Star Wars Prequels 35mm 4K Filmized Editions by Emanswfan (a WIP) — Page 41

ChainsawAsh said:

The Force 5 said:

Comparatively, CGI Yoda looks like he was pulled out of a not very impressive video game cutscene and jarringly plopped in the movie.

So…just like almost everything else in the prequels?

CPY looks nothing like Yoda or the AOTC/ROTS CGI models. CGI Yoda doesn’t look any more like Yoda than the AOTC/ROTS CGI, but it’s at least consistent with AOTC/ROTS instead of being the one odd man out.

True enough. 😛

Having just watched TESB and then seeing that side by side, the CGI Yoda looks more like the original puppet than that abhorrent TPM puppet. I was watching and the puppet was alwasy looking at the ceiling while the CG actually meets the eyeline. And it has no expressions and looks drugged in the final scene. There is a reason we call it creepy and a reason why creepy is bad. The CG Yoda matches the rest of the PT. The only area where the puppet looks better is the hair. They f***ed that up in the CG, but the rest was well done. I fail to see why anyone who prefer that creepy version. It baffles me. Looks nothing like the TESB Yoda puppet. It was such a crap job that Frank Oz’s peformance is better joined to the CG.

Dek Rollins said:

ChainsawAsh said:

My biggest “compromised purism” in Star Wars is wanting to conform the BR cut of TPM to the theatrical cut - that is, keep the editing of the theatrical cut exactly, but with all the visual updates of the BR (CGI Yoda, mainly).

It’s the only one where something like that would outright replace any official version forever for me.

But Creepy Puppet Yoda™ looks infinitely better than CGI Yoda. CG Yoda constantly has his head at a downward angle and looks up at the people he’s talking to only with his eyes, and he lacks the little bit of expression that CPY had left. Screw consistency, I prefer a decent but weird puppet that looks nothing like the character over awkward CGI that still looks nothing like the character. 😛

This!

In addition, Yoda was animated by a puppeteer (Frank Oz, probably the best), with a real acting.
It is not only a doll that could have been replaced by a CGI: there are real intentions of an actor in his movements and his facial expressions.

Replacing it with a CGI is as unacceptable as, for example, replacing the face of Alden Ehrenreich with Harrison Ford, because it would look more like the original character.

The playful performance Frank Oz’s voice acting gives fits the puppet’s “acting” way better than the angry, disappointed CGI model they created for AotC and refined for the 2011 TPM.

TPM and TLJ Yoda puppets both don’t look quite right, but I still much prefer them over digital Yoda. Ideally you would have a puppet as the base and then CGI enhancements to that. Hell having a reference puppet in scenes where Yoda would have to be all CGI would help too.

Anyhow, I’m looking back on the grain, and I’m going to do more tweaking to it. The past two renders have used real grain plates, which while real grain, does have it’s setbacks given that it is a loop overlayed over the footage. The footage itself doesn’t have an impact on the way the grain appears, so in that case a digital simulation would be better, but that can be hard to pull off. So I’ll do more research and try to figure out a solution.

Also I was looking at some classic movies in 4K HDR on Disney+ and some of those movies had very similar grain levels to that of the renders some thought were too grainy, which makes me want to head more back towards that direction. Possibly, I could always have multiple grain options similar to what is the case for 4K77 and 4K83.

If you have Photoshop 2020 you can try this trick:

• open your movie and convert it into a smart object
• apply a field blur of 1 px (= no blur) from the blur gallery
• then you can add a very realistic simulated grain and change a lot of parameters (amount, size, roughness, color, highlights)

By comparing with a real 35mm scan (which I’ll provide to you), you will be able to change the parameters and get a very natural grain, quite similar to the original one.

Decided I will be transferring to doing these grades to Davinci Resolve instead of Premiere Pro/After Effects. I’ve played around with Resolve before when trying out my own grades for 4K77, it just has a lot more freedom and ability to control the footage to what I like. That said, I’m going to have to do some online learning to really get the most out of it. I’ve used the Adobe suite since 2011 regularly versus Resolve being only since end of 2018 in small tests.

So it might be a while till I can upload another render, but rest assured the new grade will be a lot better.

I’ve been looking over the resources I’ve received of scans of the theatrical prints for TPM, and have been studying the colors closely and hopefully I’ll get something close to the look of these or at least what the current official grade looks like printed to print film stock.

AOTC and ROTS will replicate both negative and print stock, as well as some lens distortion adjustments to make them closer to the anamorphics used on other Star Wars films.

Also, I recently saw the film “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” which was shot on Kodak 7219 and my god it looks beautiful. Now it is a 16mm film so it’s a bit softer and grainer than would be for these projects, but it’s a a film that has a very raw film look to it, in other words that it is not overly digitally graded unlike in many modern films still shot on film. It’s definitely a good modern piece to study what true modern film stock looks like without excessive digital tinkering.

