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Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 69

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 (Edited)

fishmanlee said:

TV's Frink said:

Hmm, what's going on in the thread today?

Harmy said:

Who knows, maybe kenkraly was right after all :-)

*faints*

fishmanlee not being able to understand a joke? That's not a first....

Fixed.

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^Damn, I thought of posting that too.  Well played.

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fishmanlee said:notice i put up the quote box for protection

You can't stay in there for ever.  You'll have to come out at some point.

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Over on the steve hoffman forum there's an ongoing thread for the blu release:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=238224

One poster actually worked on the 04 transfer and has given some insight about the coloring etc.:

George only came in during the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays and would approve new shots, review old shots, and revise stuff as needed. The rest of the time, I just used my best judgement to get the shots in the ballpark. But everything you see is 100% what he wanted. The 2004 version was the first (and so far, the only) time that the home video transfers were exactly what the director intended you to see.
Wayneklein earlier is correct: they pretty much have 2K scans of everything, even some trims and unused scenes, so master copies exist in a sense. But the original Kodak 5247 camera negatives are extremely beat-up and turning magenta (fading yellow & cyan layers), and it's not going to last much longer.

The problem is, the restoration was only done on the new version, not the unused shots from the original "classic" version. The expense of cleaning all those up and then conforming the 1977 version would be pretty astronomical.

Originally Posted by captainsolo View Post
Vidiot, do you think that the final 04 version reflected the original film (instead of George's wishes) in any way in regards to color? Comparing to photos of prints, cells, and even over saturating the 06 bonus release it doesn't match.

Yeah, I was in a room that was just down the hall from the big screening room in Building C at the old Kerner Blvd. facility. We occasionally would adjourn and go down there and compare what I was doing to a print. Now, I think these were the 1997 prints, but those were timed and supervised by George at the lab. Again, it's all a subjective call; these are not absolutes in terms of right or wrong. Lucas is very, very astute when it comes to photographic issues; he actually lit part of Star Wars himself (like the trash compactor scene), so he knows color timing backwards, forwards and sideways.

Originally Posted by Ziggysane
The original trilogy all appear to skew towards a blue/cool tint (forgive my lay assessment), despite being worked on by different colorists.

They lean towards what the director wanted. I did most of Jedi, all of New Hope, along with Rich Garibaldi doing some of the final touches; Natasha Leonett and Rich did Empire. But we all worked in the same room and could see each other's work as still frames. All three of us are credited on the bonus disc.

We'll traditionally lean the whites towards blue to give them a "whiter" look, and I did that in the opening shots of New Hope because of the corridors and stormtroopers. On a monitor set to 6500-degree whites, it's going to look fine; on a consumer monitor with very bluish whites, it'll be too blue. I watched the DVDs (and seen the 2K digital projection), and they look fine to me.

VADER!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOCHA LATTE? -Palpy on a very bad day.
“George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”-Harrison Ford
YT channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader

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fishmanlee said:

Basically all my posts are joking, so don't trust anything I say :P

*Insert some Lucas quote about people not being able to use or tamper with his creation*

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captainsolo said:

Over on the steve hoffman forum there's an ongoing thread for the blu release:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=238224

One poster actually worked on the 04 transfer and has given some insight about the coloring etc.:

George only came in during the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays and would approve new shots, review old shots, and revise stuff as needed. The rest of the time, I just used my best judgement to get the shots in the ballpark. But everything you see is 100% what he wanted. The 2004 version was the first (and so far, the only) time that the home video transfers were exactly what the director intended you to see.
Wayneklein earlier is correct: they pretty much have 2K scans of everything, even some trims and unused scenes, so master copies exist in a sense. But the original Kodak 5247 camera negatives are extremely beat-up and turning magenta (fading yellow & cyan layers), and it's not going to last much longer.

The problem is, the restoration was only done on the new version, not the unused shots from the original "classic" version. The expense of cleaning all those up and then conforming the 1977 version would be pretty astronomical.

Originally Posted by captainsolo View Post
Vidiot, do you think that the final 04 version reflected the original film (instead of George's wishes) in any way in regards to color? Comparing to photos of prints, cells, and even over saturating the 06 bonus release it doesn't match.

Yeah, I was in a room that was just down the hall from the big screening room in Building C at the old Kerner Blvd. facility. We occasionally would adjourn and go down there and compare what I was doing to a print. Now, I think these were the 1997 prints, but those were timed and supervised by George at the lab. Again, it's all a subjective call; these are not absolutes in terms of right or wrong. Lucas is very, very astute when it comes to photographic issues; he actually lit part of Star Wars himself (like the trash compactor scene), so he knows color timing backwards, forwards and sideways.

Originally Posted by Ziggysane
The original trilogy all appear to skew towards a blue/cool tint (forgive my lay assessment), despite being worked on by different colorists.

They lean towards what the director wanted. I did most of Jedi, all of New Hope, along with Rich Garibaldi doing some of the final touches; Natasha Leonett and Rich did Empire. But we all worked in the same room and could see each other's work as still frames. All three of us are credited on the bonus disc.

We'll traditionally lean the whites towards blue to give them a "whiter" look, and I did that in the opening shots of New Hope because of the corridors and stormtroopers. On a monitor set to 6500-degree whites, it's going to look fine; on a consumer monitor with very bluish whites, it'll be too blue. I watched the DVDs (and seen the 2K digital projection), and they look fine to me.

Someone who thinks that the colours look fine to them really should never work on the colouring of a film ever again. Even on a properly calibrated monitor the colours still looks like crap and are too "blue", even changing intensity /hue from shot to shot. This is why i can see that the colours will NEVER be fixed, because they try to tell us that there isn't a problem and its all down to our viewing setups. And again we here the bull  on how astronomically expensive it would be to restore the original versions, when they already have everything scanned.

