Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition (BACK TO WIP) — Page 6

Those look fantastic. I’m digging the Mos Eisley shot…which makes me wonder: are you keeping the CGI “crane” shot as the speeder moves into the city? I love the idea of that shot but there’s so much I can’t stand about the execution of it. The main complaint is it’s too fast and too polished of a camera move. One should see some imperfections in the movement of the image (slight camera shake, focus pull, etc).

But the reworking you did of Mos Eisley and Bens hut does look really nice. I would love to see more things like this done to the movie. It’s too bad the CGI can’t be redone in the end battle to blend in and look more model like. To me, some of Howard Day’s stuff looks like a really nice blend (even though it’s all done in the computer).
http://www.youtube.com/@HowieDay82

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

Those look fantastic. I’m digging the Mos Eisley shot…which makes me wonder: are you keeping the CGI “crane” shot as the speeder moves into the city? I love the idea of that shot but there’s so much I can’t stand about the execution of it. The main complaint is it’s too fast and too polished of a camera move. One should see some imperfections in the movement of the image (slight camera shake, focus pull, etc).

But the reworking you did of Mos Eisley and Bens hut does look really nice. I would love to see more things like this done to the movie. It’s too bad the CGI can’t be redone in the end battle to blend in and look more model like. To me, some of Howard Day’s stuff looks like a really nice blend (even though it’s all done in the computer).
http://www.youtube.com/@HowieDay82

The crane shot of Mos Eisley greatly overexaggerated the size of the location in my opinion, and its so ridiculed with outdated VFX elements meant to fill every frame of the sequence with life that it comes off as quite overstimulating, so while initially I included it, I later decided to cut it out since it looked too much like a 3D render demo reel and doesn’t serve much function to the story aside from helping extend the score a bit.

Even if AI gets to a point that it could retexture all the bad stuff in the shot, it kind-of defeats the cinematography established in 1976 which had a more documentary-style look to it anyway that the miniature SE shots still retained. I just cleaned it up to match the on-set location a bit more since they literally shot it in a fishing port.

Also, I’m hoping for Dr.Dre’s new incredibly powerful algorithm to recolor some shots of the Yavin battle to make the colors and materials feel a bit more like miniatures and less like demo reels, but even then I still find them appropriate for the time anyway. I’m treading a fine line of CGI and 70s elements to ensure they all line up pretty well.

The crane shot of Mos Eisley greatly overexaggerated the size of the location in my opinion, and its so ridiculed with outdated VFX elements meant to fill every frame of the sequence with life that it comes off as quite overstimulating, so while initially I included it, I later decided to cut it out since it looked too much like a 3D render demo reel and doesn’t serve much function to the story aside from helping extend the score a bit.

Even if AI gets to a point that it could retexture all the bad stuff in the shot, it kind-of defeats the cinematography established in 1976 which had a more documentary-style look to it anyway that the miniature SE shots still retained. I just cleaned it up to match the on-set location a bit more since they literally shot it in a fishing port.

Also, I’m hoping for Dr.Dre’s new incredibly powerful algorithm to recolor some shots of the Yavin battle to make the colors and materials feel a bit more like miniatures and less like demo reels, but even then I still find them appropriate for the time anyway. I’m treading a fine line of CGI and 70s elements to ensure they all line up pretty well.

Excellent points on the Mos Eisley shot.
Dr. Dre’s algorithm sounds intriguing!

Heres a new update: fixing the R2-D2 continuity error where R5-D4 pops up behind him after he explodes. Let me know what you guys think!

(The rotoscoping isnt 100% perfect yet, I’ll fix it but heres the shot as a whole)

The black droid isnt really seen in any of the shots after R5-D4 explodes. But I’ll try to add him I guess.

Dat_SW_Guy said:

Heres a new update: fixing the R2-D2 continuity error where R5-D4 pops up behind him after he explodes. Let me know what you guys think!

(The rotoscoping isnt 100% perfect yet, I’ll fix it but heres the shot as a whole)

Thank you so much for this! This bugs me. Fantastic job.

BedeHistory731 said:

You kind of created a second continuity error by not having the black droid in the shot. It’s good work, but it just looks kind of “off” now.

Here is a screencap of the fixed shot with the black domed droid in the background!

Here’s another sneak peek shot: an improved version of the Mos Eisley entrance shot. The 2019 version is so low quality because of the DNR that I didn’t use it at all aside from the Speeder itself and the womprats. The 2011 BD version wasn’t much better because of the messed up color space, so I had to spend days rotoscoping the speeder, adding motion blur and smoke and creating a completely new matte which is a composite of all the sources in order to make things look more realistic and cohesive.

Octorox said:

Nice! I always wondered if it would be possible to just remove the rats completely from that shot, but the way they overlap with the speeder probably makes it too difficult.

I only kept two womprats in, as in the following sequence (the SE shot of the Speeder in the narrow street before they get stopped) there are womprats and I decided it would be kept for continuity and consistency to still see the Womprats in the first shot, but greatly reduced to only 2 so that there still would be life in that scene but not too many Womprats that it would overload the sequence.

Octorox said:

Gotcha makes sense. I honestly wish all the cg creatures could be removed but I think that’s a personal taste thing.

I like the idea of the creatures, but hate the dated CGI. After all, Dewbacks were in the original cut, just immobile.

I had this idea of attempting to make them look like Harryhausen-esque stop motion creatures by changing the frame rate (there’s a stop motion feature in Davinci Resolve), and using sharpening to make it look more like a clay model. That method didn’t’ help too much. I think one would have to straight up change the texture to give it the look I want. Which I would appreciate advice on how to do, if anyone has any idea.

(it would be a dream of mine to do this with the Jabba scene so we could see what a 1977 version of the scene could’ve looked like if they had the budget)

That’s an interesting idea, and I think it would be cool to have no CG anything except for the miniature sets, however it now makes the most CG part of the whole sequence the Speeder itself, which kind-of gives it away as a bad CG model, so there has to be a balance between what to keep and to remove.

I always found the Mos Eisley sequence so difficult to balance because the original 1977 footage is so underwhelming and the 1997 SE footage so in-your-face that I find it hard to strike the perfect medium between the two that still incorporates some of the elements of both to make Mos Eisley both being a backwater port and also expansive like in the wide shots.

I don’t really find alot of them intrusive unless it’s very in your face since it somewhat conditions you to help with the CGI later in the film during the Battle of Yavin.

I’m currently working on an experiment to add in accurate light flashes and recompositing the laser blasts during the Detention Shootout scene using AI-powered depth maps to relight the scene. For the laser blasts, I tried to add some realistic glow and motion blur so they looked a bit more physically accurate and less stylized. For the light flashes I added it’s subtle in motion because you only see them for a frame or two.

Here’s an example image:

Here’s a clip in motion:
https://streamable.com/qhyzl8

Thoughts and opinions are very needed and encouraged.

Without having a side-by-side to compare, I would still say that looks pretty damn cool. I’ve not worked on any of the blaster shots in ANH so it’s not burned into my brain as much, but this looks more “modern” or prequel-era blasters perhaps. I like the relighting a lot as well. Also wouldn’t it be amazing if we could get rid of all the flash frames throughout this film?

You can’t really remove the flash frames because they were actual light flashes that happen into the shot and into the subjects, and I find them to be more lively anyway if done well. The detention shootout scene I believe was meant to feel disorienting and chaotic by design so I hope that was conveyed well enough.