I made the mistake of buying an uncut copy of HC from House Of Horrors -
Blackest Heart Media. If any of you are considering buying this
particular video from them, I would advise you to to end that
consideration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello,
I just received your uncut "Letterboxed Print" of Heavenly Creatures and
I must say that I am severely disappointed. You claim that - on your
self defined scale - the picture quality is a 4, or in other words, good
(I'm assuming 4 would imply 80% the resolution of a Broadcast Quality
source.) Now, I'm no expert, but I have been working with video for
some
time and by my estimation, the quality of the image borders between
2(poor) and 1(shit).
It doesn't even appear that you ran the video through a DVE or anything
of the like, as the chroma and luma levels are WAY off. It looks like
3rd or 4th generation to me... maybe worse.
In addition, as if that weren't enough... the aspect ratio is totally
wrong. Heavenly Creatures was shot in Super 35mm with a Common Head
Room 2.40:1 framing -- http://us.imdb.com/Technical?0110005. It looks
to me like your source was telecined from an anamorphic release print
(the cigarette burns are visible every 11 minutes) with the sides
cropped off to 1.33:1, losing 45% of the original image and then a
1.85:1 soft matte was placed over that, losing another 25% to 30% of
that remaining image. The opening titles are amputated.
There were also two MAJOR drop outs at 00:34:00 and 01:27:40,
respectively.
But what really made me laugh was that you didn't remove the erasure tab
from the videocassette. Did you expect I would be interested in taping
over it in the near future? At $19.48, it sure is a really expensive
non-blank, blank tape.
I respectfully ask that you refund the money I spent. I will gratefully
return everything that was sent to me.
Thank you for your attention,
Sincerely,
Justin H. Olson
