Harmy said:
I'm pretty sure the link still works.
http://uloz.to/xr4KdS4M/esb-v2-0-wp1-r1-mkv
This one? no luck on my end. Though it suggests temporarily, this has been the case for a few days.
Thanks Harmy! Will look at it this weekend.
Is the first hour workprint still available online, with sound? The original link seems to have died. Or is it a bit too outdated now?
As someone who has followed these edits for many years as well, and is obviously picky (see above), I understand your frustration, though not to the same degree as I've not attempted my own just yet.
He has another thread where he posted his list of edits, at least for the first version. I imagine some things have changed, though?
I've very excited about this. Mostly because I was just about to get started on such a project (and had seen no evidence of an HD Donner "redux" type edit yet on the net!)
And your Theatrical Cut sounds like just what I wanted! The "pink bear scene" just works better than the sessions that compose the bullet scene. I really like booshman's DVD. He cleaned up the bullet scene so that Clark's hair and glasses don't change every few seconds, and gave an option to branch to the bear scene instead.
But going one step further and including more of Paris is a great call. Yes, it's tangential to the plot, but it's a great part of the Lester cut. I wasn't going to do this, but I'd like to see how it works.
Questions:
Since you're using the Paris bomb, how are the villains freed? Presumably by that bomb and not the nukes? Is the Superman I recap not included then? And if it is, have you kept the very poor effect overlays from the Donner discs out?
Does Lois sleep with Clark or Superman? (ie, before or after depowering him)
Is "general, would you care to step outside?" reinstated? Great line.
And most importantly, is the time travel ending included? This little issue (and the official "Bullet" scene) is the main thing that keeps me from showing people the Donner cut. We've just watched Superman I (or recently), why on earth would we want to see the same ridiculous Deus Ex Machina ending?! Granted, if it wasn't supposed to be in the first movie, it makes sense that it would be in Donner's original vision for the second. But it *was* in the first and should *not* be reused!
Anyway, thanks for doing this! I'll check it out, regardless of your answers to the above! :)
msycamore said:
cruel1079 said:
For the Jabba Scene I was probably going to use the un-edited scene with the fat stand in in the fur (the alternative would be a stop motion Jabba since that was Lucas' original plan).
The fat "stand-in" was actor Declan Mulholland and he was never meant as a stand-in for a planned stop-motion effect despite what Lucas says nowadays. He was meant to be the real Jabba in the original film before the scene was cut. See Kaminski's great article on the subject: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/jabba.html
Also keep in mind that had the scene not been cut, the scene with Greedo had also been slightly different in terms of dialogue.
Thanks for that. Ever since I saw (some of) the original footage, with Declan in full costume, I was quite suspicious of this. The fact that it was not filmed in the manner one would expect for effects is a good point as well. But the complete lack of evidence of any planning for an effect shot, or the intended character (despite evidence of costume design for Declan) seals the deal.
I think an extended version could do without this scene for various reasons mentioned: no decent quality version of the entire thing, repeated identical lines from Greedo scene, hyper-discontinuity with RoTJ.
g-force said:
I like the colors! Glad you're considering all the sources. And you're right, Harmy, the GOUT elements remain the weakest link in this project. The Cloud Car that flies past Leia's window is nearly transparent, and the moire on the pre-dinner walk-by windows is really distracting. It appears that you've also done a better job stabilizing the GOUT footage than on previous efforts, but it's still a bit jittery and noticeable in scenes where it's next to the rock-solid blu-ray. Have you thought about stabilizing the GOUT automatically first, so you don't have to do so much by hand?
Otherwise, looking great as usual!
-G
Good eye. There's so much to look at in that shot, I didn't notice. But the car *is* transparent (or, translucent). As for the moire, do you mean the screen on the top portions of the windows? It's difficult to say from the small window (and less noticeable in SD), but how bad is it in the gout?
The GOUT footage is a little noticeable when you strain to see it, particularly in freeze frames. But that's better than something that looks great in a frame but falls apart in motion!
I find myself staring at the borders of unzoomed shots, looking for the spliced in GOUT borders, and it always looks so seamless. Given that the starting materials had very different colorization, how is this done? Is recolorization of bluray material done after the merge with the GOUT borders or are the colorized at the same time?
yoda-sama said:
I haven't watched the new clip, but if the colors are warmer, I'll take a stab in the dark and say it is the Japanese Special Collection Laserdiscs he's using for reference. He was asking around for a copy of that earlier, and a thread about that had comparison shots that looked quite a bit warmer than GOUT, 97SE and 04SE.
Curious what his source is as well. He clearly has an intended vision for how he wants the color to look.
I might hesitate to say it was the japanese edition, because he was only asking for that a couple of days ago. Though he could have made changes based on them very very quickly? (I don't know how fast he works).
He asked for the exact segment from JSC that he just showed. So I assumed he wanted it for a final comparison (or to put in a comp video).
[/speculation]
Lord Haseo said:
CatBus said:
Don't ask for an ETA.
You might get one, but it might be off by a year or so... ;)
That said... July 26th, 4:23:07pm GMT.
Harmy said he will is contemplating releasing it on the 21st.
Exciting! Even if it's not then, it's probably a not-too-distant horizon. And RoTJ 2.0 was being worked on simultaneously, from what I've read? Probably priority to ESB, in recent months, though.
I have a question:
I understand (with the aid of the image, especially), that the point is that the difference between 1080p and 720p in these transfers is less than the difference between the two resolutions for many other film transfers. This negatively impacts the benefit of switching to 1080p, especially given that work would need to begin from scratch.
Another point has been mentioned for this and other fanedits, that when SD-quality material is included, it of course sticks out and looks poorly in a 1080p production. Is this effect negated somewhat by the quality of the transfer? i.e., if the 1080p transfers are more akin to upscaled 720p, does that actually bode better for the SD material?
Harmy said:
Well, I can actually see little to no difference myself, as apparently can Adywan, who also used the same picture to prove the same point. So maybe it's you :-)
I see no differences that are clearly more or less detail. The differences I see are slight ones in the shading, for reasons mentioned previously. And if I squint really hard until I make myself see something that may or may not be there, it just barely works. And then I look down and see that the extra resolution I imagined was in the 720p version.
Perhaps there is more to notice in an actual moving image? *shrug*
At first, the images looked so similar, I was hoping that it was actually a trick, with identical images, to make a point about the placebo effect.
It would make for an interesting game, actually. Release some unlabeled images from both versions and see if we can visually identify them.
I've registered to say thank you so much for this. I've watched Despecialized 2.5 and it's absolutely amazing. The 'making of' video was a fun and impressive watch as well.
I have grabbed the ESB and RoTJ Despecialized versions as well. Am I correct in understanding that there is only one release so far for these, and that is 1.0? Just want to make sure I have the most recent, as of now (the 2.0 comparisons for ESB look fantastic). And hopefully I have the full quality copies. The notes for Star Wars 2.5 have a file size listed, so it was easy to check. For the other two, I have found ~7.9gb M2TS files.
Can someone fill me in on when these were released (SW 1.0-2.5, and the sequels)? Sometimes it is a bit hard to tell, because the forum posts are updated rather than started anew, to keep everything in place.
This was indeed great to see. I had recently bought the Bluray trilogy and the Mos Eisley scenes just had me rolling my eyes. Last I checked fanedits, in probably 2005, there was a lot of promising work going on, mostly based on the laserdiscs, I think. But I thought I would see what's out there now, before it's time to watch the most cringeworthy of all, the updated Anakin ghost.