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The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP) — Page 22

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L9B5 said:

Hey guys I’m new to this, can someone just give me a quick summary of everything that has happened?

Hard to beat Towne’s post…

Basically as far as The Empire Strikes Back goes, we have cleaned and scanned a UK print @ 4K full aperture that had good colour, but unfortunately has mould which shows up as red flashes in many scenes.
I have purchased a German print of Empire that has more faded colour, but no mould, and am hoping to have it cleaned and scanned at some point in the future once I can afford both the process costs and the 20+ TB of storage that the scan takes up. To clean, and store 6 reels (which Empire is, Jedi is 7) costs around USD2000 (cleaning and HDD costs) plus the cost of scanning (and the scanning can cost up to USD15K)

We are currently going through the UK print to see what frames are missing, and checking against the German print to see if they are present, and if the mouldy frames are okay on the German print, with the hope of creating one complete print.

I’m away from home for a while at the moment, so you won’t see much in updates for a little bit, I did have a few segments of the German print scanned, without cleaning, as I was about to lose access to my favourite scanner, so wanted to get as much done as I could. I was working up until then on cleaning up some of the more damaged German frames to see if the colour can be recovered and the damage repaired, i.e. to see if the print is worth the enormous cost of scanning and cleaning it.

I have scanned one Return of the Jedi LPP, another is awaiting scanning and cleaning, and multiple Star Wars prints have been scanned, but another IB Tech is awaiting scanning and cleaning, and I’d like to rescan the LPP at some point.

We also have an 8mm print taken from a 35mm French print of Empire, that is useful for a colour reference, as the print was in good shape colour-wise when the 8mm version was taken from it. I need one of these to be able to transfer it for scanning (http://www.ebay.com/itm/ELMO-ALUMINUM-Super-8-MOVIE-REEL-1200-ft-360-m/381889385828)

The focus has been on Empire as all available prints of it are fading rapidly, so it was most important to get it done as a matter of urgency, Both Star Wars and Jedi are on film stock that doesn’t really fade, so the urgency for them is far less.
I am currently hamstrung by storage constraints, cleanup is slow as there is not enough free HDD space, so things are constantly being copied on and off the RAID which is very time consuming.

That pretty much wraps it up to where I am at (if you ignore THX and a bunch of other non-trilogy projects that are also underway, but those are a story for another time), hope that helps bring everything up to speed!

TLDR Version. UK ESB Print scanned, German ESB Print not cleaned, some reels partially scanned.

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What about in terms of the other film? Sorry there’s so many pages to read through it’s hard to keep up.

Also how much are you still needing to raise. I wanna help out as much as possible.

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The other film?

As far as costs holding things up, the German print will cost around $2000 to clean and buy enough HDDs to store it on.

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Hey poita, I saw a sample of both the UK and the German print of TESB and to be honest the UK print looks quite green throughout.

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Poita, I think you mentioned at some point a bit of doubt in some of the color in the darker scenes for the previously scanned Jedi print, as they’re quite blue. In particular, the Ranor scene is bizarrely blue in a way that makes it pretty hard to use for projects like Harmy’s (at least when combining it with other footage). Have you figured out if this is indeed an anomaly in just some of the Jedi prints, or if they all look like this?

Hey poita, I saw a sample of both the UK and the German print of TESB and to be honest the UK print looks quite green throughout.

It might need a bit of mild color correction as you’ve seen it in a fairly raw state. That’s always the case, and the type of discussion suited for final outputs rather than determining the potential of a print. But compared to any other sample, it is brilliant and vibrant. Other prints need to be pushed very far to look normal, and surely there is some amount of color in them that just can’t ever be retrieved (though recent techniques have been very successful).

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Nothing posted here has been properly graded yet, the UK print is actually pushed slightly towards red, the green tint you are seeing in the samples is just the rough colour balance done to assess what colour is left in the print.
The UK print is the least faded, but still a bit pink, the German print is very, very pink, but it looks like the colour is recoverable for the most part. The darkest scenes are always the problem, as there is very little blue to begin with, so once it fades it is hardest to recover.

