Shiny and Monochrome
September 22, 2015 7:23 PM   Subscribe

"George Miller has said that the best version of his film is in black and white, with no dialogue. BLACK & CHROME is an attempt to realize Miller’s alternate vision. The cinematography, the editing, the sound design, and the score, are now represented in a completely new experience."

(Mad Max: Fury Road previously)
posted by saturday_morning (57 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is amazing. I'm really wondering about how they were able to separate out various sound effects from the music/dialogue. I saw someone on Twitter wondering if it might've been internal access to the SFX stems. If so, this could be much more official than it's allowed to let on.

Grab your copies now before it's gone, folks!
posted by CrystalDave at 7:27 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


No copyright infringement intended.

Don’t worry folks! It isn’t going anywhere!
posted by Going To Maine at 7:35 PM on September 22, 2015 [8 favorites]


Back in the early summer there were rumors that there was going to be a B&W version on the Blu-Ray but that never happened. This looks great, I so hated the garish over-saturated colors in the released version of the movie.
posted by octothorpe at 7:36 PM on September 22, 2015


Miller allegedly did make a b&w silent version that was supposed to be on the Blu-ray release, but it didn't show up.
posted by maudlin at 7:37 PM on September 22, 2015


Now do it with My Dinner with Andre.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:40 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Firefox: right click the page, choose View Page Info, go to the Media tab, scroll and look for the video, select, click Save As.

Or so I'm told. *cough*
posted by maudlin at 7:43 PM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


Shiny!
posted by Monochrome at 7:51 PM on September 22, 2015 [13 favorites]


Monochrome wrote:
> Shiny!

I see what you did there.
posted by sourcequench at 7:58 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


In Chrome I had to right click on the movie to open the frame in a new window, then copy the address, then go to a site that I found on the google that lets you download vimeo videos by pasting the address.

Watching a few selected scenes made me realize that the movie really was made to work without dialog, and he maybe just added it in to appease some suits... it's a pretty amazing version of a pretty awesome movie...
posted by Huck500 at 8:02 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I remember noticing the low fps (sped up) when the War Boys reach out for Max swinging on the crane. Seeing it like this, it seems like it had to be a deliberate call-out to silent movies. Likewise the iris effect in the shot of his tattooed back.

I think this cut would benefit from awesome post-apocalyptic intertitles. The scene where Immortan Joe is giving his speech, in particular.

Also, apparently Miller's B+W cut does exist, it's been screened at Warner Bros? So that's interesting -- do we think this is it?
posted by vogon_poet at 8:03 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Needs title cards.
posted by octothorpe at 8:16 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


this is the video that plays. right click, save as.
posted by now i'm piste at 8:18 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Miller allegedly did make a b&w silent version that was supposed to be on the Blu-ray release, but it didn't show up.

Jeeze, why does almost everything that isn't within pretty narrow boundaries as far as ideas go for stuff like this have to get shut down?

It's not like he wanted to slap a version where they were all naked on there.

Oh well, into the video folder it goes. Wish i had saved that cool star wars prequels recut before it got taken down...
posted by emptythought at 8:32 PM on September 22, 2015


Firefox: right click the page, choose View Page Info, go to the Media tab, scroll and look for the video, select, click Save As.

Or so I'm told. *cough*


This works, but the video you get is smaller. Get now i'm piste's link. Or do what I did, which is google until you find this page.
posted by kafziel at 8:38 PM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


B&W doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps, I have gotten too used to colors. Some how the scenes looked washed out and visuals have lesser impact.

I liked the absence of dialogues though. It lets me focus on the scene and the visuals.

I would like a color but silent version, with cherry on top, pretty please.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 8:39 PM on September 22, 2015


Am I correct in reading the source code that the highest resolution version of this is the one that's height 534 width 1280?
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:48 PM on September 22, 2015


This works, but the video you get is smaller.

easy way to deal with that is to select the HD option in the video player and then reload to check for info. Then you get the HD, larger version.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 8:58 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


B&W doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps, I have gotten too used to colors. Some how the scenes looked washed out and visuals have lesser impact.

B&W is a lot more demanding on a display than color. First of all, most cheap displays are set up to exaggerate color to make themselves look better. Secondly, contrast usually sucks on them.

CRTs, even cheapo ones, had excellent contrast and black levels compared to nearly all LCDs. The effect of this really takes something like film, a CRT, or a really nice high contrast LCD.

It looks really good on like, an ipad, for instance.

Am I correct in reading the source code that the highest resolution version of this is the one that's height 534 width 1280?

