Bingowings said:

Further to my previous post, is there anything that can be done to matte paintings like the one I mentioned (other than time consuming CGI replacements)? I'm not sure if that one and the similar one in ROTJ look so bad because of the painting or whether is just the way it was composited with the live action footage (other paintings work beautifully throughout the saga). Viewing that particular scene again I'm not even sure if the scene is essential and perhaps the easiest clean up is just to remove it alltogether.

I'm also divided as to whether Empire would be better starting with the Star Destroyer slowly crawling overhead as in ANH and ROTJ (only not getting cut off as in Jedi) or leaving it as it is.

The Star Destroyer does look a bit lost and lonely in that opening shot.

Another possible option would roll down from the scroll to reveal the surface of Hoth and then see the Star Destroyer jump into the system (possibly with a few back up ships) in one shot rather than just have the poor dear hanging there.

I see no problem with the stardestroyer at the beginning. It is, after all, deploying several probe droids. I think that the Empire would scatter the Stardestroyers throughout the galaxy to give the widest search range for the probes, so it would be on its own.It also wouldn't make sense having the stardestroyer jump out of hyperspace above Hoth at the beginning because the rebels would have been alerted immediately to the imperials presence which would contradict most of the first part of the movie

I am going to be trying to do something with all the matte paintings in the movie. The main problem with the live action with the paintings is because using old bluescreen technology, the mate edges are very harsh and this makes any movement in front of the painting looks strange because any of the motion blur edges are gone.