My name is Keith and I've been browsing and participating a tiny bit in the forums. I semi-recently (last year?) got the new 2006 release of the dvds with the "bonus" disk of the original theatrical trilogy. or as some people call it on here the "Original Uncut Trilogy". And I would like to build my own "special edition" version of the trilogy.
I would like help on doing this in the form of tips, tutorials, links to threads here, and links to threads in the forum for help. So first I will outline my goals for this project, and then I will ask for help. Again I am not asking for people to join my project or anything like that, I simply mean I just want some tips, general links, tutorials, books or whatever you can link me to to accomplish my goals.
Goal #1: To get the best copy of the movies I can based on the dvds of the original star wars trilogy.
Goal #2: To make my own "special edition" version (will elaborate what I mean below)
Goal #3: To make the letterbox movies into anamorphic widescreen dvd, and convert the original 2.0 dolby into 5.1 enhanced mix.
Okay so for Goal #1 - To get the best copy of the movies I can based on the dvds of the original star wars trilogy. -- Essentially what the x0 project is doing with their laserdisc versions. I want to make sure that all the contrast is correct, (stuff like missing stars rediscovered as in one of x0 projects articles), color corrected, and that "ghosting" removed as well as getting rid of the film specs like scratches, dust particles, etc... Basically getting the best quality video I can after messing with the video. Before I can do anythiing else to it I need to be able to make the best copy of the movies I can.
Okay for Goal #2 - To make my own "special edition" version -- Basically here I want to correct things that I thought were problems in the movies, effect wise. I would like to make sure the titles and scroll are stable and not "wobbly" (like when film registration slips a bit)... I want to remove garbage mattes, and correct stuff like the fact that the contrast or brightness level between bluescreen elements and backgrounds are different. I even wouldn't mind coloring "Black artoo" blue. I know it's not original but it's my special edition version. They couldn't do blue because of the blue screen, and now it can be corrected. Anything like semi-transparent matting, matte paintings that don't quite match the live action elements, lightsaber consistancy, even turning on and off the light saber in ANH could be fixed by animation and a little morphing between frames. Basically everything to me that looked like it needed some fix up for effects I want to fix. Obviously i don't want to add any cg, because for one, I can't do cg, for another it wouldn't really be the originals would it?
Finally for Goal #3 - To make the letterbox movies into anamorphic widescreen dvd, and convert the original 2.0 dolby into 5.1 enhanced mix. -- Firstly I know there is a tutorial here that has tips on converting from letterbox into anamorphic widescreen. I realize it involves resizing the width to fit into 720, and cropping or completely redoing the black bars on top and bottom (as the widescreen is even wider than a 16:9 aspect ratio). Also a note about the sound. When I listened to the sound on the dvd's I preferred it to the sound on the "special special editions" or the 2004 dvd versions. Mostly because they seem to remix everything, and it all just sounds slightly different. I would like to take the original dolby surround (or stereo or whatever) and build a 5.1 enhanced mix. This is perhaps the hardest of all, and to some purists the most contreversial. I would just like to make sure there's more bass when I need it, and better stereo seperation. If this can't be done, well i won't do it then.
In any case if you've read this far (I thank those of you who did) I would like some help on how to do this stuff. I would like links to tutorials, maybe actual print books, links to threads in this forum, any tips you can give to do this. Basically I need help in accomplishing these goals. Could any of you help me out? (I don't mean actually doing work for my project, i just meant tips, advice, etc).
Thank you for your time,
sincerely Keith Weatherby II aka Uhfgood