Complete Comparison of Special Edition Visual Changes — Page 17

Finally going to go through Treadwell's post!

Treadwell said:

ANH:

1. There was some discussion of missing or extra frames here and there, namely fading out/in to Threepio in the oilbath, or the TIEs approaching the Death Star in comp 60. These are reel change points--as such, it is common for one transfer to have a few frames more or less than another, as they have to be either put together later in the video realm, or the reels edited together in real time during the telecine. While these would count as differences, they are the kind of thing that will be found between every transfer ever made (not just original/SE), and thus do not fall within doubleofive's listing criteria.

2. Someone pointed out color inconsistencies inside the Sandcrawler. There might very well be, but using the lights on Artoo as reference is problematic, as they were fiber optics that led to a color wheel--so the colors would change as the wheel turned.

3. I find this interesting, for if this is a recomp, they seem to have used the original clash animation mattes--or very carefully matched them (which they didn't do for the ESB cave recomp). However, look at how the light shining on the ceiling strut (which is present in frames without the flash) was mistaken for "flash" and filled in with the effect for the second pic. That shows that the clashes were, at least, altered by hand.

4. The Treadwell site said:

Right after Gold Leader says "Red Leader this is Gold Leader", the Y-Wings outside his window still disappear for a single frame at the end of the shot.

This was still the case in '97 but not 2004. I've never checked to see if they just removed the last frame of the shot or restored the Y's.

5. Comp 260: John D. is name of the pilot of Red 4 (or Blue 4) in the script (and the credits). It has nothing to do with John Dykstra. John D. was played by Jack Klaff.

6. The Treadwell site said:

the first two frames of the shot where Vader opens fire on Luke are missing the TIE on the left-hand side!

This was still the case in '97 but not 2004. I think this shot is a recomp, as are a few more not listed, such as the torpedoes entering the shaft.

7. On DVNR and hologram scan lines: it's been pointed out, but I must support the notion that the GOUT/'93 laserdisc sources cannot be trusted when evaluating such fine detail. The DVNR was applied during telecine, so the GOUT isn't going to be any better than other '93 fan copies in that regard. There was some mention of GOUT actually being softer...would comparisons to fanmade '93 LD transfers help in this case? Is the EditDroid version still about the best, or have better ones come along?

ESB:

1. The probes launching is a recomp. The pods are slightly rearranged/timed.

2. Comp 45: replacement bg? You mean the one behind Piett? Or do you mean the framework around the monitor? In either case, I'm not so sure. Yes, we can see more of the wall behind Piett, but I don't think that's a CG extension, just a slight realignment of the element.

3. The slomo cave scene would definitely be recomped, as it was not shot in slow motion, but was slowed down in post via "stretch printing", which repeats frames. That's why the original version has so much printed-in dirt. Since they were redoing opticals, it would make sense to throw this in as well, thus necessitating recomping the sabers and the clashes. Now, why the original saber and clash overlay elements weren't used, who knows.

4. Speaking of redone opticals, what about the quick fades between Luke and Vader just before the escape to hyperspace? They're only like 4 frames, so it would be hard us to compare, but these were probably redone along with all the others.

5. The Treadwell site says:

I have NO confirmation, but I've always believed one or two shots of Vader looking out the window have BLACK AND WHITE elements; notice how monochromatic he is, even the reflections on his helmet. My SUSPICION has been that his helmet suffered from "blue spill" and thus couldn't be chroma-keyed with a color Vader element. Still looks this way to me in the SE video, but it could all be in my head.

Back in the day, someone emailed me to say they studied it in photoshop or something, and, aside from video noise, they could find no chroma information on Vader. I think it might have been fixed for 2004.

ROTJ
1. The Treadwell site says:

For some reason, this shot of Artoo turning his head to look at us (the shot is a POV of the camera-arm-thing that pops out of the door to Jabba's Palace) is shorter in the SE. The two versions go immediately out of synch with that shot. Weird.

I haven't checked the 2004. This is not a reel change point, as that just happened between the matte painting shot of the droids and the studio shot of them approaching the doors. I think the SE did something (or RE-did something) to Artoo's eye to hide light shining through it, and I guess their source element turned out to be shorter.

We've almost tripled the amount of changes from the Official ANH Changes. Congratulations, gentlemen!

And congratulations to you too, good sir :-) Your comparisons are an amazing source and they're something that has been missing on the internet.

I don't know if you missed my post on the last page, 005. But the Death Star shot Treadwell was talking about in comp 60. was recomposited for the '97 release, on the frames I posted you can clearly see this in the different positioning of all the elements in it. The easiest way to spot it, is to look at the position of the stars against the battle station. The original elements recomped in '97.

You also have the recomposited sunset I posted a few examples of a few pages back. I've noticed that there actually was always static dirt in the close-up of the twin suns in all home-video transfers of the original film, at the bottom of the frame in the middle, there is some dirt, I don't know, could be what they're talking about, it's not there in the '97 footage, (when you can actually see the restoration job) in the documentary "The Magic and the Mystery". I believe both the wide-shot and close-up was recomped, in the process they took the opportunity to also revise the colortiming.

Nice finds! especially the Jedi- skiff, actually very professionally done, ooh, that hurts to say. ;) 

Those torpedoes had motion blur applied as well. Good job, everyone!

Oh sure, now you suggest that.

Few did, Mr Bowie. Few did.

msycamore said:

I don't know if you missed my post on the last page, 005. But the Death Star shot Treadwell was talking about in comp 60. was recomposited for the '97 release, on the frames I posted you can clearly see this in the different positioning of all the elements in it. The easiest way to spot it, is to look at the position of the stars against the battle station. The original elements recomped in '97.

You also have the recomposited sunset I posted a few examples of a few pages back. I've noticed that there actually was always static dirt in the close-up of the twin suns in all home-video transfers of the original film, at the bottom of the frame in the middle, there is some dirt, I don't know, could be what they're talking about, it's not there in the '97 footage, (when you can actually see the restoration job) in the documentary "The Magic and the Mystery". I believe both the wide-shot and close-up was recomped, in the process they took the opportunity to also revise the colortiming.

Nice finds! especially the Jedi- skiff, actually very professionally done, ooh, that hurts to say. ;) 

Those torpedoes had motion blur applied as well. Good job, everyone!

none said:

Thinking out loud, is there a more computational way to find these variations?  Is there a negation filter (maybe exclusion) where if the two movies were overlaid you could negate one from the other, leaving behind the changes.  What if the originals were modified so that one was just cyan and the other was just red, then when combined you would ignore the purples (or process them out) and focus on the left over cyan and red material.  Problem is they probably don't align close enough, because of the widen frame composition...

doubleofive said:

 

msycamore said:

I don't know if you missed my post on the last page, 005. But the Death Star shot Treadwell was talking about in comp 60. was recomposited for the '97 release, on the frames I posted you can clearly see this in the different positioning of all the elements in it. The easiest way to spot it, is to look at the position of the stars against the battle station. The original elements recomped in '97.

You also have the recomposited sunset I posted a few examples of a few pages back. I've noticed that there actually was always static dirt in the close-up of the twin suns in all home-video transfers of the original film, at the bottom of the frame in the middle, there is some dirt, I don't know, could be what they're talking about, it's not there in the '97 footage, (when you can actually see the restoration job) in the documentary "The Magic and the Mystery". I believe both the wide-shot and close-up was recomped, in the process they took the opportunity to also revise the colortiming.

Nice finds! especially the Jedi- skiff, actually very professionally done, ooh, that hurts to say. ;) 

Those torpedoes had motion blur applied as well. Good job, everyone!

 

Got em, I think!

 

No, this is the shot I'm talking about:

msycamore said:

Treadwell said:

There was some discussion of missing or extra frames here and there, namely fading out/in to Threepio in the oilbath, or the TIEs approaching the Death Star in comp 60. These are reel change points--as such, it is common for one transfer to have a few frames more or less than another, as they have to be either put together later in the video realm, or the reels edited together in real time during the telecine. While these would count as differences, they are the kind of thing that will be found between every transfer ever made (not just original/SE), and thus do not fall within doubleofive's listing criteria.

 

I agree with you, the fade out/in to Threepio in the oilbath is a reel change point, but I don't know if that one was missing any frames between transfers, they just remade the fade, right? And I don't think the other one, comp. 60, is a reel change point though, IIRC the next reel change is after Tarkin says "We will then crush the rebellion with one swift stroke", I could be wrong though.

Edit: I checked, the scene is actually a 1997-recomp:

last frame of GOUT

last frame of 2004 DVD

I've since double checked, this is not a reel change point, if it is sligthly retimed, it's probably a result of a remade shot. Take a close look again, and you'll see that this shot was recomposited in 1997. It's not only the starfield that is in a different position, also the TIE's in relation to the Death Star or vice versa.

And this was the other post I was referring to:

msycamore said:

doubleofive said:

I'm not seeing the static grain in the GOUT to get a picture of it.

What they're talking about may not even be on the GOUT, it could also be hard to see due to the heavy DVNR applied, or the bad resolution. Just their description of it should be enough, besides you cannot even do a proper comparison of what they accomplished when the telecine turned out like this...

1997 SE

I actually think both shots were recomped for the SE, but it's impossible to know for sure though, besides the weird choice of colortiming the white sun always looked different to me in the SE, smaller and more spherical in shape...

