Which one of Michael's short movies were shot on film?

[Eddlicious]

I was looking at the comments for the newly uploaded Who Is It video on YouTube when I saw several fans were claiming that the Estate had all his music videos in HD, but didn't release it. Some even complaining that even non-official channels had some videos in "HD". Those videos were clearly upscaled to 1080p, and I don't really think those people commenting know how HD conversion works anyway.

The resolution of movies shot on film is almost infinite. Which is why movies shot on film gets an HD remaster, 4K remaster etc all the time. More info about that here. Movies shot digitally or on tape, stays in the resolution it was filmed in forever. You won't be able to remaster it unless you digitally put in those extra pixels yourself. Since Moonwalker was shot on film, it was released on Blu-Ray and we know how great that looked. It could also be released in 4K if the Estate wanted it.

Which makes me think... which one of Michael's short films (except Moonwalker, of course) were actually shot on film? Those could easily be released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray if there's enough demand!
:dancin:

 

[HIStoric]

I was looking at the comments for the newly uploaded Who Is It video on YouTube when I saw several fans were claiming that the Estate had all his music videos in HD, but didn't release it. Some even complaining that even non-official channels had some videos in "HD". Those videos were clearly upscaled to 1080p, and I don't really think those people commenting know how HD conversion works anyway.

I'm pretty confident they do not have finished music videos in HD, at least as of a few years ago. You could see this in the Bad 25 documentary, where newly-scanned behind the scenes footage was all crisp and clear, but then it'd switch to footage from the final cut of the music video and suddenly it was very obviously upscaled. Things might've changed over the last 4 years and I seriously hope they are working on this, but Who Is It would've been the perfect opportunity to upload in 1080p and yet they evidently did not. The fans are whining over assumptions they've made but don't exactly know much about.

And you're right, those "HD" Youtube videos really are just upscaled. People go "omg it looks better!" but all they've really done is sharpened and de-noised the image, making it look even worse, removing it of finer details! Yuck.

The resolution of movies shot on film is almost infinite.

While true, there is a certain point (which varies depending on the film format) where you're not going to get anything extra out of it.

Which makes me think... which one of Michael's short films (except Moonwalker, of course) were actually shot on film? Those could easily be released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray if there's enough demand!
:dancin:

So the short films for the Off the Wall album were shot on tape. Billie Jean was shot in 16mm, Thriller and Beat It were shot on 35mm. From then on, I believe Michael's films were all shot on 35mm (they certainly had the budgets to and BTS footage has suggested this as well). Man in the Mirror is the exception, given it's just a compilation that samples a lot of tape-sourced footage.

As far as we're aware, the Estate only has versions of the short films in SD, from their tape masters. Rumour has it that they were shot on film and then later edited on tape, but I'm not sure how correct that is (I have a feeling it might've though, does seem like it). Issue is, they have to find all of the film negatives, re-scan them, restore them and then re-cut the films together (assuming they were edited on tape). They can do this using an edit decision list, which essentially lists which shot/take is used, where in the sequence it's slotted in, and the "in-point" and "out-point" of that take at that specific point. Assuming they still have those documents, if they don't it's going to take a loootttttttt longer to accurately recreate the videos.

In addition, one thing to note about many of Michael's short films from Dangerous onwards is the fact they contain digital visual effects, which would've all been output at standard definition. Therefore, they would have to recreate all of the CGI in Michael's short films (or, at least, re-render it assuming they still had the original source files with software that could still read them properly) and then re-add those newly rendered VFX over the original unaltered negatives.

Assuming they can find all the film in the first place (Michael admitted he was never best with his archiving, but film has been found as evident by Bad 25), it will be a very timely and expensive process I imagine, especially given how complex Michael's short films could be.

 

[wonderouzdj2]

I'm pretty confident they do not have finished music videos in HD, at least as of a few years ago. You could see this in the Bad 25 documentary, where newly-scanned behind the scenes footage was all crisp and clear, but then it'd switch to footage from the final cut of the music video and suddenly it was very obviously upscaled. Things might've changed over the last 4 years and I seriously hope they are working on this, but Who Is It would've been the perfect opportunity to upload in 1080p and yet they evidently did not. The fans are whining over assumptions they've made but don't exactly know much about.

And you're right, those "HD" Youtube videos really are just upscaled. People go "omg it looks better!" but all they've really done is sharpened and de-noised the image, making it look even worse, removing it of finer details! Yuck.


While true, there is a certain point (which varies depending on the film format) where you're not going to get anything extra out of it.



