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The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP) — Page 33

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 (Edited)

As this post triggered a new page I’ll quote poita’s post:

poita said:

I’d love nothing more than to get ESB done, it is difficult to prioritise one project over another.
The main scan the 4K77 project is using exists in part because many years ago I sent them $3000 worth of hard drives to store it on. The 1977 crawl exists because they lent me the film to get the 1977 crawl scanned on a pro level scanner, the ESB print got scanned in part because of Harmy’s followers. If Mike Verta hadn’t started on his project, some of these prints never would have been found and scans would not have been done.
We all help each other out behind the scenes, and make massive sacrifices of time and money to do so. It often means sacrificing time on your own project to help out with someone elses.
I got a PM the other day from someone who just wants me to upload the entire 21TB scan to their computer for them to use in their own experiments. Just doing that requires days of my time to restore the scan from LTO to hard drives, to tie up a computer for weeks to transfer the files, a computer that then can’t be used for doing any work on any of the projects. They just expected that it would be done for them, with no thought to the time and money costs involved at this end.
I also copped some flak on PMs as to seeing that I am so rich and can throw this sort of money at projects, why do I need donations anyway. I get this assumption quite a bit.
The reality is, I have 4 kids, two have medical issues, one has severe mental and physical disabilities and I am her primary carer. This means I can only work on short professional projects, or ones where I can work remotely from home. This means I typically make around AUD$30K a year in income, about $23,000 US a year, and my time is split between the work I can do and the needs of my kids. The time inbetween those spaces, I spend on this stuff, and we live very frugally and I spend probably more than I should on this stuff as well. Anything I would have spent buying a coke or a magazine or a coffee or something, I throw at this instead. I love it, I love working on it, and being part of a community that has done something that the studios are unwilling to.
The purpose of mentioning all this is that it boils down to I have limited resources of money and time. I have amazing resources of access to equipment and expertise, but am severely hampered by time and money. It is frustrating for me, and for everyone waiting on these, and without the help coming in from all of the amazingly generous souls here and on FanRes, none of this would exist. You all are truly amazing.
It is so frustrating sometimes, I wish we had a Zuckerberg style sugardaddy behind our cause, for about $40K per film, we could get the OT restored to a truly spectacular 4K that would knock the socks off the Blurays, and get it done in a few months, but we don’t have that kind of money available. It is a pity, as we could genuinely restore all 3 films for less than they spent re-doing the sound for the ANH SE.
Anyway, enough of a look behind the curtain, I just want everyone to know that I am as impatient as you all are to get the OT fully restored, in a glorious 4K deep colour version that it deserves, but other projects sometimes get priority, it all helps in the end, even if it delays things for a while.

In addition to all the help that poita has been to TN1, Harmy, and MikeV working on Star Wars projects, he has also been a huge help on other projects. Several of the early scans that are released on Myspleen came at poita’s expense, not to mention all the help he has been with other projects that are not yet released. For example, The Good The Bad and The Ugly Italian, poita found a vanishingly rare print after searching for a very long time “I have been looking for an IB of the original for a long time, this is the only one that has come up after looking at over 5000 lists in Italy (I’m not kidding).”! And he then provided someone to repair the film and scan it. And that’s just our community. He has helped others with setting up scanning systems, and I’m sure that he has done a lot more too than I am even aware about or would be able to disclose on an open forum! Poita is an unsung hero. Above all, poita is an extremely generous person, and one of the nicest people there is.

Thanks again for the amazing work you have done for scanning poita!!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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 (Edited)

About the only thing that genuinely frustrates me that my company could restore all three films for around $100K all up cost, to 4K and do it right. It would be chump-change for Disney.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Agreed! Another thing that frustrates me that I think about a lot is the fact that they won’t even allow the originals to be booked for shows. Most other films a cinema can select whether they want to screen a print or a DCP.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Williarob said:

Poita I’d like to take a moment to thank you, not only for all you do for the community but also for continuing to take the high road in situations like this - it’s unfortunate that a lot of forum threads ultimately flame out because somebody says something rude, and others respond in kind. It’s all too easy to write a biting retort. Your thoughtful and reasoned reply is the kind of response that stops that nonsense in its tracks, restores perspective and allows discussions to continue. This is not the first time, I’ve seen you bite your tongue, and refrain from cutting somebody down to size, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I applaud your patience, and wish the internet was filled with more people like you.

A very nice post. I’ve partaken in my share of dickery on this forum. Never with Poita, of course, but I still regret it. Both of you, and Harmy, and plenty of others, are good examples of how to behave around here.

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We all bite on occasion, any of us can have a bad day.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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poita, thanks for everything you’ve ever done to our community. I really mean it, and I really mean it when I say I’m sorry I can’t donate more right now. holefully, in the future, i will.

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I honestly didn’t want to sound rude. If i did I’m sorry. I had a honest question and thank you for taking the time to post your comments to clarify. You have sacrificed so much so people can enjoy your work and i thank you. if i ever save up enough money for my home server i would be happy to lend my processing power to your projects. But for now cryptocurrency miners will continue to jack-up the prices.

We ❤️ Star Wars and give it all the moneys. Please don’t sue us.

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Poita, just want to say again, thank you sincerely for all the work you are putting in despite all the life pressures you are dealing with. I doubt there is a more passionate and dedicated preservationist on the internet and I will cheerfully wait as long as it takes for your trilogy to be completed. All the best to your good self and your family.

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RUN_LUKE_RUN said:

I honestly didn’t want to sound rude. If i did I’m sorry. I had a honest question and thank you for taking the time to post your comments to clarify. You have sacrificed so much so people can enjoy your work and i thank you. if i ever save up enough money for my home server i would be happy to lend my processing power to your projects. But for now cryptocurrency miners will continue to jack-up the prices.

I don’t think anyone was accusing you of that. To me it just sounded a little uninformed, not rude. I think the thing is there is a disparity of information between people who are involved (like poita), people who follow closely, and people who are new or don’t follow these projects so closely. In any case posting your enquiry in the forum rather than by private topic I think is helpful as it provides an opportunity for others who are thinking the same thing to get an answer. 😃

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Hi poita. Please let me too pay tribute to your dedication to Star Wars, and more important to your sense of altruism.

I try to help as much as i can, by using my free time to this noble cause.

I will contact you soon 😃

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RU.08 said:

RUN_LUKE_RUN said:

I honestly didn’t want to sound rude. If i did I’m sorry. I had a honest question and thank you for taking the time to post your comments to clarify. You have sacrificed so much so people can enjoy your work and i thank you. if i ever save up enough money for my home server i would be happy to lend my processing power to your projects. But for now cryptocurrency miners will continue to jack-up the prices.

I don’t think anyone was accusing you of that. To me it just sounded a little uninformed, not rude. I think the thing is there is a disparity of information between people who are involved (like poita), people who follow closely, and people who are new or don’t follow these projects so closely. In any case posting your enquiry in the forum rather than by private topic I think is helpful as it provides an opportunity for others who are thinking the same thing to get an answer. 😃

Exactly. Though typically, any post that begins with a phrase like “I don’t mean to sound rude but…” is usually followed by something that could be interpreted as rude - even the person writing the post can see that, hence the preface. In this case, I think you asked a perfectly legitimate question that I’m sure others were wondering about also, and I don’t think it was rude to ask. Those of us who have been on this board for more than a decade often forget that not everybody is as informed as we are, and lesser beings than Poita have been know to pounce on posts like this one with venomous wrath - which is totally unfair, but also human nature. If you had spent years of your life and thousands of dollars working on these projects, and then somebody new comes along and asks “why aren’t you doing this or that?”, it’s very easy to take offense and overreact when posting a response. I know I’ve been guilty of that myself.

So my response was really just to express my admiration for how Poita handled your question, in the hopes that others (myself included) might learn from it. If we want the next generation of fans to continue to care for and about the original trilogy, we need to continue to politely answer their questions, even if the answers seem obvious to us or have already been posted many times before.

TheStarWarsTrilogy.com.
The007Dossier.com.
Donations always welcome: Paypal | Bitcoin: bc1qzr9ejyfpzm9ea2dglfegxzt59tys3uwmj26ytj

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RU.08 said:

Agreed! Another thing that frustrates me that I think about a lot is the fact that they won’t even allow the originals to be booked for shows. Most other films a cinema can select whether they want to screen a print or a DCP.

yeah me too, I was reading awhile back on a website for how to license movies, that star wars hasn’t been available because of rights issues, hopefully with disney buying out parts of fox that’ll change.

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 (Edited)

I talked to a guy organizing an independent sci-fi film festival and he said they wanted to screen Star Wars and Disney wouldn’t let them - not even the SE, the prequels or even TFA. He said that the oldest they’d let them screen is Rogue One, so they’re showing that one.

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 (Edited)

Harmy said:

I talked to a guy organizing an independent sci-fi film festival and he said they wanted to screen Star Wars and Disney wouldn’t let them - not even the SE, the prequels or even TFA. He said that the oldest they’d let them screen is Rogue One, so they’re showing that one.

