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STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 REVISITED ADYWAN *1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION — Page 25

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GREAT WORK!

I think some of the facial movements need toning down a bit or it gets too cartoony, but the overall direction is really good and goes someway to solving a real sore spot with the original scene. As Mark Hamill stated the script calls for this amazing array of alien life, but the scene as it was delivered felt like a bad masquerade party, adding some expression to the creatures was something I tried before but was never happy with the results as the warps caused texture smearing because of the lo rez source material.
That is evident too in some of these, I'd suggest using a HD grab to do the warps and additions and then scale it back to DVD for the final result. That way the warps are less obvious and the detail lost in smearing is far less.
I'd like to see your additions toned down a bit, but no doubt every single person will have a different opinion on any and every clip you post, so don't worry too much and make it the way *you* want it.
Really great stuff though, relatively small and subtle tweaks is what I was hoping for when the SEs were announced, instead we got ham fisted CG injections, this is much closer to the type of effect additions I was hoping to see from them, and as seems to be the case these days, the fans are picking up the ball where Lucas droppped it.
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I think the animation Adywan has done for the cantina scene is great as it is! Rememeber they are ALIENS so may not move exactly like humans! Some movement/manipulation is better than no movement/rubber masks.

I would make the first alien with the yellow eyes who pops up at the start blink , I reckon that would setup the shot for showing that all the Aliens have facial movement.

The Greedo scene is still fantastic. Wouldnt change that one bit now.

It will be hard if not impossible to watch the original SE2004 discs after this!!
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I love, love, LOVE that Greedo scene. Seriously, it might be the coolest thing I've ever seen done on these esteemed boards, and that is saying a lot.

The only thing I don't really buy is in the desert/sandcrawler scenes, with the sky replacement. The composite borders look far too blurry to be realistic. Is that just a feathering setting that can be backed off of a little bit?

Great work!
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my only nit really is the death star approach. I'd trim it down, right down. reasons

I know this is the big imperial intro for ANH but by borrowing the empire SD's so heavily, even changing the background means there is familiar shot repetition.

I like the opening. the ESB SD flipped. but I would cut down on the number of SD's around the DS and I would even probably eliminate the big background planet. just have the DS in space. the star destroyer is giving you your size for reference.

When a woman says yes, she means no - when she says maybe, she means no.

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Adywan, I hope you agree that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery because I think I'm going to have to do my own version of Greedo's final frown - it makes him so much more menacing! I'm not going as far as animating everyone else (it's all a bit too much for me!), but you've done an amazing job.

DE
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Originally posted by: darthbeej
I think the animation Adywan has done for the cantina scene is great as it is! Rememeber they are ALIENS so may not move exactly like humans! Some movement/manipulation is better than no movement/rubber masks.


Yep they are aliens, so you have a free run with them blinking sideways, or eating through their ears etc. and it seems unlikely that aliens would have faces that have no movement at all (as in the original trilogy), but seems equally unlikely that certain races would be chronic over actors.

I love the whole concept, I think the couple of glares from characters and the greedo blinks and extra emotion is excellent, but needs to be subtle. As an effects artist you want people to *not* notice the effect at the end of the day, it should just look totally natural and create belief in the setup.

It is a normal part of the process, you put the effects in and you play it back and then after watching it a few times you start to tone it down, then after coming back to it after a while you tone it down further and eventually it becomes more natural.

Kind of like the SE's, at first viewing the extra saturation and detail has a wow factor, but on subsequent viewings the oversaturated and overly contrasty scenes start to grate on the eye. Slightly overemphasized effects can be the same.

Seriously though, the kind of thing that adywan is doing is exactly the type of enhancement ILM should have been focussed on when revisiting the OT, this is the most promising re-working of the OT I've seen in ages.

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Thanks for the comment guys.

I agree with what has been said and there are a couple of the alien shots that need to be toned down a bit. I just compared the XVID that i posted to a quick MPEG encode i did and its surprising just how much the XVID compression has distorted the facial movements. I can see what Hal 9000 means by "underwater". I should have posted it with a higher bitrate encode but i needed to keep the filesize to a minimum because of the clips length. Apart from the 2 shots i'm redoing, i will be keeping the rest as they are now. You'll have to trust me that they look so much better in a better quality encode.
Originally posted by: Laserman

It is a normal part of the process, you put the effects in and you play it back and then after watching it a few times you start to tone it down, then after coming back to it after a while you tone it down further and eventually it becomes more natural.

