Rodan - 1.85:1 US Theatrical Reconstruction

[MustafaDaisenso]

EDIT- just noticed a gaff in the header photo, it should be 60th anniversary. whoops

Released by Distributors Corporation of America in the summer of 1957, Rodan was the first Japanese sci-fi movie to make it big at the American box office. Radically re-edited and making ample use of military stock footage and additional Japanese-shot SFX footage, the American cut of Rodan is almost a different movie, and in some ways is more enjoyable than its Japanese counterpart.

This version is also among the most poorly preserved kaiju movies, on par with the Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla. All US home video releases have been exceedingly poor, relying on a dated video master from the 1980s which really shows it age. The MonstersHD broadcast was not much better.

For the first time, the US cut of Rodan has been comprehensively reconstructed from the ground up, using the highest quality sources available. The main video source is the enhanced Toho Blu-ray, while the majority of the audio and a select number of shots are sourced from the Classic Media DVD. Main titles and most US-exclusive shots are from the MonstersHD broadcast. End title has been faithfully recreated. The whole movie has been matted to 1.85:1 widescreen as it was projected in American theaters.

This was a dream project of mine some 6-7 months in the making, taking hundreds if not thousands of hours to complete and contributing towards the rapid degradation of my already bad eyesight. I hope you can all agree that my hard work has paid off. You'll never need to watch another version of Rodan ever again!

The download link is currently being hosted on a private torrent site, and I plan to upload it to another one of my haunts in the near future. PM me for details.

Here is a textless, HD version of the American theatrical trailer in the original, un-matted aspect ratio (1.37:1). FYI the final project render is in 540p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWxz0fsESKE

[Great Hierophant]

Good work, I hope to be able to download this from a spleendid torrent tracker site which has my support and I know you haunt.

I have been thinking about doing something similar for GKOTM, given that we have a very high quality scan of it available from Criterion's Blu-ray. It would be trivial to cut out the extraneous logos and crop the film, but cropping the film to 1.85:1 obliterates some of the text in the credits, which is not the case for Rodan or Gigantis the Fire Monster.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Interesting! Have you considered an HD render?

[Pkmatrix]

Wow! Fantastic, congratulations!

[g2vd]

Wow! this looks cool!

Awesome work!

[MustafaDaisenso]

Quick announcement: I've found that my preferred tracker site has some weird rules about inviting new people, and from now on I'm just going to trust my spleen on this one and up it somewhere else instead.

I'd be happy to post additional screen caps and discuss the making-of process for anyone interested.

[Kore321]

How about upping it on mega or Google Drive?

[Pkmatrix]

I'd love to hear more about the process! After trying (and failing) myself last year, I can only imagine how difficult getting through the WHOLE film must've been!

[GodzillaBurgh]

TheH-Man uploaded a version of the US version's opening credits without that stupid copyright watermark. And if you're looking for the font for the opening credits, it is called Dom Casual. Good Luck!!!!

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

I would love to see some screenshots of how the film looks cropped to 1.85.1. In my mind, it cuts of a bunch of the picture, so I'm curious to see how much the cropping actually affects the film.

[Great Hierophant]

Quick announcement: I've found that my preferred tracker site has some weird rules about inviting new people, and from now on I'm just going to trust my spleen on this one and up it somewhere else instead.

I hope you do so soon, its freeleech for another week on the 'spleen:)

[MustafaDaisenso]

I'd love to hear more about the process! After trying (and failing) myself last year, I can only imagine how difficult getting through the WHOLE film must've been!

Just arranging the Japanese footage into roughly the same order as the American cut took around 80 hours by my estimate. Loads of shots moved around, random snippets of shots moved around within scenes, repetition of the same shots (flipped or cropped, there's even an early instance of 'pan and scan'!) similar looking shots, etc. Basically every shot was trimmed by a few frames.

But by far the biggest nightmare was recreating the multitude of optical fades between shots, many of which were created by 'artificially' extending certain shots by rewinding footage, using a freeze frame during a fade transition, or in the worst cases, rewinding footage and then playing it forwards again. This would mean that I had to render a new clip with the combined film speeds every time one of these goofy fades took place, and it happened a lot. To get the fades precise took about an hour each, and there were at least 40 fades to recreate, maybe more. The ones with editorial skreeonkery took much, much longer, the absolute worst one (which occurs during the scene where Shigeru regains his memory) took me several hours because it involved a rewind and playback which was extremely difficult to match.

In addition, I methodically went through the Japanese footage and color corrected it to create a more natural and vibrant balance. The Toho Blu was really quite fugly throughout, a lot of scenes had this 'Beijing smog' look about them, including the shot I used in the header photo (for reference Blu Ray Recon trailer ). Also, the night scenes during the Meganulon attack and in the mine were excessively dark and had to be lightened to even be visible. Because of Toho's outdated print scanning tech, there were a few shots which were borderline unfixable, so I just did my best to clean them up and make them look presentable, and thankfully they were few and far between. Some previously bland shots look quite gorgeous now that their natural color palette is restored.

To finish off, I matted the film at 1.85:1. I used the Monsters HD print as a framing reference because I have a feeling they scanned a theatrical print owing to the original, optically generated copyright mark on the title card, plus the presence of a few additional seconds of footage (which are basically inconsequential save for a single line of dialogue). As a bonus, it was framed at 1.77:1 (16:9) which is only a little bit taller than 1.85:1.

I'll get screen caps and comparisons up when I can, I'll be pretty busy this New Year's Eve.

Added in 57 minutes 54 seconds:
Alternating Toho Blu Ray (1.37:1) and 2016 Recon (1.85:1)

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

Oh, that turned out pretty good! I was worried that lots of stuff would be cropped out, but it seems pretty minimal. Looks great!

[omgitsgodzilla]

That's really terrific work! Sounds like an absolutely nightmarish editing process to have gone through; I'm really impressed. I probably won't have my laptop handy until tomorrow sometime but I'll be sure to snatch this when I get the chance!

[G-MAN]

Amy chance of a full HD render that keeps the blurays quality even if it's something along the lines of what was done with the recent ghidrah and 1985 reconstructions? Also if so would you do it uncropped so it's more of the picture? I've actually been hoping someone would do this and it would be a shame for it to be just a SD reconstruct since you have the awesome bluray.

[LegendZilla]

TheH-Man uploaded a version of the US version's opening credits without that stupid copyright watermark. And if you're looking for the font for the opening credits, it is called Dom Casual. Good Luck!!!!

May I ask how that background behind the title Card was made?

[GodzillaBurgh]

I have no idea, that's a good question! You should ask someone else

[MustafaDaisenso]

TheH-Man uploaded a version of the US version's opening credits without that stupid copyright watermark. And if you're looking for the font for the opening credits, it is called Dom Casual. Good Luck!!!!

May I ask how that background behind the title Card was made?

I'm guessing they waved a light behind a moving pane of textured glass and added a tint in post.

Links/invites will be going out soon via PM, sorry for the delay on my part.

[GodzillaBurgh]

Hey man, take your time!!! We wish you well!

[omgitsgodzilla]

I'm downloading it now; it's at about 50% with the remaining time fluctuating wildly. Can't wait to watch it!