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Dallas To Get Remastered In HD

'V'

'V'

Telly Talk Member
Extras I would like to see:
1. A serious documentary about the origin and early years of the show.
2. The original opening titles for the mini-series (the one without the split screen but with the more familiar big Dallas logo) - and in full, not just the existing clip that was taken from the Wogan show.
 
Snarky Oracle!

Snarky Oracle!

Telly Talk Supreme
Extra: reportedly (from Barbara Curran) the scene when Ray throws Pam into the lake in the pilot episode which was originally filmed when it was snowing -- called "remarkable" by the folks who were there but was demanded to be re-shot by the network because the scene was "written for heat" (which is ridiculous, since it's obviously freezing, even without the show, and they even say so). Does it still exist somewhere?

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Mustard

Mustard

Telly Talk TV Fanatic
Were there many instances on the DVD releases where it differed from what was broadcast? For example, the episode in Season 5 DVD where J.R., Bobby and Ray have gone down to South America and Miss Ellie is back at Southfork, the English language soundtrack on the DVD cut out incidental music when Miss Ellie was wandering the house. Will the Blu-ray fix these?
 
bmasters9

bmasters9

Telly Talk Mega Star
garry said:
VFX Artist Michael Moser remastered the Dallas opeing titles at Warner Bros. They look sharper with more clarity.
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Would love to see some of what he did where that is concerned.
 
WeldonBallou

WeldonBallou

Telly Talk Active Member
Rove said:
...mixed with some nerves. This all sounds a little quick for my liking. It doesn't seem that long ago @garry - I believe - gave us the news. I am hoping it will be released on Blu-Ray however I might have to wait and see if someone else makes the purchase and puts up online a side by side comparison between the old and the new. Otherwise if a hatchet job has been done on this the best I hope for is if Warner Bros releases it on DVD as a box set. That has to be better than nothing because as many have pointed out the process of converting anything old to 16:9 format to fit our beautiful big screen televisions is near impossible.

​
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If it's any consolation...CHiPs got the full 16:9 format remaster for streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime. It's expensive though but they did it. Warner Bros as well.
 
Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

Telly Talk Champion
I'd like an extra showing us how the remastering was done.

That would be lovely.

I'd also would love to see the original season nine cliffhanger with Ben revealing that he's Jock to Miss Ellie. :)
 
Mustard

Mustard

Telly Talk TV Fanatic
Chris2 said:
I really hope they make it available in its original aspect ratio. TV executives are silly sometimes. They’d crop the Mona Lisa if they thought it could make them extra money. Sorry, Mona Lisa, you don’t fit the 16 x 9 ratio, so you‘re getting cropped!
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The thing is, Blu-ray has be a minimum of 16:9 aspect ratio. If you're going to put 4:3 footage on Blu-ray, it becomes necessary to pillarbox it, i.e. by putting actual black bars on the left and right hand side of the screen as part of the footage itself, in order to stretch the footage to 16:9. Whereas on DVD with 4:3 footage, you don't pillarbox it.
 
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Snarky Oracle!

Snarky Oracle!

Telly Talk Supreme
Mustard said:
Were there many instances on the DVD releases where it differed from what was broadcast? For example, the episode in Season 5 DVD where J.R., Bobby and Ray have gone down to South America and Miss Ellie is back at Southfork, the English language soundtrack on the DVD cut out incidental music when Miss Ellie was wandering the house. Will the Blu-ray fix these?
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Yes, that's been a concern. While I'm the first to admit that TV sometimes over-scores itself, they shouldn't change these things after the fact.

In that "The Search" episode originally, Broughton's memorable score kicks in when Ellie wakes up in bed near the end, has a flashback of Jock asleep in his chair, then goes downstairs, sits down at the dining table, has her last flashback of Jock ("I have the rest of my life to listen to you"), and then the boys come in, JR can't handle it and leaves, Bobby and Ray sit down and begin to tell Miss Ellie what happened, and then JR wanders out the back door to look at his father's necklace and get his freeze frame, and we get our first look at Jock's portrait.