They’re screening Star Wars in my country later this year with a live orchestra as part of Star Wars - Live in Concert. Don’t know which version it will be, probably the bluray version, but I’ll know soon enough.

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Not to sound reactionary but as a relative newcomer to this particular project is it normal for Poita to be offline for over three weeks at a time? I do know that he’s a really busy guy and it’s been something of a rough patch as far as health goes, so maybe I’m overthinking it.

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Yes very normal. 😃

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Damn, this post got really whole-hearted really quickly and that’s a great thing to see.

I’ve gone batshit several times over for the sake of historical preservation…

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 (Edited)

Yes, it goes quiet here from time to time 😃
Sometimes a month or two can go by without an update, I try to only update if something worthwhile is happening.

My personal life can get a bit chaotic, I have ongoing health issues (which is a bit of an understatement) , I have 4 kids ranging from 5-17 years old, and the 12 year old is permanently at a cognitive age of around 18-24 months old, so free time is challenging, as is earning a living, as I am the primary carer for the kids.

Currently, I’m out of time and money, I have some paid restoration work this month that is eating around 16 hours a day, which is good to pay the rent, unfortunately restoration doesn’t pay very well, even at the commercial level, and the work is gruelling.

The last month or so has been particularly busy.
I’m recovering from a mild heart attack, and this month has seen the youngest need a tonsillectomy and adenoids removed, and the hospital is a 3 hour drive away, so it meant extra nights away, and the recovery was rougher than I’d hoped. I also do casual work to make ends meet, and I’ve had to take a few shift the last two months to feed the beasts.

My eldest is sitting her HSC exams this year (similar to the SATs or GCSE A-Levels) so a lot of the remaining spare time is spent helping her study and with assignments and essays, and the youngest needs stories at bedtime and isn’t at school until next year, so parenting takes up any non-working waking hours.
My 12 year old is fully-grown, so is the size of a fully grown woman, but has the temperament and abilities of a toddler aged 2 years or less in some areas. This is immensely challenging and time consuming, and creates a lot of safety issues for the 5 year old as you can imagine. When a ‘grown-up’ has a tantrum and lashes out if you take a toy off her, the results can be literally deadly to a small child, so managing them all can be, well, interesting to say the least.
She needs help toileting, bathing, with stairs, getting in and out of cars, pretty much everything you have to do for an 18 month old, and it will be that way forever sadly.

So my work on restoring films here comes in fits and starts. There are times when I am out of paid work, and can throw a reasonable amount of time and energy into it. Sometimes I get some better paid work and can sink some more funds into getting prints, getting them cleaned and scanned, so that stuff tends to happen in chunks as well.

Lately, equipment has been a real PITA. High end scanners are temperamental beasts, and the main unit had a focus motor problem, which took a while to get fixed, then the focus motor blew completely, which required the whole optical assembly to be removed and sent away. This creates a backlog on the commercial jobs and pushes the stuff here back a bit until the backlog is cleared.
Then sometimes the scanner unit is available, but physical exhaustion kicks in and you just can’t drag yourself to do it that night. (it all happens from midnight till dawn typically).
Cleaning a reel costs around US$200, and freight is annoyingly expensive as well, purchasing or renting the prints is also costly, and you always take a bit of a punt as to what condition the film will be in.

Scanning a reel at triple flash, with infrared at 4K full frame takes about 12 hours per 20 minute reel, and is around 4TB per reel, (and another 4TB to back it up) so it is a big undertaking of time and resources, and then sometimes the film will unspool due to a dodgy splice, or some crap will get in the gate and you have to rescan, or the scanner will just decide to be a recalcitrant old fart and not co-operate, and you have to wait for another night to scan that reel.
The restoration work once the scan is done then takes a huge amount of time and resources, just moving the files around can take ages. I’m currently waiting 12 hours for a file transfer to finish - backup two reels from my server to another hard drive so that I can clear enough space to load up the next scanned reel to start work on it.

So that is a long way around of saying that best laid plans sometimes go a bit off track, and that sometimes life and money get in the way, and things go quiet for a while.

At the moment, I am waiting on scanner access again to get the ANH SE scan finished, and I have five reels of a commercial restoration due in 3 weeks, and I’m going to be struggling to meet that deadline, but it will pay the rent, so I am working mostly on that. In the background I am transferring files around to make enough space so that I can get back to ESB as soon as that job is out the door.

Don’t expect to see much from me until May is done, then hopefully ANH might be scanned and I’ll have some time to get some progress on the original ESB.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Time

poita said:

Yes, it goes quiet here from time to time 😃
Sometimes a month or two can go by without an update, I try to only update if something worthwhile is happening.

My personal life can get a bit chaotic, I have ongoing health issues (which is a bit of an understatement) , I have 4 kids ranging from 5-17 years old, and the 12 year old is permanently at a cognitive age of around 18-24 months old, so free time is challenging, as is earning a living, as I am the primary carer for the kids.

Currently, I’m out of time and money, I have some paid restoration work this month that is eating around 16 hours a day, which is good to pay the rent, unfortunately restoration doesn’t pay very well, even at the commercial level, and the work is gruelling.

The last month or so has been particularly busy.
I’m recovering from a mild heart attack, and this month has seen the youngest need a tonsillectomy and adenoids removed, and the hospital is a 3 hour drive away, so it meant extra nights away, and the recovery was rougher than I’d hoped. I also do casual work to make ends meet, and I’ve had to take a few shift the last two months to feed the beasts.

My eldest is sitting her HSC exams this year (similar to the SATs or GCSE A-Levels) so a lot of the remaining spare time is spent helping her study and with assignments and essays, and the youngest needs stories at bedtime and isn’t at school until next year, so parenting takes up any non-working waking hours.
My 12 year old is fully-grown, so is the size of a fully grown woman, but has the temperament and abilities of a toddler aged 2 years or less in some areas. This is immensely challenging and time consuming, and creates a lot of safety issues for the 5 year old as you can imagine. When a ‘grown-up’ has a tantrum and lashes out if you take a toy off her, the results can be literally deadly to a small child, so managing them all can be, well, interesting to say the least.
She needs help toileting, bathing, with stairs, getting in and out of cars, pretty much everything you have to do for an 18 month old, and it will be that way forever sadly.

So my work on restoring films here comes in fits and starts. There are times when I am out of paid work, and can throw a reasonable amount of time and energy into it. Sometimes I get some better paid work and can sink some more funds into getting prints, getting them cleaned and scanned, so that stuff tends to happen in chunks as well.

Lately, equipment has been a real PITA. High end scanners are temperamental beasts, and the main unit had a focus motor problem, which took a while to get fixed, then the focus motor blew completely, which required the whole optical assembly to be removed and sent away. This creates a backlog on the commercial jobs and pushes the stuff here back a bit until the backlog is cleared.
Then sometimes the scanner unit is available, but physical exhaustion kicks in and you just can’t drag yourself to do it that night. (it all happens from midnight till dawn typically).
Cleaning a reel costs around US$200, and freight is annoyingly expensive as well, purchasing or renting the prints is also costly, and you always take a bit of a punt as to what condition the film will be in.

Scanning a reel at triple flash, with infrared at 4K full frame takes about 12 hours per 20 minute reel, and is around 4TB per reel, (and another 4TB to back it up) so it is a big undertaking of time and resources, and then sometimes the film will unspool due to a dodgy splice, or some crap will get in the gate and you have to rescan, or the scanner will just decide to be a recalcitrant old fart and not co-operate, and you have to wait for another night to scan that reel.
The restoration work once the scan is done then takes a huge amount of time and resources, just moving the files around can take ages. I’m currently waiting 12 hours for a file transfer to finish - backup two reels from my server to another hard drive so that I can clear enough space to load up the next scanned reel to start work on it.

So that is a long way around of saying that best laid plans sometimes go a bit off track, and that sometimes life and money get in the way, and things go quiet for a while.

At the moment, I am waiting on scanner access again to get the ANH SE scan finished, and I have five reels of a commercial restoration due in 3 weeks, and I’m going to be struggling to meet that deadline, but it will pay the rent, so I am working mostly on that. In the background I am transferring files around to make enough space so that I can get back to ESB as soon as that job is out the door.

Don’t expect to see much from me until May is done, then hopefully ANH might be scanned and I’ll have some time to get some progress on the original ESB.

I feel for you man. ❤️ ❤️.

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Sorry, I hope it didn’t come off as a whine, or a sympathy pitch or something. I enjoy working on this stuff, it is my passion and the reason I got into the industry in the first place.
I was hoping to really just let people know why it takes ages.
I’d love to get 50 grand per movie then a restoration would take about 3 months, start to finish, but with it being the part-time third job that costs money instead of making money, it sometimes has to take the back seat.

