http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyHSvlo4m54
Phil Tippett received the Visual Effects Society award this year, the above video is the feature from the broadcast. Several minutes spent discussing the Walker battle.
Hello, all!
Things have been a bit tumultuous around here lately!
I've been stalking these forums for quite some time now and figured I might as well join already. I don't really have anything to say yet, but I figured I'd introduce myself! =)
Nice little red corvette Captain.
Really sweet interview there none, weird to hear that even back then George's "It'll do" mantra was being sung.
Lucky for us that Phil was an eloquent pleader.
I am sure none of those are vignettes from the lens. It's an intentional lighting and filter effect. It looks great, very atmospheric and painterly. I hope it's not taken away, it would diminish the terrific deliberate composition and lighting of Kersh and Suschitzski's and make everything look boring and flat. It's hard to get vignettes on longer lenses like those anyway, unless they were on a zoom, which they likely weren't, as Kersh shot pretty much all on primes. The "vignetting effect"-look is a deliberate stylization in my opinion, not an error to be erased, it's part of the look of the film.
Adywan, thanks for the Christmas Clip!
Everything is so good, I can't really tell what has been changed (except for the shuttle). (Not that the shuttle doesn't look good.)
You know of the rebellion against the Empire?
@ Vaderios: to echo Bingowings, even though I don't always like or agree with your suggestions, I welcome them nonetheless as I believe sharing ideas can only benefit ESB:R. However, you may want to consider being more diplomatic in how you defend your position in the future; calling something someone else likes "crap" simply because you personally don't like it might not garner a very positive response.
Despite your talent at image editing, please remember that your opinions are just that: opinions. Although you may like such things as extensive use of CGI and high-contrast visuals, others do not. I'm sure others here would agree with me that "newer" does not necessarily mean "better."
“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers
I am reminded of the Spike Milligan's remembrance of a Public Toilet attendant defending his job from ridicule.
"It may be crap to you but it's bread and butter to me"
I think people should speak plainly though and readers should remember what they are reading is the opinion of the writer.
It better to know the true feelings of someone than have it watered down or deferentially filtered to the point where you don't really get the meaning of what is being said.
Naturally it doesn't follow that you have to agree with the opinion but your response will also be an opinion (hopefully and informed one).
Democritus says :
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
But that's just his opinion.
corellian77 said:
However, you may want to consider being more diplomatic in how you defend your position in the future; calling something someone else likes "crap" simply because you personally don't like it might not garner a very positive response.
Sure :)
It might be good, but it looks like crap ;) So we are all satisfied. I dont know who to blame. The 80s compositing? The 2004's crushed blacks? Thanks for your feedback!
-Angel
vaderios said:
It might be good, but it looks like crap ;)
Just to clarify, my 2¢ on the floating X-wing shot: I like the added detail of the trees in the background of your mock-up, but I dislike the brightness of the image. As someone else recently stated, the gloomy feel of Dagobah should not be sacrificed.
As for the shot of the X-wing's wing in the water, I like the elimination of the vignette around the edges, but the altered colours don't work (see previous comment re: maintaining gloominess).
... in my opinion :)
“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers
corellian77 said:
vaderios said:
It might be good, but it looks like crap ;)
Just to clarify, my 2¢ on the floating X-wing shot: I like the added detail of the trees in the background of your mock-up, but I dislike the brightness of the image. As someone else recently stated, the gloomy feel of Dagobah should not be sacrificed.
vaderios said:
what i did there long time ago. it was quick and i remember some members comment the overall brightness. It was quick i didnt got into that so dont bother to judge it again ;)
One thing I really, really prefer about the original matte is the the way that the brightness focuses the eyes on Yoda, R2 & Luke. Being able to see everything, everywhere might not be the best move, compositionally.
adywan said:
Give me the old '80's camerawork any day over this modern crap.
(bad edit, still learning how quotes work on this forum, ady's stuff ends above)
Thanks for the sentiment. The 1970's style has a lot to offer.
