GOUT, Automated Theatrical Colouring, and a Reference Guide — Page 7

Why is white no longer white in those color-corrected shots?

Yeah, I maintain that a single film-wide color correction in AviSynth will never yield results as good as scene-by-scene work in Avid, FCP, or Color (or any other NLE that has a color-correction function).

Asaki said:

On another seperate note...

...color me surprised... ¬_¬

Wow..that's awful..I can't believe they would put that in a trailer encouraging people to get the set. Hopefully, the footage is just from the 2004 release and not from the set..after all, I didn't see any new tweaks in the trailer. Although considering our past experiences with Star Wars releases...

Having just seen the fantastically well-preserved ESB Theatre bootleg, I am amazed at how close the GOUT seems match to it when you crank up its saturation to (or very close to) the levels I have suggested. It's pretty much the exact same thing for most of it, minus the colour-shifting due to print and tape fluxatuation and the occasional exposure wash-out or crush-down. But for example, the blueness of the Hoth and Bespin scenes is pretty much 100% the same as the caps I posted. There is one shot that was compared earlier to the SE trailer, an establishing shot of the Hoth hanger (when Solo first enters), where the SE trailer has much less blue, but in fact the theatrical bootleg has the exact same amount as the enhanced-GOUT I posted. Same with all the Luke-wampa scenes. It seemed pretty consistent that the GOUT enhanced in this way matched close to the bootleg.

This only highlights the dilemma I mentioned earlier: in order to have theatrically-accurate colour/saturation with the GOUT, you have to live with popping and noise and all those artifacts. It looks ugly sometimes, but that's the actual accurate colour level.

Well, when it comes to the reds, I'm not sure I would agree with that solution. I do get what you are saying in that the red tends to pop more than other colours, but because the GOUT is washed out in general, leaving the reds alone produces an imbalance and gives the image an "improper" look (even if the reds are technically too high by measurement). Something about it just looks dull and "incorrect", I guess, if you can see what I am saying. I'm not sure what the solution to the problem can be, but leaving them alone IMO doesn't quite work. You need the bright reds. You are right though, the reds are already bleeding a bit just in the raw GOUT, but they don't have the vibrancy that pushing them gives them, which matches the rest of the image. It's a weird problem.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more comparisons with the old trailers from the SW Bonus DVD, I think it's interesting how vibrant some of the colours are from those:

Those trailer pics look just right to me, and would make a great reference for future colour correction efforts.  That's real photography there, not a photoshopped mockery.  Just highlights even more just how wrong the SE renditions can be.

And wow, the GOUT looks really dull compared to that other pic, doesn't it?  Jeepers . . .

EyeShotFirst said:

rockin said:

I'm surprised there hasn't been more comparisons with the old trailers from the SW Bonus DVD, I think it's interesting how vibrant some of the colours are from those:

Neat to see just how not blue Palpy's throne room is. A little on the warm side actually, but that could be from adding the sabers in.

 The trailers on the DVD unfortunately are missing a lot of the colour in some shots. This is likely because they pre-date the final answer print by many months. That might be why on the trailer the Hoth hanger only has some blue, while in other sources, noteably the (enhanced/restored) GOUT and the theatrical bootleg, it is very blue, as some might have been added by colour timing. As far as the above cap goes, in the final film, the throne room is almost as blue as it is on the 2004 DVD. You can see this on the theatrical bootleg, the GOUT, or any past home video releases. I think publicity stills have it fairly restrained though, so maybe it was shot "neutral" like the above cap from the trailer which uses the raw dailies, and then timed blue in post.

EDIT

That outtake from the dailies on the Falcon looks stunning as far as the colour goes. Such a difference.

I did a little experiment with RGB filtering instead of YUV (in After Effects) to try and push the GOUT color balance toward what we see on the Technicolor print photos. In comparison, what I see in the GOUT is lack of contrast and lack of deep green/cyan. Also the colors are desaturated but I wanted to see what can be achieved without drastic saturation tweaks.

Flesh colors in the GOUT are not so much redish but purple-ish, so green should shift them in the right direction; also it can move the color of the Death Star corridor walls out of no-color and pure blue.

The big s-shape of the master curve is (supposed to be) the contrast boost; then the whole thing is moved upward (= gamma boost, because now the picture is pretty dark). Also I added a hole at the shoulder to protect highlights somewhat (they are already blown out in many places). The green curve is in a little counter-contrast, so shadows would be shifted toward green in the output.

I did tweaked shadow and highlight saturation, both by less than 30; highlight saturation is actually dialed down. (I think the peaks of  the saturation curve you see here is also equivalent to less than +-30.)

There are 3 shifts in the hue curve. The first two is for the droids, I wanted them to look like the first grab of that 8mm print Zombie posted on some other page (which is I think beautiful, color-wise). The third is for (hopefully) spreading the newly added green.

First I tried this setup as a one-light, then added another layer for tweaking the levels for individual scenes, but this was a half-assed attempt. As you can see on the screenshots below, some scenes are still too bright/dark, also some could use a little more/less contrast boost.

Also, check out the second image: that fishy green pattern on the wall is caused by the RGB-curves (appears in some scenes in the first three reels). It also moves, thanks to the color fluctuation -- which is emphasized by the raised contrast. Generally, as Zombie mentioned in regards of the saturation boost, this kind of drastic tweak brings out noise. Worst are the desert scenes with half of the screen being flat blue and the other half flat yellow. By the way the input video was processed with G-Force's script (which is great!), minus anti-aliasing and resize. Maybe the script could help with the emphasized noise (doing the color tweak before the script).

I think these settings might be a good alternative starting point. Unfortunatelly I don't have time to take it any further right now.

Trailers would have been cut from prints that were not color timed yet.  That's why a couple of Jedi trailers have Luke with a blue lightsaber - they shots weren't done yet.

I wouldn't trust them for a color reference one bit.