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4K restoration on Star Wars — Page 183

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CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Except that the SE color timing is supposedly part of Lucas’ original creative vision. Magenta Leia and all.

Counting the '97 SE and the RMW scans, we’ve now got no less than three different versions of George’s “original creative vision,” four if you count the tweaks made in 2011.

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Fang Zei said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Except that the SE color timing is supposedly part of Lucas’ original creative vision. Magenta Leia and all.

Counting the '97 SE and the RMW scans, we’ve now got no less than three different versions of George’s “original creative vision,” four if you count the tweaks made in 2011.

I’ve clarified what I was getting at since that post.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Fang Zei said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Except that the SE color timing is supposedly part of Lucas’ original creative vision. Magenta Leia and all.

Counting the '97 SE and the RMW scans, we’ve now got no less than three different versions of George’s “original creative vision,” four if you count the tweaks made in 2011.

I’ve clarified what I was getting at since that post.

My point is that the RMW master could end up improving the look of the movie. It still wouldn’t be ideal (Mike Verta said on his vimeo channel that it still looks way off from Legacy), but it would at least look better than the 2004 master.

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Well, now I put even less credence into his earlier reporting on the matter. Let’s see if Making Star Wars gives us an update or if the rumor pans out in the next few weeks.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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danny_boy said:

Mike O said:

Fang Zei said:

Mike O said:

JawsTDS said:

Fang Zei said:

Cthulhunicron said:

What exactly does it mean for the negative to be disassembled?

The negative has been conformed to the SE since 1997. George decided to cut the changes directly into the negative because, as far as he was concerned, the SE was the official version of the movie now.

We recently got confirmation from the relevant person at Fox that the pieces of the negative replaced for the SE were indeed put into storage and not discarded.

I think I remember reading on zombie’s website that the negative need not be disassembled to reconstruct the unaltered version. Because a modern restoration would be done digitally anyway, they would simply need to take a scan of the o-neg as it is now, scan in the pieces that got replaced, and rebuild everything in the digital realm.

For further context, the negative is the first-generation source for the footage used in the final cut. They are also without any color timing as that comes later in the process, and unlike a 35mm print, which is a few generations down from the negative, there is only one layer of grain to deal with (this is not the case with SW as there is optical compositing).*

*if I’ve made any mistakes, please correct me.

Would any IPs or separation masters still be usable and around?

Nothing I’m reading here suggests ANY hope for a remastered OOT.

The separation masters are still intact, as are other film elements closer to the o-neg than the theatrical prints.

Robert A. Harris emphasized several years ago that “these assets are well-protected.” If a user on the blu-ray.com forums is to be believed, Disney has been meticulously going through every last piece of Star Wars film material and scanning them in. It’s simply a matter of time … and of timing.

I hate to be eternally negative, but A) why believe this, and B) how much time?! I’m not getting any younger.

Combining the separation masters will not yield the same quality as that which can be derived from a scan (or even a photochemical replication to a first generation interpositive) from the original negative.

A massive chunk of the original negative was lost/damaged beyond repair from the scene where Supes confronts Lex Luther in Superman The Movie.
For the restoration in 1999, they recombined the separation masters to recreate that scene.
But the colors were slightly out of sync and the resolution noticeably compromised.

Lucas has already gone on record saying that the separation masters for Star Wars were not preserved correctly(Fox were to blame).

So the original negative is the only salvation for Star Wars.

So we’re fucked, essentially.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Well, now I put even less credence into his earlier reporting on the matter. Let’s see if Making Star Wars gives us an update or if the rumor pans out in the next few weeks.

For all we know, they’re planning an announcement for next month and are playing dumb about it in the meantime so as not to spoil the surprise. After some googling the other day, I found that first USA Today article telling everyone about the GOUT and, yup, it was from the day before May 4th.

The reporter could’ve phrased the question better. He brought up “the sale to Disney” as a way of asking in very coded language if there was any agreement not to release the unaltereds. Then, when Kennedy understandably failed to see what he was getting at, he asks about “further alterations” to the SE. You can’t pussyfoot around the question you want to ask and then expect a direct answer.

It also frustrates me to see people conflating the issue of the SE being George’s official version with the mostly unrelated issue of the unaltereds being suppressed.

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 (Edited)

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

So MSW reported (correctly) on this, neither confirming or spelling doom for their own rumors.

