Ultra HD 4K Blu Ray LOTR and Hobbit boxsets announced (presumably this will be the long talked about 'Ultimate edition')

Even on the non HD visions you only notice the body double masks once you've been primed to watch for them at specific points via the appendices. I think the trick is to retrain yourself to look wide rather than focus in on the hobbits, then it all looks fine. They pulled it off on the big screen with nobody complaining about it because it hadn't been pointed out yet.

{{ They are pretty notciable in some scenes, thinking in particualr when Pippin is riding Shadowfax with Gandalf, there are some really obvious shots and not much else to draw the eye away for them. Clearer and sharper you make an image, higher the definition more obvious these things become to the eye. In the cinema the sheer physical scale of the screen can help, but on a tv, even a decent sized one your more likely to notice it. Sometimes grain and lower resolution hides a multitude of sins you were never meant to see.}}

I don't know whether this is correct or not, but I remember that on my old VHS copy of Fellowship there's a shot of the hobbits in Moria during a chase scene where the mask that one of the stunt-doubles wore was visible. It kind of scared me when I noticed it, like an uncanny valley thing where I expected to see Sam's face and instead saw a lifeless mask.

Is something like that possible, and that they cleaned it up for later versions?

{{ I doubt it could be cleaned up. Problem is youd need a high quality digital scan of the actors head and face, and unlikely they made any of those at the time. And you couldnt do it now as they are so much older in appearence.
These days youd probably have the double in a green hood to mask their face out post and the replace the green with the digital model.
Or if the hobbit films are anything to go by all the different sized actors would have shot each of their running scenes seperatly on a green screen stage, leading to the weird computer game effect that plaques those films and the obvious lack of interaction between actors. }}

enh, little tweaks to make things look more consistent across all the films. Not at all worth buying new versions.

Tbh I don't particularly care about the 4k, I'm just curious about which new special features/deleted scenes etc the 'big boxset' edition next year will have...

{{ Well as someone who has spent far too long staring at shots from these films for editing the first really obvious thing to strike me is how different the colouring is, particualrly in the Hobiit.

Heres an example- this is a screen grab from my purist edits with nothing done to colour grading, its as it was on the normal release-



and heres the remastered version same shot, much less green far more yellows.



Its not a small or subtle change either its a complete pallette redo. }}

That's actually a pretty shocking redo. I would have thought they'd go the other direction.

{{ Yeah was suprised myself at just how much they altered the look. Im guessing it was an attempt to desaturate the Hobbits over bright colouring, but its pretty severe solution to the 'grass' problem! But if anything its even more garish and unnatural looking to my eye. }}

yeah, halfway would have been about right.

the title in the 4K edition is horrible. Most of the other changes are not noticeable in the prologue because that was all patina based anyway. Once you get to "reality" it seems the nature scenes are brought closer to reality by desaturation and tint removal so the skin tones are made more natural. This is more noticeable: Saruman's hair is no longer blue.

{{ Yeah they seem to have aimed for realism, which I am not convinced works, a lot of the 4k shots to me look more like set photos than they did before. Another side effect of the realism look is if you take the shot of Frodo sitting under the tree, the colours are truer to life but it also makes the scene look colder and starker, which is probably not the feeling you want to convey for the homely warmth of the Shire. }}

True, the sense of magic that imbued the shire scenes will be decreased.

{{ Another issue is the sharpness and clarity of eveything, besides the risk of highlighting things like theatrical makeup, wig glue, body doubles and the like, its just not how the human eye works- we never take in a whole scene, particularly a wide view of something, in one sharp crisp view, we focus our eyes on a part of it and shift that focus about to take in the whole. Now on a cinema screen you can get away with super sharp and crisp just thanks to sheer scale of the screen, your eyes still naturally move about the screen finding focus points. But on a home TV thats a different story and its perfectly possible to take in the entire scene at one go, and everything being sharply in focus and super detailed can actually pull you out of a moment or conversely make it feel more fake. It gives me the impression in some of those shots I am looking at a film set, or raw footage - its almost like its real to how it actually looked as they shot it on the day, as opposed to being a finished post-processed film- ironic as they have used post-processing to make it look less like its post-processed.}}

You can really see a difference in some of these shots. Every strand of hair is visible. The Helms Deep shot looks incredible. Must be a popular 4k release , cos it's sold out everywhere.



Remember if you don't have a 4k TV you don't see the difference.

{{ Oh you can see a big detail difference Chris even on a 1080, obviously not to the same degree but its still obvious on hair strands and stuff. But the most striking difference is the colour grading, some of which I like some I dont. But then Im not sure which version they are using for 'original' as they look lower quality than ones I edit from, and the flesh tones seem more red and orange too. }}

{ I still cant work out what that vid is using as its 'original'. VHS? For example here is a comparison between a shot from the above vid and a shot taken from my edits which are from the standard bluray edition (but remember Ive converted the files to edit them and compressed them to keep file sizes down for ease of up and downloading, so the raw bluray quality is actually a little higher than what is in my edits).

Above vid 'original'



From my edit



Something fishy going on in above vid to make the 4k version look a much larger improvement than it seems to actually be. }}

{{ Another example- top is what the vid claims is the 'original' and bottom is from the edit-





The claimed 'original' is blurry and oversaturated and lacks much of the detail. Very suspicous.

Heres same shot from the 4k version-



The biggest difference being its been even further desaturated. But that means you lose the 'glow' from the Ring and the fire quite a bit. So not sure about it, it just looks duller to me.}}

I prefer the one with the glow to be honest. But until I get a 4k version and see for myself

Saw an article online saying that the 'big box set' next year probablu won't actually contain any of the extant special features from previous editions, but will probably include never before seen deleted scenes.

This is mere speculation though, i don't think Jackson has clarified yet exactly what he wants to include in the set (I'd assume if they did include all th eold special features, they would probably just port them across in standard defintion, would be a lot of uncessary expense to upscale behind the scenes interview etc i.m.o)

{{ Well given the previously unseen stuff would prob be things like what they shot of Arwen fighting at Helms Deep and other nonsense not sure I'll be too bothered. }}

If I do get it on 4k I will wait for the box set . If the extras are not worth it then I'll wait for super specials day. Trying to talk myself out of it, but I no I'll buy it in the end 🤭

{{ Well dont think I can trust the comparison vids for much of a guide, so think I'll wait till you give in Chris ans shell out for it, then at least I can have an opinion I trust. }}