Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 71

bkev said:

OT: I'm still not getting this set. I have the DVDs, which leave me in the clear for fanedits... I think... I hope...

Strictly speaking no, less strictly speaking only if it's the same transfer and even less strictly speaking it's up to your own conscience, after all it is in a legal grey area in any case.

Harmy said:

Strictly speaking no, less strictly speaking only if it's the same transfer and even less strictly speaking it's up to your own conscience, after all it is in a legal grey area in any case.

Hmm, what about the Puggo Grande, then?  Should someone own a copy of the 16mm print?  And what about laserdisc transfers?

Those aren't fan edits though, they are preservations of commercially unavailable materials.

Harmy said:

But I think it would be a bad idea to use all 3 separation masters, because it would mean combining 3 different film strips together, thus combing four different grain patterns (that of the o-neg plus one for each of the seps), so the sep-masters combined would have to be 3 generations worse than the o-neg and that's assuming they were stuck directly from the negative.

Didn't they use the separation masters for the Wizard of Oz, and before that The adventures of robin hood. 

Warner Bros and MGM i mean.

Sleeping beauty also was restored from the 3 strip separation masters ycm.

As were portions of star wars special edition in 1997 in which the negative was too far gone to use. 

Yeah, I guess that's true, it was just a problem I saw with using them but I'm no expert and I was hoping that someone like Zombie could give us more insight.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

none said:

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.

The claim that ESB came out too blue because they were using better monitors is, frankly, laughable.

exactly. It's just more spin to try to make out there is nothing wrong with the colouring done on the 2004 set. Here's an example below that blows the "we were using better monitors" excuse right out of the water. Now nothing has been done to these two images. These frames are as they appear in the 2004 transfer:

Now how the hell can they say that the colour problems are sown to consumer monitors? Now, although these are 2 separate shots in the edited scene, you can see that they are originally one longer shot that was split for editing purposes. Now why would the colouring be so different if the colouring was correct? Do they have magical monitors that adjust the colours between shots so that everything looks perfect? No. And why was the first shot NEVER green in any other transfers of ESB that had ever been done? Do they really think that people are so dumb that they will believe that the set looks so bad because its the consumer equipment at fault? well to be honest yes, there are those who argue that the colours are perfect as its "George's true vision" and that Hoth should be completely blue because it's an ice planet etc. But what about those who have correctly calibrated monitors? Is this guy trying to say that Lucasfilm have the only monitors in the world that are correct? Bull.

Maybe it's not that far removed from the o-neg, maybe he did develop a way to only use one of the 3 masters for fine detail (which would be the equivalent of using an IP in terms of grain and detail but the resulting image would be black-and-white with wrong levels) and then using all three to give it proper colouring. It would be a process similar to colourizing a black-and-white movie.

Harmy said:

 

Baronlando said:

I saw the Spartacus reconstruction in a theater and you'd never know it was that far removed from the negative. And that was years ago, Harris probably can do some amazing things now.

 

Maybe it's not that far removed from the o-neg, maybe he did develop a way to only use one of the 3 masters for fine detail (which would be the equivalent of using an IP in terms of grain and detail but the resulting image would be black-and-white with wrong levels) and then using all three to give it proper colouring. It would be a process similar to colourizing a black-and-white movie.

Anything Harris could do including restoring the negative back to its original state, is far better than those 2004 abomination video edits.

Undo the damage done since 1996 and do a true restoration of the original elements what the special edition originally was supposed to be.

adywan said:

exactly. It's just more spin to try to make out there is nothing wrong with the colouring done on the 2004 set. Here's an example below that blows the "we were using better monitors" excuse right out of the water. Now nothing has been done to these two images. These frames are as they appear in the 2004 transfer:

Now how the hell can they say that the colour problems are sown to consumer monitors? Now, although these are 2 separate shots in the edited scene, you can see that they are originally one longer shot that was split for editing purposes. Now why would the colouring be so different if the colouring was correct? Do they have magical monitors that adjust the colours between shots so that everything looks perfect? No. And why was the first shot NEVER green in any other transfers of ESB that had ever been done? Do they really think that people are so dumb that they will believe that the set looks so bad because its the consumer equipment at fault? well to be honest yes, there are those who argue that the colours are perfect as its "George's true vision" and that Hoth should be completely blue because it's an ice planet etc. But what about those who have correctly calibrated monitors? Is this guy trying to say that Lucasfilm have the only monitors in the world that are correct? Bull.

adywan said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

none said:

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.