Kind of like the SE's, at first viewing the extra saturation and detail has a wow factor, but on subsequent viewings the oversaturated and overly contrasty scenes start to grate on the eye. Slightly overemphasized effects can be the same.
i couldn't agree more.
Originally posted by: tellan
my only nit really is the death star approach. I'd trim it down, right down. reasons

I know this is the big imperial intro for ANH but by borrowing the empire SD's so heavily, even changing the background means there is familiar shot repetition.

I like the opening. the ESB SD flipped. but I would cut down on the number of SD's around the DS and I would even probably eliminate the big background planet. just have the DS in space. the star destroyer is giving you your size for reference.

Doing an edit like this it is going to be impossible to avoid some form of shot repetition because i have to use existing shots to create my effects. That Death Star sequence only uses the flip shot and then the final approaching stardestroyer from ESB so i wouldn't say that its heavy usage. All of the other SD's are stills of model shots not used in the films and 1 still shot from ROTJ. If you look at the OT there are already a few fimiliar shot repetitions. The sequence where the rebel fleet is about to go to hyperspace in ROTJ, the falcon does the same swoop pass towards the camera that it did in the asteroid field in ESB just in the opposite direction, The opening of Jedi mirrors the opening of ANH and even in the Death Star 2 battle they use an X-Wing explosion from ANH trench run, so things like this don't bother me too much. lol Also the number of stardestroyers will be staying the same in the final render. This is the lead up to the conference scene so i feel that there would be a few stardestroyers there because the officers have been summoned to this meeeting. You will see in the final edit that the next shot we see of the death star has only 1 stardestroyer and then when the death star leaves orbit and heads for Aldreaan then it is alone.
Originally posted by: Slumberland

The only thing I don't really buy is in the desert/sandcrawler scenes, with the sky replacement. The composite borders look far too blurry to be realistic. Is that just a feathering setting that can be backed off of a little bit?

I guess i was rushing getting the clips out for the guys who donated and after you mentioned it i noticed that i have used older footage and not my final effects shot. The matte was too blurry on that one but i knocked the feathering down to give it a stronger and more natural edge. So the shot you see on that vid is not the finished shot.

The colour correction is proving to be a total headache to do. Some shots are so messed up that its almost impossible to do anything with them to look as they should. The blue tint to these films has been added for one reason and one reason only.. To help mask the disaster that the restoration work has actually done to the colours in this film, and not the pathetic excuse that has come from lucasfilm. Creative decision my ass. lol. hell of a lot of the shots look like the old B&W movies that have been recoloured. There just seems to be no gradient in the tones.
Trying to match colour balance between shots is impossible so i can only do the best i can so please don't expect miracles. Bens cloak, for instance, in the duel scnes changes colour all the time and trying to match that it from shot to shot is impossible because doing so knocks all the other colours off and looks horrible. So i can't really say that this edit will have colour correction, more colour interpretation. Its never going to look the way we all remember it unless Lucasfilm do it themselves and if i attempt to do this i would have to create so many masks for each colour section, of each shot, that this release probably would never see the light of day until the 40th anniversary.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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Originally posted by: Laserman
Originally posted by: darthbeej
I think the animation Adywan has done for the cantina scene is great as it is! Rememeber they are ALIENS so may not move exactly like humans! Some movement/manipulation is better than no movement/rubber masks.


Yep they are aliens, so you have a free run with them blinking sideways, or eating through their ears etc. and it seems unlikely that aliens would have faces that have no movement at all (as in the original trilogy), but seems equally unlikely that certain races would be chronic over actors. ..........


Gungans
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Your'e a genius, Adywan. This is all fascinating. I never liked the Special Editions, but this is something else entirely.

All I had to say! Keep up the incredible work

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

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Originally posted by: Trooperman
Your'e a genius, Adywan. This is all fascinating. I never liked the Special Editions, but this is something else entirely.

All I had to say! Keep up the incredible work



I second that wholeheartedly.
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Adywan this is mindblowing...... just GREAT!
Do, or do not. There is no try.
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Originally posted by: musicman
Oh, man, I'm getting jealous. I'm only getting audio on that clip you posted. Any ideas for a solution?

