Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 36

I believe they used a separation master for The Wizard of Oz, too, and that looks pretty fantastic.

hairy_hen said:

... 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 . . .

I think we had a rather lengthy and heated discussion about this when the GOUT came out in 06.  And everyone survived!

ChainsawAsh I agree with on 1080p 240hz or 120hz displays I don't like them either the quallity on those displays compared to 60hz is owfull. I much more perfer a 1080p 60hz display for LCD and 600Hz for plasmia HDTV's.

ChainsawAsh said:

I believe they used a separation master for The Wizard of Oz, too, and that looks pretty fantastic.

 Wizard of Oz was shot in 3-strip Technicolor and was restored using the 3-strip original negatives. It is essentially the same technology as the 3-strip separation masters for Star Wars, except this is how the negative to Wizard of Oz was shot rather than the duplicate negative for Star Wars.

Ah, I see.  I thought that may have been the case, but I wasn't entirely sure.

hairy_hen raises an interesting question:

What exactly was the source for the '77 crawl in the GOUT?

No one knows. It looks like a new transfer.

Possibilities:

-1977 negatives. IMO doesn't look this good though.

-1977 separation masters. I doubt they would scan and composite three different film pieces.

-1977 print masters. Possibly, if they were stored correctly. Would explain the gate weave too, due to shrinking.

-1977 IP. My impression was that these are worn to bits, and the start of the film tends to be more worn due to handling. But could be a possibility.

-1977 Technicolor prints. Another possibility, but IMO unlikely simply because this was something Lucas had printed for himself and kept in his home.

I am guessing they just pulled a print master out of an archive. But who the hell knows. I mean, if they took the original negative and did a standard-def scan who is to say that it wouldn't look similar to that? Where and most importantly when this piece came from has always been a bit of a mystery to me. The crawl appeared in Empire of Dreams but it is clearly a separate source of some sort. Maybe they re-compressed that original scan for the doc, but the footage found there does look like it is a totally different source and/or scan, however, it really is a big coincidence that the first time this was ever telecined was for that doc and now here all of a sudden for a release that only had to use existing materials it was included. So who knows.

zombie84 said:

-1977 IP. My impression was that these are worn to bits, and the start of the film tends to be more worn due to handling. But could be a possibility.

This one is intriguing. They've always implied they were hopelessly trashed, a victim of success. But why would they be any worse off than other hit movies of the era? Ultimately, Grease and Saturday Night Fever, etc. played just as wide and it's not like Fox was using monkeys to handle it.

Wasn't it the poor DeLuxe film stock of the time that contributed to the excessive deterioration of the negative in later years? At least that's my understanding of things.

Baronlando said:

zombie84 said:

-1977 IP. My impression was that these are worn to bits, and the start of the film tends to be more worn due to handling. But could be a possibility.

This one is intriguing. They've always implied they were hopelessly trashed, a victim of success. But why would they be any worse off than other hit movies of the era? Ultimately, Grease and Saturday Night Fever, etc. played just as wide and it's not like Fox was using monkeys to handle it.

 I doubt the original IPs to those film would be a preferrable source to use as well.

Truth is, the original crawl seen in the GOUT could be from anywhere. Print master, IP, O-neg. I don't know. I mean, if you think about it they have all the material there and its not any harder to scan the original negative section than it would be to scan a print master. But you don't want to handle the negative unnecessarily, so for a crappy bonus video that low quality to begin with my money is on some kind of theatrical print or original IP. What I am curious is when this was done. Was it new or did they pull the video transfer that was done for Empire of Dreams? If its the latter, why does the transfer on EOD look completely different. Or was this done neither for EOD nor this release but was catalogued by LFL at some other time? It's a bit mysterious.

I found that old thread on the original crawl, complete with discussion of specks of dirt.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-1977-Crawl/topic/6555/page/1/

zombie84 said:

l. But you don't want to handle the negative unnecessarily, so for a crappy bonus video that low quality to begin with my money is on some kind of theatrical print or original IP. What I am curious is when this was done.

