Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 35

If AMC's projectors will all be 4K then we'll have no problem. No new movie is mastered at a higher resolution than 4K unless it's for something like IMAX.

SilverWook said:

The sad fact is trained professional projectionists are a vanishing breed. I've seen the quality of presentations go way downhill the past two decades. The guy working the snack bar is often the one who turns the projectors on.

The last time I had to complain about focus issues, it took three trips before anything was done and half the movie was over. Sad thing is, I was the only one who got off my ass to complain!

Seeing Empire all those years ago in 70mm six track Dolby will always be a cherished memory for me. I really need to see 2001 on the big screen, and maybe a Cinerama film before I die.

I think most people don't like to complain, or feel awkward doing so. Just human nature. But you do sit there wondering to yourself, Doesn't this bother anyone else? And there are probably dozens thinking the same thing.

I went to see 2001 at a special screening at a local arthouse theater about ten years ago, which was a very good experience and it looked spectacular on a big screen (complete with Intermission, like the old days where there was a break to visit the candy bar). I wish more older movies would get regular screenings, since I'm sure many people would love to see classic films at the cinema.

Yeah I don't buy any of that. Digital cinema was the biggest scam in the world back in the early 2000s, peddled by companies looking to sell something ridiculously expensive and with built-in obscelecence, and it was embraced by people so eager to have "the wave of the future." I saw lots of people saying it looked great. They had no clue. Its like Lucas saying how superior his shitty Cinealta camera was. Really, that low-res camera with no depth of field, no dynamic range, hot spots blowing out all over, bad gradient, no black information, dark levels breaking up, cables out the ass, no wireless transmission, bad balance for camera operators, etc. Those cameras were news cameras too, they weren't made or intended to be used for motion pictures.

Don't be fooled, all that hype was exactly that. These days, it's a different picture, it would be unfair to use technology from 1999 to judge the medium today. Today most of the problems are gone or on their way to being gone, so I don't hold anything against people wanting to shoot digitally, but in 1999 come on. I saw digital projection back then and yes, it was clear and there were no splice and the colours were bright--this is the exact sort of stuff that fools everyone into falling in love with high-def. "It's so pretty!" They don't notice the noise, the moire, the aliasing, the tack-like artificial sharpening, the artifacts, the poor resolution, the picture breakup, etc, on the 1999 projection because its bright and shiny.

@ Harmy:

My understanding is that theatrical projection is uncompressed, but the files have to be converted in format, which is a lossy process. So you aren't seeing what it would look like directly from the D.I. Obviously it would have to be downconverted as well if it was from a film scan D.I. or a higher-than-1080 video shoot.

$75,000 for that array of 20, 18 gig hard disks? How times have changed...

IMAX and 70mm are technically the same thing.  IMAX is just 70mm film run horizontally instead of vertically, which gives it a larger frame.

And I agree that digital looks lifeless compared to film.  I don't care that most films go through a 4K DI before being printed back to film, I still want to see it on film.  I've yet to see a digital projection that didn't leave me feeling cold after it was over.

"A 1080p/24 transfer of the OUT will look better than what anyone saw in the theatres in 1977,78,79,81,82."

This is probably true, but it does depend on what the source is. For instance, due to the fading, grain and dirt levels of the 1985 IP, I would say 1977 theatrical prints looked much better than that, and the 1985 IP is likely to be the source of a future transfer unless they do a restoration from the negatives. I would almost say the surviving Technicolor prints would be the best source other than going to the negs or separation masters.

Chainsaw Ash: You are probably correct about 70mm preserving more detail because of the larger negative size. But then, there is at least one more extra generation due to the blow up, if I am not mistaken, which is why 70mm was often very grainy. I haven't seen enough 70mm to do a side by side comparison, but your logic makes sense. Which was why I found your statement confusing:

"Basically, I want to see it as close to the way it was shot as possible.  Which is why I don't see films in IMAX unless, like The Dark Knight, at least part of the film was shot on IMAX."