So the short films for the Off the Wall album were shot on tape. Billie Jean was shot in 16mm, Thriller and Beat It were shot on 35mm. From then on, I believe Michael's films were all shot on 35mm (they certainly had the budgets to and BTS footage has suggested this as well). Man in the Mirror is the exception, given it's just a compilation that samples a lot of tape-sourced footage.

As far as we're aware, the Estate only has versions of the short films in SD, from their tape masters. Rumour has it that they were shot on film and then later edited on tape, but I'm not sure how correct that is (I have a feeling it might've though, does seem like it). Issue is, they have to find all of the film negatives, re-scan them, restore them and then re-cut the films together (assuming they were edited on tape). They can do this using an edit decision list, which essentially lists which shot/take is used, where in the sequence it's slotted in, and the "in-point" and "out-point" of that take at that specific point. Assuming they still have those documents, if they don't it's going to take a loootttttttt longer to accurately recreate the videos.

In addition, one thing to note about many of Michael's short films from Dangerous onwards is the fact they contain digital visual effects, which would've all been output at standard definition. Therefore, they would have to recreate all of the CGI in Michael's short films (or, at least, re-render it assuming they still had the original source files with software that could still read them properly) and then re-add those newly rendered VFX over the original unaltered negatives.

Assuming they can find all the film in the first place (Michael admitted he was never best with his archiving, but film has been found as evident by Bad 25), it will be a very timely and expensive process I imagine, especially given how complex Michael's short films could be.

I pray that since 2010 that they have been working hard & long on them if that is the case

 

[Galactus123]

I'm pretty sure all videos from Thriller onwards are on film. They could release Thriller and Bad era short films on Blu-Ray easily because they don't have CGI effects.

 

[wonderouzdj2]

I'm pretty sure all videos from Thriller onwards are on film. They could release Thriller and Bad era short film on Blu-Ray easily because they don't have CGI effects.

Speed demon...or claymation not the same as cgi?

 

[HIStoric]

Speed demon...or claymation not the same as cgi?

Shot on film and then superimposed onto the footage of Michael dancing on-set.

 

[Galactus123]

Speed demon...or claymation not the same as cgi?

CGI = Computer-generated imagery. I don't think they used it before Dangerous short films. They are on film but people say that they were edited on tape and they added the CGI in that stage or something like that. I don't know if that is true.

 

[KOPV]

whatever the case, the estate has to have plenty of great footage to share in awesome quality... We have seen only glimpse of what they have.

 

[vanou]

The victory tour live LA has been shot on 35mm film. 35mm can go up to 8k...
Unfortunately it has never been released.
A lot of the bad tour has also been shot on film in full! They used bit of it for the film Moonwalker.

 

[HIStoric]

CGI = Computer-generated imagery. I don't think they used it before Dangerous short films. They are on film but people say that they were edited on tape and they added the CGI in that stage or something like that. I don't know if that is true.

I'm pretty confident that the CGI was rendered in standard definition. Given that music videos were only going to be shown on television, there would be no benefit to rendering it in high definition, let alone the cost of it all - hiring artists to wait around for forever longer as they wait for it to render/export, as well as the cost of simply storing it all.

The victory tour live LA has been shot on 35mm film. 35mm can go up to 8k...
Unfortunately it has never been released.
A lot of the bad tour has also been shot on film in full! They used bit of it for the film Moonwalker.

Actually to be technical, I remember reading a while ago that Kodak said 35mm was the equivalent of about 6k, so anything beyond that you're not really gaining much more out of it.

And yep, you're right about the Bad tour it's really just a case of finding these showreels as well as having access to the audio that was recorded on the night.

 

[Hess]

So if a concert og music video was shot on 35mm they could turn it into 4K with very little cost?

I think the estate should aim for the future and release all MJ's videos in 4K - and also the next concert.

Blu-Ray is already dated and old, on UHD TV's you need 4K - so the estate and SONY should release Vision again - in 4K. That's not only the future, it's also the present.

 

[HIStoric]

So if a concert og music video was shot on 35mm they could turn it into 4K with very little cost?

I think the estate should aim for the future and release all MJ's videos in 4K - and also the next concert.

Blu-Ray is already dated and old, on UHD TV's you need 4K - so the estate and SONY should release Vision again - in 4K. That's not only the future, it's also the present.

I'm not sure of the exact costs, but it wouldn't necessarily be very little cost (and on top of that, I'm not sure what the Estate consider "very little cost"). Post-production is generally expensive, easily running into the hundreds, even thousand + an hour.

It'd definitely help on the financial side of things if they have all of the negatives together, that they have been stored in pristine conditions, that they require very little restoration work and that they also had a soundtrack that is up to scratch (Wembley was one of the few Bad shows that had been recorded in multitrack). That way they could essentially get "straight to it" rather than try and repair anything up to scratch, which costs extra. I imagine the footage would definitely need touching up and colour grading of some kind.