It is ironic that Lucas and Speilberg both cut their teeth in the 70's when there were some really spectacular movies made and they are jointly responsible for ushering in some of the worst aspects of modern movies. Fact is that today movies are not made for adults.
adywan said:
All this talk of re-framing and zooming shots to make them "more interesting" is madness and plain pointless.
..And that's why most modern movies are crap. Just overblown music videos. You say that the OT cinematography is boring and needs to have all these weird re-framings etc to make it more like modern day film making, well no thank you.
You over-think something and it can turn into a turd. Sometimes the simplest option is the best.
And sometimes it isn't. Unless you're saying that all the cinematography in Jedi, for example, is fine? And don't you have big changes in mind for Jedi? Why so? Just because Angel said something looked crap (as did I) makes no difference ultimately to what you're doing, which is fixing things you consider to be problems. It's all a matter of personal taste. You say reframing a shot that he considers unsuccessful is pointless, for example, and yet you change the most minor continuity errors, many of which most viewers never even noticed, or cared about if they did. Slightly hypocritical there, Ady.
And this is why i could never work with you on any of my edits and why 99% of your mockups i would never even consider, Vaderios. We have a totally different mind set. I'm also quite surprised at just how defensive you get if someone says they don't like one of your mock-ups. I think it's very disrespectful saying someone else's work is "crap" just because it wasn't done with today's technology. The matte work on the Star wars films was very good . It looked great and very convincing in the cinema first time around. the problem is that some have gotten use to the computer done mattes of today and forget that back then everything had to be painted by hand, with a brush and not on a computer.
Why is it disrespectful to say something, the Dagobah matte in this case, looks crap? Okay, how about "it fails to achieve what it's supposed to". Semantics are irrelevant. You yourself wouldn't be changing anything if you didn't think it was inadequate and you also add things that others might not feel need adding. Also, the reason it looked great in the cinema the first time around is because you were seeing a relatively blurred presentation. With HD displays now, old matte work doesn't stand up. As you know, I love traditional matte painting. I actually prefer it to digital, sincerely. But that Dagobah matte, for one, looks terrible. It's nothing personal, there could be all manner of reasons during production that a shot isn't as successful as it could be, but if it looks crap, it looks crap. You can dress it up in polite language but the bottom line is the same.
In response to Jaitea:
I haven't spoeken to him harshly and it certainly wasn't meant to come across that way. And i didn't say anything about him not being or not wanting him on these boards either. I think you have read something into my comments that weren't there.
Then he wasn't the only one who read something that "wasn't there".
And to show I'm being as balanced in my response as you were, I will agree 100% about Michael Bay. Utter crap, for the most part. I'm sure you don't mind saying his work is modern crap. Oh wait, you already did.
:-)
Umm, wow. :(
My only "suggestion" about the scene is that the X-wing still needs to be dripping on it's journey to the shore. Hopefully that, if it can be done believeably, will help the model and background plate look more like they both exist in the same space.
I mention that also Kenobius, a couple of pages back. That would be a very tricky detail to add, without having to recomposite a digital X-wing, or film a model with water dripping from it. I actually messed around with that idea on my maya, but I gave up pretty quick on it because I could not get the lighting on my X-wing model to match the lighting on the one in the movie. The X-wing in the movie has a different lighting scheme apart from the matte, and live action set.
Anyway, I'm pretty content with how it already looks.
Venerable member of the “Red Eye” Knights
Damn. I just wrote up a whole reply to many of the questions since the Yoda clip and this bloody netbook crashed just as i was about to post it. I give up
Lol, just write it out on a note pad, then copy and paste. That way, if your note book crashes again, you wont loose any of your work.
I would like to see the answers to some of those questions Ady.
Venerable member of the “Red Eye” Knights
Keep in mind that the overall image probably would be this bright, if it is to be consistent with the previous close-up shots of Luke doing the handstand. It seems to be around noonish, as the area Luke and Yoda were/are located was/is pretty well lit (during the training sequence before Luke fell over) - which means you can't have a dark and gloomy X-wing shot if the previous shots were brighter (unless you darkened them to match).