Wouldn't this then lead you to swear off 70mm for distorting the presentation method of Star Wars then? If you are open to 70mm, then you should be open to IMAX, is what I was getting at. 35mm films blown up to IMAX usually hold up, the same way 35mm films blown up to 70mm generally did and were considered premium releases.

I'm against seeing non-IMAX films in IMAX, because the two times I did so, the film was cropped to fit in the IMAX frame.  (One was Attack of the Clones, the other was Apollo 13.)  Since then, I haven't seen any non-IMAX film in an IMAX theater.

The cropping of the Star Wars movies to 70mm is the difference between 2.39:1 and 2.2:1, which isn't that noticeable.

I'd much prefer a preservation of Star Wars to be from the o-neg, or the first IP struck from said o-neg.  If neither of those can be used for whatever reason, then a 70mm print would be next in line.

SilverWook said:

The sad fact is trained professional projectionists are a vanishing breed. I've seen the quality of presentations go way downhill the past two decades. The guy working the snack bar is often the one who turns the projectors on.

The last time I had to complain about focus issues, it took three trips before anything was done and half the movie was over. Sad thing is, I was the only one who got off my ass to complain!

Two horror stories from different eras: I saw Star Trek 6 opening night, and the print already had a vertical scratch on the right side of the frame for the whole movie.

I saw the special theatrical screening of the remastered Star Trek episode "The Menagerie" a few years back. That was being broadcast (via satellite?) into participating theaters. Some dumbass had the projection system set at SD resolution! By the time I figured it out, it was too late to complain, alas. I think we could make an entire thread recalling the botched screenings we've all seen! ;)

Some film buffs have taken to calling digital IMAX "LieMAX" because it isn't film, but I've been pretty impressed with my local venue so far. I do think it's sad a lot of people will never see a true 70mm presentation though. Seeing Empire all those years ago in 70mm six track Dolby will always be a cherished memory for me. I really need to see 2001 on the big screen, and maybe a Cinerama film before I die.

 I don't know where you live, but sadly that's pretty much the norm in Eastern Europe. Ironically, the best projection I've been to over the past decade was in a cinema that plays only old, classical prints (not sure about the exact term in English), on a theatrical 1980 TESB print. I'm not sure what bothered me more, that the image quality was far superior to the "best" modern local cinema, including digital, or that my friends complained about it being not CGI enough.

What I miss most about film tape is the grain. I even use the grain effect in games that allow it (Mass Effect, for example). Fine quality grain only adds life and character to the movie. New digital pristine and flat movies I can barely stand, animation excluded.

Obviously, the negatives would be the best source.  But given all the SE crap and the possibility that they may no longer conform to their original edits, and that the colour timing would have to be redone, it would also involve rather more work to put back together again, and every extra step is just one more potential place for LFL to screw things up.  They don't exactly have a good track record, after all.  So it may well be that a more 'secure' result would come from scanning interpositives or prints that already represent a complete depiction of the original films, even if the quality isn't as good.

Given Lucas' comments, I get the impression that if he ever did consent to restore them, it would be from separate sources than his SE's, which is good because then the two can remain quite separate, but also bad because they could half-ass it and claim it was the best they could do.

It seems to me that an ideal source would be whatever they used to transfer the first shot of the GOUT, with the pre-ANH crawl and the Star Destroyer flyby.  Aside from being of non-anamorphic resolution, it looks quite good.  Frankly, I'm amazed that they actually went to the trouble of scanning that shot and putting it in at all.  I wonder what kind of source it came from . . .

It was probably the same source they used for Empire of Dreams, which contains clips of the 1977 crawl and several pre-SE scenes in quality much better than the GOUT.

Wouldn't the separation masters be the thing they would be least able to screw up? (plus, what good are they if not to be used in exactly this situation)

I was thinking more in terms of the fact that it's something they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel for, because other restorations have used them (Spartacus did, since the negative was useless, and it yielded really great results, good enough to create a new source for 70mm prints. And those seps weren't even done right apparently)