Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 77

"And a picture with the GOUT reference in the corner (the GOUT reference has increased saturation but I pulled red saturation down by the same amount I increased the master saturation, so red saturation remains the same as in raw GOUT but all other colors are increased)" -Harmy

can you expand on that? Are all gout clips affected? I'm amazed at how film like the work print looks(especially without a proper color reference), but the one issue I had is with an inconsistent hue, especially in the first half in hoth and mostly noticeable in bright red lights(and the sometimes purple blues). Bright red lights sometimes jump from pink, red, to occasionally orange... I don't know if it's the selectively colored bright lights of the blu ray or the analog nature of gout and the SE source to blame, but even a fraction more consistency in the red channel would really sell me on the overall colors.

I think you'll have to pull the red saturation down by a greater amount than that, since the faded film from which the GOUT was derived was already starting to become red-shifted at the time it was scanned.

Also, judging the whole movie by one level of red throughout isn't necessarily reliable, because it is likely to be inconsistent as to which shots are more faded and red-shifted, and which ones are not.

Puggo Grande isn't a totally accurate source either for a variety of reasons (it pushes blue entirely too much throughout the movie, for one thing), but even taking this into account, certain aspects of the original colour timing seem to be retained.  Having just watched some it, I would say that the scenes of Luke lost in the snow should have their blue levels saturated a little bit more—not much, but a little—and the red dialed back somewhat.  A subtle shift in each of these should combine to make the purple tint go away, and the scene come closer to what its original appearance probably was.

It does seem to me that the only shots in which Hoth's snow should have any significant blue saturation are the ones where Luke is lost, since it is intended to be colder and darker during this time.  The amount of it ought to be less than Puggo Grande (and way, way less than the SE), but a bit more so than it currently is.  By no means should this be taken to mean that each shot should be totally consistent with each other, as I'm quite certain that the original prints were nearly as variable on this matter as on the Death Star interior in the first movie.

That does make sense, of course.  I can only go by what I see, which is that the purple looks strange and out of place; and by the fact that the GOUT is a highly flawed transfer, which I do not trust even when its inconsistencies are evened out.  It can be easily inferred that the source from which it was made did not contain an accurate record of the original colour timing—one only need look at the arrival on Bespin scene to know that, since the various film prints show this scene being very orange, while the GOUT has absolutely no trace of this orange tint.  It may well have come from an earlier generation source than what ended up on the film prints, and so is lacking certain post-production choices that were made later.  There is also the possibility that the colours may have been deliberately altered in 1993: this was the case for the sunset scene in the first movie, after all.

Now, without a reliable a colour reference as you had for the first movie, it is of course very difficult to say for sure what the 'real' colours ought to be.  But since the GOUT is problematic, and other sources sometimes disagree with it, I do think some leeway of interpretation is called for, in the places where following it too closely yields a strange-looking result.  Purple Hoth just looks weird.  But it's only a small change I'm suggesting for this . . .

I also recognize that all this has to be done within the context of the 2004 transfer, which is itself highly flawed and may not be fully receptive to manipulation without contorting into a strange appearance itself.  I'm pretty amazed that it came out looking as good as it did, actually.  

Anyway, most of this is subtle stuff—by and large it's looking fantastic.  ;)

Harmy, you are a national treasure for this. And this isn't  hyperboyl on my part. As far as I'm concerned, you're a film preservationist (well, a digital preservationist anyway). I can't imagine the amount of time and money you've put into this project for zero financial reward...just to preserve part of our cinematic heritage. Honestly, even if Disney does eventually release the OT in its original form on BD (which I suspect they will), I'm doubtful they'd go through the meticulous colour correction, etc. with the love and attention to detail that you have.  Seriously, if anyone (meaning, a fan)has ever done anything like you've done done with these films in the history of cinema, I haven't heard about it.

When can we expect it? And will be on MySpleen, ala your other releases?

Harmy said:

At the top of the third section it has "Dialoge" instead of "Dialogue". Hopefully that's not too hard to tweak :)

Edit: And 3:34 of the sample posted earlier has "Additional matte Photography", missing its capital M.

Edit Edit: At 3:48, "Acountants" instead of "Accountants".

Behodar said:

Harmy said:

At the top of the third section it has "Dialoge" instead of "Dialogue". Hopefully that's not too hard to tweak :)

Edit: And 3:34 of the sample posted earlier has "Additional matte Photography", missing its capital M.

