Ridley Scott's 'Alien' Will Finally be Released in 4K HDR For Its 40th Anniversary

The long wait is over for sci-fi and horror film buffs: the 1979 classic "Alien" will be released in 4K and HDR for the film's 40th anniversary. The remaster will be available on an UltraHD Blu-ray disc. From a report: 20th Century Fox and partners embarked on an effort to remaster the film in 4K last year, under supervision by Pam Dery and Director Ridley Scott. "Alien" was originally shot on 35mm film, and the remaster was made using the original negative. Remastering older films for the UltraHD era has sometimes proven challenging for studios. In many cases, original film masters have degraded, and 4K on a 65-inch TV is adept at revealing graininess and other flaws that result from aged or damaged film.

So what is it?

[Colin Castro]

What is 35mm film really equivalent to when it comes to 4K, 1080, etc? Can the film pick up the detail to translate to HD?

Re:So what is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The short answer is neither.

The actual answer becomes a lot more complicated because ultimately film is analog, and the smallest conceptual "pixel" in a 35mm film print is way higher than 4K. (The answer I found on Google is that it's closer to 175MP, while 4K is a "mere" 8MP.)

However, that ignores the realities of film grain and focus. And these factors can make it so that going all the way to 4K is kind of pointless, because you're no longer getting more details out of the image, you're just getting more noise. Of course, these factors depend on the type of film used and the lighting conditions. Some 35mm shots are probably in quite good focus and have low enough film grain that they'd make excellent 4K transfers.

Which also leads to a problem where not all shots are created equal - darker shots are more likely to show off far more film grain than brighter shots.

There is no real answer to this question, but to invent one, I'd say 35mm film usually seems to be better quality than 1080p, but somewhat worse quality than low-noise 4K shot with modern digital equipment. But it depends greatly on how the 35mm was originally shot. (And it's trivially easy to shoot bad digital 4K that will look worse than any 35mm print.)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh hello. I am the IBM 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

I was built in the 1960s to hold a terabit of information on film strips.

"it is nowhere closure to 175 MB."

auto correct huh

Re:

[Paul King]

Would be good if you read the article you point to.

Data was stored on small 35 by 70 mm cards of stiff film known as chips ... Data was stored on small 35 by 70 mm cards of stiff film known as chips ... This resulted in about 4.7 Mbit of usable space in a 6.6 Mbit chip.

Re:

[Kjella]

There is no real answer to this question, but to invent one, I'd say 35mm film usually seems to be better quality than 1080p, but somewhat worse quality than low-noise 4K shot with modern digital equipment. But it depends greatly on how the 35mm was originally shot.

An important factor is also if you're talking digital equivalent or film-to-digital resolution. The latter requires approximately double to accurately represent the full detail in the analog film. The people who have tested [clarkvision.com] it says:

Digital 9.8 Mpixels, monochrome: Intensity detail similar to or slightly better than 35mm film detail. Color detail still lacking film. Note the lack of green in the digital image, especially in the closest grass clump just left of center. Also the brown dry grass tip at the lower left corner shows a lack of color in the 9.8 Mpixel digital compared to the 35mm film. The 9.8 mpxel image shows many fine lines which look like grass blades. Many are real, but some are not! Compare with the higher resolution images to see what is real.

35mm film: 4000 dpi scan is 3760 x 5640 pixels = 21.2 RGB Mpixels (64 MByte tif file).

Digital 17 Mpixels, monochrome: The intensity detail is now clearly better than the 35mm film, but the color detail is just beginning to be comparable. Note the dry grass in the lower left corner still appears washed out compared to the 35mm film and the 48 Mpixel image below.

Digital 48 Mpixels, monochrome: Quality similar to small medium format film. Most of the not real grass blades are gone (but not all). Color detail is very good.

So for photography you're beyond 4K (8MP) somewhere. For video however, though I can't find it right now there was a study that said typical film stock on a typical film camera from negative to release print was like 900 lpm. So a 1080p camera fully resolving 1080 lines would be

Re:

[Khyber]

"For video however, though I can't find it right now there was a study that said typical film stock on a typical film camera from negative to release print was like 900 lpm."