To that note, there’s a lot more filtering to be done to recreate the look of film beyond the color grade, which I am further studying. They may not be in the initial releases. Steve Yedlin’s (cinematographer on The Last Jedi) material has a lot to say on this.

I think the film look boils down to (at least) these elements:

1. Grain
2. Gate weave
3. Flicker
4. Halation
5. Color grade

Most of these are things Yedlin touches upon. The key of course is subtlety in application. A little bit of each goes a long way for the film look.

For reference here’s probably the best comparisons I’ve seen between 2011 1080p releases and the 2019 4K releases.

TPM: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/819-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-I.html

AOTC: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/820-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-II.html

ROTS: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/821-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-III.html

Pretty minor improvements, but still worth it. It will be good to see what AI enhancements can do to the footage.

emanswfan said:

For reference here’s probably the best comparisons I’ve seen between 2011 1080p releases and the 2019 4K releases.

TPM: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/819-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-I.html

AOTC: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/820-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-II.html

ROTS: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/821-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-III.html

Pretty minor improvements, but still worth it. It will be good to see what AI enhancements can do to the footage.

Phantom Menace looks brighter and more contrasty but I don’t really see a difference in detail level.

AOTC probably looks the most improved. Better color and sharper.

ROTS looks sharper as well but I’m not sure that I really see more detail, just more noise.

emanswfan said:

For reference here’s probably the best comparisons I’ve seen between 2011 1080p releases and the 2019 4K releases.

TPM: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/819-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-I.html

AOTC: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/820-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-II.html

ROTS: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/821-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-III.html

Pretty minor improvements, but still worth it. It will be good to see what AI enhancements can do to the footage.

It looks like some highlight detail was lost in the phantom menace 4K due to over saturating the colors.

The 4K Attack of the Clones actually looks pretty good to me.

For Revenge of the Sith, I think the lightsabers looked better in the 1080p version as opposed to the 4K.

NeverarGreat said:

It looks like all three of them are just the Blu-rays run through a sharpening/upscaling process. ROTS really suffers from sharpening artifacts while AOTC looks better for the process.

I’d say that they went back a generation. Not the actual BR version, but the master the used to make it. AOTC actually looks like it has more detail. I’m guessing whatever they did to “clean up” the image for the blu-ray is gone and they have “cleaned up” the video for 4k.

emanswfan said:

Here is softer grain, along with colors that are a bit closer to what I see in the print caps above.

That looks real good. Would love to see TPM this way!

emanswfan said:

Here is softer grain, along with colors that are a bit closer to what I see in the print caps above.

It´s just great. Really looking forward to this. Great work so far! Time calls for fan cuts after you´re finished^^

Unfortunately, my current laptop is slowly dying, and I may have to replace it sooner than I had planned. Once the tech stores open up again, I’m gonna get it checked out, although I suspect whatever repairs it may need will not be worth the cost, and it’ll just be better to get something new. It’s still functioning fine for basic applications, but start doing something more demanding and the whole system freezes up.

Not to mention, that I’ve been currently out of work due to the COVID crisis, so money is quite limited, though it has given me more time to work on this.

It’ll probably be a new laptop likely, so not the eventual desktop that I plan to get. I’m waiting for the next generation of GPU’s from NVIDIA and AMD for the desktop. (likely I’ll be going with a NVIDIA GPU as it has more optimization for video rendering and AI applications).

Playing around with TPM in Davinci Resolve, I know I’m going to be able to achieve far better results than with Premiere, it’s just going to take quite an adjustment for me to learn all the necessities of color grading in Resolve as it is a lot more complex.

emanswfan said:

Unfortunately, my current laptop is slowly dying, and I may have to replace it sooner than I had planned. Once the tech stores open up again, I’m gonna get it checked out, although I suspect whatever repairs it may need will not be worth the cost, and it’ll just be better to get something new. It’s still functioning fine for basic applications, but start doing something more demanding and the whole system freezes up.

Not to mention, that I’ve been currently out of work due to the COVID crisis, so money is quite limited, though it has given me more time to work on this.

It’ll probably be a new laptop likely, so not the eventual desktop that I plan to get. I’m waiting for the next generation of GPU’s from NVIDIA and AMD for the desktop. (likely I’ll be going with a NVIDIA GPU as it has more optimization for video rendering and AI applications).

Playing around with TPM in Davinci Resolve, I know I’m going to be able to achieve far better results than with Premiere, it’s just going to take quite an adjustment for me to learn all the necessities of color grading in Resolve as it is a lot more complex.

That´s unfortunate. I have a second laptop, which you could borrow (a13 r3) but where are you located (us/eu/aisa)?

No need for that, but I appreciate the offer.

My state did open up last week, so I may be able to go back to work soon, but still haven’t heard anything back.

Good luck and the force always be with you

Come on, man. Just 4 posts above yours.