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4K restoration on Star Wars — Page 266

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Laserschwert said:

I don’t think they have the ANH Falcon in any of the newer films though.

I guess recreating the SE shots would be a relatively easy task, if they could just salvage any of the camera and object animations of the old data. The shots themselves are much less complicated than what they are used to do today. Were they still using Softimage for the SE?

Anyway, re-rendering with updated models and rendering software would certainly open a can of worms and create just another SE.

Surely they could use the Falcon model used in TLJ, just replace the radar dish.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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The Post mentions

“Original Negative”

This could mean the OUT or it could be the SE’s…

Personally I believe it is the Theatrical Cut…

I want the hear your thoughts on this matter

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Jedi Master Skywalker said:

The Post mentions

“Original Negative”

This could mean the OUT or it could be the SE’s…

Personally I believe it is the Theatrical Cut…

I want the hear your thoughts on this matter

I think it means both. This done to create a digital master from which future releases can be sourced. It makes sense to scan and restore every element used for the film.

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Of course it makes sense cause Disney does not want to have to restore elements or track them down every time they want to release the Original Trilogy

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The best approach would be the same as they did for TNG, with re-composited effects.
For TNG they improved the light passes a bit, and I guess they corrected small model defects.

But it looks seamless and much better than 2000’s CGI.
For Star Wars it would look great and still have the 1977 feel.

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4throck said:

The best approach would be the same as they did for TNG, with re-composited effects.
For TNG they improved the light passes a bit, and I guess they corrected small model defects.

But it looks seamless and much better than 2000’s CGI.
For Star Wars it would look great and still have the 1977 feel.

It would still be an SE and not a theatrical release because the original effects are what make it theatrical.

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I, for one, would be totally fine with that.

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At this point, I would be happy with any release, that doesn’t look like it was approved by a color blind person.

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For the 2011 master of TPM they were at least able to go back to the digital filmout tapes so that they could transfer the movie (well, almost all of it) straight from the digital source.

Even if they’re not going to re-render the ‘97 cg shots from scratch, I wonder if at the very least the finished frames still exist in a readable format like they did for TPM. We’re only talking two and a half years earlier. For the ‘04 master it looks like those shots were simply scanned back in off the negative since you can still see filmic anomalies like weave even after Lowry finished their (rushed) cleanup.

By the way, this is exactly why I’d want the ‘97 versions preserved. The o-neg is already conformed to that exact edit of the movie anyway.

4throck said:

The best approach would be the same as they did for TNG, with re-composited effects.
For TNG they improved the light passes a bit, and I guess they corrected small model defects.

But it looks seamless and much better than 2000’s CGI.
For Star Wars it would look great and still have the 1977 feel.

They already did exactly that for the ‘97 SE. They scanned in the original individual elements (which I guess would’ve all been 8-perf horizontal VistaVision negatives?) and recomposited them digitally at 2k res, filming back out to a new piece of 4-perf cinemascope neg and intercut with the rest of the movie just like the cg shots.

As with the cg shots, if the finished 2k files are still readable like they were with TPM then they should at the very least be transferred if they’re not going to spend the money to re-re-comp the elements with, say, an 8k scan / 4k finish.

I don’t even know what the state of those individual film elements would be after an additional two decades of storage, but I still remember that post from several years ago where someone in-the-know said that Lucasfilm was archiving everything, so maybe they’ve been scanned yet again.

But yeah, as LordZerome pointed out, this is still SE talk. If we really wanted an unaltered OT that was 110% unaltered then we shouldn’t be talking about re-comps at all.

Speaking of which, if I remember Zombie’s article on the matter correctly, certain stretches of the conformed 35mm negative had faded badly by the time it was dug up in the mid-90’s to be restored for the SE. Zombie mentioned that there were four different film stocks that made up the conformed o-neg and that one of these stocks just wasn’t designed to last. I want to say it was the stock used for composites, which means even if they saved those shots in storage there’s no guarantee they’d be salvageable even with modern digital restoration tools. So, a secondary source like an IP or the separation masters might be necessary to get those shots for an official OOT restoration.

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I would not be offended in the slightest if they reproduced the original effects by scanning and recompositing earlier generation negatives.

It’s essentially the image Mike Verta has attempted to produce in his project, though the image will benefit from the resolution of a first generation source and more even grain across frames.

TV’s Frink said:

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

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Am I really the only one who would be offended by a “theatrical cut” with recomposited effects…?

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Isn’t that what the SE’s started out as? Before George decided to make them into test beds for the prequels.

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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Didn’t they recomposited the effects because the film stock used originally for the final composites was degrading rapidly ? And was already in such a bad shape that it was deemed unusable at that time ?

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Z6PO said:

Didn’t they recomposited the effects because the film stock used originally for the final composites was degrading rapidly ? And was already in such a bad shape that it was deemed unusable at that time ?