More like 50-100 lines per MILLIMETER, not meter, depending upon the lens you're using.

"But a native 4K video will have more detail than film ever had..."

Never. You can make silver halide particles far smaller than any LED or LCD element.

Re:

[dwywit]

I think folk who've never studied film chemistry don't understand just how it works. Halide crystals are much smaller than any digital element. Smaller than a micrometre.

How they're used, of course, makes all the difference.

And *that* brings us back to Alien. IT'S NOT ABOUT THE DETAIL IN THE IMAGE! It's a film with a lot of dark - making it mysterious and terrifying. Upping the visible detail in those shadows is not going to improve the "terror" factor. It'll make it worse. Ridley Scott may have made some s

Re:

[Khyber]

"Fine detail isn't part of the experience."

You very obviously did not watch the Director's Cut, and only paid attention to the theatre and TV releases.

I say that as a massive xemomorph fan.

Re:

[Khyber]

"The answer I found on Google is that it's closer to 175MP, while 4K is a "mere" 8MP."

Boy Google is just so full of bullshit answers now days. 35mm film is closer to 90MP when you take film grain size and film measurements into account.

So glad I quit relying upon Google for answers YEARS ago. Why haven't you done the same?

Re:So what is it?

[Misagon]

A 35 mm release print of a film, used to project a film in a threatre back in the day, is considered to be roughly equivalent to 2K or 1080p, and those are at least a third generation copy from the original master.

This UHD release is supposed to be scanned from the original negative, so, however how grainy it is, it should at least be as good as it could be.

Re:

[Kyr Arvin]

This UHD release is supposed to be scanned from the original negative, so, however how grainy it is, it should at least be as good as it could be.

Unless the original negative has degraded, which is a not-uncommon problem with restoration from these 40-year-old film cans. If the original negative wasn't well-stored, a well-preserved working print could be higher quality. So we can sortof gestimate a best-case scenario, but who knows what the quality level will be.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

(I know nothing about all this, but here's what I found after several Google and Wikipedia searches. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

"What is 35mm film really equivalent to when it comes to 4K, 1080, etc? Can the film pick up the detail to translate to HD?"

35mm film can be scanned in at 2,400 (and higher) DPI.
35mm is 36 × 24 mm.
At 2,400 DPI, this is means 3,402 × 2,268 pixels.
That's pretty close to the TV/consumer media 4K UHD, which is 3840×2,160.
This particular 35 mm print is probably

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the films were recorded on 70 mm as well. However, the motion picture films are not as high resolution as still camera and they don't yield 2400 dpi (some of the best prime lenses used in still photos in those days barely produced 2400 dpi on best shots). So if the original was shot in 35 mm then it is less 4k (but can be higher than 2k, so can still benefit with 4k). If it was shot with 70 mm, then 4k may turned out great.

Re:So what is it?

[fafalone]

In my experience, the difference between 1080p and 4K for scanned 35mm is like this: Imagine if you took a 1920x1080 image, printed it on a piece of paper, then scanned it at 2400dpi. I'm still only seeing a 1920x1080 picture, but now I'll also get to see every last little detail of the paper fibers.
Getting to see the film grain in a whole lot of extra detail is of limited value.

Re:

[markdavis]

>Getting to see the film grain in a whole lot of extra detail is of limited value."

And also, viewing the "old" 1080P bluray master on a 4K upscaling TV of any reasonable size (50-80"), at any reasonable distance (6-12 feet), is far more resolution/picture quality than probably 99% could ever resolve or notice. So..... "yawn."

Re:

[F.Ultra]

You can even go one step further. I once performed a test with the 1080P bluray version of Blade Runner where I forced the bluray player to downscale to 720P to my UHD 4k 65" TV and it was very difficult to spot the difference between that and when the player sent the whole 1080P image.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Getting to see the film grain in a whole lot of extra detail is of limited value.

