Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 76

Harmy, the new subtitle shot looks fantastic, I can't imagine them looking much better than that!

Subs look nice, and darkening Vader in the hallway is quite good.  Can't believe I never noticed that before, but the 2004 version looks utterly ridiculous.  It's completely out of character with the photography, and unrealistic for it to appear that way given the lighting.  The brightened corridor in Echo Base during Han and Leia's argument about him leaving seems like the same kind of thing, though that one I did notice a long time ago.

The 'plastic' look of the 2004 transfer is a subtle yet irritating problem that may not be fixable.  The main issue is that during the cleanup process they took it upon themselves to artificially sharpen parts of the image for some reason (Lowry himself boasts of this in an interview), resulting in imagery that could not possibly have been photographed in such a manner.  Smoke and haze no longer obscure background lights and detail, depth of field is shot to hell, and many things just look somehow wrong and unnatural in ways that are difficult to explain.  Add in the messed up colour timing and wildly fluctuating saturation levels, along with the crushed blacks, and the result is so far removed from what the movie is supposed to look like that even the most earnest and dedicated attempts can only repair some of the damage.  We put up with it for the sake of having a clean and detailed image, as opposed to the jaggies, smearing, and softness of the GOUT, but it's quite sad that every look at the 2004 reveals some new flaw that we just haven't found a way to describe yet.  I'm not very knowledgeable of photography or video at all, but the fact that the so-called "professionals" who made them can't see the problems is completely absurd.

Hi, my girlfriend had never seen Star Wars before (wtf?!!), so I watched this with her just now. It's an absolutely beautiful restoration, like magic sometimes. Certainly it was impossible for her to tell that it was a fan edit, so I'd call it a major success. She commented at the end that it was great to see the soft costumes and a lot different from modern CG movies. As a sort of layman I just have a few questions about this work:

When the X-Wings fly into the trench the quality goes down for a few seconds, is that shot from 35mm?

During the shots of the droids in the docking bay, the perspective seems to shift while C3PO is talking. Was this an artifact of the original filming?

Since you're posting all those videos about 1.2 changes, are you still going to release it before starting on 2.0? Nice job on all those scenes btw.

Before you start with 2.0, no offense, visit my thread and you might find the settings there useful as a base to start with.

Excellent work, again!

The melted bars thing really baffles me.  Presumably that was an actual on-set explosion and not a special effect added in post-production, right?  So why did somebody take it upon themselves to think it was not good enough?  Is this a case of "Reality Is Unrealistic"?  (as they say on TVTropes)  Somebody thought what was actually photographed didn't measure up to their conception of what it ought to look like, even though that's what it actually did look like?  And for just a couple of frames nobody would notice on their own?  What the heck is that about?

Just looked at the most recent videos again:

• The Lightsaber Fight- I know you did this awhile ago but the new version you made has such a great look to it. The lightsabers have a nice hand-animated look to them which I personally love. The colors are spot on. Vader's lightsaber, for example, looks very red. It was nice seeing it in good quality.
• The First Dewback Shake Reduction with Ben and Luke- The second version is a decided improvement and comes our nicer than your original Despecialized version. I noticed that the color timing is different for the comparison. Which color represents your intentions?
• The Dewback Shake Reduction with C-3P0 and R2-D2- I never was bothered by the Dewback in the original version, but I do see the improvement and you'be done a great job.
• "I can't shake him" scene- Your new version looks great.
• Melting Bars- I definitely never knew about this SE change but it's nice that you could restore the original.
• Vader DeBrightened- It's more theatrically accurate, so it's a good thing to restore for me.
• The Logos and Credits- These look crisp and fantastic. I love them! Great Job! It's most probably the best they've ever been seen (minus 70mm theatrical screenings).

I really do like your first Despecialized but the new version (2.0) looks like it's going to be even better. Fantastic job, Harmy!