Progress is happening, just a lot of it isn’t sexy ‘check out the pictures’ type progress. It is often just boring stuff like finishing and backing up a dust-busting pass, or finishing a backup, or working out a new Nuke script that can semi-automate finding artefacts created by the cleanup and removing them, that kind of thing. I tend to only post if there is something nice to look at, but it doesn’t mean nothing is happening during the quiet times. Progress is slow, but it is progressing.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Time

poita said:

Yes, it goes quiet here from time to time 😃
Sometimes a month or two can go by without an update, I try to only update if something worthwhile is happening.

My personal life can get a bit chaotic, I have ongoing health issues (which is a bit of an understatement) , I have 4 kids ranging from 5-17 years old, and the 12 year old is permanently at a cognitive age of around 18-24 months old, so free time is challenging, as is earning a living, as I am the primary carer for the kids.

Currently, I’m out of time and money, I have some paid restoration work this month that is eating around 16 hours a day, which is good to pay the rent, unfortunately restoration doesn’t pay very well, even at the commercial level, and the work is gruelling.

The last month or so has been particularly busy.
I’m recovering from a mild heart attack, and this month has seen the youngest need a tonsillectomy and adenoids removed, and the hospital is a 3 hour drive away, so it meant extra nights away, and the recovery was rougher than I’d hoped. I also do casual work to make ends meet, and I’ve had to take a few shift the last two months to feed the beasts.

My eldest is sitting her HSC exams this year (similar to the SATs or GCSE A-Levels) so a lot of the remaining spare time is spent helping her study and with assignments and essays, and the youngest needs stories at bedtime and isn’t at school until next year, so parenting takes up any non-working waking hours.
My 12 year old is fully-grown, so is the size of a fully grown woman, but has the temperament and abilities of a toddler aged 2 years or less in some areas. This is immensely challenging and time consuming, and creates a lot of safety issues for the 5 year old as you can imagine. When a ‘grown-up’ has a tantrum and lashes out if you take a toy off her, the results can be literally deadly to a small child, so managing them all can be, well, interesting to say the least.
She needs help toileting, bathing, with stairs, getting in and out of cars, pretty much everything you have to do for an 18 month old, and it will be that way forever sadly.

So my work on restoring films here comes in fits and starts. There are times when I am out of paid work, and can throw a reasonable amount of time and energy into it. Sometimes I get some better paid work and can sink some more funds into getting prints, getting them cleaned and scanned, so that stuff tends to happen in chunks as well.

Lately, equipment has been a real PITA. High end scanners are temperamental beasts, and the main unit had a focus motor problem, which took a while to get fixed, then the focus motor blew completely, which required the whole optical assembly to be removed and sent away. This creates a backlog on the commercial jobs and pushes the stuff here back a bit until the backlog is cleared.
Then sometimes the scanner unit is available, but physical exhaustion kicks in and you just can’t drag yourself to do it that night. (it all happens from midnight till dawn typically).
Cleaning a reel costs around US$200, and freight is annoyingly expensive as well, purchasing or renting the prints is also costly, and you always take a bit of a punt as to what condition the film will be in.

Scanning a reel at triple flash, with infrared at 4K full frame takes about 12 hours per 20 minute reel, and is around 4TB per reel, (and another 4TB to back it up) so it is a big undertaking of time and resources, and then sometimes the film will unspool due to a dodgy splice, or some crap will get in the gate and you have to rescan, or the scanner will just decide to be a recalcitrant old fart and not co-operate, and you have to wait for another night to scan that reel.
The restoration work once the scan is done then takes a huge amount of time and resources, just moving the files around can take ages. I’m currently waiting 12 hours for a file transfer to finish - backup two reels from my server to another hard drive so that I can clear enough space to load up the next scanned reel to start work on it.

So that is a long way around of saying that best laid plans sometimes go a bit off track, and that sometimes life and money get in the way, and things go quiet for a while.

At the moment, I am waiting on scanner access again to get the ANH SE scan finished, and I have five reels of a commercial restoration due in 3 weeks, and I’m going to be struggling to meet that deadline, but it will pay the rent, so I am working mostly on that. In the background I am transferring files around to make enough space so that I can get back to ESB as soon as that job is out the door.

Don’t expect to see much from me until May is done, then hopefully ANH might be scanned and I’ll have some time to get some progress on the original ESB.

poita, I don’t know you, but reading this makes me wish I did! Seeing all the things you have accomplished, and now knowing this about your life, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. My parents helped me through autism, I can only imagine how it feels on the other end. I wish you the best and a speedy recovery.

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BTW, I stumbled across your Vimeo page, there are some interesting colour experiments going on over there!

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Time
 (Edited)

poita said:

BTW, I stumbled across your Vimeo page, there are some interesting colour experiments going on over there!

Thanks for noticing! I’m trying 😃