msycamore said:
hairy_hen said:
Thanks for pointing out the alteration to the first lightsaber scene, msycamore. I too noticed that quite a while ago, and it bothered me because there was something not right about it. Obviously the old transfers are of rubbishy quality, but you can still see the difference even there; the Technicolor print, of course, is by far the best representation. The blade looks so well made and natural in that version, while the SE is flat and sharp and strange and stupid in comparison.
Thanks for noticing what I pointed out. ;) I thought I was alone there for a while. :)
zombie84 said:
Also, the Falcon saber--in that one wide shot--was always green-cast. The sabers were never consistent, and in ANH Vader's alternated between red, pink and orange. The problem is that this was very, very mild in the original version, so you never noticed it, while in the SE they jacked the colouring on the sabers waaaay up, and then did all sorts of other colour manipulation which just exaggerated this further. As a result, it's not just a mild shift in the colour cast, like in the original, it's outright full-on re-colouring.
Lukes' lightsaber was always blue in the original film, the same goes for Obi-Wans', it could go from a more saturated blue to a more light washed out blue depending on different shots and lightning but it was never green-cast as far as I can see. Where do you get this from? You can clearly see that it is blue in the bootleg telecine for example, even with its wonky quality, also in many older transfers and documentaries where the contrast levels were much better than later video releases.
How the recomposited saber in the Falcons two wide shots turned green in one of the shots in 2004 is no miracle, as we all know the same kind of color-screwups are all over the place. One example is when Vader approaches Obi-Wan, the green lights on his belt goes from the correct green to blue and back to green again, another is Ben's purple saber and so on. I just find it hard to believe that the 2004 DVD have magically revealed those inconsistencies in colors you describe was always there. Especially when we know this lightsaber shot was recomped in '97. But I may be wrong about this, of course.
The '04 master is so amazingly F***ED up, that in the end it's even hard to study what really is a stupid deliberate alteration or what is just a regular amatuer behind the wheel.
I'm not saying the saber was green, it was always blue, but in that first establishing shot it has a bit of a green cast to it. Go take a look at the GOUT. It was never a strong blue in that first establisher, and at least on the GOUT I can see some mild green hues coming out. So, on the 2004 version when they yanked up the saturation, played around with other colour levels, and shifted the cast greener still, as the entire shot has a more pronounced green shift, that green saber cast really came out and totally overrode any blue element that was originally weakly there.
However, and this ties in with what I had mentioned earlier, it's hard to say what of the original saber element is even valid in the SE anyway--the saber is a re-comp. The original one was a nubby saber that didn't quite extend to the top of the frame, and they redid the blade (probably for 1997?). So this may also further complicate how the colour deviated so much. I don't know if this shot was ever catalogued as a change/recomp, but it is.