The claim that ESB came out too blue because they were using better monitors is, frankly, laughable.

exactly. It's just more spin to try to make out there is nothing wrong with the colouring done on the 2004 set. Here's an example below that blows the "we were using better monitors" excuse right out of the water. Now nothing has been done to these two images. These frames are as they appear in the 2004 transfer:

Now how the hell can they say that the colour problems are sown to consumer monitors? Now, although these are 2 separate shots in the edited scene, you can see that they are originally one longer shot that was split for editing purposes. Now why would the colouring be so different if the colouring was correct? Do they have magical monitors that adjust the colours between shots so that everything looks perfect? No. And why was the first shot NEVER green in any other transfers of ESB that had ever been done? Do they really think that people are so dumb that they will believe that the set looks so bad because its the consumer equipment at fault? well to be honest yes, there are those who argue that the colours are perfect as its "George's true vision" and that Hoth should be completely blue because it's an ice planet etc. But what about those who have correctly calibrated monitors? Is this guy trying to say that Lucasfilm have the only monitors in the world that are correct? Bull.

 

I don't know how you are going to like or dis-like this suggestion Adywan, but even if you just did a color correction to the blu-rays once they came out and made that available, Im sure there would be quite a few shouts of admiration from the star wars fan community....

avoidz said:

It was interesting to read that reply from Robert Harris.

Although this bit:

While many of us prefer the original versions, that does not control the marketplace.

The marketplace has been sold the hyped SE versions and never offered the originals since the early 1990s, so that kind of shapes the demand for those movies.

That's my logic as well.  I've been in sales all my working life and I've always taken the attitude that you can't second-guess the market.  Saying something won't sell because it doesn't sell now when the reason it doesn't sell now is because it's not available in the first place is the marketing equivalent of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A bit more from Robert Harris on the SW preservation at HTF

TV's Frink said:

I like that Carl Frink guy.

;-)

is that a Hint? ;)

Time for the tinfoil hat.

What if Harris has already restored the OOT for Lucas, but he can't talk about it?

What if Lucas has been sitting on it for a couple of years?

(I'll just put myself in the corner)

zombie84 said:

A project like that would require millions of dollars and months of work, involving dozens of people. I don't believe this would remain quiet for very long. Plus Lucas a couple months ago at Celebration said that they only restored the SE and that the "classic version" would have to wait until some time in the future. So, maybe Harris is just in the last months starting to do (preliminary?) work on it and has inspected the materials and devised a plan. But come on, more likely he just has heard from various people who restored and worked on the SE restoration materials since he is one of the top film restorationists in the world. Let's not jump the gun.

I didn't know Lucas every said anything about the "classic version" ever being available. It's awesome if he did. I always thought that he said the 2004 versions and beyond would be all that would ever be available and that the original versions were considered "unfinished workprints" in his opinion and that people could watch them on VHS and LD or whatever if they wanted to see them. I thought he also said it would be too expensive to remaster them properly.

What I could never figure out is why they would have to remaster all of the original versions. I thought they would only have to remaster the bits that were changed for the 1997 and 2004 versions since the remainder of the films will already be remastered. It boggles the mind how he thinks. The sad and crazy thing is that these Blu-Ray sets will break sales records no matter what. He could release them in B&W and in mono and people would complain, but they would still buy them.

Just my 2 cents.

Someone on home theater forum said if we support the blu ray of the special editions there would be a chance Lucas would take that money and restore the originals at a later date.

If that was true he could have used the money he got on the 1997 theatrical release, or 2004 DVD release.  The fact the films are still rotting in a vault someplace says to me its a bogus idea that person had.

In fact its more likely Lucas will release the 2004 without any fixes beyond a new and even worse audio mix for episode IV a new hope, formerly known as star wars.  He will take the money and run, "a fool and his money are soon parted".

If smaller studios and companies releasing silent and black and white films and take incredible care in doping so like Kino, or a smaller catalog company like Criterion, then there is zero excuse for a company like Lucasfilm with billions in revenue not to release the theatrical cuts of all the films, including the prequels and 1997 special editions.

If films like Blade Runner and 2001 which barely turned a profit can be restored and issued on blu ray why not the 3 most popular films in motion picture history, the star wars trilogy 77-83.