Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 130

20th Century Mark said:

Nicholas J. Michalak said:

I watched "Empire of Dreams" last night.  Am I wrong, or did they use extensive footage from the original theatrical releases in that?  Even Jason Wingreen's voice appears as Boba Fett.  The stuff from the original Star Wars looked dodgy in places, but for Empire & Jedi, I believe it was really good quality from the original theatrical editions.  The lightsabers aren't all screwed up, and the color timing looks to be pre-97/04.  That begs the question of where did they get those good prints from if Lucas insists the films are in irreparable condition?  Can someone with a sharper, more educated eye double check this?

-NJM

 I recently re-watched EoD and thought the exact same thing! It just doesn't make any sense.

"Madness has no reason"

The EOD documentary was basically outsourced to a bunch of documentary filmmakers. My guess, and one that others have made, is that they simply captured the Laserdiscs or used the GOUT master. The footage is actually not very amazing quality. Has anyone ever done a side by side with the GOUT?

That begs the question of where did they get those good prints from if Lucas insists the films are in irreparable condition? 

Lucas is just banking on the lack of knowledge among the public about how films are archived, handled, assembled and processed. Anyone who does even a little research into the topic will find out that an original negative is not the only source for a film.

In any case, they have the SE negatives with all the changes baked into them so its not impossible to imagine them rescanning those, chopping out the footage that contains SE changes, and then dropping in original version footage. Because these would all be realtively short isolated sections of footage they could pick and choose sections from any number of sources on a case by case basis to do this. This is how The Godfather was restored. They used as much original negative as they could but where it was too degraded they chose footage from other sources to fill in the blanks, in some cases going as far to rotoscope good footage into degraded scenes. The SE negative apart from the specific SE-altered scenes *is* basically a restored copy of the original.

zombie84 said:

The EOD documentary was basically outsourced to a bunch of documentary filmmakers. My guess, and one that others have made, is that they simply captured the Laserdiscs or used the GOUT master. The footage is actually not very amazing quality. Has anyone ever done a side by side with the GOUT?

I doubt it since people have said that Empire of Dreams was broadcast in HD.  No one in their right mind would take a laserdisc non-anamorphic image, and up-res it for a HDTV broadcast.  It would look horrendous.  While the footage isn't like brand new, it definitely looks better than the GOUT DVD.  Some of the footage looks like it was sourced from an old print that, while in presentable quality, definitely hadn't had any real digital remastering done.  Dirt and scratches on some frames, for example.  Again, the footage has no blue color timing which was there in the '97 SEs (the 2004 DVDs just manipulated the coloring further).

-NJM

I had never heard it was broadcast in HD. I wonder why it wasn't included on the BD were that the case. Does A&E even have an HD channel? And have they re-broadcast it since 2004?

zombie84 said:

I had never heard it was broadcast in HD. I wonder why it wasn't included on the BD were that the case. Does A&E even have an HD channel? And have they re-broadcast it since 2004?

I have never heard of this either, because if it was, I am sure someone would have capped it, I would like to see proof of this claim for sure.

zombie84 said:

I had never heard it was broadcast in HD. I wonder why it wasn't included on the BD were that the case. Does A&E even have an HD channel? And have they re-broadcast it since 2004?

 I have A&EHD, and EOD has been broadcast several times.  I remember it was on sometime last year, and it was full HD.  It is the shorter version then the DVD, as it is only 2 hours with commercials as I cant remember what the OOT scenes looked like.  If it is on again, I will keep an eye on those scenes.

The History Channel usually shows the documentary on the Saga (not sure the name of that) where it gets real philosophical about the 6 movies, and that is in HD too.

That History Channel special was likely "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed."

-NJM

CO said:

zombie84 said:

I had never heard it was broadcast in HD. I wonder why it wasn't included on the BD were that the case. Does A&E even have an HD channel? And have they re-broadcast it since 2004?

 I have A&EHD, and EOD has been broadcast several times.  I remember it was on sometime last year, and it was full HD.  It is the shorter version then the DVD, as it is only 2 hours with commercials as I cant remember what the OOT scenes looked like.  If it is on again, I will keep an eye on those scenes.

The History Channel usually shows the documentary on the Saga (not sure the name of that) where it gets real philosophical about the 6 movies, and that is in HD too.

I am really surprised this was not capped and available on usenet then, that is weird.

For the record, I have not SEEN the HDTV version.  On the ForceCast, recently, it was stated that it had been broadcast on A&E HDTV.

-NJM

Thanks for the heads up on this, "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.", so this is EoD? or no? either way I found it in 720p and am grabbing it.

msycamore said:

You have a couple of sub scenes from Jedi in there which seems to use a pretty good source:

Other than that it's not good looking. What Lucas' official story is, doesn't really matter anyway, he just don't want these versions out there. Plain and simple.

And that is clearly not the GOUT because the subtitles are not burned into the frame.  They are just a separate subtitle track on the disc.  So, the footage was sourced from something other than the 1993 Laserdiscs.  Whatever that source might be, they did get a print that was not used on the official DVD transfers.

-NJM

CO said:

The History Channel usually shows the documentary on the Saga (not sure the name of that) where it gets real philosophical about the 6 movies, and that is in HD too.

Does anybody know the name of this? Is it any good? Sounds kind of interesting.

I find it weird to think that EoD could possibly be in HD--for the simple reason that it's almost guaranteed it was not filmed in HD. The interviews were conducted in late 2003 I believe, and at that time there was really no HD cameras, and HD editing was pretty much unheard of. High definition original content simply didn't exist, it was only IMAX documentaries and the like, not a documentary for a bonus disc and A&E. It wasn't really until around 2005 that HD started catching on for original documentary and feature work. So the EOD master is almost certainly in stardard def.

As to some of the footage--maybe it is new scans from a print or something. After all, they scanned all the raw dailies--and the quality of the dailies clips and the finished film clips is about the same. Maybe they had Lucasfilm scan some original clips from the film to use as well. Whatever the case, the footage isn't very good, looks like the quality of a Laserdisc to me, which is why some people guessed that this is where it came from.

CP3S said:

CO said:

The History Channel usually shows the documentary on the Saga (not sure the name of that) where it gets real philosophical about the 6 movies, and that is in HD too.

Does anybody know the name of this? Is it any good? Sounds kind of interesting.

could it be this, Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed? I am actually grabbing this now, and it is in 720p.

SilverWook said:

Television shows and concerts have been regularly shot in HD video since the late 90's. I even have one of the few feature films shot in analog HD in the 80's in my Laserdisc collection. And lets not forget MUSE HiDef Laserdiscs in Japan!

The industry knew HD and widescreen sets were coming.

 I worked in the industry as a cinematographer and later camera assistant around the 2005-2008 changeover when HD started being widely adopted, and there was a massive shift in those years. In 2005 and most of 2006, I worked almost exclusively in the field of documentary and reality television, and the stuff I was on was either 16mm or standard-def video (and once in a while some 35mm). By 2008, there wasn't a single major production in town that was shooting docs in either of those formats, it was all being done in HD. There simply was no need to do HD in 2003, the hardware and software was simply so cumbersome and slow and expensive that it was easier to just shoot on film if you wanted the product to have a future-format shelf life (i.e. theatrical distribution or then-hypothetical high-def format). In most cities, you didn't even have access to an HD camera, you'd have to have it shipped in from L.A. or NYC or Toronto. For a tiny production intended for a DVD extra and a limited A&E broadcast, HD would not have even been thought of for EoD.