Hal 9000 said:
The Lowry master’s version of the Death Star explosion is bad. But the 19SE isn’t, and it has the fiery colors back.
And I’m open to whatever material for Mos Eisley may exist. I PM’d Dat_SW_Guy to see what he had made. I think he was even going to try to use that shot but with the SE background of the buildings. That’d be cool.
It’s not possible to cobble together something totally seamless between the original and SE versions of these movies, but I’m shooting for as close as I can get. When I was first introduced to Star Wars through renting them from Blockbuster in the late nineties, the original and SE versions were both available and I experienced both. The personal motivation for this project is to get at the ideal compromise that I have a pseudo-memory of from back then. What feels right while maintaining continuity. Can’t be totally realized without a team of VFX wizards, but can get close enough in a way that’s at least preferable to the SE as it is.
I don’t know about that statement to be honest HAL9000 about not being able to cobble together a perfect blend both SE and Original versions but yeah I get the whole thing about “a team of visual effects Artists” which is also the failure point too I think. Although I am no VFX artist or even a good artist I am having reasonable success in making some good visual changes but for the right reasons I think. But I think the key to my strategy is trying to have a reasonably light touch and using matte replacements rather than too much funky CGI. I don’t mind some shots in the Special Edition at all but then others just get totally extraneous. I have singled out some CGI extra shots but they are few little snap shots tbh.
I think you can look at the Yavin takeoff and say well Make it a big Matte shot like it was supposed to be and replace the tracking dot’s if you can or just make them pinkish like engine glow, or accept the totally different interpretation of the scene which is nothing like a film in 1977. It’s a tough call… It is indeed difficult but also simple in a way too.
Having just looked more closely at the Special edition version the light is coming from both sides from the right on the guy in the basket like the original and the highlights on the ships from the left so it’s kind if messed up anyway. Special edition ships being flipped and roto in would fix that problem. But it’s way past my abilities to do that.