We truly do live in a gilded age of television.
The internet era brought with it things like DVR and the streaming services which have made
it possible for people to easily follow season-long story arcs.
Consequently in many ways, long form storytelling on television has surpassed the scope and
depth of your average theater experience.
"Dracarys."
But it isn’t only that.
Classic television which we once had to watch through the bottom of a coke bottle
is being restored to a glory the likes of which we’ve never gotten to see.
With these remasters, studios are going back to the original films the shows were shot on,
creating brand new high definition scans of them,
and updating their special effects while keeping the original flavor.
Many of these beautiful restorations have been done with a meticulous attention to detail
and with loving care for the original source material.
And then…
And then...there is the 'Buffy' remaster…
Why do ALL THEIR FACES LOOK LIKE RUBBER DOLLS?
Oh come ON.
That’s not even the same color!
It’s DAY TIME.
YOU CAN SEE THE CREW.
JUST CROP THEM OUT!!!
[Buffy crying]
*sigh*
I’m going to need a lot of wine for this one.
Before we get into this,
if you’re unfamiliar with the show
and seeing me make comparisons between 'Buffy' and
'Breaking Bad' or
'Star Trek'
or any other all time great made you want to:
“Scoff.”
- “Did you just say the word 'scoff'?”
Let’s quickly run down the importance of the 'Buffy' in the modern pop media landscape.
Of course, the show owes a great debt to earlier trailblazers.
Buffy is very much a supernatural girl-power Peter Parker.
When 'Buffy' first aired, 'The X-Files' had been teasing season long story arcs for three years.
And both 'Buffy' and 'The X-Files' owe some debt to the short lived 'Twin Peaks'.
But noted TV critic for the New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum
wrote in 2014
that 1999 marked a turning point for television
because of 'The Sopranos',
and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.
Quote.
“...David Chase and Joss Whedon were turning television into something radical"
"...and groundbreaking"
...the latter by forging a mythic...meld of
horror,
comedy,
and...drama.”
'Buffy' took the influences of its predecessors and, by the middle of its run,
had combined them seamlessly into a more coherent model for serial television that is still in use today.
Since 'Buffy' aired it has been cited as an influence by many major showrunners including
Rob Thomas,
Russel T. Davies,
Damon Lindeloff,
Eric Kripke
and Amy Palladino.
'Buffy'’s writer’s room, Mutant Enemy,
was a training ground for a team that would later go on to be major influences on
'24',
'Once Upon A Time',
'Daredevil' and
'The Martian'.
The show’s insanely terrific episode, ‘Once More, with Feeling,’
popularized the musical episode and was probably at least partially responsible for...
though...maybe don’t hold that against it.
And, of course there’s Whedon’s work itself.
Whedon said he used 'Buffy' as his own personal film school
and he later went on to having a major hand in shaping one of the most significant film series’ of all time,
along with creating 'Dollhouse',
'Angel',
'Firefly',
'Dr. Horrible', *aka Dr. Horrible's Sing-a Long Blog
and 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'. *aka MARVEL's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
If this topic of the awful remaster sounds familiar,
it may be because 4 years ago, when the remaster was only partly complete,
I recorded a voice over for a video called 'What’s Wrong With Buffy’s HD'.
This video, like that one, was done in collaboration with the team at
'Buffy’s HD' group over on Facebook, who have done the lion’s share of the research and referencing.
However, since we made that video back in 2015,
the abysmal remaster has limped to its conclusion
and we all felt it warranted some kind of complete post mortem.
Especially, if 'Buffy' is ever to get the remaster it actually deserves.
Since Fox Studios finished remastering the show the remaster has been seen on
Netflix US
several tv channels,
Amazon streaming (for a short period of time)
and is currently available on
Amazon Prime UK,
Facebook Watch,
FoxPlay
and other streaming services,
despite the fact that the effort was almost universally panned by fans, journalists and members of the original Mutant Enemy team.
Yet, except for fixing a few shots in the early episodes, Fox has done virtually nothing.
To say that 'Buffy' is an important influential show worthy of a quality HD remaster is of an understatement something
and, in an era where we're getting more and more carefully and beautifully created remasters,
'Buffy' currently has (without hyperbole)
the WORST HD conversion ever seen.
"I don't like you."
Period.
We’re going to do a breakdown of the many many mistakes including
the absence of color-correction,
the framing,
the weird digital filters they threw on the footage,
and the handling,
or rather mishandling, of the show's special effects.
