UK film critic doesn't understand using HDTV to watch old movies, why kids are on his lawn

Another day, another ignorant article about high definition. This time it's Peter Bradshaw, film critic for Guardian.co.uk, claiming Humphrey Bogart would have any cameraman approximating a "high definition" effect thrown off the set. Blatantly ignoring the fact that movies of that era were made on 35mm film with more resolution than even 1080p Blu-ray can display, Bradshaw claims that instead of a HDTV, viewers would be better off with a standard definition projector and DVDs. This is all in response to a recent Sky ad campaign (check out the video with Sir Anthony Hopkins dropping in Rutger Hauer's Blade Runner monologue after the break, plus the original) promoting the broadcaster's new HD transfers, allowing home viewing of many older films in quality that would be impossible unless you'd seen it the first week in theaters, and with sound that likely surpasses anything available at the time. What someone should explain to Mr. Bradshaw and so many others with this misconception is that HDTV allows us to see the movie closer to the way it was meant to be seen when it was originally mastered, with all the detail that was present. Provided a high quality transfer, there's plenty of reasons to catch old flicks in a new format, so spread the word.

[Ma2T @ Jul 16th 2009 7:00PM]

What a bloody idiot! Very ignorant of him.

I hate it when people write an article, and have the facts completely wrong.

I'm from the UK, and run a website about HDTVs (http://www.hdtvlounge.net), there are enough people confused about HDTV, and an article like this isn't going to help anything.

[Richard @ Jul 16th 2009 7:05PM]

"I hate it when people write an article, and have the facts completely wrong."

Well it is The Guardian so facts don't really come into it.

[arkweld @ Jul 16th 2009 7:16PM]

he does have a valid point buried in his ignorance.

He states that a for a better "movie experience" you should get a projector because it would be better then watching it on a TV. Which he is absolutely correct about.

Unfortunately this also highlights his amazing lack of basic technical knowledge since obviously there are many choices of HD projectors available. So he clearly can't differentiate between a "high definition" format and the old CRT he has sat in the corner.

Something tells me that projector he got ... he didn't install it himself.

[TeddyLikesComputahs! @ Jul 16th 2009 7:19PM]

Get off my lawn you silly kids! Oh wait, that just Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp kids singing on my crystal clear and life-like HDTV.

[John @ Jul 16th 2009 7:24PM]

The man is confusing high definition with lighting for maximum detail; thus quips like "Hopkins is obviously lit for this photo flatteringly". He is apparently under the impression that the extra detail in high definition comes from applying some sort of filter that creates the effect of more raw lighting which would throw features into relief and thus bring out more 'detail'. Not the most sensible position (or factually accurate) but not quite what this post seems to have taken from it.

[adrian @ Jul 17th 2009 7:26AM]

I think the key is what Engadget says in their argument against Peter bradshaw: "Provided a high quality transfer". Some studios will cut corners in this area. You then have to ask yourself what the point of paying more for HD.

[Smart People Play Tuba @ Jul 17th 2009 1:16PM]

The "cutting corners" adrian refers to is what ticks me off. One of the first Blu-rays I bought was "The Terminator." The picture was grainy and every now and then you'd see a black speck onscreen. That totally turned me off the buying any BDs of movies prior to BD adoption. Little did I know (till I read this article) that it wasn't the limitations of BD that I was seeing, but rather LAZY A$$ production of the disc.

Superman 1 on Blu-ray is the same way: crappy picture quality captured in full 1080. Woo-hoo.

So the question is: How do we know which discs are GOOD transfers from the original 35mm, and which ones are crappy? The only way I've found so far is to check user ratings on Amazon (starting from "1 star" and working my way up).

[calgaryalta @ Jul 16th 2009 7:01PM]

"This time it's Peter Bradshaw, film critic for Guardian.co.uk, claiming Humphrey Bogart any cameraman approximating a "high definition" effect would be thrown off the set."

Huh? Eh?

[Matt @ Jul 16th 2009 7:06PM]

I bet he's related to Karl Bradshaw.

