Outsourcing DNR, or: Dustbusting Or Bust.

As a follow-up to my June 13 post about the overuse of DNR to remove grain (and unfortunately much more) from Blu-ray releases, I'd like to direct you to film historian and preservationist Robert Harris' fantastic update at his digs at The Digital Bits.

Almost concurrently, Dan Ramer from DVDfile.com posted his first installment of coverage from the Home Media Expo, which included a paragraph about DNR. Apparently, Ramer approached Fox Senior Vice President of Corporate & Marketing Communications Steve Feldstein about the use of DNR on Patton. Feldstein's reaction was one of surprise and denial, and in fact he immediately text-messaged his technical folks who relayed to him that the Blu-ray master was taken from "highly-revealing low-grain 70mm source elements" and that "no grain removal was applied."

Hmmm.

What's interesting here is that Patton and The Longest Day - both Fox titles - have similar, waxy, no-grain appearances, while The Sand Pebbles (also a Fox release) looks absolutely wonderful, with grain and fine detail intact.

What could be going on here?

I came across this interesting bit of info about the restoration efforts for The Sand Pebbles, and was drawn to this passage:

"After Bernstein's initial color-correction and image-restoration steps, the digital files were sent to a contract facility in India for dustbusting."

Maybe Patton and The Longest Day went to China instead?

Methinks this story is far from over. Stay tuned...