Hi!
Since this is my first post on this forum, let me introduce myself. My name is Rune, I’m a 3D animation and VFX guy from Norway. I’ve been doing 3D for around 17 years, and like all healthy people I am a huge fan of Star Wars I discovered this forum after searching the web for documentaries on the Star Wars films. Thanks to myspleen, I’ve discovered the wonderful world of fan edits, and I thought I might give something back by sharing something I played with today.
Looking through the thread on screenshots ( http://www.originaltrilogy.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=9&threadid=4681 ) I thought it might be interesting to apply the GOUT colours to the new SE edition image. In other words, keep the excellent edge sharpness of the new transfer, but retain the old colours of the laserdisc version of the film.
When I do compositing I work in a piece of software called Eyeon Fusion. It’s my favourite software for this kind of work (after having played with After Effects and Shake), and its node based interface makes it great for quick and non-destructive changes to a shot. It costs around 5000 dollars, but that’s the price you have to pay for these things…
Anyways, I set up a project in Fusion that imports the screenshots from the mentioned post, and using some simple nodes I did this:
- transformed the GOUT image to match the SE version
- used the match histogram functions in a colorcorrect node to match the SE brightness to the GOUT
- used a color merge (similar to photoshop color layer) to apply the GOUT colors to the SE image
- keyed out the blacks from the SE and kept them, to avoid noise in the resulting image
The project in Fusion looks like this:
The result was surprisingly good - at least on the 30-so images inside the screengrab comparison page. A New Hope got that instant seventies look right away, but with the super sharp quality of the new SE image. Combined it gives the impression of being sharper than the SE even. Scroll down to see some comparison images.
Drawbacks using this method:
- Each shot need a separate transform, which makes this time-consuming for an entire film.
- Transforming the GOUT is too simple, you need a warp to properly match the two images (the way it’s done now, the corners have some slight alignment problems that would be very apparent on a large screen).
- I have not seen this in motion, there could be flickering in the auto-match node
- Some colour differences, both due to the necessary smoothing of the histogram curve (otherwise you get banding), and some differences due to the new transfer using selective correction in the telecine (this method can only do the entire image in one operation).
Despite that, it’s really nice seeing these two sources blended together so successfully (after a couple of hours playing around). Hope you like the result. Here are some other examples:
Cheers, Rune
Click here for “shot03”
Click here for “shot09”
Click here for “shot17”
Click here for “shot18”
Click here for “shot21”
Click here for “shot29”
Click here for “shot34”