This also reveals that someone purposely cut some of Kathleen’s dialogue out for the YT channel Star Wars Junk reupload

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nickyd47 said:

Also, does it matter if Kathleen believes in George’s vision when the house of mouse can override that and be like “nope, we like money, put out the OOT, we worked out a deal with FOX”

They let Disney have their way with EP7 so…

This. George was his own boss. If he wanted to make a sw film made of nothing but of cgi potatoes, he could. Kathleen Kennedy is not her own boss. She is a figurehead/manager who answers to stock holders and a corporate board (see: syndicate).

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they bought EVERYTHING. There’s no contract that says they can’t release the out. For $4 billion, they don’t owe George anything. Kk might have professional and personal respect for George, but also has superiors to appease. Superiors who micromanage every decision to the tiniest detail in order maximize short and long term profits.

Disney can and will release the out, but it will be solely when they feel it will get the biggest bang; not when the fans want it, not to comemmerate some date,etc.

40,000 million notches away
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I agree with Kathleen 100% on this one!

kennedy

“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas

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 (Edited)

I’m sure she agrees with us that it should be released. I mean, honestly, who but GL could really be against it? It’s frankly silly.

TV’s Frink said:

I would put this in my sig if I weren’t so lazy.

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 (Edited)

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

I’m sure she agrees with us that it should be released. I mean, honestly, who but GL could really be against it? It’s frankly silly.

Well, besides GL, I can think of a few moronic posters on that other message board that are against it…

“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas

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 (Edited)

The problem is, that agreeing that most fans dislike classics being tinkered with, and agreeing, that an artist has to sole right to determine what happens to his or her art, are not mutually exclusive opinions. She may very well agree, that an OOT release is desirable, but still protect Lucas’ interests as an artist who created the works. Only time will tell.

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Cobra Kai said:

I agree with Kathleen 100% on this one!

kennedy

How embarrassing. This has become like some kind of pseudo political debate, where no comments can be trusted and the more information you find the less it makes sense.

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I just read an interesting quote from a certain person over at the steve hoffman forums.

This is concerning the original restoration for the 2004 release:

I was told point blank at ILM that Lucas kind of didn’t really care that much about home video, and he was mainly concerned with whatever project he was on at the moment. They told me they had considered remastering the theatrical versions AND the revised versions simultaneously, but there just was no time available to do it because Fox demanded a pretty stringent deadline. Money was part of it, but it was more about time than money.

“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas

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 (Edited)

Windexed said:

nickyd47 said:

Also, does it matter if Kathleen believes in George’s vision when the house of mouse can override that and be like “nope, we like money, put out the OOT, we worked out a deal with FOX”

They let Disney have their way with EP7 so…

This. George was his own boss. If he wanted to make a sw film made of nothing but of cgi potatoes, he could. Kathleen Kennedy is not her own boss. She is a figurehead/manager who answers to stock holders and a corporate board (see: syndicate).

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they bought EVERYTHING. There’s no contract that says they can’t release the out. For $4 billion, they don’t owe George anything. Kk might have professional and personal respect for George, but also has superiors to appease. Superiors who micromanage every decision to the tiniest detail in order maximize short and long term profits.

Disney can and will release the out, but it will be solely when they feel it will get the biggest bang; not when the fans want it, not to comemmerate some date,etc.

The biggest bang would be literally any time now because they haven’t had a proper release in over 20 years

It’s been 22 years since the widescreen VHS tapes came out. It’s been nearly 11 years since we got those terrible DVDs. What’s to wait for?

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 (Edited)

It’s not like Lucasfilm hasn’t altered ROTJ multiple times after the director passed away… Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy there?

Also - why would they do any release prior to 2020? Spending a bunch of money on an OT restoration and having to split the money from TESB and ROTJ with Fox is just stupid. I still don’t know why anyone is expecting anything to happen prior to the rights reverting

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Windexed said:

nickyd47 said:

Also, does it matter if Kathleen believes in George’s vision when the house of mouse can override that and be like “nope, we like money, put out the OOT, we worked out a deal with FOX”

They let Disney have their way with EP7 so…

This. George was his own boss. If he wanted to make a sw film made of nothing but of cgi potatoes, he could. Kathleen Kennedy is not her own boss. She is a figurehead/manager who answers to stock holders and a corporate board (see: syndicate).

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they bought EVERYTHING. There’s no contract that says they can’t release the out. For $4 billion, they don’t owe George anything. Kk might have professional and personal respect for George, but also has superiors to appease. Superiors who micromanage every decision to the tiniest detail in order maximize short and long term profits.

Disney can and will release the out, but it will be solely when they feel it will get the biggest bang; not when the fans want it, not to comemmerate some date,etc.

Because Disney doesn’t care about some date. 😉

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