[ClarkyAC @ Jul 16th 2009 7:07PM]

i think it means.. if a camera man was to ask, "are we filming in 1080p?" he would be told to GTFO

[Crlye @ Jul 16th 2009 7:24PM]

I thought he was referring the perception that HD=loss of shallow focus/too much detail/too digital.

Which, if this is what he is referring to, is an absolute non-issue if it's a movie shot on film!

[sracer @ Jul 16th 2009 7:01PM]

It's not a question of whether HD video is higher quality than SD video... but whether the increased resolution results in a discernible improvement that warrants the added costs of a full HD setup.

[sracer @ Jul 16th 2009 7:03PM]

All things being equal, sure HD looks better than SD. But if the original film elements are in poor condition then HD might actually look worse.

[Mmmm... Dohnuts. @ Jul 16th 2009 7:33PM]

I fear watching the original Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Star Wars special effects in HD... what a terrifying prospect.

[d889 @ Jul 16th 2009 7:53PM]

film has an infinite resolution

if you take the negative and re-telecine it into HD ... it will look like HD.

[JM @ Jul 16th 2009 8:35PM]

Film doesn't have infinite resolution. 35mm motion picture film has somewhere between 3K and 4K resolution (meaning it's roughly the equivalent of a digital image that's 3000-4000 pixels across - as originated; it's much lower by the time it's printed and projected), and that's assuming you're using excellent lenses. Sure, you can scan it at a much higher resolution, but the only thing you're gaining by that is redundant data.

[Ryan @ Jul 16th 2009 9:39PM]

I have the original star trek movie set on Blu-Ray and it actually looks pretty good. Granted they're not as old as the series, but the effects hadn't progressed that much (after all the genesis effect took a whole year to create). Yes some of the effects are hokey, but some of the models they made for the movies were actually really really detailed and look pretty good in high def.

[Newone @ Jul 16th 2009 9:58PM]

Actually film has a lot better resolution, or at least slow films like ISO50. Fuji Velvia claims to be able to reproduce 160 lines per mm. Thats 320 pixels. Or 11,200x7,680 picture. Or 86MPx.

But even if the film could do that, the lens that the picture was taken, can't. A good lens gets upto about 100 lines per mm in the middle and dropping off to the sides, most lenses a lot less. So the film isn't the limiting factor but lens is. And old lenses even more.

Then comes the reproduction loss of quality. Films aren't meant to be viewed from masters but from theatre copies. And theatre copies are at least third generation copies. Each copy weakens the quality.

Then comes the theatre equipment. The projector lens isn't perfect. Old lightsources weren't as pinlike as they are now. (Yes, the size of light makes a difference and you can't get around it with lenses). Even the screen wasn't as good quality as now.

Taken all these into account I doubt a 40's film was ever watched with better than 30 lines per millimeter quality. So the writer has a point when he says Humphrey Bogart would have been annoyed with HDTV. Even the change of photography support this. Pre 70mm films, in the black and white era movies had a lot of extreme closeups. This ended when the quality from filming to theater screen increased in the 60s. Films started to have a lot of panoramic views and no extreme closeups. There's nothing as offputting as a picture of face where you can check for zits.

So 40s films and older aren't made for HDTV but for poorer quality, and if they are remastered to increase quality overly the end produuct isn't what the director meant it to be. 50s films and onward are best to viewed from HDTV or better, mostly. Some of them too lose in the experience if quality is increased too much.

[ill trooper @ Jul 17th 2009 4:13AM]

NewOne... There are some good points in your post but also some really incorrect ones.

- Lenses don't have 'line resolution', that's just some strange talk that you use when you're approaching it in retrospect from a digital standpoint, which doesn't work in your first example. Camera equipment back in the 'old days' was high-quality too. Prime lenses for movies have always been nice. Even lenses with outer-edge aberration still gave a good image and it's not like pixel resolutions in digital imagery that really show quality break-up; a lens putting an image on film is going to be smoother than this unrelated 'lines of resolution' you claim lenses have, even on a faster film with more visible grain. And, black-and-white film is sharper than color stock in the same speeds. It's often the condition of the old films' deteriorating celluloid and mediocre transfers that cause many to think that old films don't have detail or contrast, or lack quality. They did.

