Info: STAR WARS - Magic Bullet Grades

Being that there aren’t any real sources to base the official STAR WARS look on, I decided to take it into MAGIC BULLET’S LOOKS software via Sony Vegas and make something close to what I’ve seen from LEGACY and the DESPECIALIZED editions – while keeping it purely the SE (1997 based).

There are some clear artifacts as you can see by looking at the crawl and the shot in the trash compactor. Other than the occasional issue, it does look pretty good on my end.

Warning: My monitors are not the best calibrated, so let me know if there is an overabundance of any color.

http://imgur.com/a/aeBmK

Wow. They definitely look more than good on my end.

towne32 said:

I like it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with simply grading the film(s) to look decent rather than striving for perfection or matching certain references. You’ve gotten rid of a lot of that awful magenta. Though I think it’s still a bit too dark. Not sure if you’ve done anything with the luma/contrast.

When you say 97SE, do you mean you’re actually striving to replace Jabba with the old model and lengthen the Greedo shooting sequence again, as well as the many other little changes? Or just the color timing?

I have done some lighting curve adjustments, but can adjust it further. I have the project settings in 32-bit, but in 8-bit it doesn’t look as dark nor pop as much with the colors.

As for the 97 SE, I was mainly looking to match some of the color timing, but I also want to downgrade the '04 edition to match the original SE – and then do a custom SE from there.

This to me is perfect. What I wouldn’t give to see the Despecialized edition look like this.

Dig the lightsaber colours!

Here’s some more of everything - from IV to VI with the effects applied.

http://imgur.com/a/49EYO

Is it me, or are the shadows inverted? The lights and brights seem to be very flat now. Check the image of Tarkin in DS1 in the first link – also look at Luke’s lightsabre core. They’re flat?

How’s the progress going on this? I haven’t heard from you regarding this project in months.

Thanks,
~ Darth Nyriox

I’ve been tweaking this more and more over the past weeks. Here’s a sample of something I did using the same idea as the Magic Bullet grades.

I looked to Legacy and Harmy’s own as samples, but mainly went for the look of the '97 SE. Did I raise the shadows too much, though?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1-W6ByLSZVKazg5QTJqZDY1SzA

Here are proper screenshots – the video color seemed to have shifted.

Thoughts on levels and fleshtones?

Magic bullet grade is very nice. The pants one is a nice observation.

I found by restoring some green and boosting the saturation back (I had lowered it initially), the difference in color in regard to the outfit was more noticeable. However, this leaves Tantive IV with slightly green walls – whereas I had always believed it to be pure white.

Is it pure white, or is it slightly green?

Here are some examples of the LOOKS grade with THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. If there’s any interest, I could release these onto the spleen – for people to base their own edits on.

Here’s JEDI.

Indeed! Very beautiful colors!

Here’s the color graded AND regrained(!!!) THE PHANTOM MENACE:

That seriously does look a lot better.

Here’s ATTACK OF THE CLONES, which had a subtle amount of grain applied, but could perhaps use more: