What is wrong with BUFFY in HD?

I think it was on Thursday or Friday, but got moved to Tuesday. There was a line in it that went 'Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday' that erryone was repeating for weeks.

Also, I am reminded of my previous desire to get some friends together and go to a con as The Gentlemen, but I'd be afraid of scaring kids.
 
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I felt this way when i saw what they did to the original Trek but at least there they gave you an option of the new effects or the original effects simply with a button push. This is more of a slaughter by someone who obviously didn't care enough to even try and match things up.
 
I think it was on Thursday or Friday, but got moved to Tuesday. There was a line in it that went 'Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday' that erryone was repeating for weeks.

Also, I am reminded of my previous desire to get some friends together and go to a con as The Gentlemen, but I'd be afraid of scaring kids.

I've wanted Spike's leather coat for like forever :(
Scaring kids is a good thing :p
 
My wife and I have been watching Buffy (rewatch for me, first time for her), and I was really excited when I first heard they were remastering in HD. I was really hoping that they would do it justice like Star Trek TOS or TNG and keep it in 4:3 with effects as close to the original as possible, but… shame that isn't the case.

Even beyond the 16:9 crop issues and the VFX mismatches, I'm surprised they couldn't even get the color grades right. I mean, I used to do color grading for some History channel shows, and I'm not half as good as some colorists I know — and even *I* could have done a better job matching the grades than these people are doing. It's like they don't even care. :(
 
Hi :)

Last reactions of three members of the original team:

Mark Metcalf (The Master) on his Facebook Page: "I probably should know more about this before I open my big mouth but from the little I do know Fox has made a mess of remastering the great work of Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar and all the other actors, directors and technicians who worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show and the work were important to me at the time and there are fans throughout the world that still get inspiration from the little girl with the big wooden stake and her struggle for justice and a simple dinner date in a nice black dress. This is worth a look."

Aaron Miller by private message: "I was the post coordinator for Season 5 and we actually made a list of 16X9 fixes for every show that would need to be done when the show was remastered for HD. [Fox] definitely did not contact me at any time."

Aaron Miller:
"Here's a comment from my post supervisor/AP that I worked with on Buffy. He was a post PA on Season 1 and moved up to AP by Season 6. He and I both went to work on Firefly so we did not do Season 7:

[Brian Wankum:] Thanks for asking! I am a little torn. The true purists should only ever watch the 4:3 standard def original release versions (exception being the "Once More With Feeling" which was intended to be shown widescreen). Not only is the framing as was originally intended, but i suspect that there will be lots of details in sets, props, costumes and makeup that might not hold up in HD.

That's for the purists. BUT... Right or wrong there is a large population of average Joes who just want the picture to fill their frame. The same group who 15 years ago would have preferred the center cut to the black bars on top and bottom. Would be a shame for a whole new generation to miss out just because they (or their local TV station which is more likely) got turned off by black side bars. I agree that if it must be done there's a better way to do it. Season 1 was 16mm 4X3 so there is no way to make it 16:9 without blowing up the image. One of the things that bugs me the most about the ones I have seen is that top of show credits appear over peoples faces. We always had a rule to keep credits below the chin in closeups. Starting with season 2 we shot 35mm composed for 4X3 but protecting for 16X9. After we delivered the 4:3 air master I would sit down and watch the 16:9 version and take notes and do blowups and repos where necessary to avoid crew, equipment and ends of sets in shots. We called these the "16X9 safe masters" and archived them with everything else. I thought these were pretty cool to watch, the problem is when they went back to negative for the HD rexfer in this latest release it looks like they did not consult the original for either color timing or re-framing reference. I'm sure the stories and characters will hold up but it's too bad more care was not taken. Nobody asked me, but if they did I would have loved to have consulted on this. Probably could have organized a crowdsourcing effort of comparing the originals to the re-transfers. Lots of crew alumni with lots of love for the originals would have likely participated. Maybe for the 4K/3D version?"

He probably meant they started shooting 35mm with season 3. Season 2 was (super) 16mm.

Note that the video was also shared by Kristine Sutherland (Joyce Summers), James C. Leary (Clem), David Fury, Tim Minear (producer, writer and director on "Angel" the TV show) and Nancy Holder (writer).
 
Well hey, look at it this way. At least the situation isn't as bad as with Babylon 5 where, while they shot in 16:9 to "future proof," the f/x that they did on a video toaster were never preserved in hi-def even for DVD, let alone Blu-Ray, so there's basically no way for that show to ever really be modernized without totally redoing the f/x. The real trouble, though, is that the original material for things like the actors appearing in f/x heavy shots have been lost, so even if the f/x themselves were cleaned up, the live action portion can't be.
 
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