- Next up, the theaters... Well, while there's some truth there, I can't totally agree with you. First off, theaters were a more special experience in the past, before television and cable... they were the only place to see stuff in motion. It wasn't just any place that could show movies. The projectors were nice, the bulbs were bright and the equipment was expensive and cared for. The film and cameras were up to the task. If anything, the audio is what might have suffered.

- As for 'we aren't meant to be seeing master copies [of films]', well, we still aren't seeing them with HD transfers. The transfer is done by telecine experts who account for things like exposures that were set to aide later copy generations, and color-corrected to give us the truest experience to the original film in their expert opinion. The generation-loss process you talk about was an unavoidable event in the 'mass distribution' scenario, not a desired effect. It's unlikely that directors of these films would opt against sharper, clearer version of their films.

- Very few films actually used 70mm for any shots other than special effects, where the larger image area combined with matched lenses (to give similar lens characteristics of scenes shot of life-size, actual things) allowed for high detail on miniatures, as well as giving some extra detail before the next generation loss in compositing. (Notable exception, Baraka in the early 90s). Most movies that were advertised as 70mm and shown in '70mm' were actually 35mm blow-ups to 70mm, which despite how it sounds, still offered great detail. (The original up-res!)

- There are a lot of close-ups, always. Every decade. I think there's even more now, as directors take their film's eventual arrival on television screens into account. Screens were larger. Stars on screen were projected even bigger than what you're talking about. Actors have always had 'good sides' vs 'bad sides', and even back then, they knew how they liked to be shot and what would be visible on screen. I think the detail was there then too.

Long story short, I like when older films wind up in HD. It's the closest to how it probably looked back when it showed in a good theater, on day one, before breaks and scratches in the print.

[kadajawi @ Jul 17th 2009 4:54AM]

@Donuts: I have watched a couple episodes of TOS in HD, and it's very, very sharp. Granted, they remade the visual effects, but since the episodes have been filmed on 35mm they are as sharp as any movie today, except for when the focus puller messes up.

[sam @ Jul 17th 2009 7:16AM]

@LilTrooper - Sorry, NewOne was broadly correct regarding lenses. This is nothing to do with digital imaging - the resolution of camera lenses is indeed a genuine fact, and is measurable in line pairs per millimetre as s/he stated. (In practice this is usually done by showing the 'amount of contrast' between lines a fixed distance apart, rather than working out the minimum distance between lines that can be resolved - but it works out to the same thing.) Visit the website of any lens manufacturer and look for MTF charts.

In other words if you have a series of alternating black and white lines, how narrow/closely packed can they be before the lens blurs them into a grey? That's how resolution is measured, and it's a physical fact. Sorry.

I also think it rather unlikely that the quality of most old cinemas was really as good as you're suggesting. This is just a hunch, I don't have any particular knowledge on the issue... But all that said, just because it's likely that very few people saw the film in the highest quality that could be obtained from the negatives, I don't think that means the 'director intended' for it to be blurry or whatever. The director didn't have much choice in the matter. Personally, I'd happily watch a 1940s film in higher quality than 1940s viewers saw.

[kavendano14 @ Jul 16th 2009 7:01PM]

IRL troll

[lawyer bird @ Jul 16th 2009 7:01PM]

idiot

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 7:04PM]

"This time it's Peter Bradshaw, film critic for Guardian.co.uk, claiming Humphrey Bogart any cameraman approximating a "high definition" effect would be thrown off the set."

I second the HUH?

[Makavre @ Jul 16th 2009 7:04PM]

If his age is relative to his ignorance, all his worries at this point should be about what retirement home plays Matlock in HD

[Eddie @ Jul 17th 2009 3:46PM]

Ooooh, Matlock! And don't forget Macgyver. Oh, and Perry Mason. Love 'em! And to see 'em in HD would be choice.....

[CaramelZappa @ Jul 16th 2009 7:05PM]

Hooray for people who don't understand the concept of quality!

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 7:06PM]

The Guardian is mostly written by communists trying to destroy the capitalist west so trying to stop people buying new TVs is part of their agenda.

[DizWhiz @ Jul 16th 2009 7:08PM]

I've got a spare tin-foil hat if you want to borrow it.