Compositionally I can understand the brightness concern, being that you don't want Luke, Yoda or even R2 to get lost in the background (though that doesn't seem to be too much of an issue here, at least for me, as I can still clearly see all 3).
Here is a slightly modified version; I burned in some of the environmental elements around Yoda, Luke and R2 to help them stand out, to show a gradual "lightening" of the environmental vegetation as you go up (to show the effects of the sunlight being drowned out the deeper and lower you go).
... okay, it's not that much different... I think the main thing is making sure the X-wing stands out, as well as syncing the lighting between most of the shots as best as possible (you don't want to go from fairly well-lit to gloomy and then well-lit again).
The main idea is that you can replace the background with something with more appropriate detail (not just simply more detail, but something that looks more natural and blends in with the set Mark Hamill is on) and then adjust the lighting to the appropriate light or dark levels.
Another note: nothing big again, but either when Luke is trying to lift up the X-wing or any other shot, will there be any implication of the path the X-wing took to crash into the shore? As it stands, the X-wing would have travelled through some majorly thick trees to crash where it is (which would have killed Luke), short of him crashing straight down in a nose dive.
“You people must realize that the public owns you for life, and when you’re dead, you’ll all be in commercials dancing with vacuum cleaners.”
– Homer Simpson
Monroville said:
Another note: nothing big again, but either when Luke is trying to lift up the X-wing or any other shot, will there be any implication of the path the X-wing took to crash into the shore? As it stands, the X-wing would have travelled through some majorly thick trees to crash where it is (which would have killed Luke), short of him crashing straight down in a nose dive.
Yes yes! I remember that.
Old mockups (dont judge :P) the light streak is too intense maybe but since luke was going down the clouds were pretty bright.
Generaly the original matte and the mockup is wrong because the X wing is in the wrong angle. I think ady mentioned that he will fix that.
-Angel
I like my Dagobah gloomy. I like vignettes and I like mattes. I don't mind if they look like they are painted. Sometimes I like them BECAUSE they look like paintings. Great paintings.
That's not to say I don't like Adys changes. I loved ANH:R and I am excited about all the changes in ESB:R. I just wanted to say that I have a love of the old fashioned arts of movie making.
DarthJarJar said:
I like my Dagobah gloomy. I like vignettes and I like mattes. I don't mind if they look like they are painted. Sometimes I like them BECAUSE they look like paintings. Great paintings.
That's not to say I don't like Adys changes. I loved ANH:R and I am excited about all the changes in ESB:R. I just wanted to say that I have a love of the old fashioned arts of movie making.
Ady released a pre SE version of ESB ;) Its full of the stuff you like in the best quality available. You can check it ;) There you will find "your dagobah"
-Angel
Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here
Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here
adywan said:
Damn. I just wrote up a whole reply to many of the questions since the Yoda clip and this bloody netbook crashed just as i was about to post it. I give up
Ehm... Pen and pencil and paper? :D
Handzzz said:
adywan said:
Damn. I just wrote up a whole reply to many of the questions since the Yoda clip and this bloody netbook crashed just as i was about to post it. I give up
Ehm... Pen and pencil and paper? :D
OT Forum_; FanEdit.org:_ Radi0n FanEdit Forum: Kal-El
tehPARADOX**Galen_Marek_True_Jedi **(I know… <span style=“padding: 0px; margin: 0px; text-decoration: underline;”>don’t ask</span>)
My Man of Tomorrow (Superman Returns) Fan Edit (FanEdit forum link)
_
_
Lemonstein said:
Also, the reason it looked great in the cinema the first time around is because you were seeing a relatively blurred presentation. With HD displays now, old matte work doesn't stand up.
Sorry but that is complete and utter nonsense, if you saw a 70mm presentation of ESB in 1980, it would have been sharper and more detailed than 1080p.
