Yet Another New Slideshow

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt looking 20 years younger just blows me away.

Not to mention that with the correct color, as the show was intended to be seen:

He doesn't look like someone in the makeup department went overboard with the spray tan, like he does on the DVD:

 

(But again, I'm not bitter over the DVD transfer. Nope. Not. At. All.)

[Midnite]

Wow, MB.  And the images show that David's vest was originally black but on the DVD it's brown.

I just watched the pilot on DVD and noticed some really unfortunate changes in Vicki's makeup too, but more on that later.  There also are annoying flashes of red light while Carolyn dances in the roadhouse that detract from the scene.  And while I never understood the fan complaints before about the bright California sun in the series, I get it now!-- in the DVD, it streams through pretty much every window; it's almost blinding when Vicki is attempting to teach David while he's more preoccupied with the tarantula.  Not to mention how amusing it is that the transfer has brightened the basement of the Old House.  My recommendation is to skip the Sony DVD totally and burn your own DVD copies from the video series.  I promise you will not get the bright sun but you will see the correct colors and lighting.

Anyway, the current quote is from the only extended scene in the 2nd half of the pilot:  [spoiler]Ep #1-- Carolyn:  'It'd be, uh, kind of tough to leave, you know, right now.'[/spoiler]

Context:[spoiler]We get some insight into Carolyn's background as she drives Vicki to the stables.  Her career as a photographer was starting to take off when Liz phoned to request her return.  She's still taking some photos, and Vicki suggests that now that she's at Collinwood, Carolyn can return to the city to pick up where she left off, but Carolyn replies that what's happening now makes it difficult for her to leave.  Vicki says she understands and thanks her for the ride, and Carolyn tells her to take the chestnut mare named Carolyn.  This explains why, in the next scene, Vicki singles out the brown horse and calls it by name.

There've been a few clues already, btw, that a big part of what's keeping Carolyn there is not David and not Daphne, but Joe.[/spoiler]

[michael c]

i've only seen the series son dvd and the BLINDING california sunlight has always been one of the biggest distractions/production gaffes for me.

and when i've mentioned this in the past for some reason fans of this version of the series become infuriated and defiant. it's like some strange thorn in the side for fans of this.

glad i'm not the only one to see it.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I think everyone has understood your points, mscbryk, so far as the Sony DVD version of the '91 Series goes - and especially with regard to the sun as it appears on the DVDs, your points are spot on! But the point that people have tried to get across - and Midnite stresses in her post here - is that with the correct color and with the intended filters (the ones that Sony insanely removed during its DVD transfer process) in place, the sun that is indeed a factor on the DVD set is not anywhere near the issue it is on the DVDs. Sony's DVD transfer is nowhere near an accurate depiction of how the series appeared on NBC or was ever intended to appear. The look of the series shouldn't be judged by the DVDs or any of the Web sites that feature the DVD version rather than the original masters which, thankfully, are preserved beautifully by the MPI tapes. The only way to really judge the '91 Series is to watch the MPI tapes. (Or maybe the showings on Chiller? I don't have the channel so I don't know what version they're showing. Hopefully not the DVD version!)

And I certainly agree with Midnite suggestion that fans of the '91 Series should definitely skip the Sony DVD entirely and burn their MPI tapes to DVD. I know that's definitely what I'm in the process of doing as I've begun work on this project. (Thank heavens I was able to get the Sony DVD set for free in a Buy One/Gert One sale. That set isn't worth ANY amount of money. Actually, it isn't even worth getting it for free!)

[michael c]

i definitely hear your points about the lighting mysterious.

however it's not just the light. i've lived in california and i've lived in maine. everything about the foliage,the coastline look completely different. i'm not trying to be critical it's just the way it is. they're on opposite coasts and the landscape is just different in each location. if the series had been shot in pheonix, arizona it would have a different look too.

as a devoted fan of the original series i know that it was not filmed on the coast of maine but on a set. it looks like a set because it's a set.

but anyways i'm sure this is beating a dead horse....

[Midnite]

Opinions are always welcome, mscbryk!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

There is one truth that can never be discounted () - Collinsport and its surroundings are unique locations in not only Maine but all of the Northern US and almost all of the East Coast in that the grass is always green and not just the evergreen trees/bushes always have foliage. With obvious anomalies like those, who knows what else is possible?!  

[michael c]

and of course the summer months require blazing fires and the wearing of stiff,boxy,heavy wool coats.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Well, THAT goes without saying! 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I don't honestly remember if any Julia/Natalie stuff was added to the extended version of the finale. I haven't watched it in a long time. But we shall see when it comes up in the slideshow in December...

Actually, I had occasion to watch the finale last night and there is indeed extended footage with Barbara Steele as Julia (as well as footage featuring Ely Pouget, Michael T. Weiss, Stefan Gierasch, Jim Fyfe, Ben Cross, and Veronica Lauren).

[Gothick]

Needless to say, I love today's shot of Julia's arrival... emerging from the murk and drizzle of the Collinsport train station...

Her introduction literally foregrounds that this Julia is a much "darker" character than the original.

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The scene was shot with so many shadows that it was very hard to get a good capture that actually showed her face. But then, as you say, perhaps they were trying to convey right from the very start that Julia would be darker in the '91 Series.

I've read that Julia was deliberately drawn so darkly in the '91 Series because she was envisioned as the female analogue of Barnabas. And what's really interesting is how the writers saw the structure of the series as Barnabas' obsession with the three women in his life, with each representing a different aspect of Barn. Josette was seen as his emotions, his past, his lineage, and his heritage. Julia was seen as his future and his intellect. And Angelique was seen as his physical nature, his sexuality, and a simile for his vampiric affliction.

(All that certainly makes one curious as to how the Depp/DS film will delineate the women in Barn's life. But, of course, that's a discussion for a Depp/DS film topic...)

[Mysterious Benefactor]

With all the excitement surrounding Eva Green's videos yesterday, I forgot to post here that I just love the way Ben Cross delivers the word "yes" in yesterday's quote: Ep #2 - Barnabas: 'Yes - that is the question' - in response to Julia's quote from the day before: Ep #2 - Julia: 'That still leaves one question unanswered: who is the one that did this to her?' And I also love the expression on his face:

He looks so seriously puzzled despite the fact that he knows damn well he was the one. Though he has no clue that[spoiler]Julia now suspects him because she's seen that he doesn't cast a reflection in the mirror.[/spoiler]

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Noticing how the capture from yesterday's quote was framed -

I was curious if the butchered DVD set cut off the heads of all the characters in the background. But imagine my surprise to discover that whoever handled the formatting of that portion of the scene, for the most part, actually took those background characters into account:

However, what I also noticed was that the filtering that was used to darken day-for-night outdoor scenes had apparently also been used to darken some indoor scenes - and as with the outdoor scenes, the filtering from the indoor scenes had been stripped as well:

I don't know why in my mind I would have been thinking that the filtering would have only been stripped in the day-for-night outdoor scenes because, obviously, they didn't just do whatever they did that removed the filtering from the outdoor scenes to only just those scenes - they did it to each entire episode so that wherever and wherever the filtering should have appeared, it was stripped away. Here I was originally thinking that it was only those day-for-night outdoor scenes that were ruined by the processing of the eps, but quite obviously the problem is much deeper and much more extensive.

Grrrr! 

[MsCriseyde]

Dare I horrify you further, MB, and point out that the version that is streaming on Netflix at the moment appears to take the DVD's 16:9 image and lop the left and right sides off in order to get it back to a 4:3 image? In other words, the picture has been cut on all sides.