Edit Edit: At 3:48, "Acountants" instead of "Accountants".

Well that's embarrassing! Some of this I did very early one morning, looks like I should have been more careful. It's odd that the spell checker in Open Office that I used didn't find most of these problems. Thank you for pointing those out. I'm going to have to go back over my PSD and look for any other errors I may have missed. 

Harmy, I've already fixed these and can send you (or Laserschwert) a new PSD with the fixes if you want me to, unless it's easier for you to fix them with the rasterized image you're using. I'm not sure what would be better at this point (though I had to adjust character spacing for the first and third typos).

EDIT:

Found a 4th typo under Location Second Unit. "Asssistant Directors" changed to "Assistant Directors." Character spacing adjusted.

EDIT 2:

Found a 5th typo under Miniature and Optical Effects. "Minature Pyrotechnics" changed to "Miniature Pyrotechnics." Character spacing adjusted.

EDIT 3:

Found a 6th mistake in the last paragraph. There was a missing comma after "applicable laws." Character spacing adjusted.

That is all I could find going over it once again. Hopefully that's it! I moved RALPH McQUARRIE over and also changed the "TM &" to "TM:" next to the copyright. And my apostrophe's were already closer to what you changed them to.

If anyone sees anything I or Behodar may have missed, please let me know.

Harmy said:

I'm using Firefox and have absolutely no trouble with it.

 Actually I'm using Firefox too and I DO have trouble with it.

The problem is that the URL

http://s25.postimg.org/ezzxpmfil/Purple.png

gets translated into the URL

http://postimg.org/image/okjkci4uj/

Which is actually an HTML page showing the image, not the image itself.

The URL of the image itself is

http://s25.postimg.org/qccj7eo7h/Purple.png

So I'm not sure why for some people the first URL gets redirected and for others not, it should be a server setting independent from the client, shouldn't it?

SirJonah said:

Found a 5th typo under Miniature and Optical Effects. "Minature Pyrotechnics" changed to "Miniature Pyrotechnics."

Hah, I thought that there was something wrong with that one so I re-read it, concluded that "Pyrotechnics" was correct, and left it at that :P

SirJonah said:

Harmy, I've already fixed these and can send you (or Laserschwert) a new PSD with the fixes if you want me to, unless it's easier for you to fix them with the rasterized image you're using. I'm not sure what would be better at this point (though I had to adjust character spacing for the first and third typos).

My After Effects project just uses your text layers, not the rasterized image, so they can be changed inside of After Effects.

OK, assuming I haven't missed anything else. I've uploaded a new PSD and will send you the link via PM, Harmy. Just a second...

Oh damn, I thought I imported them as text... ah well.

Jonah included the fonts in the first ZIP he sent to us ;) But I think I replaced one of them...

Back to something I pointed out a few pages earlier. I just checked the clip Negative1 made available of the end of Empire, and the top framing of the window is clearly visible. So which cropping is the good one ?

Harmy, I've now watched a fair chunk of the work print (I didn't want to watch the whole thing through straight and spoil the experience of watching the actual release) and really have no significant comments. Phenomenal work. 

One possible thought I had for version 3 relates to the Fox logo. Is that a GOUT upscale? If that's right, I wonder if blu-rays of other films might serve as possible high def sources for that logo, which must have been used in tons of films from the early 80's. Anyway, just an idea. 

Also, just out of curiosity, why did you decide to recreate the credits from GOUT and 35 mm for starwars but rebuild them from scratch for ESB? Are the 35 mm sources not as good this time around? 

@ Harmy & SirJonah

"JOHN CAMPBELL" instead of "JOHN CAMBELL" (at 3:11)

EDIT:

"Electronic Engineers" instead of "Electronics Engineers" (at 3:49)

"Supervising Stage Technician" instead of "Supervising Stage Technicians" (at 3:53)

n00b said:

@ Harmy & SirJonah

"JOHN CAMPBELL" instead of "JOHN CAMBELL" (at 3:11)

EDIT:

"Electronic Engineers" instead of "Electronics Engineers" (at 3:49)

"Supervising Stage Technician" instead of "Supervising Stage Technicians" (at 3:53)

Fixed, fixed, and fixed. Thank you!