2D to 3D to maybe spend money on something new.

I have yet to see a preview for the upcoming summer that is not a prequel (X-men: first class), a reboot (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), or a sequal (to many to list).

Avatar worked for 3D because it was made WITH 3D in mind, the way it should be made.

It didnt fall back to cheap tricks of having stuff "thrown" at the viewer, but instead relied on far backgrounds, to give depth.

Unfortunantly most of this "remastered" junk just does not cut it.

[Dan Beshear]

I was hoping this was a hoax.

Now the missus is going to want to see it again at the moviehouse. The water gushing into the people-tank was bad enough in a cold theater in 2D, I don't even want to think about in 3D, no matter how crappy the transition is.

Kate Winslet in 3D wouldn't compensate, unless the movie freeze-framed right there. Maybe not even then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive props...

...For the Penny Arcade reference in the title.

[Christian Berger]

Why Cameron's Version?

I mean there's Orlando Corradi's version. You know the one where the ship was held together by that giant octopus until all people could reach the life boats. _That_ would have been a good movie to turn to 3D.

[Adrian Esdaile]

Only one way I'll ever see this again...

And that's the same way I saw it the first time.

In a cinema.

Sitting behind Lucy Lawless.

*spoilers*

This ship sinks.

Yes, that tunic's mine. "Joxer the mighty, master of geography..."

[Jaruzel]

You are missing one MAJOR thing.

If you have Titanic on DVD (is it out on Blu-ray?) put it in your player and skip to the night shots of Titantic on the ocean. What you'll see is a seriously bad low-res render of a CGI ship. It's as bad as something I rendered up on my Amiga 1200 during the early 90s. Accepting that CGI in the late 90s still had a long way to go (some of the CGI in Phantom Menace is just as ropey) it's still a very bad render - If Cameron is doing this then he MUST re-render all of the ship shots else it's all pointless waste of time.

[Morteus]

I've tried - really I have...

... to think of something positive to say about these 'enhanced re-releases', but on a gut level I just feel dispondent each time I see it. Wether it's good or bad is, to me at least, irrelevant. I would far rather they put the time, money and effort into producing something new, excting and possibly even original? Very few insentives to draw me to the cinema these days.

[Paul Lee 1]

Errors

Cameron should spend the money digitally correcting the huge errors he has made in the film: http://www.paullee.com/titanic/jc1997goofs.html