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Does Re-Mastering EVER make a production better?

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As well as a Star Wars fan, I am also a hugly devoted fan to the British Sit-Com 'Red Dwarf'. In 1997 Grant Naylor Productions and the BBC took the first three seasons of Red Dwarf and remastered them in a very similar way to how they remastered Star Wars. We got new CGI shots instead of the original mdodel shots of space craft and stations, and we got pointless new sound effects. Like the remastering of Star Wars, it turned out to be very unpopular among the faithfull.

I'm just wondering really, why does anyone remaster thier past work? Surely it only serves to destroy the snapshot they have created in time and just cheapen it to modern day standards. It makes no sense. Star Wars is wonderful because it shows us and reminds us of how revolutionary those special effects were int he 70's and 80's. To replace them with CG to bring them 'up-to-date' (which, incidently, will eb out of date soon enough) totaly ruins the legacy. As does denying the fans of the original versions, as George Lucas seems to be doing.

Now, unlike Star Wars, Red Dwarf has recently started to recieve DVD releases and, to the utter joy of myself and other fans, they have used the orignal versions. I really don't think that George Lucas understand just what an impact he would make by releasing his versions as orignally intended. All it takes is some injection of money to clean up the prints again, transfer it to DV and it will live forever.

I realise i may have just repeating many things already said in this forum but, as a newbie, i just wanted to tell you my stand point on the whole matter and also have an excuse to talk about Red Dwarf. I will leave on this thought though. The greatest enemy to a great film or TV show is an overly critical creator. And that is sadly what is happeneing with Star Wars.
"My flappy coat is augmented"
Cappsy
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It all depends on how you define remaster. In the music industry, remastering is done because older magnetic tape is not very stable, so it is a question of transferring to a new medium and (at the same time) getting as much information as you possibly can out of the original master. With the remastering of a film or a TV series, it can be done without substantially altering the original work, but someone in the chain of command often makes the myopic decision to "redo" the special effects and add in sound effects, arguing that current audiences are "too sophisticated" to accept the old version. Ironically, this results in a dumbing-down of the original in many cases. There are only two cases in which I found such tinkering to be justified: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Ghostbusters. In both cases, the tinkering was done to correct errors made at the time of release (unfinished special effects for both and with ST:TMP, a re-edit because the booking date for the film resulted in a rush job on the editing).

Princess Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han Solo: I'm a nice man.

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Well the Red Dwarf Re-Mastering was done like the Star Wars Special Editions but with 100th of the budget. Result: total tripe.
"My flappy coat is augmented"
Cappsy
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Gundark Hunter I think re-mastering the star wars trilogy for dvd will make the flims only better. I will give some exsamples of re-mastering first superman: the movie it's flim as the 1978 release but with few scenes they but back in the movie and a new sound mix and the other star trek tmp in that movie they re did some special effects because most of them where unfinshed at the time the movie was made back in 1979.
Kenneth Kraly Jr.