Originally posted by: Marvolo
The Padme picture never had anything wrong with it. Why do humans automaticly associate everything to something on earth? Guess what, not everything is the same as earth. Not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the same color sun. What if the sun in the Geonosis system is a redder light? It would make everything redder. Plus, the sand on Geonosis is suppossed to be redder than sand like is on our beaches. Also, the sky of geonosis is red. This also creates the red tone. The picture of padme is right, because that is how Geonosis looks. It is very red, and is suppossed to be.
Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
I think the color on Phantom Menace looks really good. I actually wasn't that impressed with the color and cinematography on the original films. The lighting looks rather flat, made worse on the 2004 dvd, and the most of the sets look rather drab and dull. Cloud city interior looks like a hospital wing, Jabba's place looks more like a dark cave than a palace. The wall on the Hoth base where 3PO pulls down the wampa sign in a deleted scene looks like molded plastic rather than a cave that was carved through ice. Even Endor doesn't seem that colorful for a forest. I know it's supposed to be a used future look but still so much seems to take place on confining corridors with either white, gray or black walls. I'm not very fond of 70's style and architecture so that might be part of it too.
When I first watched Phantom Menace in '05, I was completely blown away by the varied landscapes and vistas, detailed set design and colors that were very vibrant while still looking natural. The visual effects looked great and I think they still hold up fairly well even today. They just don't have that much resolution but I think after a certain point, trying to add more detail to CG just makes it more obvious because that just brings out the fake texture and unnatural sharpness. Ironically, I think the biggest aspect of where the prequels actually improved on the original films was not visual effects but rather set decoration and design, costumes (especially prosthetics masks) and the minature sets. It's a shame so much of II and III used blue screen.
Anyways...
I decided to try color correcting some screenshots from episode II.
I thought this shot looked pretty good to start. How was the landscape generated (if it was real world, where was it shot?) and how was the house made?
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
I don't think this correction is perfect (part of R2 becomes overexposed) but I think it gives you a good idea.
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
This is probably one of the better examples of the oversaturation that TM was referring to. But if you were to jack up the saturation on the image all the way, you would reveal the problem with the shot. Padme's face will look pretty much the same color as the sand she's lying in. So basically the face of someone and desert sand under broad sunlight is not able to be differentiated by the camera in regard to color. The image is also too far red shifted and fixing that makes Padme's shirt more white. I think I adjusted the contrast/midtones with the shot but not very much. I also desaturated it which was more effective with the other fixes.
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
I think the color on Phantom Menace looks really good. I actually wasn't that impressed with the color and cinematography on the original films. The lighting looks rather flat, made worse on the 2004 dvd, and the most of the sets look rather drab and dull. Cloud city interior looks like a hospital wing, Jabba's place looks more like a dark cave than a palace. The wall on the Hoth base where 3PO pulls down the wampa sign in a deleted scene looks like molded plastic rather than a cave that was carved through ice. Even Endor doesn't seem that colorful for a forest. I know it's supposed to be a used future look but still so much seems to take place on confining corridors with either white, gray or black walls. I'm not very fond of 70's style and architecture so that might be part of it too.
When I first watched Phantom Menace in '05, I was completely blown away by the varied landscapes and vistas, detailed set design and colors that were very vibrant while still looking natural. The visual effects looked great and I think they still hold up fairly well even today. They just don't have that much resolution but I think after a certain point, trying to add more detail to CG just makes it more obvious because that just brings out the fake texture and unnatural sharpness. Ironically, I think the biggest aspect of where the prequels actually improved on the original films was not visual effects but rather set decoration and design, costumes (especially prosthetics masks) and the minature sets. It's a shame so much of II and III used blue screen.
Anyways...
I decided to try color correcting some screenshots from episode II.
I thought this shot looked pretty good to start. How was the landscape generated (if it was real world, where was it shot?) and how was the house made?
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]I don't think this correction is perfect (part of R2 becomes overexposed) but I think it gives you a good idea.
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]This is probably one of the better examples of the oversaturation that TM was referring to. But if you were to jack up the saturation on the image all the way, you would reveal the problem with the shot. Padme's face will look pretty much the same color as the sand she's lying in. So basically the face of someone and desert sand under broad sunlight is not able to be differentiated by the camera in regard to color. The image is also too far red shifted and fixing that makes Padme's shirt more white. I think I adjusted the contrast/midtones with the shot but not very much. I also desaturated it which was more effective with the other fixes.
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL][URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL] The Padme picture never had anything wrong with it. Why do humans automaticly associate everything to something on earth? Guess what, not everything is the same as earth. Not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the same color sun. What if the sun in the Geonosis system is a redder light? It would make everything redder. Plus, the sand on Geonosis is suppossed to be redder than sand like is on our beaches. Also, the sky of geonosis is red. This also creates the red tone. The picture of padme is right, because that is how Geonosis looks. It is very red, and is suppossed to be.
I think the issue is more that even if the sand that they photographed was actually red, it should not have looked THAT red. Also keep in mind that I am trying to do this OT-style as much as I reasonably can, which means that although exotic locations were chosen, they were filmed on Earth and the image was not unnaturally adjusted.
Knightmessenger.. those are some interesting fixes. They are certainly better than the originals. I don't know that they are enough, though.
"I'm not very fond of 70's style..."
Ah, see that's what I was trying to bring to the prequels. The 70's style of the OT movies fit in really well with the "used universe" concept, I thought. You can see this more in Star Wars and Empire than in Jedi, when things got a bit more polished. One of the things I loved about the OT, though, is that it was a combination of Golden Age filmmaking with this 70's grittiness which completely disappeared in the PT.
This is just personal taste really, but I really liked the starkness of the sets and costumes in the OT- I thought it set the mood really well and it still holds up today. Plus they stated many times they weren't trying to show off the sets and costumes- it was simply part of the world. Lucas said back in the 70's that he took a documentary style approach to shooting Star Wars. He didn't try to explain everything, show off sets and whatnot, he just threw you into the action and the story.
I see where you're coming from on some of the sets, but I thought the costumes looked great in the OT and extremely stupid in Ep. I. Amidala's wardrobe, for instance.
Who came up with this stuff? No matter how much editing you do, you can't take that garbage out. This isn't my idea of what Star Wars should have been.
I'm sure I look at this differently than a lot of people, but I have a very distinct "classic" sense of what Star Wars should be and I think that I have created that mood as much as possible with Ep. II. It involved cutting out obviously digital characters, taking out the blatant political correctness, cutting ridiculous dialouge, bringing the music to a much more important level- I think it has become a much classer and more "classic" movie. Obviously it could be so much more if it was written and shot well, but I think that I have it in best possible form (for me, anyway). I'm reluctant to put too much work into Eps. I and III because I don't know if it's possible to do what I've done with this one. In particular, I think the clone war at the end will surprise a lot of people because I really think it feels like Star Wars now.
On the same token, I've done some things editorially that George Lucas probably would not have done even back then. Then again, so did Irvin Kershner.... I definitely left my own mark/style on this movie when I edited it together...
I hope that made some sense
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Audio work is coming along. Still waiting on a couple voice recordings, but that's not a problem right now. Adywan is very busy right now but I just want to thank him again for helping me to complete this at the quality level I wanted it to be at. He's very busy both with this and with his own project and I have the deepest thanks for his willingness to help me out. Thank you Ady
TM