Why does movie film look so bad before they clean it up.

With all the extras available on DVD’s, they often include deleted scenes with the movie. Many times the deleted scenes do not have the full post processing so they don’t have sound or music. But they also look terrible! So dark and grainy. The movie itself looks fine–I guess the post processing cleans it up so much. But why does the un-processed film look so horrible?

I meant to say that the sound was scratchy, not that they don’t have sound.

I’ve wondered that myself.

Most deleted scenes are taken from workprint or dailies (positive). Typically, these elements have been subjected to a great deal of wear and/or abuse in the editing process before finally being excised (sometimes, the “cutting room floor” can be literal).

Most studios are unwilling to go to the trouble of doing more than a rudimentary sonic cleaning and quickie timing job for deleted scenes because of the money involved. They could, theoretically, do a frame-by-frame digital clean-up, or go back and revisit the original neg for those shots, but why bother? Of course, it would be nice (from an aesthetic perspective), but I think most people have become conditioned to have such added value material being presented that way, so the studios have no financial incentive to do so. Any additional effort will probably come from the pressure of the filmmaker or producer.

Same goes for the audio.

I don’t think they do the color timing on the outtakes. I’m sure someone else can give more details, but generally, that’s where they make film that was shot at different times under different lighting conditions all look the same, and like the director wants it.

To me, the film doesn’t look like it’s been abused. It’s not that it’s scratchy and has fingerprints. It’s that the grain is very pronounced and the colors are dim and blotchy. It looks worse than an 8mm home movie. I would think that the film used by a Hollywood movie would be of such a quality that the print would look fabulous without any post production work.

The print almost NEVER looks “fabulous” with out post production work. This is everything from color timing to neg matching.

For low-budget like the stuff I shoot, there is ONE print and you better be very very careful with it, or you’re SOL.

As I prep to start a feature in a couple of days(as 2nd A.C.) I’m reviewing all the paperwork involved. One form we use is the camera report, on which we keep track of the takes on one roll that the director wants printed for the edit.

A print, one light for dailies(meaning not color timed, or not the best quality), is made from an entire roll.
Later when it comes time to edit, only the best takes are correctly timed and printed from that roll.

So, as stated before, outtakes may not always be of the best quality.

What the others have said is true. What you’re looking at in the deleted scenes is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, often run quickly and cheaply just so they can have something to work with for editing, effects placement, and so on. When a movie is shot, the original clean negative is duplicated and then put away in a safe place; all the work happens on copies and copies of copies. Once the final decisions are made, and they know exactly what they’re doing, they can go back to the original. If you’ve ever read the credits, this is what “negative cutters” do: they work off a final editing plot to cut a clean negative to make the final movie, once they know exactly how many frames of any given shot they’re going to use.

Note that all of this is being revolutionized by digital technology. Most Hollywood movies are being edited on Avid and similar machines; nobody’s actually handling film. And more and more movies are being shot on digital (Sony’s 24fps is the standard; see Robert Rodriguez’s movies), so no film is created at all until they send the movie to the lab for duplication and distribution. If you look at deleted scenes for movies shot on digital, they look just as pristine as the rest of the film.