What is this you ask? This is a “theatrical” reconstruction (mostly) of The Empire
Strikes Back using the UHD BluRay 2160p HDR version as it’s main source.
This is not a pure theatrical reconstruction though. It is very close to theatrical.
I call it D+80.
All my posts and updates have been on the other forum. I just didn’t want to maintain two discussions about it. I’m posting this here for those not on the other site to know what this is.
V2.0 is the latest version available at the usual place.
Edit: v2.1 has been released.
Sources used…
The 2160p UHD BluRay was used as the primary source for this project.
Two 35mm theatrical prints were used to restore original shots where needed.
All scanned in and cleaned in 4k.
Audio…
This version is not NTSC GOUT synced. Two frames at the end of reel 5 are added back in. It is now essentially PAL GOUT synced but timed to 23.976 fps. Those two frames were present in theatres in 1980 and belong in the film. This is how the film should be viewed, in it’s entirety. This version has the full theatrical audio restored for this by schorman and hairy_hen. If you have alternate language audio it should work fine since the lips don’t match the words anyway. Please don’t try to NTSC GOUT sync this movie. Instead re-sync the audio you have and shared it back to the community. It’s time to abandon the flawed GOUT standard and keep the film as it was made, as it was seen in 1980 and how this film should only be viewed, in it’s original glorious entirety. It’s time to readopt the original theatrical standard like 4K83 did.
New 5.1 audio track mastered and theatrically synced by hairy_hen for this release.
Other audio tracks newly mastered and theatrically synced by schorman for this release.
Thank you both.
More info about the audio in the Audio files folder.
Colour…
The original HDR grade took advantage of the wider colour gamut. Since I’m working in SDR, rec.709, I needed to tame the HDR grade. What this means is areas that lacked saturation have been boosted but areas that would have gotten oversaturated with that change have been scaled back. I did a saturation rebalance. Other colour tweaks were used to make it the best I could.
Colour is - HDR tonemapped with a LUT provided by age - final colour by me using only curves (sat-vs-sat, luma-vs-sat, hue-vs-sat, and standard RGB curves).
More info…
Theatrical but not completely theatrical…
I restored most of the original 1980 shots of the film, removing most of the CGI and other
unnecessary changes. My preference was quality over authenticity though.
My intent was to keep it as theatrical as possible, but I’m willing to sacrifice some
authenticity for quality sake so some creative license was used in the process.
It’s theatrical in spirit.
A new version is in the works. A few replacement shots have been redone already.
