ray_afraid said:
About the “worse” compositing, can some kind soul explain? I don’t really see it…
Maybe in the 2nd shot, but I think the first looks a bit better…
(also, what’s 19SE mean?)
19SE as in 2019 Special Edition, as in the version of the Star Wars special editions made available through Disney+ and other digital distribution services in 2019. The Blurays are sometimes called the 11SE, the DVDs the 04SE, and the original theatrical release of the special editions the 97SE - mostly by DoubleOFive on twitter. Though maybe we’re going with 4KSE instead; or perhaps when they get a physical media release we’ll start calling them ‘the UHD Blurays’ or the 20SE instead…
Anyway, compositing is a VFX technique where you basically add all the stuff together to make the final film frame. The reason I reckon the 19SE has worse compositing of Hayden is the black levels - meaning the darkest blacks on his face. The shadow under his neck seems much darker and browner than any of the darkest shadows on Yoda or Obi-Wan, which are more of a medium blue. Less technically, his head generally seems less ghostly and less well integrated with Shaw’s body and the other two Jedi masters.
The blacks are less crushed for most of the film, as far as I can see.
One redone change which I think is a huge improvement is the removal of Vader’s eyebrows. They’ve much more realistically created a shaved brow appearance, with darkness and wrinkles there to get back some of the expressiveness which was somewhat lost with the eyebrow removal. I also really like the slightly pink colour correction for Vader. This shot is worse though because you can clearly see the eyebrows alteration glow with a slightly orange tint.
EDIT:
I feel sorry for the poor VFX artists who had to redo all these changes. Here’s the transition from Tatooine to Naboo redone (because Naboo was added in 2004). It’s a slightly cleaner edge. Naboo looks super desaturated in these new versions; I hope the HDR versions have sufficient colour information for us to get a more vibrant grade out of them without gross artifacting. If we can get them to look like they do on Dre’s TV on my computer monitor, I’ll be chuffed.
Here’s the undone funeral pyre change.
EDIT 2:
No visible change whatsoever in the R2 malfunctioning shot, except the colour grading of course. Maybe they just still had it lying around and could copy it across wholesale?
EDIT 3:
I don’t know if this is anything other than colour correction (Ben’s ghost).
I see no evidence of changes to the Rancor.