Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released) — Page 142

INv8r_ZIM said:

 

Just looked at the promo...Tatooine shot is looking good, but it was never a major problem in the SE.  The burn though; I always thought that was introduced sometime after the thatrical run, when they were prepping transfers for home video.  No kidding, it was always there?

I'd like to know this for sure, too. :)

-e

Meh, I can do without them but will abide by whatever Harmy thinks is bet.

The end of WP2 is so far amazing (as expected). Don't really remember this ever being so jarring (yellow light on Luke's sleeve, also visible on Han's in shot before) but again, wtvr. I've never seen an IB print and have not actually watched unfiltered GOUT that much, shockingly.

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Also, I did not realize just how bad 25fps audio sounded until this strip. Every voice overly nasal and distracting. Especially Vader! Turned him into a wimp! Not to mention how sped up the whole thing felt, esp the end credits. Not a criticism as much as an observation, of course, Harmy :)

All right, I suppose I'm a bit confused.  I watched the preview and it looked quite good to me, but it seemed like the shot directly following the Tantive IV getting hit (R2 and 3PO reaction) seemed to get really blurry.  Is that supposed to happen?

ww12345 said:

IMHO, if it was on all the prints in '77, that's good enough for me. Burn marks, for me, please! :)

I can live with it, but i prefer the movie without it..

We are talking about a HD release right? ;-)

TServo2049 said:

From what I can gather, the burns were on all prints in '77. The source used to make the video transfers in the 80s was burn-free, but then the source used to make the '93 transfer had them again.

They are part of the '77 theatrical version for sure, but I'm on the fence about whether it's necessary to put them in the DEED. It's kind of jarring seeing them appear on an otherwise clean image, as opposed to on a print that already has other noise...

And looking at the blur that Harmy added to the camera shake, I see what he did. The camera shake effect in the SE looks different than in the original, where the image shakes longer and more violently. Since it's not a different take, I'm guessing that means that the shake was indeed a post-production effect, or that more shaking was added optically and what we're seeing in the SE is the original in-camera version. It looks like Harmy was trying to simulate the shaking effect from the original version. It still doesn't look as "rough" as the original, but unfortunately, there are no high-resolution versions of the true original, so I guess I'm fine with Harmy's new version as a compromise.

I don't know, I'm still with You_Too that the burn mark is the joke of the day.  It just doesn't seem consistent with other choices Harmy's made up-to-now.

There are things, like subtitle shake, etc, which were technological limits and perhaps even mistakes but they were made during an intentional process of making the film.  Then there are other technological limits and mistakes that were NOT part of the intentional process of making the film, and those were left out.  Specifically, I'm thinking that if you want a real theatrical look you'd need to crop out ~30% of the current image, because nobody ever saw the edges in the theatre.  But there's a reasonable expectation in the home video front that transfers will include a larger frame and will even be cleaned up, and up 'til now Harmy's gone that route.

We'll see what his take is but I'm thinking JOTD is a fair assessment.  It has a historical basis, yes, and only Star Wars fans would really get it, but it's not for real.  Then again...

OK, so, 1) The halos are unfortunate and I'm not sure whether or not they were originally there but the sad truth is that there isn't much I can do about them.

2) The burnmarks are something I'm not quite decided about, here's the thing: That shot has been reframed in the SE, so that you see more on the right and less on the left. Now I'm pretty sure this happened due to them going back to the original negative in order to get rid of those burnmarks and in the process redoing the shake, which was done in postproduction, so when I decided to revert it back to the original, I wanted to go all the way with it. You can't really compare it to cropping, because while these burnmarks were present on the print, the cropping was done by the projectionist and the print itself wasn't cropped. It's similar to the ripped frame in that tie explosion, sure, I could easily fix it but it was always there, it's even in the 97SE trailer.

3) The jaggies shouln't be there in the final version, don't know how they got there...

I don't know if lurker votes count but I vote for no burn mark.

The blue haze around the Falcon's engines was in DEED 1.0. I pointed it out at the time, but Harmy said he wouldn't be doing anything about it. I'm not sure any of the pre-dvd releases have the resolution to prove this one way or another. To me, it looks a lot like the blue haze that surrounds the Death Star explosion.

The burn mark is a neat touch, but I think it's distracting and takes away from the viewing experience. It's something that would be removed in a serious (i.e., non-Lucasfilm) restoration.

I am 100% for the burn mark.

Harmy said:

The burnmarks are something I'm not quite decided about 

Okay, well I'm inclined against them, for what it's worth.  The rest of the print has such a "cleaned up" look that they stand out more than they would have in a normal dusty, scratchy theatrical run.  And as others have said, any normal restoration (Criterion, anyone else) would remove them.

As for the shake, I like the idea, but it still doesn't quite work for me in its current state.  I suspect that the extra shake plus high compression makes the blur look worse than it would in the final product, and I might like it right now with less compression, who knows.

I'm all for theatrical restoration, but the burn mark, unless I'm mistaken, is something that happened to the film AFTER it had been cut.  It was not a part of the filming process, and thus it is not like other "mistakes" like matte lines and such that represent the historical, technological limitations that they were dealing with.

So, since they were not part of the original filming process, I believe a true restoration of Star Wars would not include them.  Just my opinion.

doubleofive said:

I am 100% for the burn mark.

I thought you might get a kick out of this ;-)

Add another vote for "no burn mark."

I understand where you're coming from, Harmy--trying to get SW as close to theatrical accuracy as possible.  However, I think there's an important distinction to be made between the finished, deliberate product and the incidental state of the product upon viewing.  Things like wobbly subtitles or other composited effects "errors" were due to technical limitations of the time period--people would have signed off on such things and given it a seal of approval, thinking, "Yeah, this is as good as this particular thing is going to get."

Conversely, something like the burn mark is obviously the result of some accident, and not an intentional part of the film.  As such, I for one don't think it should remain in the preservation.  It's the same thing as the notion you were playing around with earlier regarding the artificial addition of such things as dust and hairs to the film.  Although doing so may have given the film a more theatre-like feel, it wouldn't really be preserving the film per se, since you'd be introducing elements that were not intended to be there by those responsible for making the film.

... just my 2 cents.

Edit: I see Cobra Kai was quicker (and more succinct) in making the same argument :)

I vote against the burn mark.  A real restoration of the film would remove it, because it wasn't part of making or printing the film.  It is damage after the fact.  If someone had spilled coffee on the print, should the coffee stains be preserved too? No, it would be removed to reveal the film in its fullest original glory.  If you want to preserve the sorts of damage that prints accumulate over their lifetime - burns, scratches, hairs, dust, mouse droppings, etc., there is another preservation that has that covered.

The thing is, even though it may have happened by accident, that accident is a part of the history of the film, since this particular damage was most likely on the original negative, so it's not that easy. It's like 99,9% of dirt in Puggo Grande is specific to that print but these burnmarks are something that all the prints had in common.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I definitely will restore them, I'm just trying to explain why I'm even considering it.

Harmy said:

The thing is, even though it may have happened by accident, that accident is a part of the history of the film, since this particular damage was most likely on the original negative, so it's not that easy. It's like 99,9% of dirt in Puggo Grande is specific to that print but these burnmarks are something that all the prints had in common.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I definitely will restore them, I'm just trying to explain why I'm even considering it.

If you go down that line of reasoning, isn't it like saying, "Well, Star Wars went from film, to laserdisc, then was ported over to DVD, and along the way a number of visual artifacts (DVNR, jaggies, etc.) were introduced, but hey, all that preserves the history of what this movie went through, so it stays?"

Does Mike Verta have any comment on this particular issue?  What's his sources reveal regarding the mark?