As for Jedi, it looks like nearly all the first run 1983 prints have the blue cast, I have seen many prints now and they are all blue in those scenes. I have seen an intermediate print that is not blue, so it looks like it was either a decision to try and get a ‘look’ for the release, that ended up leaning too far into blue, or more than one lab had the problem, which seems a bit less likely.

Either way, Jedi will need to be re-scanned with the light source catering for the blue to let us get the most out of the scan. Keep in mind though, that the original theatrical version of Jedi had very dark scenes, and the was intentional to hide some issues with the ‘puppets’ and effects, as well as to set a very gloomy mood in the Jabba’s palace scenes. The scenes are darker than a modern audience would expect/accept these days I feel.

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Thanks. It’s not so strange that it’s blue. Just of course unfamiliar to most of us, having seen the home releases for so many years and decades. For so long we had been arguing about a blue cast on Hoth, unaware that there is a much more drastic blue cast in Jedi. 😃

I suppose the best thing to do for projects like Harmy’s will be to use the best possible scans for all shots within the pit, or else to conform the usable blu-ray shots to look like the blue 35mm, rather than attempting vice versa! But that’s a discussion for another thread.

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I will be archiving it as blue as it is, but to watch it I’d be tweaking some of the blue away 😃

I was working on an ESB sample from the German Reel2 before I headed off. Something weird happened converting it from P3 colourspace, and it was a work in progress, but I thought I may as well post it here anyway.
The colours (including the original red) are all screwy, but you can see the damage before and after, if nothing else it is a bit of fun.

https://infinit.io/_/HGHwPWK

If someone wants to go through the 16000 frames of the German reel I had partially scanned and look for missing frames vs the GOUT, feel free to do so 😃 That file is here: https://infinit.io/_/7yRkSxj

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poita said:

If someone wants to go through the 16000 frames of the German reel I had partially scanned and look for missing frames vs the GOUT, feel free to do so 😃

Should we report our findings via a post or through PM?

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A post is fine. Thanks!

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Here is my analysis of the shots that have missing frames from a portion of Reel 2 of the German print of ESB.
GOUT Reference: Harmy’s ESB Despecialized Edition. MKV video, 23.975fps.
Additional Reference: Renegade Grindhouse ESB. M2ts video of release print scan, 23.975fps.

For each source of each shot, I’ll be using this format to describe position of the length of the video:
Time (mm:ss.ff) / Frames numbers,

Han Fixing Falcon

GOUT: 21:22.05/30743-30834, Number of Frames: 101
Renegade Grindhouse: 21:21.13/30727-30825, Number of Frames: 99 (missing frames from the head-end of this shot)
UK Print: 00:00.01/1-91, Number of Frames: 91
Comments: 10 missing of the GOUT from the head-end of this shot

Veers leaves Vader, upper half of Vader’s chamber lifts to reveal viewing screen

GOUT: 23:11.15/33366-33788, Number of Frames: 423
Renegade Grindhouse: 23:10.21/33348-33770, Number of Frames: 423
UK Print: 01:44.14/2614-3029, Number of Frames: 416
Comments: Missing 7 frames. To be honest, I can’t find where the skip-frame is in the UK print. The shot looks physically clean.

Vader’s Medium Shot

GOUT: 23:29.06/33789-33910, Number of Frames: 122
Renegade Grindhouse: 23:28.12/33771-33892, Number of Frames: 122
UK Print: 02:01.05/3030-3127, Number of Frames: 98
Comments: Missing 24 frames. I am taking a guess that the missing frames are from the tail-end of this shot because of the shot that follows…

Vader’s Viewing Screen: Ozzel gasps for air, Piett reacts

GOUT: 23:34.08/33911-34025, Number of Frames: 115
Renegade Grindhouse: 23:33.14/33893-34007, Number of Frames: 115
UK Print: 02:05.03/3128-3144, Number of Frames: 17
Comments: 98 frames missing from the the head-end of this shot.