Disney,
if you’re out there,
please listen closely.
Shooting all the footage for a movie or television show is only the beginning of the process when it comes to creating a piece of content.
Once all the footage is shot, it enters what is called 'post production'
where the footage is edited, sound effects and score are mastered,
and special effects are created.
And it’s clear that, for the remaster, a crucial part of the post-production was regularly skipped:
color correction, also called color-grading.
Color correction is, simply, shifting the color in a computer of filmed footage
to achieve a particular kind of effect.
In 'The Matrix', any of the scenes that were occuring in the real world had a light blue organic hue to them
and any of the footage in the Matrix itself was tinted green,
the same color as the green text on Neo’s computer
- a visual indicator that they were all in a program themselves.
'Buffy' used color correction quite a bit to change the atmosphere of a scene in the editing room,
make footage that shot during the day look like it took place at night,
or simply to make the show look richer.
The first step in the HD remaster process is to go back to the original film footage that was shot for the show.
But after you do that you have to reapply all of those color corrections that were done in post production
and it’s clear that much of that work in the original show was outright ignored.
In doing so, a multitude of issues were created depending on why a scene was color corrected in the first place.
Some scenes now look like daytime
or a sunset scene no longer HAS a sunset.
At a basic level, it looks like the remaster team was haphazardly
applying an automatic filter to the brightness and image contrast,
which has completely altered the mood of some scenes.
A whole pile of shots now look completely unnatural or washed out,
including the landmark, 'Once More, with Feeling'.
But when a scene SHOULD look different,
because 'Buffy'’s original post production team color graded it,
that work was skipped.
The gothic atmosphere of the early seasons is gone,
color saturation for important episodes has been lost.
Across the entire remaster
the brightness is excessively strong
and often makes no sense within the context of a scene.
In one of these shots it's 11:34 p.m. at night.
In the other, Buffy is taking a midday nap.
Broadly these criticisms might seem petty.
A small price to pay in exchange for the chance to watch 'Buffy' in that sweet sweet high definition.
SO let’s look at a single very specific example to understand why a decision
as simple as color tone can mean SO much.
But I want to acknowledge up front that all I can do is speculate as to why the original team made the decisions that they did.
That said my favorite episode of the show is Season 5, Episode 22:
'The Gift'.
Throughout 'Season 5', Buffy has been defending her kid sister Dawn
from an unstoppable Big Bad.
And in Episode 22, Buffy finds herself at the end of a rope
as she’s faced with choosing between Dawn’s life or the fate of the entire world.
THIS is her character’s low moment.
"I don’t know how to live in this world, if these are the choices.”
She fights the Big Bad,
attempts to save her sister,
and in a moment of clarity realizes that rather than sacrificing her sister to save the world
...she can sacrifice herself.
During her moment of realization the sun rises.
Buffy saves the world,
yadda yadda yadda.
All of the night sequences at the end of the episode had a blue color tint applied to them
almost across the board.
Some shots had a less dramatic grading
but it’s almost in every shot.
And that blue tint...
...is completely missing in the remaster.
Tones are more organic.
The colors are warmer, rosier, and more orange.
Kind of like the colors of...
the DAWN,
the climax of the episode and the moment of Buffy’s emotional breakthrough.
By removing the blue tint,
there is no longer a visual distinction
between the hopeless battle
and Buffy’s moment of clarity with the scenes after.
An entire layer of visual subtext has been lost in the episode
all because of a little...
...lack ...
...of blue.
Classic television, like 'Buffy', was created for what's called a...
...4:3 aspect ratio.
Just think, more square.
Modern TV’s are a more rectangular shaped
16:9 aspect ratio
and when it comes to remastering old shows
for modern televisions,
there is always the question of whether or not
to maintain the original squarish 4:3 shape,
or to convert it to 16:9.
Joss Whedon is on record having said that
the 4:3 is the way he wants the show to be and
that he’s not against 'Buffy' in HD,
only 'Buffy' in widescreen.
The show was shot with widescreen Panavision film cameras,
but always with the intention of it being cropped down for the 4:3 squareish format.
Now a widescreen version would go against the creators’ wishes,
but recent remasters like 'The Wire'
and 'Charmed'
have proven that a show could still be successfully converted to widescreen
without losing the creator’s vision.
And even though CBS released the 'Charmed' Blu-ray in 16:9,
they did create 4:3 HD masters that are available on streaming services.