I believe they said that was separate from the documnentary efforts for 2004. Supposedly, Jim Ward (or someone on his behalf), actually did look for something decent to use in 2006 and found that crawl, whatever it is. And then somebody made the decision to just stop there.

(one more aside about the Saturday Night Fever thing, just to note that movie has somehow been quietly released over and over without any multimillion dollar lowry-style restoration, something which is supposedly impossible according to LFL, for a 1977 blockbuster with multiple releases and versions)

I was discussing this with my girlfriend yesterday and she raised the notion that they may have at first intended to do real scans for the whole thing, but that Lucas then cheaped out and opted for the quick and easy path.  Maybe he didn't see a benefit to doing a new transfer without a full restoration (he implied this when talking about the Bluray), maybe he just wanted it out and done with to try to shut up the 'whiners' like us, maybe he deliberately wanted a low quality version that would look worse compared to the SE, who knows.  It's possible they'd already started scanning the film and then had to stop, but that somebody dedicated enough managed to convince him to include it to represent the theatrical release.  Or it could be that they only ever scanned that one shot and there was no intention of doing more.

Regardless, it's clear it's a separate transfer than the Empire of Dreams footage, and that whatever they used was in decent shape.  Enough to make a watchable Bluray?  Almost certainly, though who knows if the rest of the movie (let alone the other two) is in as good a condition.

Just thought you guys might like to know, my dad just sat beside John Lowry on a 20 minute flight. He started talking to him about restorations, and Mr. Lowry told him that the restoration for The Abyss is already done and in the can. He also had a few other tidbits of info about other projects:

Apparently they're working on the Titanic restoration/3d-izing at the moment and they say it looks phenomenal. James Cameron has been heavily involved in this, even go so far as to tell them what sort of depth of field to use on different parts of the image during some scenes. Apparently it looks so good that it's hard to tell it wasn't shot in 3d in the first place.

He also mentioned that they're working with the Star Wars movies again, and have gone back to the originals for the groundwork. This is probably for the 3d versions (I would assume the masters for use with the Blu-Ray set are finished already). He implied that this restoration means they will have restored versions of the theatrical Star Wars movies, but that they have had no indication from Lucas that the movies are in the pipeline for release in their theatrical versions.

Some more rumors suggest that the blu-ray will be from the 2004 1080p master, due to time and cost issues... I doubt it, it's not even a 2k master for crissake

budwhite quoted:

Just thought you guys might like to know, my dad just sat beside John Lowry on a 20 minute flight. He started talking to him about restorations, and Mr. Lowry told him that the restoration for The Abyss is already done and in the can. He also had a few other tidbits of info about other projects:

Apparently they're working on the Titanic restoration/3d-izing at the moment and they say it looks phenomenal. James Cameron has been heavily involved in this, even go so far as to tell them what sort of depth of field to use on different parts of the image during some scenes. Apparently it looks so good that it's hard to tell it wasn't shot in 3d in the first place.

A 3D sideshow is such a respectful way to treat a tragedy.

A guy on avsforum wrote that.

It's besides the point. LFL is always going to half-ass the BD and 3d releases of SW, like everything since 2004, while fans of the OOT are going to be still watching the GOUT 10 years from now. And the GOUT was just a ploy to undercut bootlegging.  

The ironic thing: they're going to think the BD/3d upgrades are better than they really are, just like the 04 DVDs.

The blu-ray release is going to be good. It will be a good release and the picture and audio quallity be better than in 2004. Some don't belive that but it will be. Until we see the screen shots from LFL we will not know.

I agree skyjedi2005

If you agree that the Blu-Ray will be sourced from the 2004 masters, you admit that it will have the same flaws the 2004 masters had (crushed blacks, bad color, etc).

Glad to see you're finally admitting the truth.

No I do think the blu-ray release will have fixed colors and fixed sound. And they will be new HD Masters. Until we see proof from LFL that they will be fixed we will never know. Understand?