HBO Max’s ‘Mad Men’ Vomit Scene Proves ‘Remastered’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Better’
But the problem goes beyond a change in aspect ratio. Remastering shows that were originally filmed with more primitive technology sometimes goes horribly wrong, like a I love Lucy clip that went viral last year showing two formerly blurred actors in the background brought so into focus that they now looked like surrealist Picasso sketches.
I visited all of Spawn in the late 1990s, as the television industry prepared for the transition from standard to high definition. As I admired the set of Dr. Crane’s living room, one of the producers of the famous sitcom lamented that it would all look much more ramshackle in HD than in the more visually forgiving SD format, and worried about having to spend to rebuild all of its standing sets. Spawn, Lucyand many others were created without thinking about what they might one day look like in a format that didn’t exist at the time.
While countless classic films have been successfully remastered in HD or 4K, these are also standalone projects, where real care and attention can be given to each frame. Seinfeld And I love Lucy both directed 180 episodes. The Simpsons produced 429 episodes in standard definition. Performing quality control with such a quantity of product is very difficult, which is why so many of these mistakes are made. (In the case of The SimpsonsDisney+ finally introduced an option to watch the first 20 seasons in their original aspect ratio.) Every now and then you get a situation like The threadwhose creator David Simon insisted on being involved in the process of changing the image quality and proportions of the urban drama, but this is rare.
This specific Mad Men The error is strange, since the show was always presented in HD widescreen. But the first four seasons were shot on film, so perhaps during the remastering process, someone inadvertently used an alternate take of the vomit scene where the crew members hadn’t been digitally erased. A source close to the process said Lionsgate gave HBO Max “incorrect files” and that the correct versions would be uploaded as soon as possible.