Whatever decision they were going to make,
the problem is that 'Buffy'’s conversion to widescreen was done with a bulldozer
using insane amounts of cropping.
Logically, it would follow that the remaster should most often just
open up the frame and use the unused portions of the original filmed shot
but there are confusing decisions throughout
to instead crop down the original aired frame.
'Season One' is a nightmare.
LOOK AT WILLOW’s FACE.
This frame on Buffy looks awkward and crowded.
Later, the remaster starts
incorporating more of the original unused portion of the footage
but continues for some reason
to crop out parts of the original shot from the show.
Goodbye, Angel latte.
In 'What’s My Line',
they completely crop out the burned church at the end of the episode.
One running theory for why this happened is that the remaster team had a computer doing
auto framing and the team didn’t bother to fix it,
which could be the only way to explain the utter
indifference to such a terrible job.
But the net result is a regularly ruined composition, and the director's intention being completely ignored.
Cropping issues were never resolved,
and are present in all 7 seasons,
the extreme zooming being doubly unnecessary,
as we can see from the European DVDs,
which were released in widescreen,
that no cropping was required at all.
Even if the transfer had been done correctly and used the entire frame,
since 'Buffy' wasn’t filmed with the ultimate intention of being aired in widescreen,
without the remaster team paying attention to each shot
what you end up with are a pile of easily avoidable mistakes.
"THESE ARE LIES!"
You often get a syncing issue with the previous shot,
a piece of equipment appearing like
lighting rigs or, worse,
crew members.
There’s those Panavision cameras we were talking about earlier.
If an actor was originally cropped out of a shot in the remaster
you may hear a character speak but their lips are not moving.
"But we can't,"
"we've gotta..."
Y-you don't understand."
Those are the more obvious mistakes,
but the remaster is full of little ones,
caused by the change in aspect ratio, that they needed to fix.
So you have cropping and reframing where it's pointless
and breaks the original vision of the director,
and you have shots where cropping actually would’ve been a benefit just outright ignored.
Thing is, cropping is the cheap and worst way to fix the problem anyway,
as you lose information from the original shot.
In HBO's excellent remaster of
'The Wire'
those C-stands, cameras and crew members were
painted out digitally.
But we’re far from done my friends.
We’ve now come to my
least favorite issue.
I mentioned previously that 'Buffy' was shot using Panavision film cameras
and one of the natural byproducts of
shooting on film was film grain,
tiny particles or light static moving around randomly in the image.
For most people, even people who don’t notice it,
film grain is one of the things that makes film, look like...
...well...
...FILM.
Most people generally consider film grain, a neutral or a good thing.
However, there is a process called
Digital Noise Reduction (or DNR) used to reduce the
presence of film's natural grain.
And in excess, can lead actors to have a
plastic, doll-like appearance.
Because you know what human beings have?
PORES.
FRECKLES.
And when a DNR filter is dialed in wrong, the filter can’t tell the difference.
As you can see here, the DNR smooths everything to the extreme
destroying the benefit of HD from 16 and 35mm film.
Many shots just look like watercolor as a result
and it’s sometimes overused to the point where you can actually see greater detail
in the DVD standard definition version.
What is the point of remastering a show from film if you make it look like it was
shot on a digital camera from 1998? *1997 for this episode
"She irons her jeans. SHE'S EVIL!"
No other prominent remasters, like 'The X- Files', also made by Fox, suffer from this issue.
To take 'Charmed' as an example again
you can see that the level of detail is incredibly impressive,
the definition isn’t compromised by the fact that they did use DNR,
and the show looks like it was shot on film.
This close-up comparison says it all.
The two shots are the Full HD versions available,
both shows were shot on 35mm, during the same year
and yet the way it was remastered, 'Buffy' looks like an extremely inferior process.
And there are many examples of modern Blu-rays that were taken from a 16mm source that look very good.
The “Pride & Prejudice” mini-series was shot only one year before 'Buffy Season 1'.
It looks grainy but high definition,
and mostly it looks natural with a pleasing amount of detail.
The Gilmore Girls remaster of 'Season 1' which was filmed two years after 'Buffy Season 2',
is more proof that 16mm can look very good in high definition.
'Buffy Season 1' and '2' were shot on Super 16mm film,
which is never going to have as much detail as 35mm.
But that’s all the more reason to avoid Digital Noise Reduction.