Luke opens belly compartment of snowwalker with lightsaber

GOUT: 32:30.14/46768-46918, Number of Frames: 151
Renegade Grindhouse: 32:29.18/46748-46898, Number of Frames: 151
UK Print: 10:35.12/15887-16000, Number of Frames: 114
Comments: 37 missing from the tail-end of this shot.

Total Number of Missing Frames: 176, over 7 seconds of footage

What is impressive about this print is that even though I know where the skip-frame is in a shot, I see no evidence of where a frame may have been damaged-- dried-on adhesive markings, a torn frame that is poorly pieced together, etc. Either some digital enhancement has been applied to the frame to remove the said anomalies or the person maintained this print very well.

JEDIT:
UK Print… Of course, I meant the German print. I’m sorry for that

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That would be my fault, the time-coded segment I posted has been fairly extensively worked on, I am about 60% through an initial restoration phase on it.
The original looks like the red segments in the sample I posted, i.e. a bit of a mess 😃 so I imagine you would be able to see the jump pretty clearly in the print itself.
I’ll post a ‘raw’ version as well.

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If anyone likes it in red, here are the 16K of frames.
https://infinit.io/_/37HdmGq

If people could use the frame# it really helps me find the relevant frames quickly as it is in the filename of each Frame.

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Here are the shots that have missing frames from the red –faded version of the portion of Reel 2 from the German print of ESB.

As you have requested, I am identifying the skip-frames of these shots from the scan as file names that are posted on the bottom of each frame in the scan. I hope that I am interpreting your request.

For GOUT References, I’ll be using this timestamp format–Time (mm:ss.ff) / Frames numbers,

Han Fixing Falcon

File Names:
SRC TC/Fm: 01:00:00:01/1 through SRC TC/Fm: 01:00:03:19/91, Number of Frames: 91
GOUT Frames Missing: 10. They should appear before file name, SRC TC/Fm: 01:00:00:01/1

GOUT References:
Harmy’s: 21:22.05/30743-30834, Number of Frames: 101
Renegade Grindhouse ESB: Print has missing frames also.

Veers leaves Vader, upper half of Vader’s chamber lifts to reveal viewing screen

File Names:
SRC TC/Fm: 01:01:48:22/2614 through SRC TC/Fm: 01:02:06:05/3029, Number of Frames: 416
GOUT Frames Missing: 7. They should appear between Files Names, 01:01:58:22/2854 and 01:01:58:23/2855. In those 7 missing frames, the static on the viewing screen would dissolve to the image of the officers. In the German print, the static image on the viewing screen jump-cuts to the image of the officers.

GOUT References
Harmy’s: 23:11.15/33366-33788, Number of Frames: 423
Renegade Grindhouse ESB: 23:10.21/33348-33770, Number of Frames: 423

Vader’s Medium Shot

Files Names:
SRC TC/Fm: 01:02:06:06/3030 through 01:02:10:07/3127, Number of Frames: 98
GOUT Missing Frames 24.
There are two skip frames in this shot.
The 1st one occurs between file names 01:02:09:18/3114 and 01:02:09:19/3115. In 01:02:09:18/3114, there are two dark horizontal lines on the bottom of that frame and on 01:02:09:19/3115, there is one dark horizontal line on the top of that frame.
The 2nd skip frame occurs after file number 01:02:10:07/3127, where there are two horizontal lines on the bottom of the screen

GOUT Reference:
Harmy’s : 23:29.06/33789-33910, Number of Frames: 122
Renegade Grindhouse: 23:28.12/33771-33892, Number of Frames: 122

Vader’s Viewing Screen: Ozzel gasps for air, Piett reacts

File Names:
SRC TC/Fm: 01:02:10:08/3128 through 01:02:11:00/3144, Number of frames: 17
In those missing frames, which should appear before file name-01:02:10:08/3128, Ozzel’s gasping face would go from full-face, move backward, and turn to profile.