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

DONATIONS TOWARDS MATERIALS FOR THE REVISITED SAGA

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WELL ADYWAN IF YOU KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT COLOR CORRECTING LET'S SEE YOU DO BETTER

;)

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That's very interesting. The guy should really come here to give us some insight.

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 (Edited)

Yup, except for maybe 7 of the most obvious lightsaber shots, the whole thing looks exactly like they want it to. (At this point, I've kind of given up on them doing  anything from the negative, just holding out hope they'll do the '82 Blade Runner thing and use one of the other sources.)

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I noticed someone over there posted this:

originally posted by TheCassidy

@ Vidiot - are you aware of, and have you ever visited the Forums at originaltrilogy.com?

Your info would be very interesting to a lot of people over there who critique the work, often baseless, and go to great lengths to "correct the films" themselves.

You should check it out sometime, if you haven't already.

lol

 

ANH:REVISITED
ESB:REVISITED

DONATIONS TOWARDS MATERIALS FOR THE REVISITED SAGA

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Man, why do people delude themselves like this just so they can accept the official versions as the "definitive"? It's sick.

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I do think the colour timing of the 2004 transfer is salvageable through careful correction--it's not quite as far off as it seems.  However, it does have a huge amount of problems, and it's insulting to say it's just down to consumer equipment and people complaining about nothing.  These problems are often very obvious.  Lightsabres and laser blasts should not be magenta, not ever, and the red levels in a lot of shots are through the roof.  Not to mention the hideous black crush, which is probably the worst visual aspect of the entire thing, and makes all the other problems stand out even more.  The Death Star corridors should be blue to some degree, not grey as in the faded GOUT, but the new and apparently intentional blue cast often intrudes onto Vader and stormtroopers and pretty much everything else.  In trying to make the backgrounds a consistent hue, rather than varying as they sometimes did in the original cinematography, they pretty much damned the colours of every other element to fluctuate wildly and beyond reason.

And of course the '04 sound is a pile of crappe, made by a tone-deaf imbecile.

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Quackula said:

WELL ADYWAN IF YOU KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT COLOR CORRECTING LET'S SEE YOU DO BETTER

;)

Agreed!

... wait! What?!

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adywan said:

I noticed someone over there posted this:

originally posted by TheCassidy

@ Vidiot - are you aware of, and have you ever visited the Forums at originaltrilogy.com?

Your info would be very interesting to a lot of people over there who critique the work, often baseless, and go to great lengths to "correct the films" themselves.

You should check it out sometime, if you haven't already.

lol

 

Wait... our TheCassidy?!  *shock*  I feel... betrayed!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Last I remember of Cassidy, he was telling us that we all would eat crow because Indy IV would rock.

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Didn't that guy who worked on the color timing of the 2004 versions also work on The Simpsons at some point?...

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Sluggo said:

Last I remember of Cassidy, he was telling us that we all would eat crow because Indy IV would rock.

And boy oh boy did that crow taste delicious, Sluggo.

Long time poster, first time lurker - how's everyone been?  Place looks a little different than I remember...

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Wow, that was as if someone said "Beetlejuice" three times.

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 (Edited)

I'm kinda curious what aspects were meant by that 'often baseless' comment...

I sure hope it wasn't meant to defend the new 'colour-timing' of the 2004 releases, at the end of the day...as it's certainly not 'baseless' to reckon that the director/and others involved in the 're-mastering' obviously didn't have a clue about good 'colour-timing', considering how badly they ended up screwing up colours/hues/lighting/cinematography on the Original Trilogy that were already great-looking. 

Whether it was the 'always' the way that GL supposedly 'intended' these movies to be seen, or not...his SE colour-tampering is the equivelent to this, compared to how they used to look to me originally, lol. -

Unfortunately, this trend of badly meddling with previously good-looking movies is not soley restricted to GL and co. of course.  Here's a couple of interesting links I was sent, that give a good example of how 're-mastering' for 'high definition' gives too much of a tempting 'opportunity' to radically alter things from the previously better way they used to look.  Either that, or certain people involved haven't a clue how to treat prints respectfully, that they've worked on - 

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/archives/2007/10/the_digital_restoration_bandit.html

 

...and just for completion, there's a few additional points about certain aspects to do with the 're-mastering' of this particular example, here too -

http://www.landofwhimsy.com/archives/2010/01/suspiria-the-good-the-bad-and-the-downright-ugly/

 

...however, it's good to know that it looks like 'The Phantom Menace' Blu-ray is actually an improvement colour-wise, compared to it's DVD release.  The movie will still remain disappointing overall, but at least it will look better for those that will watch it in future.  I fear this is likely to be a rare exception in too many 'high definition' releases, however.

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Being able to listen and ask questions to the people who did the actual work, seems like a unique event, which we'll most likely not get again, proceed cautiously, please.

The idea that their monitors are a different class then the TVs in most people's homes, provides another wrinkle to how the films look different dependent upon the equipment you use.

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ImperialFighter said:

I'm kinda curious what aspects were meant by that 'often baseless' comment...

Actually, I want to apologize for that - keep in mind that I was around here for a long time and when I left the place was really negative but it seems to have relaxed a bit.

 

I'm amazed at the work a lot of you have been doing as I've been "catching up."

 

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none said:

Being able to listen and ask questions to the people who did the actual work, seems like a unique event, which we'll most likely not get again, proceed cautiously, please.

The idea that their monitors are a different class then the TVs in most people's homes, provides another wrinkle to how the films look different dependent upon the equipment you use.

 Sure...although it certainly doesn't explain how they ended up re-colouring the 2004 SE releases so drastically differently to what they looked like originally.