Puggo Strikes Back! (Released) — Page 12

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

But I will do the upscaled HD... THAT is worth it.

Sweet! Sorry new technique didn't work out.

And yes, I miss 35mm theaters. Digital is not pristine if you have a dead pixel on the projector or morons left fingerprints on the lens, which happened to me tonight when I saw Fellowship of the Ring Extended with a few friends. Meanwhile, the whole experience feels deader :(

I am very much looking forward to when you're about to strike back!

Hi Mike,

It's not quite that easy.  To do the same thing in HD also requires some special hardware acceleration.  The company that makes the WorkPrinter has very recently come out with HD versions of their rig, here is an example:

http://www.moviestuff.tv/wp_16hd.html

So, all we need then are thirty people to put up 100 bucks each, and buy Puggo the new rig? ;)

And a camera :)

Seriously, I still maintain when all is said and done, even a HD 16mm telecine with one of those beauts is still going to basically be a reddish collection of scratches, dropouts, furrballs, and assorted mouse droppings.  The money is probably better spent helping -1 with his 35mm transfer.

^...If we expect it to come to frutition, Adywan - who has seen many moer clips than the general public - is less than enthusiastic due to the shape of the film (it wasn't scratches, it was some other kidn of defect that I can't remember how to describe...)

Uhm anyway, still eagerly awaiting this release!

That was only one reel of ESB. From what I understand, he's got a copy of ANH that's he's also trying to capture.

And maybe more?

Any progress? Can't wait! :)

Yeah, I was just going through my download folder deleting stuff (millions of little clips and stuff) and I just watched all the samples you posted again and kept them, this is gonna be great!

I'm hoping I'll get to watch it on a projector, that would be cool. You know what would also be interesting? If you could include an alternate mix that would have a slight projector clanking sound added as a constant background sound (ideally in 5.1 and have the clanking only come from behind :-) ) and maybe add slight dropouts at reel changes. It would add to the atmosphere of actually watching a 16mm film at home :-)

I don't think I've seen an actual 16 since elementary school, so I can only barely remember. :/

The 16mm projector I used in school was such a pain. Especially when it decided that it wanted to eat every bit of film that came near it. There's still nothing like it though.

I can't wait for this-especially with that optical track!!

I started working on it again last night, and realized that what might really help it, is to have someone better than me color-correct it.  Any suggestions?  I'm leaning towards asking Adywan if he'd be interested.

There has been some amount of color correction in all of my previous projects. See, contrary to what one might think, there really isn't a way to capture the films exactly as we see them.  Cameras are just not as sophisticated as our eyes and brains, so you have to do the best you can with the white balance during capture, and then tweak afterwards.  ESB is a bear to color-correct because most scenes take place in dark or strangely-lit settings.  SW was more straightforward.  I'm thinking there might be people here who would do a better job than me.

Or, someone could try and tell me how to best use the "color curves" in Vegas.  The explanations in the built-in help don't say much, and the axes aren't labeled.

See what others can assist with, but aside from doing some work here and there I wouldn't go too heavily into color correction.

Right, the only color correction would be to apply a single set of color changes to an entire reel.  I totally agree with the "less is more" approach, and wouldn't do anything that compromises the closest possible reproduction of what it's like watching these films on a 16mm projector, to the extent to which I'm able.

Adywan has agreed to give it a shot!  He said he's going to try it on reel one and see if I like the result.  My instructions to him are to only find a single color correction for each capture of reel 1.... no contrast or brightness adjustment, no tweaking of individual scenes, just a single color timing shift for an entire reel in an effort to get the best white balance overall.  That way, the balance and emphases won't be affected.  It's what I tried to do for PG, and for the 8mm PEs.  And again, although I could do this myself, ESB has proven much harder because of the settings and subsequent difficulty in achieving what I consider to be an acceptable and representative white balance.

I'm excited to see what choices Ady will make, given what he sees.

The only slightly bad thing is that we are on different sides of the Atlantic. Thankfully, he says he can work equally well with PAL or NTSC.  But we're going to trade files using the archaic method of thumb drive and snail mail. So I won't have anything to report for a little while.

Thanks Adywan!!!!

Film is but the DV camera he used to capture surely isn't and because he's from the USA, the capture is NTSC.

Puggo, you never said what you think about my alternate audio idea.

And as to the colours, I think you're doing a great job on your own from what I've seen but it's still nice that Ady agreed to help :-)

thorr said:

The other option would be to send Adywan all captures for each reel and have him give suggestions for each captured version of the reel.  Then you could select the best version scene by scene and have consistency amongst the captures scattered throughout the reel, but not use one capture across the entire reel.

Something like that.  I've sent Adywan two captures for the first reel and asked if he can find a single color correction for each reel, and if possible also try and move their color balances to make them as similar as reasonably possible.  In the case of reel 1, the most likely thing is that I'll use mostly one reel, with a few scenes substituted with the alternative capture.  (actually, I also have a third capture to be used only on a couple of relatively extreme brief scenes).

Presuming that goes well, we'll repeat the process for reels 2 and 3.

Moderation will be the order of the day.  Keep in mind that color balance isn't the only consideration when selecting which capture for which scene. There are also the various scratches, wobbles, fuzz balls, and assorted mouse droppings to contend with.