Yep, thats essentially "letterbox" 720p. That's normal. I wouldn't mind a 1080p version, but that's not exactly poop and is about as good as it gets on HDTV broadcasts of movies.
posted by emptythought at 8:58 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


TheLittlePrince includes the detail I forgot to add about switching to HD. Firefox let me download the HD version that is about 1.87 Gb (1280 x 534), as well as the default version that is about 622 Mb (640 x 268).
posted by maudlin at 9:03 PM on September 22, 2015


This is even more beautiful than I expected. I thought this would be just a novelty, but I found it hard to stop watching. In HD on a good monitor, it really shows off the lighting and camerawork. The landscapes are straight out of Ansel Adams. I’d prefer a version with the audio intact, though.
I'm really wondering about how they were able to separate out various sound effects from the music/dialogue.
Could they have stripped the front channels from the surround-sound mix, leaving only the rear channels? That would explain why some of the SFX are also missing (like many of the engine sounds).
posted by mbrubeck at 9:08 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


The link's not to Babe, is it?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:18 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


I started watching it through curiosity, but stuck with the whole thing, not even stopping for a much-needed bathroom break. If it had occasional intertitles (or perhaps sub-) it would actually be perfect like this.
posted by Grangousier at 10:35 PM on September 22, 2015


So, now someone needs to create an appropriate entry on themoviedb so this is picked up by Plex (and Kodi and the like).
posted by el io at 10:49 PM on September 22, 2015


That was much more compelling than I expected. Like others have said, I expected a novelty and got something more. The lack of dialogue (after having, admittedly, seeing the film in its theatrical format a couple of times) didn't seem at all necessary to me. Everything seemed conveyed through body language, facial expressions, what was obvious about certain situations, and so on. It even took on that "over-acted" quality I associate with silent films -- and now I wonder how much of that sense of over-acting is due to lack of audible dialogue. Would we see everyday life as over-acted if we didn't hear the dialogue?
posted by treepour at 11:09 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm grabbing it with "youtube-dl -f h264-hd https://player.vimeo.com/video/140069127" which is 1280x534 and apparently the best resolution vimeo offers (or at least the best that youtube-dl detects).
posted by russm at 11:12 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Reading the thread where Fury Road's trailer is released at a Con is highly entertaining in retrospect.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:54 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's an interesting, and gorgeous, look at what Miller might have intended, but it suffers from too many scenes of the characters obviously talking, but us hearing noting. That's just too awkward in this age of talkies.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:33 AM on September 23, 2015


Bah, talking pictures are just a passing fad. They'll go back to making real movies soon.
posted by octothorpe at 4:44 AM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Reading the thread where Fury Road's trailer is released at a Con is highly entertaining in retrospect.

I didn't comment in that thread, but I was aggressively unimpressed when I originally learned they were making another Mad Max movie. Then I learned that it was being directed by Miller and read the interview where he said it was basically two long car chases with minimal dialogue, and I was like "Go on....?"

And then I saw the trailer and I threw my wallet at the screen.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:58 AM on September 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


I would like a color but silent version, with cherry on top, pretty please.

You could always just rip the audio track out of this version and put it on a color version!
posted by mayonnaises at 6:13 AM on September 23, 2015


I'm bummed the black and white version didn't make it to Blu-Ray; what an exciting idea! The linked article notes it was apparently produced, so maybe we'll see it yet. It also says "just hear the isolated score as the only sound in the film"; this fan version also has the sound effects, at least the foley work. Also crowd cheers, just no dialog.

I love the "No copyright infringement intended" on the blog. What the fuck do you think this is other than massive copyright infringement? That phrase is like some cargo cult thing people do. I was going to say it was some polite statement of intent but it's not even clear what intent it signifies.

I'm cheerfully playing along though. FWIW youtube-dl -f h264-hd https://player.vimeo.com/video/140069127 is getting me a 3 gigabyte file, a 1280x800@24fps version. Sadly the audio is only stereo; I wonder what he had to do to subtract the dialog?
posted by Nelson at 7:10 AM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's not quite at Dark of the Moon/Wizard of Oz levels, but I've been running this in the background as I burn through hundreds of pages of proofreading at work today, with the sound turned down and Sonic Youth's "Confusion is Sex / Kill Yr Idols" turned up, and every time I look at the screen there's some cool synchronicity going on.

I am fortunate to have an office with a door, yes.
posted by Shepherd at 7:24 AM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


That phrase is like some cargo cult thing people do.

I’d love to see a study that looks at that phrase’s propagation across Youtube. I also wonder why Youtube & Vimeo don’t preemptively flag every video with that in the description.

This version is pretty clearly a transformative work, but it’s also pretty clearly a substitution for the original, so…
posted by Going To Maine at 7:32 AM on September 23, 2015


Reading the thread where Fury Road's trailer is released at a Con is highly entertaining in retrospect.