Because there are definitely no other sources that can be used for the original effects… 😒

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ChainsawAsh said:

Z6PO said:

Didn’t they recomposited the effects because the film stock used originally for the final composites was degrading rapidly ? And was already in such a bad shape that it was deemed unusable at that time ?

Because there are definitely no other sources that can be used for the original effects… 😒

Exactly!

As I said in the second or third edit of my way too long post above, there are other film elements aside from just the o-neg that could be utilized in an official restoration of the unaltered version.

Also from my overlong post, it wouldn’t really be the 100% unaltered versions if we started talking about re-compositing the opticals. You’re certainly not alone there.

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Fang Zei said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Z6PO said:

Didn’t they recomposited the effects because the film stock used originally for the final composites was degrading rapidly ? And was already in such a bad shape that it was deemed unusable at that time ?

Because there are definitely no other sources that can be used for the original effects… 😒

Exactly!

As I said in the second or third edit of my way too long post above, there are other film elements aside from just the o-neg that could be utilized in an official restoration of the unaltered version.

Also from my overlong post, it wouldn’t really be the 100% unaltered versions if we started talking about re-compositing the opticals. You’re certainly not alone there.

Glad to know it’s not just me!

I mean, 4K77/83 have proven that even release prints are a solid source in a pinch. And Disney/LFL certainly have access to lower-generation copies that are higher quality than release prints, even if the original composites aren’t usable.

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Unless Lucas hid them away in that exact replica of the booby-trapped temple from Raiders in his basement. 😉

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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If a bunch of people online can stitch together a watchable version I’m sure a huge company like that can manage it. They probably just don’t want to.

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All I want is two versions:

The true original version with no re-compositing and original color timing

A brand new SE from the ground-up using VFX techniques similar to Rogue One and a more modern color timing.

Simply, sometimes I want to watch the movie exactly as it was made with all the imperfections intact because damn some of those optical composites were crazy hard to do back then, especially the space battle in ROTJ.

Other-times, I wanna be fully invested in the story and I don’t wanna be distracted by poor VFX and errors.

But somehow I think we’ll get neither of those versions, and will just get something as shitty as any of the releases starting in 97 and since then.

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At this point, us fans will be able to create those versions much better than the studios within the next 2-3 years.

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emanswfan said:

All I want is two versions:

The true original version with no re-compositing and original color timing

A brand new SE from the ground-up using VFX techniques similar to Rogue One and a more modern color timing.

Simply, sometimes I want to watch the movie exactly as it was made with all the imperfections intact because damn some of those optical composites were crazy hard to do back then, especially the space battle in ROTJ.

Other-times, I wanna be fully invested in the story and I don’t wanna be distracted by poor VFX and errors.

See, this I can get behind. As long as the true original version is preserved as well.

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Agreed. Although as far as I’m aware that is what a lot of the contributors on this site have been asking for over the past 10+ years. We can still have a “special” edition, but have the original theatrical version alongside it. And I do think this is a great compromise, because you will always have the original versions to enjoy, but you also can have some updated versions that fit in more, effects-wise, with the other movies in the saga as well.

Though like Zerome said, I also think that the fan editing/preservation community are much more capable to create a solid theatrical preservation and a “modern” special edition than anything official. The 97 SE, the GOUT and even the 2011 edition all have issues that have been discussed ad nauseam here. Maybe under new leadership that would be different, but I am not holding my breath.

I mean, think of what we already have. For the theatrical version, we have Harmy’s Despecialized Editions and the various 4K projects. And as far as modern Special Editions go, we have Ady’s Revisited Trilogy as well as Hal’s custom Special Editions. There’s also no telling what other projects will pop up in the future.

But I suppose these will only get so much attention and the general Star Wars audience might not ever know about it, so I agree it would be nice for them to release something officially.

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I kind of wish that they had finished the 3D versions of the OT (with updated effects) and released them by 2017, because then they would have continued as cultural touchstones for a new generation.

Where other movies have reboots, Star Wars should have evolutions.

And the originals of course.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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NeverarGreat said:

I kind of wish that they had finished the 3D versions of the OT (with updated effects) and released them by 2017, because then they would have continued as cultural touchstones for a new generation.

Maybe just me but when I was a kid I never cared about the special editions. I honestly didn’t even notice the effects had been updated, only the obvious things like the extra stormtroopers that corner Han, the Wampa, Jedi Rocks, etc. If you show your kids the originals at the right age (i.e. early) they won’t even know they’re old movies.

But in terms of there being a new significant re-release of the OT, there’s probably something to be said for that (and it’s almost certain that if Lucas started with ANH in 2012 he would have made a lot more money than TPM 3D did).

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NeverarGreat said:

Where other movies have reboots, Star Wars should have evolutions.

And the originals of course.

I’d rather Star Wars be blown up and an abstract mural made from the debris. 😛