It was an honor to review this workprint. I know I haven’t been a Despecialized tester since ESB, but this 40 minute workprint blew me away. Do forgive me if anything I say here has already been pointed out. The workprint starts on a very good note with sharp and well defined title cards. The crawl here seems much better than the 1.0 crawl and more vivid. The color of it seems spot on. During the opening shots, the starfield is very visible which is awesome, considering how obscured they were in the 2004 master. I was surprised you were able to make that many stars visible.
When I got to the Tantive IV halls, I was thoroughly impressed. Though I’d seen screenshots of the color correction, it didn’t strike me just how good they were until I saw the CC in motion. You_Too and Harmy, you guys rock in color correction! You’ve somehow restored that good old fashioned 1970s film look. It doesn’t seem bland like the GOUT but more like a vivid version of the earlier releases… if that makes any sense. In any case, it seemed to resemble screenshots from the IB print. I felt the original’s color correction did not go far enough and this certainly did. I noticed there was no red push like the GOUT and instead a slight green cast, which makes it more resemble any film cels I’ve seen of 70mm prints. Anyway, the Tantive IV halls were in stark, Kubrick-ian white and all the soldiers had spot on flesh tones: very natural-looking. I also enjoyed the color of C3PO and R2D2. I was very impressed by the amount you retrieved from the crushed blacks. It’s pretty astounding. Thank you for having no lobster man this time around! It’s worth noting that the color correction did not interfere with the laserblasts in any way. I did notice that the black widescreen bars occasionally changed color, hopefully you’ve resolved this.
One slight think I noticed was a matte box (?) in the initial shot as the escape pod as it was launched out of the Tantive IV. It seemed like an artifact of undercontrasting in order to retrieve crushed blacks. I was once again impressed as Vader confronted Leia since his helmet wasn’t at all obscured.
The Tattoine sands look great: not pinkish or reddish by any means; they are more natural than I’ve seen them in quite a while. I’m also really digging the canyon scene! It’s not too dark but not too bright. It feels like you referenced the video of the Senator IB screening, which is great. In any case, it was a good balance and I feel that you really nailed just how it should be. I noticed a very, very vague distortion behind the left trooper in the “Look Sir, Droids” scene, possibly to remove a Dewback. It didn’t bother me.
The droid selling scene was wonderful. I really loved the color of Luke’s hair and skin! In some scenes, I noticed that without the overcontrasting typical to the ’04 master, some instances of slight DVNR appeared to be visible. This is certainly no fault of yours; I just felt like mentioning it. The sunset was nice: not over contrasted and light enough to be like a real sunset. When we get to Ben’s hut, the exterior shot looks good, and, inside, less contrast reveals so much more detail.
I must say my favorite thing about this workprint, even better than the color correction, was the lightsaber! It looked so old-fashioned like in DJ’s Project Blu. I was blown away by how you put the original ’77 lightsaber (I assume) back in. The hand-animation makes it very simplistic but adds a whole great feel to it. The color of the lightsaber is spot on. Some close ups of Luke look a tad desaturated. This may be because of color inconsistencies in the ’97 restoration, passed to the ’04 master.
Just when I thought the color correction could not impress any more, I saw: THE DEATH STAR! You nailed the grey-green look of the Death Star. It’s now exactly like in the 70mm scans. Flesh tones look great and the uniforms are a good grey/brown. I’m impressed how there is no blue cast whatsoever. Red skin tones do not pervade this scene. The daylight scenes on Tattoine afterwards looked fine. Thank you for that humorous ending, BTW J.
Harmy, you’ve truly blown me away with this one. It’s unbelievable better than V1 and I can’t wait to test more. I'm very sorry if I've repeated anything that's already been said. As some of you may or may not know, I was on a hiatus for awhile so I haven't had time to catch up on the thread.