...in the original film it is equal in dimension to the lower red sun, it cannot just be the clipped white levels that make it look that way, it looks like that in other transfers as well.

There's only one thing that is weird about all this, IIRC the bright white sun was the real location photographed one and the red one inserted in post or am I wrong?

Any thoughts on this? to me it actually looks like both suns in the wide-shot was digitally remade for the SE, also remember, the '97 wide-shot is not the same in the 2004 DVD, where they inserted clouds.

I can post a few examples of the dirt I mentioned in the close-up of the suns, if you want me to. Maybe it was on the negative.

Found another change trying to grab a frame to match one from Making of Star Wars:



They retimed the laser when they recomped the matte. Not sure why...

When they recomped the matte, it was probably necessary to recomp the laser as well.

Edit: and making the recomped laser an exact match to the original in terms of timing, wasn't one of their priorities I guess. ;)

Just for the sake of it, here's the shield generator shot as seen on Video Collector's "Theater Performance-Empire bootleg" which is from a 35mm print.

Hey, doubleofive, I noticed that you still haven't updated comparison pic 60 on SW. Just thought I would remind you.

msycamore said:

Hey, doubleofive, I noticed that you still haven't updated comparison pic 60 on SW. Just thought I would remind you.

The elements were recomposited due to the wipe to this scene, also changing the timing making this shot longer.

(1997 Change)*

doubleofive said:

I'm still not 100% sure what you want me to say, so I put this:

The elements were recomposited due to the wipe to this scene, also changing the timing making this shot longer.

(1997 Change)*

Feel free to write me out a caption if that's still not it, or direct me to how to correct the image. 

Ah, sorrry. Hadn't noticed you had updated the accompanying notes. As it is three differences to the original film in that shot, wipe, recomposite, timing/lenght you could always split it up in three screen-caps instead of two, like it is now you don't have a clear image of the original composite of the scene in there due to the different lenght of the scene, just a thought.

Also, are we sure that shot was recomped necessarily due to creating the new wipe, have they not created a new wipe over original elements before in other shots? Maybe you're on to something, maybe we could check all the other wipes to effect sequences and see if they also were recomped, for example in comparison 15, 57 and 88. Are those original composites? Maybe hard to tell.

doubleofive said:

Tried to tweak the description again for the Sunsset. Again, please feel free to write up new captions. 

To me it definitely looks like the wide-shot was recomposited in '97, so a screen-cap of the '97 incarnation of the scene is much needed there IMO. In the close up of the suns however, it is impossible to tell if anything was done, that one was just me speculating aloud.

Keep up the good job, 005! :)

msycamore said:

Also, are we sure that shot was recomped necessarily due to creating the new wipe, have they not created a new wipe over original elements before in other shots? Maybe you're on to something, maybe we could check all the other wipes to effect sequences and see if they also were recomped, for example in comparison 15, 57 and 88. Are those original composites? Maybe hard to tell.

Thanks. You know, as much crap as we give the SE, they worked really hard on them. Sure, not all of the decisions were great, but they did good with what they were supposed to do.

doubleofive said:

Thanks. You know, as much crap as we give the SE, they worked really hard on them. Sure, not all of the decisions were great, but they did good with what they were supposed to do.

I must disagree. While despecializing the shots, I noticed there was a lot of lazy rotoscoping done for the SEs and some other changes are technically not that great either.

Also, 005, you asked me to tell you if I notice any more changes, so here goes:

R2 was also recoloured in all the shots when Luke comes to the Cloud City and is flying through the clouds.

EDIT: Oops, sorry, you've already got it, I must have overlooked it.

doubleofive said:

You know, as much crap as we give the SE, they worked really hard on them.

Well, not as hard as the people whose shots are now replaced.

doubleofive said:

Sure, not all of the decisions were great, but they did good with what they were supposed to do.

I wonder if their boss George thinks so, maybe when the fourth attempt is done, he will finally be happy. ;)

Hey, 005, I'm back, this time hopefully with something useful :-) The description of this shot isn't quite right:

It says: "This shot has been zoomed in on, though the sky plate and model elements has remained the same size."

(1997 Change)

While actually the shot isn't only zoom in but also shifted. In the SE, there is only a little less on the sides but a lot less at the top and and you can see more at the bottom. Also the sky plate and model elements are composited in exactly the same place as in the original. Here's a quick photoshop overlay to show what I mean:

Also, the shot immediately before this one was also zoomed in, so you may want to add it.

Hope this helps,

Harmy.

OK, more nitpicking ;-)

All these shots are incorrectly marked as 97SE changes but they are all identical to the original in the 97SE.

The wipe, while it was obviously redone optically in 1997, was redone again digitally in 2004.