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How 'Mission Impossible' Made the Leap To 4K and HDR (engadget.com)
In the run up to the release of Fallout, the new movie in the Mission Impossible franchise, Paramount studio re-released the entire Mission Impossible series on 4K Blu-ray last month. The new discs aren't only a huge upgrade for cinephiles -- they're also a fascinating glimpse at how studios can revive older films for the 4K/HDR era. Engadget: "In terms of any re-transfers or remastering that we are doing for our HDR releases, we will go back to the highest resolution source available," Kirsten Pielstick, manager of Paramount's digital mastering group, said in an interview. In the case of Mission Impossible 1 and 2, that involved scanning the original 35mm negatives in 4K/16-bit. As you'd expect, the studio tries to get the original artists involved with any remasters, especially with something like HDR, which allows for higher brightness and more nuanced black levels. Pielstick worked with the director of photography (DP) for the first Mission Impossible film, Stephen H. Burum, to make sure its noir-like palette stayed intact.
[...] "Our mastering philosophy here is always to work directly with the talent whenever possible, and use the new technology to enhance the movie, but always stay true to the intent of the movie," Pielstick said. "You're not going to want to make things brighter just because you can, if it's not the intent of how you were supposed to see things." [...] "You also have to remember that we're not putting in anything that didn't exist on the film [for HD remasters]," Pielstick added. "It was always there we just didn't have the ability to see it. So we're not adding anything new, we're not doing anything to increase those, we're just able to look at the negative in a much clearer way than we ever could before."
[...] "Our mastering philosophy here is always to work directly with the talent whenever possible, and use the new technology to enhance the movie, but always stay true to the intent of the movie," Pielstick said. "You're not going to want to make things brighter just because you can, if it's not the intent of how you were supposed to see things." [...] "You also have to remember that we're not putting in anything that didn't exist on the film [for HD remasters]," Pielstick added. "It was always there we just didn't have the ability to see it. So we're not adding anything new, we're not doing anything to increase those, we're just able to look at the negative in a much clearer way than we ever could before."
That's a lot of words to basically say, they remastered something.
Not sure what the big whoop is. 35mm has just as good resolution than 4k, and if you take into account the compression that typically comes with 4k then 35mm would be superior.
But don't take my word for it, check out the comparisons: https://i.imgur.com/g8U62w3.png
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Yes, when these were on Netflix it had good resolution. A lot of older shows were shot on film. You can often tell shows that were shot direct to video tape because they had a distinctly different look to them. It took awhile to make video cameras that looked decent, so you'd off odd optics, high persistence which smudged whatever was moving, and overall fuzziness. Twilight Zone did a few episodes with video instead of film (they were going over budget) and those really stick out because of the primitive video cameras used. I think video got stuck with an assumption that they were low quality even after they had improved, so shooting to film remained a standard for pre-recorded weekly television for a long time.