STAR WARS - Episode I - The Ancient Lore [Improved]
Episode I is the best-looking of the three prequels, with a lot of devotion put into them from both the crew, actors as well as the director himself before he went all ludacris on digital moviemaking. It is also the most dull of the three prequels, with little to no character motivation or even plot explanation.
Some of you might remember my very enthustiastic restructering of The Phantom Menace, and although it was liked, it had plenty of faults.
The project burned me out for anything Episode I-related, and the sequel trilogy extinguished any flame left. Now that the Sequel trilogy is worse than anything from the prequels I have found the fire in my heart again to show people how good The Phantom Menace can be, and how much potential there is for the Prequel Trilogy beyond the first and very-hated chronological entry of Star Wars.
MISC AND PICTURES:
So, the decision to make The Ancient Lore canon-friendly with a higher accuracy will remain firm, and therefore many of the old plot decisions will be gone. The “new” music is also gone. The film needs its original identity.
As for other things;
The Phantom Menace was shot on film, with high browns, dark shadows and a cyan blue. The denoised, high bitrate Disney blu-ray’s and 4k’s are an abomonation and make the CGI look like wax, and the 35mm film prints are noisy and - at certain points - lack detail.
Therefore, the middle-point for me was to use the (not-denoised-/DNR-less-) version of the film; an upscaled HDTV Rip. Then, with my own custom color grading, the next step was to carefully replace and repurpose the original colors of the film (that have been lost since cinemas, except for the mentioned 35mm film print(s)).
This was also important so that today’s children, whom are used to clean screens and firm colors, was kept in the loop when watching The Ancient Lore.
As mentioned the original palette had dark browns, dark shadows and a cyan blue, whilst the DVD and onward versions have replaced the cyan blue with purple and the dark shadows with bright shadows. Also the orange has been toned down to something more pink.
HANGAR BAY EXAMPLE:
Here is the DVD/BLURAY/4K VERSION:
Here is the original 35mm filmprint version (brightened and upscaled):
Here is my color palette:
TRADE FEDERATION INTERIOR EXAMPLE:
DVD/BLU-RAY/4K/HDTV:
35MM VERSION (Brightened and upscaled):
THE ANCIENT LORE/MY VERSION:
And then to something more fun, which would be video.
VIDEO EXAMPLE:
Here is the new The Ancient Lore version, with this new color grade.
The original filmprint has surprisingly dark shadows and colors, and this was important for me to mimic. I love the vintage style of it, but with a modern twist.
I also included a slightly new but unfinished tweak, which was to extend the Nute Gunray scene to also include the Queen of Naboo’s dialogue about the Ambassadors. I find it more thrilling to the story to have them deny their presence whilst they are in the ship, unknowing of the present danger.
CHANGES:
- A new and improved source (Downscaled 4k footage (1080p) for more detail)
- A new color grade that better suit the Prequel Trilogy, and that utilizes keyframe grading to better support outdated CGI backgrounds).
- Maintain the original musical score identity, with few alterations.
- Fixed new CGI added for The Ancient Lore. This including for instance Sidious hologram on Tattooine, some background details have been refined and improved, and of course re-graded certain scenes to a much better effect that both fit the film more as well as better mask stand-out effects in the background.
- Improved pacing (by actually adding a little bit more footage to the Naboo Underwater scenes), and trying to go for better suspense as well as character building and humour.
- Improved first act and third act pacing.