Jurassic Park Restoration Project

Text - Jun 25, 2018

Jurassic Park Restoration Project

For the past couple of months I’ve been working on my ultimate Jurassic Park restoration edit, and though it’s still a long way off from being completed, I wanted to talk a bit about what I’ve done. This post will cover some of the changes I’ve made to the film, and why I’m even doing this in the first place.

Jurassic Park has been released in many different formats over the years, including LaserDisc, VHS, DVD, Blu-Rays — but none of these have ever matched the colour and overall visual quality of the original 1993 theatrical film print. The LaserDisc and VHS releases each had their own colour grades, and when the film was finally transferred to 1080p Blu-Ray in 2011, it received yet another alteration to its colour palette, this time the film we got was overexposed, grainy, and massively high in magenta. It was certainly the clearest and crispest the film had ever looked, but it was lacking everywhere else. Then, in 2013, the film underwent 3D post-conversion and got probably the worst treatment yet, with brown skies and sickly-orange grading.

I made the following video comparison showing the differences between the 2011 and 2013 Blu-Ray transfers. A lot of the visual weirdness is due to the 3D, so bear that in mind.

A few years ago I got hold of a scan of an original 35mm theatrical print of Jurassic Park and I was amazed at just how wonderful it looked. I’d heard people over the years talk about how gorgeous the film prints were — but this was breathtaking. The CGI looked better than I’d ever seen it, with dinosaurs looking completely present within the rest of the frame. Sure it had many signs of age: dust, scratches, jittery frames, but those colours where incredible. It was warm and bright where it needed to be, Isla Nublar was bursting with greens and blue skies, and the clouds were the purest white. The night scenes were filled with inky blue-blacks and felt completely immersive. The whole atmosphere of the film was improved by the grading, and everything had a magical golden warmth to it that I’ve always remembered Jurassic Park having.

It even sounded better: the original 6-track Cinema DTS audio was unbelievable. Everything was clearer, from voices to roars, from birds chirping to the John Williams score itself. I thought the remastered 5.1 Dolby Digital on the blu-rays was the best I’d heard, but I was wrong. I know that Gary Rydstrom personally oversaw that remaster, and is seen talking enthusiastically about it on the blu-ray extras, but it doesn’t even come close to the DTS, and I don’t know how the hell that’s possible.

Above is a short comparison between the Dolby and DTS. I chose a section of a scene in the film that has notoriously iffy audio. With the Dolby, the voices of Hammond and Gennaro blur together with the sound from the Jeeps, the road, and the score itself. It’s a little messy and muted. With the DTS however, the sound is crisp and there’s a clarity to the actors’ voices that isn’t present in the Dolby. Please note that this is a youtube encode of the Dolby/DTS files, in stereo, so the quality is even more reduced than on the originals, but it still gives you an idea of the difference.

Overall, in both sound and picture, it was a massive improvement over the home releases. But of course it wasn’t an ‘improvement’ at all, because this was how the film was originally presented. This was pristine Jurassic Park. Everything since had just gotten it wrong.

So a few months ago, with some input from fellow JP super nerds, I got the idea to try to create the ultimate version of Jurassic Park. A version that would match the colour grading of the original film prints, with the crispness and clarity of the 2011 transfer, and the excellent de-noising of the 2013 transfer (but not too much). On top of this, I wanted to try to include some of the alterations featured in the 3D post-conversion, like the removal of some visible cables and wires, and the stabilised titles.

As I said, the project is still far from being completed, but when it is — if it is — I’ll be back here with an update. I’m always chipping away at it, a little bit at a time, but other stuff gets in the way, and shit, those memes aren’t gonna make themselves.

Here are some more comparison shots for the time being: