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Wizards: DVD vs VHS

posted 18 years ago by barlowe2003
3 replies | jump to latest

I own both the DVD and VHS versions of Wizards. The VHS I own was a release from the 90's. I never noticed the difference between the two, but after watching the "They Killed Fritz!" scene as it appears at badmovies.org (I've uploaded it to my myspace profile), and re-visiting it on DVD, I've come to notice some discrepancies. First of all, the DVD is apparently widescreen, yet it actually cuts off some of the top and bottom of the screen! For example, we don't see the feet and head of Necron 99's steed during that scene where he is front of the advancing army, Elenor's feet are slightly cut off as Avatar is struggling with the nasty little critter, the eyeball of Necron 99's steed is slightly cut off after it falls off the cliff, and Fritz's body isn't all on the screen as Max shouts his tirade. These are just a few noticeable examples.

Also, the color on the DVD is highly saturated and not nearly as bright as it is in the VHS. The blue gasmask guys appear green in the DVD, and Peace's steed is black instead of grey. Consequentially, some of the subtler details are lost too, like the Star of David on the lower half of that bovine that Larry (?) eats after he reports to Blackwolf.

Has anyone else noticed that the DVD is an unnecessarily poor transfer, or is it just me?

[–] zoltan42 18 years ago

"First of all, the DVD is apparently widescreen, yet it actually cuts off some of the top and bottom of the screen!"

Uh, yeah. That's standard in a 1.85:1 movie.

Generally, the negative is about 1.33:1. Using a spherical lens, when the movie is shown, a matte it placed in front of the lens creating a 1.85:1 (or 1.66:1 or other similar ratios) image on the screen. Using an anamorphic lens, an image of approximately 2.35:1 is horizontally squeezed on the negative.

In a matted movie, the material above and below were never supposed to be seen, but usually for the fullframe video transfer they simply don't apply the matte.

Wizards was shot life using Rotoscoping, where animators trace live action movement, frame by frame. They had the extra material, which is what you saw on the VHS, but, again, you were never supposed to see that stuff. It's like the opposite or Reader's Digest condensed books, where in this case extra words and sentences are added to the story.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!

[–] jimimadcap 18 years ago

I noticed that the color on the DVD was terrible. Just a bad transfer that wasnt re-mastered would be my guess.

[–] superturbo4 13 years ago

The Blu-Ray is said to be a huge improvement over the DVD transfer!

ST4

Finally VF5:FShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_qjJ6eI1Og&feature=player_embedded