Reader warning: there's gonna be a lot of pretend puke photos in this post.
If you've fired up HBO Max recently, you've probably seen that one of the most influential and prestigious television series of all time was to premiere in 4K on the streaming service. The show's first four seasons were shot on film, and the final three were shot digitally on the Alexa, but the run of the series was mastered in 1080p HD. HBO Max has been touting this 4K "restoration" of the series, produced by Lionsgate TV.
The highly anticipated 4K debut of the show was to be one of HBO Max' crown jewels of television history. It looks like it might initially serve as a cautionary tale of quality control when it comes to restorations and the technical process of bringing shows to streaming.
As far as I can tell, Paul Haine was the first to notice something weird going on with HBO Max' presentation. In one of season one's most memorable moments, Roger Sterling barfs in front of clients after climbing many flights of stairs. As a surprise to Paul, you can clearly see the pretend puke hose (that is ultimately strapped to the back side of John Slattery's face) in the background, along with two techs who are modulating the flow. Yeah, you're not supposed to see that.
It appears as though this represents the original photography, unaltered before digital visual effects got involved. Somehow, this episode (along with many others) do not include all the digital visual effects that were in the original broadcasts and home video releases. It's a bizarro mistake for Lionsgate and HBO Max to make and not discover until after the show was streaming to customers.
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I want to be clear that this is a separate issue than the "reframed original film negative for 16:9" issue that has plagued many restorations that have left viewers scratching their heads. In those cases, the shows were originally shot on film and presented in 1.33-to-1 aspect ratio, but for their HD restorations the studio decided that their shows should fill the HD frame at the 16:9 aspect ratio, so portions of the negative, previously unseen and NOT intended for broadcast, were now suddenly visible, sometimes leading to ridiculous images that were never meant to be seen by audiences...
example from "Friends" in HD, look at screen right
...or cropping out vital visual information in order to avoid black bands on the left and right side of frame.
Reframing old shows to fit a new aspect ratio is antithetical to the spirit of media restoration, and cheapens the future of our shared culture. The folks at the studios who insist on hobbling their most classic television shows are really bad at their jobs.
But that's NOT what is going on with "Mad Men", since the show was mastered in 16:9 to begin with.
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I decided to help illustrate the changes by diving in and creating images that might do better than words. The first thing I noticed is that, at least for season one, the episode titles and order were totally jumbled. The puke episode is "Red in the Face", not "Babylon".
Update: the season one episodes are being updated live on HBO Max to their correct positions and titles. The corrected title:
I lined up the Blu-ray edition of the episode with the current HBO Max episode:
The fun thing about this restoration mistake is that now we, the audience, get to see exactly how many digital visual effects were actually used in a show like "Mad Men", which most would assume did not have any digital effects component. In this shot, not only were the techs and hose removed, but the spot where the pretend puke meets Slattery's face has some clever digital warping to make it seem like the flow is truly coming from his mouth (as opposed to it appearing through a tube inches from his mouth, on the other side of his face).
A Twitter user noticed that the post-production screwups are not exclusive to season one, so I fired up my comparison machine to illustrate it.
In this case, visual effects was used to obscure the fact that the show was filmed in 2000's era Los Angeles, not in 1960's New York City. Every sign was altered, and period-appropriate garbage NYC garbage cans were also added to each side of the frame.
Eric Vilas-Boas has been covering the behind-the-scenes issues that may have cause this screwup over at Vulture.
This post will be updated as warranted. My original Bluesky thread is here.
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