With film transfers, all the detail is in the grain, especially when it comes to 16mm.
But again, the arbitrary application of the filter just indicates that a brute force, automatic
and cheap as possible approach was used with 'Buffy'.
No one at the wheel.
[radio fiddling]
"Eyes on the road. Eyes on the road."
And boy, can you see cheap with the special effects.
Though 'Buffy' was shot on film,
things like
morphs to vamp face,
vampires being dusted,
and any and all magic spells were done in a computer after the fact
and probably rendered in only in the standard definition that 'Buffy' was airing in at the time.
Meaning, in order to do a proper remaster the team was going to have to go back to every special effect
and create it again from scratch with a high definition version.
And some of the special effects in 'Season 1' and '2' have been redone,
the rest is entirely upscaled.
Meaning, rather than recreate the effect from scratch over a high definition scan of the original footage,
the team instead took the old standard definition versions of the shot and just...
...blew them up.
Ever zoom into a picture on your computer too far?
A couple of the redone HD effects actually look decent enough
although not identical to the original.
But the remaster takes great licence throughout with the style of the vampire dusting,
looking more like a smoke effect than dust.
The effect was reinvented, rather than re-rendered.
FOX just...stopped remaking the dusting effect in early 'Season 2',
they resorted to just upscaling everything from standard definition,
along with all the other special effects.
Think taking a low resolution picture and zooming into it.
The upscaled shots are also suffering from an excess of edge enhancement,
which will create white edges around the characters and looks worse than the DVD version.
And, of course,
upscaling can create
more unnecessary cropping -
either when used for a special effect
or....
...other mysterious reasons.
So, you’ll be watching the remaster and go from a nice, if overly filtered, HD shot,
to a blurry, blown up special effect,
and back again.
Over...
...and over…
...and over.
The whole portal sequence in 'Becoming looks abysmal.
All the CG shots are upscaled, but it looks like the standard definition effect is a different version
than the one used in the episode at the time.
The colors are different.
If the remaster team was planning on redoing ANY effect in 'Season 2',
why not this moment?
Instead...
...upscaling.
But for remasters like 'Charmed' and
'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and
'The Original Series',
CBS Studios recreated
ALL of the CGI effects in high definition
looking very close to the original ones.
This is what should be done for 'Buffy'.
Care.
Attention.
Affection.
The group over at 'Buffy’s HD' have reached out to several members of the original Mutant Enemy team
and many of them have expressed their outrage over 'Buffy'’s mishandling.
Joss Whedon’s closest comments on the remaster came in 2015,
tweeting that
“Widescreen Buffy is nonsense.”
David Fury and Steven DeKnight called the remaster
"--an embarrassing mess."
and tweeted
“Somebody should be indicted.”
The late Michael Gershman,
Director of Photography on most of the episodes
shared his feelings with the 'Buffy HD' Facebook page in 2016, saying,
"It's a shame to have all of my work thrown in the garbage."
"I tried to give 'Buffy' a texture that would turn a teeny bopper show into a serious dramatic presentation."
"Alas, once any piece of art leaves the artists hands," *a piece, *hand
"control is lost."
"Sorry everyone can't see the work in it's original incarnation.”
It may seem daunting but the truth here is, you can’t fix this remaster.
There are too many mistakes.
Too much went wrong.
Doing it right means starting
over again with the original footage and...
yeah...
...that means expense.
Time.
Cost.
But I think we’ve covered why 'Buffy' matters enough to do it.
And there is another reason that we as the fandom need to be making our voices heard about this.
I CLING to my DVD boxed set
If you don’t own a VHS or LaserDisc
copy of 'Star Wars'
you can no longer watch a version of it that hasn’t been tampered with by endless meaningless revisions
and frustrating changes.
But even then, physical media IS dying.
At some point, our access to our favorite stories is going to be
exclusively through streaming and ala carte download services
and it is 'Buffy'’s corporate overseers that will say
what version of our favorite shows
they give us access to.
Will it be a blurry half-assed mess,
or will it be something that was made with care
by people paying attention to the show's color, lighting, and composition?
People have been asking me for my thoughts on the 'Buffy' reboot since it was first mentioned and here’s what I’m hoping.
I hope...
...it’s good.
I hope it’s really, really unbelievably good.
Not just because we might have a brand new Buffy
to comment on the trials and triumphs of a modern young adult.
But because a shining success and our loud voices around it
might just motivate Disney to look on the original,
...and care.