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The Original Trilogy restored from 35mm prints (a WIP) — Page 36

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Yep, I’m a bit snowed at the moment. Sorry!

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bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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Jedi Master Skywalker said:

Will you go back to this once you have done 1997 SE

You’ve been asked repeatedly not to post like this. Project owners post updates as they have them.

This is an official warning for both this post and the similar post you made in DrDre’s thread. Future “update nagging” posts in this or any other project thread will be deleted and you’ll be banned.

Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

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 (Edited)

Okay guys and girls, I am still saving up to get the Empire print ultrasonically cleaned, but just so everyone can get a quick look at what we have, here is some of the first reel of Empire.
It is a low quality proxy scan, so that you can see how it looks. It hasn’t been cleaned, and it is a single flash scan, and not colour corrected, the final will be triple flashed at much higher resolution.

A big thanks to Althor1138 for helping out yet again, and to everyone that helped us secure this print.

BTW, the print came with a little bonus, at the start is a teaser for ‘Revenge of the Jedi’, this was only shown in the UK with the double-bill Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back theatrical run. It is pretty rare, so that was a lucky score.

The audio is not from the print, I didn’t have time to capture the audio, Althor1138 kindly synched some audio to it to make it more fun to watch.

So here it is, about 1.8GB in 720P, I hope you enjoy it, one of the last of the unfaded Empire prints in existence!

(Note, there is a blank set of frames from when the STAR WARS logo appears, it was just a glitch when scanning, the print is complete, i.e. it is not missing those frames)
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/23bbcb9826bd8321600319fb0de924b320180829103936/fff2f315aba72705451939adbed0fa7820180829103936/ef1b87


















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

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THIS hasn’t been CCd yet??? 😮 This looks mind-blowingly AMAZING already!! 😄 Thank you for sharing this Poita!! Well done!

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“It hasn’t been cleaned, and it is a single flash scan, and not colour corrected”

Amazing.

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These look incredible. I can’t wait for Empire to commence.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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That looks crazy good.

I know this might be an unwanted question but at the same time it’s on everyone’s mind. What kind of schedule are we talking here, is the cleaning/scanning somewhere in the near future or can it take even a year or two, not even talking about the final digital correcting? Just wondering if it’s more “one reel at a time for cleanup”, then “one at a time for scanning” or how the process will actually go?

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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oh my goodness. not color corrected. jesus. that’s amazing.

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Cleaning costa about USD120 per reel, so that is really the holdup. Once it is cleaned, then scanning would take place within a month or so, then digital cleanup and colour correction it’s hard to say until I see it scanned.

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

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 (Edited)

poita said:

Cleaning costa about USD120 per reel, so that is really the holdup. Once it is cleaned, then scanning would take place within a month or so, then digital cleanup and colour correction it’s hard to say until I see it scanned.

How can we donate?

*edit - nevermind, I see 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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The images look great! But I’m wondering, is the yellowish color noise something that would only be on release prints, or would the negative also have them? And why do those appear? They seem much different to what grain looks like.

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theMaestro said:

The images look great! But I’m wondering, is the yellowish color noise something that would only be on release prints, or would the negative also have them? And why do those appear? They seem much different to what grain looks like.

IIRC, Verta said it was difficult to get rid of it but he managed it. You may find the video about it on vimeo.

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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I could be wrong, but I believe the plan is for Poita’s scan to be used as the basis for 4K80, but the scanning itself/Poita’s work on it and 4K80 are separate projects.

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Amazing. I’d settle for even this quality in the short term. So much better than other sources.

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 (Edited)

theMaestro said:

The images look great! But I’m wondering, is the yellowish color noise something that would only be on release prints, or would the negative also have them? And why do those appear? They seem much different to what grain looks like.

The grain patterns look weird and clunky due to downsizing to 720P without doing any grain management. I have posted a document on grain over at fanres, I’ll write something up here if people are interested.
This is what the image looks like with some grain management and cleanup applied (just a quick go)

Closeup of what it looks like at 4K resolution…

With some grain management and cleanup it looks much closer to how the image looks projected.

It is a well known phenomenon and something that we often have to manage when doing restoration, Mike V does some amazing things, and has come up with some really useful techniques, we all learn from each other, but he isn’t restoration or film trained, so some things he doesn’t have extensive background in. He does bring his unique expertise to bear on other problems with really great results.

I will be doing a full restoration on this one, not just scanning. When I say that no colour correction is done, I mean that a proper grade hasn’t been done yet. Obviously I have adjusted the levels and gamma from the flat log scan.

Yes, the print is really great, it was stupid money, but I felt it was worth it with them all turning pink and time running out, and thought everyone would like to see what the base material we will be working with looks like.

It will look even better cleaned and scanned properly.

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

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Wow the grain-managed and cleaned up frame looks fantastic! When you say “grain management”, is that the same as DNR? I would love to read more about grain (or really, anything you have to say about film restoration). Do you have a link to the document? I remember in Mike’s video, he talked about “rolling” the yellow globs into the blues or something like that.

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It is very different to what Mike is doing. If you want to join Fanres, I think the details are over there.

We have our own in-house software that we have developed, that is now using deep learning tools to manage grain, along with a big database of different film stocks, and modelling the lens used in our scanner. It is complicated and a lot depends on what your target resolution is, which scanner is used with which lens, and the film stocks themselves.

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