In the DVD release (and, apparently, some syndication versions) all of that near-iconic score has been removed (until JR goes out back). It was originally one of DALLAS' most poignant moments and scores. And while I realize that sometimes "less-is-more", it shouldn't ever be "less-than-we-once-saw." (Actually, if it had been up to me -- and nobody asked -- I think I would have requested, as a producer, not to score Miss Ellie waking up in bed, having her flashback of Jock asleep, and then her wandering downstairs pre-dawn, all in silence, with the music resuming as she goes to sit down at the table before her final flashback). But they cut it all out.

The same thing was done for DVD (and certain syndication versions) when Sue Ellen goes to Holly Harwood's to catch JR in bed with her. The original score was perfect. And they removed it, too.

What will happen now?

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Seaviewer

Seaviewer

Telly Talk Warrior
Via The Void said:
I'd like an extra showing us how the remastering was done.
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That's probably the first one they'll make; a little shameless self-promotion never hurt anyone.
Mustard said:
The thing is, Blu-ray has be a minimum of 16:9 aspect ratio. If you're going to put 4:3 footage on Blu-ray, it becomes necessary to pillarbox it, i.e. by putting actual black bars on the left and right hand side of the screen as part of the footage itself, in order to stretch the footage to 16:9. Whereas on DVD with 4:3 footage, you don't pillarbox it.
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I'd rather thay did. Saves having to do it manually on the TV - assuming the TV even has the capability.
 
Mustard

Mustard

Telly Talk TV Fanatic
Seaviewer said:
I'd rather thay did. Saves having to do it manually on the TV - assuming the TV even has the capability.
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But if it's an old TV, it's impossible to make pillarboxed 4:3 (which is stretched to 16:9) Blu-ray footage fit the full screen, as you have black bars on the left and right of the screen. I still have such a TV in my bedroom. 4:3 footage on DVD fits perfectly.
 
Toni

Toni

Maximum Member
T

TJP

Telly Talk TV Fanatic
Via The Void said:
I wonder did they fix or keep the mistake which was made in the season five (DVD count) opening credits.

Susan Howard's credit was noticeably larger than everyone else's.

Not that it would have taken much to fix it if they remastered the original footage before re-constructing the actual sequence.

Personally I don't mind if they didn't fix it at all.

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They did not "fix" the wrong size and position of Susan Howard's credit in that season. It's still a bit too big and still a bit off in contrast to the other cast members' title cards.

Remastering and reconstructing usually means that the studios do not tamper with the original presentation. It's not their intention to delete such errors; the intention is to enhance the picture quality only.

In contrast, however, we know that Warner Bros. repositioned a few film frames when they remastered season 3 of "Falcon Crest" in order to avoid a few apparent mistakes we had addressed in our "Behind the Scenes" section, such as the boom microphone being visible on the upper frame. The negatives were big enough so they could simply show more of the bottom instead of the upper frame, but such "improvements" (?) are very rare and not common.

From what I know, the mandate for "Dallas" (and other current remastering issues) was simply to get the answer print (after cleaning these film frames) digitized in the best possible resolution; anything else was to be preserved the same way it was during the original broadcast.

As a result, however, we usually don't get a bigger picture. Although "Dallas" and the other Lorimar shows were filmed on 35 mm films with a camera neg aspect ratio of 1.37 : 1, the newly remastered version is the classic 4 : 3 (= 1.33 : 1) aspect ratio. The original picture negative as well as the answer print would usually allow to have a bigger picture on each side of the frame. If they gave us the 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio, we could see a lot more on the sides, but a 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio has never been an industry standard, so these parts will remain unseen after all in the interest of preserving the original aspect ratio (which I personally regret though).
As an example — which is also applicable for "Dallas" — you can see in our "Making of" section on falconcrest.org how much of the original picture negative is "lost" in the film transfer to distribution copies by cropping: http://www.falconcrest.org/english/master.php?path=show/productionoffice/making — scroll down to the "Post-Production" section where we included a visualization using the scan of an original picture negative in contrast to the distribution prints.
 
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