I stand by my statement that Master Blaster should have been in Citizen Kane.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:32 AM on September 23, 2015


I hadn't seen the theatrical version so had no context -- I gotta say that this is a beautiful film but without the dialogue, significant chunks don't make sense. Wonderful nonetheless.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:07 AM on September 23, 2015


It's like watching Metropolis.
posted by Jode at 8:13 AM on September 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


I was thinking that this makes it look like John Ford's Mad Max but then I realized that Fury Road is at least half a remake of Stagecoach so it all makes sense.
posted by octothorpe at 8:16 AM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


A small suggestion: Start "Black and Chrome" playing with the sound completely off. In another window, queue up some silent film piano scores (sound on). Imagine a single interstitial title at the appropriate moment: "Mediocre!"
posted by sourcequench at 8:33 AM on September 23, 2015 [4 favorites]


The lack of a MEDIOCRE! intertitle is itself mediocre, so I guess it sort of works in a meta way.
posted by ckape at 8:53 AM on September 23, 2015


aaaaaaaaaand it's gone.
posted by Jairus at 8:53 AM on September 23, 2015


So, now someone needs to create an appropriate entry on themoviedb so this is picked up by Plex (and Kodi and the like).

(quoting myself feels weird).

Anyway, someone has done this! Woot; I'm going to pretend it was someone here in this thread. Movie title - "Mad Max: Black and Chrome".
posted by el io at 8:55 AM on September 23, 2015


I think the intents of "No copyright infringement intended" include, depending on circumstances:

* I will comply with any takedown requests, so do that rather than jumping to suing me
* I encourage viewers to support the official release/I don't intend to or foresee undercutting any actual profits
* I am not profiting from this myself
* This is not the full work
and/or
* This is a fair/transformative/parody use

I think most people know it's not a solid legal defense, it's more of an attempt to make their position/intentions of good faith clear and appeal to the better instincts of the copyright holders in this murky and arbitrary legal area.
posted by Drexen at 8:56 AM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


This post made a blurry Ambien morning after a week of stress-driven insomnia much, much more tolerable, thanks.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:05 AM on September 23, 2015


Aaannnnnd the video's down now. Sorry to everyone who didn't get Witnessed into Valhalla fast enough! :(
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 9:10 AM on September 23, 2015


Mirrors are very shiny. Can I get a chance to witness one?
posted by radwolf76 at 9:22 AM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


The lack of a MEDIOCRE! intertitle is itself mediocre, so I guess it sort of works in a meta way.

Wait no longer!
posted by zippy at 9:24 AM on September 23, 2015 [20 favorites]


Hah, that Mediocre clip is fantastic mediocre.


Mirrors! Kingdoms for mirrors!
posted by Driph at 12:26 PM on September 23, 2015


Someone really needs to throw this up somewhere like vkbox where it wont get taken down. Maybe i'll try when i get home from work...
posted by emptythought at 4:14 PM on September 23, 2015


Miller allegedly did make a b&w silent version that was supposed to be on the Blu-ray release, but it didn't show up.


Well, not until WB releases the Deluxe Platinum Chrome WITNESS! Edition, once sales of the regular BluRay die down.
posted by lmfsilva at 4:38 PM on September 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, the regular Bluray was suspiciously light on special features, so I didn't buy it anticipating a Special Edition release later on down the line, which I presume will have the B&W cut and more stuff.
posted by yasaman at 5:37 PM on September 23, 2015


The site’s been updated
posted by Going To Maine at 8:28 PM on September 23, 2015


Yeah, updated to include links to a bunch of articles that all linked to the same Vimeo, which is kaput.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:19 PM on September 23, 2015


Thank you for liking, sharing, and watching BLACK & CHROME. This is it for now. Your response has truly shown what the joy of movies is about. Hopefully, the right person(s) will have WITNESSED this and we can look forward to an official version of Mad Max: Fury Road in black and white. The film has lived, and has died, but can it live again?

So this is what I was thinking. By putting it up for people and watching the media reaction, they're hoping to see an official release.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:59 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


I liked what I watched, but did not download it so I can't try it with my own ideas of a soundtrack.
I was going to try Invasion of the Polaroid People
followed perhaps with Kings Lead Hat during the Buzzard chase. Thats as far as I got.
posted by boilermonster at 11:54 PM on September 23, 2015


Alright, here's some mirrors. I have a pretty fast connection so i decided to throw it up a few places while i watch the new rick and morty.

one two three

Most of those should stick. They're, erm, well known for hosting extralegal content and having it stay.
posted by emptythought at 1:45 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


This is pretty amazing. I'm noticing so much more about the imagery. And when they're talking I can fill in my own dialogue since I know the gist of what they're saying. I wonder what it would be like to see this version without seeing the other version. I might have some people to try that on...
posted by isthmus at 11:02 PM on September 25, 2015


I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to track down a subtitle file, get the best of both worlds that way.
posted by kafziel at 10:59 AM on September 26, 2015


« Older No means no.   |   Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments