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--------------------------------   HALLOWEEN:   --------------------------------
--------------------------------   EVIL WAITS   --------------------------------
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The latest version of this readme file will be hosted at the following URL:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pipefan413/evil-waits/master/README.txt


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-- ABOUT THIS PROJECT ----------------------------------------------------------
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When John's Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween was finally transferred to
the small screen in 1981, it had to be censored for broadcast. On top of that,
NBC wouldn't show it unless it hit the 2-hour mark (including commercials). This
meant that a significant amount of extra footage had to be shot and edited into
the film, which luckily was possible because Carpenter was shooting Halloween II
at the time. These additional scenes were mostly unnecessary and only exist to
pad out the runtime. This is very obvious when you watch them, even if you don't
know the backstory: they drag on for far too long and add little of substance.

However, there is one scene I do like, or at least almost like. This one shows
Loomis standing in the corner of young Michael's room in Smith's Grove
Sanitarium in May 1964, regarding Michael silently for a while (too long) before
declaring that he's onto him. Unfortunately, like the other TV scenes, I feel
that this too is comically slow and dull, contains some questionable performance
moments, and wrecks the flow of the edit in the TV cut (appearing immediately
after the much more exciting opening scene). My solution to this was to create a
heavily re-edited version of this scene and append it to the start of the
original theatrical cut as a prologue. This way, the visual differences are less
jarring (especially after I regraded the colours), the dodgier moments are
removed, the pacing is much snappier, and the flow of the original theatrical
footage is uninterrupted.

The other goal of this project was to present the rest of the film in a form
closely resembling its original 1978 theatrical release, in the best quality
possible. The theatrical footage is therefore sourced from the 2013 "35th
Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray Disc release, the colour grading of which was
approved by the film's director of photography, Dean Cundey. Note that this
significantly differs from the interesting but nonetheless revisionist 1999 THX
DVD colour grading, which has a pronounced orange tint intended to evoke autumn,
since the film was actually shot in the middle of a hot summer, evidenced by the
bright sunlight and vibrant green grass and trees seen throughout much of the
film. I also used the original mono audio mix throughout, which was sourced from
a 1994 LaserDisc because later mixes (even mono versions) almost all add
revisionist details like additional sound effects to flesh out the soundscape. I
believe the sole exception to this is the first Blu-ray Disc release from 2007,
but the mono track is encoded in heavily compressed AC3 (as opposed to the
lossless PCM rip used here). The colour grading of that release is pretty far
from what it should be as well. This is, therefore, the first time I've seen the
film released digitally with the most "correct" video and audio available, aside
from the addition of the prologue.


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-- SUMMARY OF CHANGES ----------------------------------------------------------
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This is mostly Halloween as we know it, but with a few tweaks:

1. I have added a new prologue consisting of a re-edited presentation of one of
   the scenes shot for the 1981 TV cut. As well as cutting some shots and
   rearranging others, I regraded the colour to somewhat more closely
   approximate the DP-approved "35th Anniversary Edition", since that was my
   source for the rest of the footage.

2. The original mono audio has been reinstated (in lossless 16-bit PCM) and the
   TV audio has been level boosted by approximately 5dB so that it is no longer
   significantly quieter than the rest of the film.
   
3. 10 frames have been trimmed from the start of the opening titles so that the
   timing of the main theme kicking in after the new prologue is more satisfying
   (you can almost count the theme in with a bar of 5/4 at the right tempo).

4. I've migrated the chapters from the 35th Anniversary Edition, realigned
   them to account for the additional/removed frames at the start, added a new
   one for the prologue, and given them all titles since they don't have any on
   the disc or indeed anywhere on the packaging.


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-- SOURCES ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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VIDEO:

1. 2013 "35th Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray Disc (H.264/MKV remux)

   This release was reportedly regraded under supervision of DP Dean Cundey and
   director John Carpenter to look as close to their original intention as they
   could recall. It looks significantly different from every other release I've
   seen, apart from a 35mm print that I saw screened several years ago which did
   indeed match this relatively closely, or at least didn't have the orange tint
   seen on the 1999 THX DVD.
   
2. Halloween: Revised Extended Edition by Croweyes1121 (TV footage only)

   This had been regraded toward an "autumnal" orange tint to approximate the
   1999 THX DVD colours, which are pretty ridiculous when put beside the much
   cooler and more muted palette of the 35th Anniversary Edition (Loomis looked
   like he had just dropped by Smith's Grove directly after a visit to the
   tanning salon). However, my only other available source was the isolated TV
   footage from the Blu-ray special features, which is interlaced 1080i (eugh!)
   rather than 1080p, so I just regraded the colours of this instead.
   