GOUT Reference:
Harmy’s: 23:34.08/33911-34025, Number of Frames: 115
Renegade Grindhouse: 23:33.14/33893-34007, Number of Frames: 115

Luke Opens Belly compartment of Snowwalker with Lightsaber

File Names:
SRC TC/Fm 01:11:01:23/15887 through 01:11:06:16/16000, Number of frames: 114
GOUT Missing Frames: 37
Missing frames should appear after file name 01:11:06:16/16000

GOUT Reference:
Harmy’s: 32:30.14/46768-46918, Number of frames: 151
Renegade Grindhouse: 32:29.18/46748-46898, Number of frames: 151

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Thanks so much!

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Between red 0|1 insert GOUT 30742-751.
Between red 2854|2855 insert GOUT 33606-612.
Between red 3114|3115 insert GOUT 33873-876.
Between red 3127|3128 insert GOUT 33890-909 and 33910-34007 (two shots.)

In Vader’s medium shot, the red.mov frames 3115-3127 align with GOUT 33877-889.
There’s a tell-tale blob on the wall in top right quadrant of 3119/33881

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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Cool. I am also very interested in if any of the frames missing from the UK print are present in the German-Red print. I really appreciate the help.

Once I get the German print scanned, it will be immensely helpful to have the community involved in checking for lost frames etc. between the UK print, the German print and the GOUT, as my time is really limited and the machines are usually tied up with long render or file transfer jobs. The OT community is the best!

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I’m consistently stunned at the level of quality that can be pulled from these prints. Even if the colors on the last video are off, the cleanup looks incredible. You’re doing an amazing job, Poita!

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poita said:

I didn’t know that all available prints of Empire are fading rapidly.
Thank for your efforts preserving it.

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Yeah, sadly they are, but it is not too late, yet.

This is the faded German Reel5 after a basic colour adjustment to reduce the red fade. The heads and tails are pretty beat up, and the film is pretty grubby.
https://infinit.io/_/3eCmTZT

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de-reel5.mov
Between 7175|7176 insert GOUT 128958-129157 (200 frames of Han torture-- censored?)
Between 7591|7592 insert GOUT 129574.
Between 27494|495 insert GOUT 149478-484
Between 27906|907 insert GOUT 149897-903

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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poita said:

Yeah, sadly they are, but it is not too late, yet.

This is the faded German Reel5 after a basic colour adjustment to reduce the red fade. The heads and tails are pretty beat up, and the film is pretty grubby.
https://infinit.io/_/3eCmTZT

Look very nice though.

You probably already know that, but the image looks crushed vertically.

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Yes, I’m not worried about the aspect ratio, these are pre-scans to just look for damage/missing frames etc.

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I want to thank everyone that is doing frame checking, it saves me an enormous amount of time.
Due to disk space limitations for me to do it, it means I first have to offload one of the reels I am working on to external storage, which takes hours, and then load up the GOUT references etc. and then go through them.

The help really lets me just keep working on the restoration itself.

Reel6 will be up soon. Again, not worried about colour or aspect ratio etc. just looking at damage and missing frames.

https://infinit.io/_/38ZVBxJ

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Darth Mallwalker said:

de-reel5.mov
Between 7175|7176 insert GOUT 128958-129157 (200 frames of Han torture-- censored?)

Yes it was censored for the cinema release to achieve “FSK 12”.
Nowadays it is uncensored with “FSK 12”.

Sorry only german:
http://www.ofdb.de/view.php?page=fassung&fid=243&vid=182462

VHS (1st release, identical to cinema release) vs THX VHS (uncensored)
http://www.schnittberichte.com/schnittbericht.php?ID=945883