The project looks very cool, though. I look forward to seeing more on it.


make sure you have the latest xvid codec installed. This is the one i use:

koepi xvid codec.

I also use VLC Media player because this seesm to play most things. Hope this helps

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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I also use VLC Media player because this seems to play most things. Hope this helps


If I remember correctly, you don't the Xvid codec if you use VLC. It does its own internal decoding.

DE
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Originally posted by: Darth Editous
I also use VLC Media player because this seems to play most things. Hope this helps


If I remember correctly, you don't the Xvid codec if you use VLC. It does its own internal decoding.

DE


Exactly. VLC uses its own codecs.
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Originally posted by: tweaker
Originally posted by: Darth Editous
I also use VLC Media player because this seems to play most things. Hope this helps


If I remember correctly, you don't the Xvid codec if you use VLC. It does its own internal decoding.

DE


Exactly. VLC uses its own codecs.


yeh, VLC will play most xvid without the codec, but i know that some people don't like to use VLC as their media player so thats why i pointed him to codec.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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Adywan,

Would you consider re-editing the Death Star chasm scene so that it appears Luke throws the grappling hook twice, missing the first time?

I assume you are familiar with this SW urban legend. If not, you can read about it in the my memory isn't that bad, is it? thread.

I just think this would be really cool to see. Maybe you could do it as one of your "extras" that won't be included in the actual movie.

With some clever editing of existing footage, you could probably pull this off. The only shot you don't have is the hook missing and bouncing off. Based on some of the other things you've pulled off, I wonder if you could "make" that shot.

In any case, keep up the excellent work!

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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Originally posted by: Erikstormtrooper
Adywan,

Would you consider re-editing the Death Star chasm scene so that it appears Luke throws the grappling hook twice, missing the first time?

I assume you are familiar with this SW urban legend. If not, you can read about it in the my memory isn't that bad, is it? thread.

I just think this would be really cool to see. Maybe you could do it as one of your "extras" that won't be included in the actual movie.

With some clever editing of existing footage, you could probably pull this off. The only shot you don't have is the hook missing and bouncing off. Based on some of the other things you've pulled off, I wonder if you could "make" that shot.

In any case, keep up the excellent work!
BLOODY HELL PLEASE DON'T. Maybe as a easter egg or something....

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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that would really make the myth/possibility of that scene existing even more muddied.

FE<3OT

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I think it's a pointless task asking for it to be created just for the sake of giving life to the myth, if it was of merit then maybe, however it would just be a waste of adywan's time.
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I'd only want to see it if there could also be a trombone making some kind of wha-whaaahh noise before the audience laugh-track kicked in.
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Originally posted by: vbangle
Originally posted by: Erikstormtrooper
Adywan,
Would you consider re-editing the Death Star chasm scene so that it appears Luke throws the grappling hook twice, missing the first time?
I assume you are familiar with this SW urban legend. If not, you can read about it in the my memory isn't that bad, is it? thread.
I just think this would be really cool to see. Maybe you could do it as one of your "extras" that won't be included in the actual movie.
With some clever editing of existing footage, you could probably pull this off. The only shot you don't have is the hook missing and bouncing off. Based on some of the other things you've pulled off, I wonder if you could "make" that shot.

this was something that i was thinking of adding into the movie when everything was just in the initial planning stages but was scrapped before i started any work on it. So this won't be appearing in the final edit.

I've finally finished the colour correction. But please don't expect it to be perfect. The colour is so bad on the DVDs that some shots are impossible to fix so i've had to settle for a good balance in those shots, but they're still an improvement from what they were originally. God knows what they have done to the film but in a lot of the trench run cockpit shots the cockpits are black and white with only colour appearing in the pilot. This has lead me to think that i was right all along about the new "blue cast" on the dvds. There is no way that this was a creative decision but put there to mask the colour problems with the DVD's. I've just done a quick MPEg rendering of the complete movie and i have to say i'm very pleased with the result when viewed on my 32" LCD TV. I played the original dvd side by side using the picture in picture function of my TV (having to stop and start to resync because of the extra footage that i have already added) and i don't think i could ever watch the mess that is the 2004 dvds again. Like i said, my colour correction isn't perfect but its a huge step up from the DVDs. i'll post a clip later so you can see just how nice it is looking now.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

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