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 8:31PM]

It won't fit over my sarcasm goggles.

[Orinjz @ Jul 17th 2009 4:56AM]

...but organic free-range TVs are still ok though, right?

[3Djesus @ Jul 17th 2009 5:52AM]

@ DizWiz He's right, my commie friend(not comrade) Daniel cites the Guardian quite often. If it didn't have commie leanings, then he wouldn't patronize it so much. Here's a recent article about a famous commie- http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/15/picasso-liverpool-tate

[digi @ Jul 17th 2009 9:57AM]

What a load of balls. The Guardian is by far the best newspaper in the UK.
You make that comment with that avatar? Are you perhaps making a post-modernist statement about the duality of the self?

[guy943 @ Jul 16th 2009 7:16PM]

This is why kids don't respect their elders.

[LloydChiro @ Jul 17th 2009 10:19AM]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[spiderbug @ Jul 17th 2009 6:39PM]

Hay ever hear of a SPOILER ALERT? Thanks a lot Anthony Hopkins.

[Carniphage @ Jul 16th 2009 7:51PM]

Standard 35mm film. After exposure, editing, mastering and creating a master print - has a horizontal resolution of about a 1000 lines.

In digital terms, that's nearer 720p

C.

[Alex @ Jul 16th 2009 7:26PM]

Hmmm I think you should double check that. You are way off.

[Makavre @ Jul 16th 2009 7:41PM]

someone here reeks of High School DropOut

35mm Film = 4096 x 3112 px .....

1080 doesnt even stand a chance .... lol

[jon @ Jul 16th 2009 8:21PM]

Even if that were true, how is 720 closer to 1000 than 1080?

That's just basic math.

[El Capitan @ Jul 16th 2009 8:44PM]

35mm, or any type of film for that matter, is a true image. A REAL picture of what was captured. There are no pixels to speak of. Film can be transferred to near any digital resolution because of this. It is "scanned" into digital format so people can view it. Unfortunately there is no way to get mass media on 35mm or higher film. I wish it were so, because picture quality would be phenomenal...but that dream will never be fulfilled.

[shhac @ Jul 16th 2009 9:55PM]

@jon
"Even if that were true, how is 720 closer to 1000 than 1080?"
720p is 1280px wide and 720px high
1080p is 1920px wide and 1080px high
1000px wide is closer to 1280px than 1920px -> closer to 720p

But that doesn't mean he didn't get his figures wrong, as the film actually has a much larger resolution as Makavre said.

[Dave @ Jul 17th 2009 12:36PM]

@shhac, I believe he said 1000 lines of horizontal resolution, which would be closer to 1080 than 720. Of course, this ignore the other fact that film has far greater resolution than current digital distribution formats, ie blu-ray. Anyone who reads engadget and especially engadgetHD should have some idea about this. Heck, even Seinfeld has been remastered in HD for broadcast on TBS and it looks amazing. 1000 lines. Only if they used vaseline on the lens ;-)

[Jeff Oakes @ Jul 16th 2009 7:23PM]

Ah, come on. Don't be so hard on him. I didn't know. I'd wondered about it, but I didn't take the time to Google it. If he were an idiot he would not be the film critic he is now. Just chuckle and let it go.

[Major4Play @ Jul 16th 2009 9:31PM]

You didn't know ? then you are the yardstick all idiots shall be judged against !

[Jeff Oakes @ Jul 17th 2009 12:02PM]

It's hard to say. The competition is fierce.

[Amun @ Jul 16th 2009 7:29PM]

Blade Runner is quite possibly one of the most excellent movies ever. And it looks much better in HD. (Or projected from a print for that matter...)

[Rob @ Jul 17th 2009 10:56AM]

Agreed. Glad to add that I completely adore that scene. I'd argue it's as good or better than any moment in any film ever.

[kal326 @ Jul 16th 2009 7:44PM]

The better question is who the hell is going to take a film critic seriously? Let alone take a film critic's opinion on HD versus SD movie presentations.

[Amun @ Jul 17th 2009 2:14AM]

I hear the French take their film critics seriously. =/