so how authentic will it be?
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that's a tough question to answer.
it all depends on a certain point of view...
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what if you restored the 'reel change' marks... well
that wouldn't be true to the film, because they're
actually on the film.. so filling those in is altering
those frames.. so we're leaving those in...
what about de-warping and stabilizing images.
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again, these are digital alterations made to the original
frame data... due to the film shrinking or bending due to
time..the video although straight in the frame, could
compress and decompress and look like warping..
of course, we have ways of digitally fixing that so you
would never know that it was changed unless you
looked at the original frames..
also, for stabilization, due to the alignment of certain
frames.. like in the crawl for example, you might see
the original picture move slightly.. again, we can
digitally alter the sequence by using fixed points as
references and then continue the animation per frame
to smooth out the shifting.. you wouldn't notice this
also, since we'll be cropping around the edges.
isn't fixing the damage altering the images too?
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yes it is, because when you replace the damage with
pixels or color data from other frames, it's not going
to be original either...
the thing is this was probably done for the GOUT anyways,
so even there it's been altered somewhat from the
'originals'... that's always going to be the trade-off,
better picture quality vs original data.
of course, if you watch a completely raw transfer of the
movie (which for the most part, you could for the lpp), you
wouldn't have to think about too much of any kind of
alterations, besides color corrections mostly to get the
'just projected' type of experience. again the lighting
and colors were meant to imitate the type of bulbs
used back then..
the pictures going to look soft?
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yeah, it might. but guess what, when you project it, that
kind of thing happens which compensates for the dust
and scratches on film. the reason it seems that way on
the digital version is you're seeing it at sharper resolution
in some cases than it would seem in a theater. of course
watching it on a monitor/crt or tv, is completely different
from the effect of watching projected film onto a screen.
are we going to using sharpening/contrast filters?
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no we are not. this could introduce more artifacts than were
originally there. granted, when you do some of the dirt and
dust cleanup, there APPEARS to be either a softening or
sometimes a sharpening effect. these will be minimized,
but most likely this is to emulate the effect of how it would
have appeared projected.
are there are any major scenes variations?
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the opening scene is made from 3 different stocks of films.
the crawl is the original splice in. the flyover is 2 different
lpp prints, and most of the rest of the film is one stock.
the han shoots first scene is also an original red faded
kodak stock. you WILL notice a difference in the quality
of these scenes..
any scene that had major composites, like the mos
eisely entry scene, the falcon taking off, will also appear
degraded due to several generations of reproduction.
there will be slight digital alterations of these also..
in the end, about 90-95% of the films should be considered
very close to the 'original'... the rest should be negligible
and not easily detected, even if using the GOUT as a
reference.
why not use the Bluray or other high def for references?
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because due to the nature of those versions, ignoring
the main cg alterations. even then the colors and sharpness
and clarity will not be able to be replicated by us. there
may be some scenes or a few frames that may be of
use. but as a whole we didn't need to refer to them during
the processes.
will there be other improvements or revisions, or is this it?
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for the time being, this will be the 1.0 version. we're making
every effort to not miss out on anything significant so we
don't envision returning to this anytime soon.. unless there
are some future developments?????????????????????????
i know there will be several side projects that will be a lot
less serious (like including deleted scenes, or more orignal,
and grindhouse versions).. but those will not be up to the
reference standard. and not be as comprehensive as the
main release.
we'd like to see how this does, and gauge the response and
interest in it. as we contemplate future projects and releases.
later
-1