Yeah I hear what you saying about memory, and I know the print is correct or accurate but there is something I can’t quite put my finger on.
And my thoughts lie with perhaps if it is indeed a broadcast print then how would that handle with a CRT and how would that also change the information.
The Blu ray when it comes to R2-D2 panels they won’t go the same color as the technicolor print in fact there is one shot that even if I desaturate the whole image his front part round his eye is blue and everything else is black and white.
So yeah the Blu-ray has some serious issues…
I am just pondering these variations and It might only be small, but it is signifficant enough that it’s coming over like there is something not 100% correct but say 98% correct and that’s not to say I am calling it out as wrong but it does seem that there is evidence to support that is displayed at least a certain way and that perhaps should be taken into account.
I mean I’m not bonkers but I think action is very important part of the film and It should not be overlooked even though it is a small thing ultimately.
Basically they were yellow flashes until the DVD came out in 2004… And I still had a CRT so I am wondering if it has to do with this or that as you say it’s been prepared by design for CRT or the CRT simply misinterprets highlights… But since the new 2004 it has lost the luminence that it did have in my opinion.
Either way you can’t erase 20 years of something being a certain way even if it’s wrong…
The Blu-ray is an absolute mess when it comes to colour, and they digitally altered specific parts, like some of R2’s panels by masking them out and changing the colour separately etc. so it is useless as far as a cohesive colour reference goes. Film scans, laserdisc and VHS will at least be consistent within their own medium, whereas the blu-ray has been tweaked within frames.
As for CRT, it is highly unlikely that your particular television(s) were ever calibrated, so who knows what colour bias they had, generally though a calibrated CRT TV will give accurate colour.
The explosions likely had a bit more yellow bias, telecine tends to lean towards the warmer end, and an operator again would likely decide that an explosion should be orangey-red and colour correct towards that end.
One thing CRT does have is an interesting luminance curve, and absolute blacks and a diffusion due to the spot size being larger than the smallest pixel element. This gives a diffuse glow to everything, which coupled with the blacks and scanlines, can give an impression of more colour depth, and a less flat image.
Watch a laserdisc on a CRT TV vs on a LCD screen and you will see what I mean. It is a different look, and the loss of luminence you are talking about might be to do with that.
Anyway, you are going down the path of creating a version as you remember it, whether that’s how it was or not is pretty irrelevant for that kind of project, colour it the way it looks best to you.