As for the 4K business, unless the footage isn't of particular high quality, storage is restricted or budgets are restricted, most places generally do scan footage in at least 4K nowadays. If they were to release it on 4K UHD Blu-ray, it would mean they have to do their whole workflow in 4K (rather than downscale to 2K or 1080p, as was common a few years back) but I imagine they would nowadays regardless of a 4K release or not due to archival and future release reasons. At least, they would if they were smart. I think if this was announced tomorrow, we'd likely just get Blu-ray and DVD versions, for now at least. Even the DVD versions would look much better if they were sourced from the original negatives.

As I've said before on this forum, if they were to restore and re-release all of MJs videos, I can see it running up a very pretty penny.

 

[Galactus123]

I'm not sure of the exact costs, but it wouldn't necessarily be very little cost (and on top of that, I'm not sure what the Estate consider "very little cost"). Post-production is generally expensive, easily running into the hundreds, even thousand + an hour.

It'd definitely help on the financial side of things if they have all of the negatives together, that they have been stored in pristine conditions, that they require very little restoration work and that they also had a soundtrack that is up to scratch (Wembley was one of the few Bad shows that had been recorded in multitrack). That way they could essentially get "straight to it" rather than try and repair anything up to scratch, which costs extra. I imagine the footage would definitely need touching up and colour grading of some kind.

Warren Eagles has said on Twitter that they even edited a concert they filmed so Estate could release it like that if they have it. I hope they do. It wouldn't cost as much if the editing is already done.

This is the guy who wrote this if somebody doesn't know:

http://icolorist.com/grading-michael-jackson/

 

[Eric]

I've read before that a majority, but not all, of MJs videos were shot on video tape and not film. This was the time before HDTV and most of his videos were not intended to be shown in a movie theater, so there was no point in shooting on film because of the added cost.

 

[Themidwestcowboy]

"The concert was shot on a mixture of 35mm and 16mm film, it seemed at times they were shooting film for fun! The crew filmed 2 nights out of the 5 Wembley stadium gigs, film was also fed from the earlier tour legs in Australia, Japan, and Europe. As an accompanying piece to the concert, an “on the road” documentary was also filmed at the same time. "

"The single “Another part of me” was cut from some of my early telecine work. The music video was cut from footage shot in London and Paris, that shows you how tight Jackson’s performance was. As far as I know the complete concert and documentary has never been released. A disappointing waste as the film managed to capture Jackson at his peak. Jackson never came into Visions during the project but Frank Dileo, his cigar smoking manager, visited a couple of times."

This leaves me a bit hopeful. Hopefully we'll one day see the Bad Tour in all it's glory the way it was meant to be seen.

 

[KOPV]

God the amount of footage they are sitting on.... they could literally feed us our entire lives with footage/documentaries/concerts etc.

 

[Galactus123]

I've read before that a majority, but not all, of MJs videos were shot on video tape and not film. This was the time before HDTV and most of his videos were not intended to be shown in a movie theater, so there was no point in shooting on film because of the added cost.

All Thriller and Bad era short films are definitely on film. Most likely others too. You can see film cameras in Black or White behind-the-scenes videos and photos if I remember right.

 

[KOPV]

I high percentage of Mikes work was done on film.. You think early 90's and earlier for sure on film.. that's a lot!

 

[Hulkamaniac]

All Thriller and Bad era short films are definitely on film. Most likely others too. You can see film cameras in Black or White behind-the-scenes videos and photos if I remember right.

that's right, the Estate should definitely make a Blu ray with the music videos, and simply upscale the ones that are on tape.

 

[HIStoric]

I've read before that a majority, but not all, of MJs videos were shot on video tape and not film. This was the time before HDTV and most of his videos were not intended to be shown in a movie theater, so there was no point in shooting on film because of the added cost.

All Thriller and Bad era short films are definitely on film. Most likely others too. You can see film cameras in Black or White behind-the-scenes videos and photos if I remember right.

Thriller era onwards, almost all newly shot videos seem to be shot on film. Just like Galactus said, you can in fact see film cameras in many of the Behind the Scenes videos.

Here's a photo from the BTS of TDCAU, while low quality, it's not hard to make out the Panavision logo on the film magazine:

Also barely makeable on the magazine on this camera:

Also the fact that Michael was insistent on treating these videos as proper short films, I can see him pushing for film over tape. Cameras that record onto tape tend to look like this, notice the lack of film magazine:

 

[KOPV]

Hulkamaniac - Let me tell you somethin' Brother.... I agree, and not JUST the videos.. I Still love 'Dangerous short films' because of the featurettes