Complete Comparison of Special Edition Visual Changes — Page 19

Harmy said:

I'm not quite sure if this is relevant but I just noticed that while the sky has been completely replaced in this shot, the forest is the same but flipped for some reason.

To me, the SE image looks more like a CG cartoon than the original shot which looks more realistic.

No, he's right, the forest has been flipped. I was under the impression that the foreground trooper and the forest were shot live together in Guatamala, so they would have had to roto him out, flip the forest and composite him back in where he originally was (while adding a totally CG sky plate), which makes it seem extra unnecessary.

In the SE shot, the lighting on the X-wings and the trooper seem to be coming from different directions.

doubleofive said:

zombie84 said:

No, he's right, the forest has been flipped. I was under the impression that the foreground trooper and the forest were shot live together in Guatamala, so they would have had to roto him out, flip the forest and composite him back in where he originally was (while adding a totally CG sky plate), which makes it seem extra unnecessary.

Does that make the lighting on the trooper come from the wrong direction?

 No, the lighting comes from the sky, which still has an upper-right source direction; technically, I guess the forest is lit reverse in the SE (pretty sure you can see this in the highlights if you scrutinize), but it's such a soft, vaguely-defined light that you wouldn't know it. In the SE the X-Wings look like they are lit from the left though, making them incorrect.

timdiggerm said:

Do you mean the forest, or the sky? If you mean the forest...it's the same forest. If you mean the sky... In the original, the clouds in the sky of Yavin IV are somehow behind Yavin. It's one of the 2004 changes that really, really made a lot of sense.

I think it's mostly the over-saturation of the SE, plus the in-your-face X-wing in the foreground (and the new background looks a little phoney despite the addition of clouds).

It looks like they flipped the forest so the trees closer to the camera on the right-hand side (original) are directly in front of the watchman to make him appear more like he's part of the tree tops.

Some other general images here:

http://www.starwarslocations.com/mediagallery/album.php?aid=89&page=1

That gallery isn't very user-friendly. I keep going around in circles :/

doubleofive wrote:  I'm going to try to line them up and mask out the area that should be new to see if there are repeated elements.

Looks like they just clones very nearby trees.  Go horizontal from the bottom-most engine of the X-Wing and there's now a tree with seems to be giving the finger twice.

In my own opinion....had the S.E. been done with more care and more attention to detail there probably wouldn't be so much animosity towards it.  There was a great missed opportunity with it's release. 

All I ever wanted most was to have the original preserved properly and if they were going to make additions or expansions to give it something special for the anniversary that it would only add and flesh out things crucial to the core of the entire story.

The 1997 SE isn't too offensive I guess - at least the colour timing was nice. The 2004 versions though are so incredibly shoddy and caused so much damage to the quality and consistency of the films. Widely regarded as among the worst transfers ever done for a major release. And it looks like we'll be stuck with them on the blu ray as well. Which I will *NOT* be buying.

For me the biggest offensive issue is not that Lucas changed his films, its more that the changes are all so poorly done. Its ironic that they used new technology badly to change things that old technology got right. Lucas claims to be the father of digital cinema but he clearly has a very poor understanding of it.

Leonardo said:

I wonder why they zoomed in..?

Just been going through this thread (amazing!) and got to the bit about the zoomed in Falcon shots from ESB.

Anyway, I have a theory. In Rinzler's Making of ESB book, its mentioned that the Falcon cockpit was constructed to be slightly larger than the one in SW because of all the extra action that was to take place in it. Apparently when Lucas found out he was displeased - he thought that the cockpit should have remained small to emulate the cramped conditions that feature in real military aircraft cockpits.

I wouldn't be surprised if he zoomed in on these shots to compensate for the roomier design. As Harmy pointed out, it focuses more on the principals - and, I would say, provides an increased dramatic effect.

It also destroys the composition Irvin Kershner intended for the scene. Has Lucas actually forgotten that he testified in front of congress on the evils of altering another director's work without their supervision? And while a change as small as a slight recomposition of a shot isn't going to rape anyone's childhood, there's still the principle of the thing.

George was never satisfied with the hologram R2 projected in "A New Hope". So it's been corrected for the NEW Blu-ray collection: