Finally back with another volume in my MST3K remaster project. After back-to-back Joel episodes, we enter the Mike era with Alien From L.A.

Once again the episode was upscaled and silhouettes were isolated and placed in front of an HD source of the movie being riffed. No dialogue was removed.

This movie is a curious case because it was shot in Super35 format, so it was framed both for widescreen theatrical exhibition and 4:3 home video display, to avoid panning and scanning within the wide frame. Many filmmakers have used this format including James Cameron, Ridley Scott, and Peter Jackson. Director Albert Pyun lamented that widescreen version has never been widely available, so I have honored his wishes in creating this remaster of the MST3K episode by cropping the 16:9 blu-ray source to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Doing so only confirms that yes, the movie was shot with that framing in mind. For more information on Super35: https://w.wiki/B4cX I've also made a version that is open matte.


Again, adjustments to accommodate the widescreen HD format include:

• using a rotoscoped final countdown door to open/close on the movie segment
  
• red curtains to cover Mike and the bots entering/exiting from within the frame. This is done 3 times in the episode. The last countdown door covers the rest
  

Also:

• did a separate pass for Crow's head. Tweaked to accommodate the extra detail in this season 5 episode (that detail just wasn't there in the two Godzilla episodes from season 2). I'd say I got about 90% of the detail.
  
• frame-by-frame clean-up/animating of Mike's hands in several instances, and Crow's hat in one instance
  
• added custom "Turn Down Your Lights" opening, and recreated "A Best Brains Production" stinger clip at the end
  

I didn't realize going into the one that season 5 has probably the toughest silhouettes to extract. A lot of fine-tuning was involved to get clean silhouettes throughout. The detail on Crow's head is so delicate in season 5, I decided to do a separate pass for him, which added a lot more time.

Special thanks to Zapp at Project MSTie for upscaling the silhouettes and host segments. Any fan of MST3K should be following their YouTube channel which provides the absolute best-looking versions of the classic show. And check out their archive.org page for episode downloads. Also a big thanks to them for providing me with a new method for extracting the silhouettes. Looking forward to putting it to use on future episodes.

Now I'm not going to make the mistake of promising when another one of these will be out, but I am excited to utilize the new time-saving method for extracting silhouettes

All of my MST-HD Remasters can be found here: https://mega.nz/folder/GohSSKJI#YcZB1hR88vhVyh6Sb5__Hg

Alien From L.A. is available in Scope and Open Matte, as well as HQ and MED for both. Personally, I lean toward the scope version, but I understand where others would prefer the open matte.

Enjoy!