   It isn't perfect because I haven't regraded each shot individually (for some
   reason they're not even matched with each other in any of the sources
   available, with some shots looking warmer than others) but it's certainly
   much closer to the 2013 "theatrical" grading than it has ever been before. If
   I can get hold of the 2014 US Complete Collection bonus disc to strip the TV
   footage from, I would perhaps like to revisit this, but I'm happy enough with
   it as is for the time being and wanted it out by Halloween!


AUDIO:

1. 1994 Criterion Collection US LaserDisc:
   - Original 1978 mono mix (lossless 16-bit PCM)

   This was obtained indirectly via spoRv's Fundamental Collection #006. It has
   been upsampled from its LaserDisc-native 44.1kHz sample rate to 48kHz for
   Blu-ray Disc compatibility.

2. Halloween: Revised Extended Edition by Croweyes1121 (TV footage only):
   - Original 1981 mono mix (lossless 16-bit PCM)
   
   As mentioned previously, I had to boost this by a little over 5dB to bring
   it more in line with the rest of the audio from the theatrical cut.


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SPECIAL THANKS TO:

spoRv
... for creating Fundamental Collection #006, from which the theatrical mono
audio mix was drawn

Croweyes1121
... for putting the Revised Extended Edition together, which made it easier for
me to grab a non-interlaced 1080p source for the TV footage


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-- CHAPTERS --------------------------------------------------------------------
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01: Smith's Grove, 1964
TC: 00:00:00.000000000

02: Halloween 1963
TC: 00:01:17.744333333

03: Smith's Grove, 1978
TC: 00:08:17.747250000

04: Halloween 1978
TC: 00:12:25.453041666

05: The Shape
TC: 00:21:11.353416666

06: Don't Fear The Reaper
TC: 00:29:23.136375000

07: Trick Or Treat
TC: 00:36:02.451958333

08: The Boogeyman
TC: 00:45:22.386333333

09: Hey Lonnie
TC: 00:55:33.038041666

10: See Anything You Like?
TC: 01:01:37.902541666

11: Pursuit
TC: 01:10:29.850625000

12: Was It The Boogeyman?
TC: 01:20:51.221375000

13: End Credits
TC: 01:29:59.394000000


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-- VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS --------------------------------------------------------
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The direct rip of the unedited video was ~36.2Mbps and 23.4GB with the mono
audio track muxed in. The first released encode of this edit is ~ 22.9GB.
I have attempted to ensure that it's disc-compatible, but I don't reckon I want
it on disc myself so burn at your own discretion (you might want to inspect the
file closely before authoring).

After the initial release, people asked for a smaller version, so I've also
created a lower-quality encode (around 7Mbps as opposed to 35Mbps) which should
behave well with a media server setup like Plex as long as your network is able
to stream at up to 8Mbps comfortably. For this version, the audio track was
transcoded to 192Kbps AAC from the lossless 768Kbps master.


BLU-RAY DISC OPTIMISED VERSION:

Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 22.9 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 35.6 Mb/s

VIDEO
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 35.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 38.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.704
Stream size                              : 22.4 GiB (98%)
Title                                    : Halloween: Evil Waits

AUDIO
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 768 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 47.952 FPS (1001 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 507 MiB (2%)
Title                                    : Original 1978/1981 mono (16-bit PCM)
Language                                 : English


STREAMING OPTIMISED VERSION:

Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 4.62 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Overall bit rate                         : 7 174 kb/s

VIDEO
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4
Format settings                          : CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 5 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate                                 : 7 000 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 814 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 2.35:1
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 23.976 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.187
Stream size                              : 4.50 GiB (97%)
Title                                    : Halloween: Evil Waits

AUDIO
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : A_AAC-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Channel layout                           : C
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 127 MiB (3%)
Title                                    : Original 1978/1981 mono (192Kbps AAC)
Language                                 : English


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-- CHANGELOG -------------------------------------------------------------------
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2019-10-28  v1.0s
    Streaming-optimised encode released, with a target video bitrate of 7Mbps,
    192Kbps AAC audio, and maximum total bitrate of 8Mbps. Still in an MKV
    container to make the file easier to work with and keep the chapter list
    without having to faff about migrating the chapters across to an MP4 file
    manually. Feel free to convert to MP4 if you need to for compatibility.

2019-10-27  v1.0
    Initial release version. 10 frames removed from theatrical footage, 1864
    frames added from TV footage and regraded, mono audio reinstated to match.
    Video encoded in (hopefully) Blu-ray Disc compatible ~35Mbps H.264 format in
    1080p resolution (although the TV scenes were already upscaled to 1080p from
    standard definition TV source material). Used MKV container for simplicity;
    if I feel like figuring out how to author a proper Blu-ray Disc with menus,
    I might do an .ISO later but I don't think it's worth it otherwise.