An amazing admission that you don't know what causes grain or how it relates to the medium. By its very nature grain would be more like the individual dots the printer printed on your contrived example. If you can see additional grain you have additional details from the film. The only exception would be if that part of the film was out of focus at the time, and with 4K being a measly 8.3mpxl lenses from back in the day easily out resolved this resolution.

You sound like you've been jaded from dodgy remaster

Re:

[fafalone]

An amazing admission that you don't know what causes grain or how it relates to the medium.

How does knowing what causes grain change how it appears? You could write up a 500-page single-spaced report to teach me all the technical details of film grain and 'how it relates to the medium', but unless you go in and rewire my visual system too my newfound knowledge won't change how it looks.
And the better the transfer is reviewed as by pros, e.g. the stuff made with a true 4k intermediate instead of upscaled 2k and/or with artificial grain, the more my comment applies. I'm just not seeing any additi

Re:

[thegarbz]

How does knowing what causes grain change how it appears?

It doesn't change how it appears. It changes the conclusion you just made. Grain is not related to the fibres of the paper. It's more like the dots from the printer you just mentioned. If you see the grain more clearly you literally have the ability to see more of the recorded detail.

The fibres on the paper stay the same but you just printed in 2100dpi rather than 1800dpi would be a far better example. Now this explaination is not withstanding that your original explanation said you're starting with 1080p c

Re:

[jaa101]

35mm is 36 × 24 mm.

Only for still cameras where it runs horizontally. For motion pictures it runs vertically so it's more like 24 × 18 mm.

Re:

[thegarbz]

That can never truly be answered as it depends on a large variety of factors including the film, the processing, the recording equipment (sometimes film isn't the limiting factor) and the lighting conditions.

Re:

[Solandri]

35mm film was what film SLR and point and shoot cameras used. From over a decade of scanning the stuff, I can tell you that it can hold about as much info as 4k video. You can get about 3000-4000 horizontal pixels of usable info out of a 36x24mm film frame. More if you used a low-ISO film (smaller grain), Less if you used a faster film (bigger grain, more noise).

I'm kinda surprised it wasn't shot in 70mm. That's what the bigger blockbuster movies used. But I guess Ridley Scott and Alien weren't house

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

My slides scan at 44MB each and I am not max'd out on resolution. I don't pirate movies so i found a use for all that disk space :)
It is a patience time limit....it is 15 MINUTES to scan a 1 inch slide at that scale.

Hopefully their scanner is at least that good and even tho film is usually a little less than slides should be plenty for 4K.

Re:

[jaa101]

You can get about 3000-4000 horizontal pixels of usable info out of a 36x24mm film frame

But 35mm cinema frames are more like 24x18mm.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Film will give enough information for 4K.
The movie is getting a 4K restoration.

I watched enough examples of 4k remasters now...

[ffkom]

... from old 35mm and 70mm analog film to state from experience that even if this remaster is done with lots of effort from the original negative, it will not reveal any details you could not see on a 1080p remaster.

Even the better examples like the 35mm "Rambo First Blood" or the 70mm "2001 - A space Odyssey" remasters do not get anywhere near a modern digital 4k camera recording.

Re:

[jaa101]

4K on 35mm, which has a frame 25mm wide, works out to 80 line pairs per mm. Film and lenses are capable of that (at 50% contrast anyway) but it's challenging, and that's just for the original negative; prints will be worse. Restorations of relatively recent 35mm films have the potential to achieve or slightly better 4K given access to the original negatives. For older films, especially where the negatives aren't available, a digital transfer can struggle to reach 2K, AKA, "Full HD".

Don't forget, digital

Re:

[dwywit]

"unless 4K projectors have overtaken 2K installations recently."

Not in my neck of the woods. Our 2K projector was installed in 2013, but we're starting to see 4K DCPs turn up. It's handy that the projector can just discard 3/4 of the data in a 4K film and show a decent 2K image.

Re:

[Kyr Arvin]

If ever someone asks me "what is Slashdot? How do I get started?" I will send them to this thread to get them caught up with the most important topics.

Re:

[91degrees]

You wouldn't. Obviously.

This is information for people who are interested - collectors, fans of the franchise, sci-fi and horror fans with high end home cinema systems etc. Casual movie fans are not the target audience of a special edition.

Obvious

[jfdavis668]

Now the special effects and and rubber alien suit will be very obvious.

Re:

[mjwx]

Now the special effects and and rubber alien suit will be very obvious.

Am I the only one not excited about this?

Part of the brilliance of Aliens is how it didn't use SFX to create atmosphere. Lighting, scripting, cinematography techniques to cover for the fact they had a limited number of animatronic creatures. I think they had 6 or 12, but used cinematic trickery to make the illusion of thousands. No big budget CG, just good production.

Much like Blade Runner, the original was the best. It doesn't need another version to go along with the 40 already in existence.

This is Ripley

[CohibaVancouver]

Final report, the commercial star-ship Nostromo. Third officer reporting. The other members of the crew - Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash, and Captain Dallas - Are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier within six weeks. With a little luck the network will pick me up.

This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.

I was 12 years old when Alien came out, so I wasn't that dialed into mass media.

I wonder if back then the '70s version of today's insecure basement-dwellin

Re:

[Kyr Arvin]

I like how you call her Ellen Degenerates. That's very classy.

Re:

[Bigbutt]

Tough call. Back in the day the ability for "insecure basement-dwelling neckbeard trolls" to actually communicate with each other was pretty limited, mainly to local newspapers and maybe science fiction/fantasy magazines or perhaps one of the horror magazines or movie magazines. And of course they had editors and limited space for letters.

As someone who saw it when it came out in theaters on post when I was in Germany, having a woman as the strong female lead wasn't even in consideration. It was just a fsck

Re:This is Ripley

[Ol Olsoc]

As someone who saw it when it came out in theaters on post when I was in Germany, having a woman as the strong female lead wasn't even in consideration. It was just a fscking cool movie.

One of the strangest issues today is the so called "Strong Female Lead". Hollywood brays as if women were not even in films before, and this is some sort of great liberation over evil "white males". I wouldn't have even put that in there, but anyone thinking otherwise needs to research Brie Larson, the racist and sexist female lead in the new Captain Marvel movie.

If you actually have a strong female lead, you don't have to tell people she's a strong female lead. They can tell by watching the movie. Ripley kicked ass, and you cared about what happened to her. Sarah Conners in the first couple Terminators. Gal Gadot was good in WW, even if feminists were enraged that she shaved her armpits. https://www.maxim.com/entertai... [maxim.com] Disclaimer - I do like Linda Carter WW better, but no problem if others differ.

It is high time that Hollywood stop acting like they are embracing racism and sexism. Just because the object of your hatred and vilification is white males, one does not eliminate racism and sexism by becoming a racist and a sexist. And a stronf female lead isn't whining, and inserting your political views into the movie.

Re:

[Comrade Ogilvy]

I wonder if back then the '70s version of today's insecure basement-dwelling neckbeard trolls were all complaining about a strong female lead, the way they do today about Rey, Carol Danvers et al.

It was so rare that there was not really a reaction -- just a strange detail in already very unusual movie.

Keep in mind that even in the late 80s, Star Trek: The Next Generation, as proto-PC as it was, treated strong women as a bit of an anomaly. Yes, they had Yar, but she was a bit of a weirdo from a psychotically violent planet, thus easily explained away as a bizarre outlier that did not matter to the civilized world. Either Crusher and Troi, as Starfleet officers, could easily have had some very modest

Re:

[fafalone]

The idea that the computer/sci-fi nerd type guys had or have any issue with strong female leads in principle is just SJW hysteria. The film and/or marketing having a very specific agenda, and/or the film being legitimately terrible, is what causes the backlash against some films. There's a long list of other movies besides the ones you mentioned that have strong female leads and lack the "omg all these sexist fragile men with their toxic masculinity just hate these strong womyn taking their place!!!" bullsh

Re:

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Oh you don't like Last Jedi? Sexist! You only think Black Panther is 'good' instead of 'the biggest cultural moment evar!!!eleventy!'? Racist! Actual reasons for the opinion are irrelevant, something made abundantly clear.

I, for one, never make assumptions for merely disliking or liking any movie.

But I have seen enough "actual reasons" provided to know with certainty there are quite a few sexists and racists, and then a huge bunch of fellow travelers who enthusiastically agree and are too cowardly to name a reason why.

Walk like a duck. Talk like a duck. Consequences.

Re:

[Kyr Arvin]

Either Crusher and Troi, as Starfleet officers, could easily have had some very modest degree of martial arts competence, yet they basically fell into the standard helpless female role when it came to fisticuffs.

It's been decades, and I remember Troi being fairly useless (even as an empath!), but I have vague memories of Crusher having a couple ass-kicking moments. Tasha Yar was strong, Ensign Ro as well, but there was a gap of about 5 seasons between the two of them. Then again, I seem to recall Wesley and LaForge being pretty useless in any (non-phaser-related) fight. Worf and Riker were the action guys, and Picard sometimes got in some licks since he's the lead.

The first true strong action hero female was Linda Hamilton's jaw-dropping performance as Sara Connor in Terminator 2,

Linda Hamilton was pretty amazing in that film, no

In this version...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Newt shoots first.

SO happy the theatrical cut is included

[NG Resonance]

But I wonder why its soundtrack will only be remastered in 4.1, instead of 5.1 for the 2003 revision?

Re:

[F.Ultra]

As I heard it back when they release the Bluray version which also uses 4.1 the claim was that early 70mm 6-track mixes where actually 4.2 (3 fronts, mono surround and 2 LFE channels) and since you cannot encode 2 LFE channels into AC3 it became 4.1. Then there are other claims that the 4.1 mix comes from the 4 channel master that where used for the Theatrical Dolby Surround mix since Ridley wanted to correct some sound errors in the 6-channel mix that where not present in the 4 channel mix.

Re:

[NG Resonance]

Very interesting. Thank you for shedding some light on this!

Why?

[Zorro]

Not sure what can be gained here, the first one wasn't that high in action.

ALIENS however should look AWESOME in High Def!

Alien Queen VS Mech Suit!

Re:Why?

[AHuxley]

To get ready to sell the rest of the movies in the same way. Start with 1 and move up the series.

Re:

[mckwant]

Better yet: Start with 1, stop there.

Re:

[Cochonou]

What is the relationship between action and high definition ?

Who cares?

[Torodung]

Anybody got the 120" TV that will make that 4k worth anything?

It's like we're gearing up for Ray Bradbury's telewalls. I don't want one. Does anyone? Is that a spider drone at my front door? Excuse me while I... LOST CARRIER

Re:

[fafalone]

It would actually be really nice to have a large display with a picture quality so high you couldn't tell the difference between it and an actual window looking out somewhere, even better if it's the whole wall-- like sitting on your porch. Of course pixel count isn't the biggest issue holding us back from realizing that, but really who wouldn't want a wall in their house like that?
Just a big screen like screen tech today, sure it wouldn't be worth it, but when picture and real life are indistinguishable?

Get offa my lawn

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Just what we need. 4K of Harry Dean Stanton standing there in closeup, greasy and sweaty, as the water drips on his face, or Penny's sister blubbering uncontrollably.

They better not "touch up" certain parts of someone's anatomy though.

Anything else?

Re:

[rv6502]

In this 4K remastered edition the face hugger is acting purely in self-defence and they go after the xenomorph with walkie-talkies making noise that shoos it away.

Re:

[Cochonou]

Alien: engineers [archive.org] could have been good. Unfortunately, we got Prometheus.