You_Too said:

mverta said:

In 1977, the flashes were a pale amber/yellow. At the outermost edges of the flashes, where the yellowish flash combines with the blue-ish walls, it creates a pale sort of green, but it's subtle.

Interesting. But what about that cyan flash frame I posted?

Well, first of all, the saber colors themselves have been grossly up-saturated. The original saber colors were no where near that colorful. They were more photographic; tinted glows. Vader's in particular was always a sort of pink with a slightly-more-reddish-outer edge.

Since you can't globally push the blues and reds that high to get that look without corrupting the rest of the scene, these elements were treated separately, and the impact flashes were, as well. That particular flash is easily the "whitest" of the flashes, which again highlights the blueish tint to the walls at its edges, but again the whole thing has been super-saturated way beyond what's on the negative.

This is all part of the cartoon-i-fication of Star Wars which began with Empire, where suddenly we see the droids are all shiny and repainted, and Vader's all clean and showroom new instead of interesting, historied, and weathered. It's just been a steady downhill trend of "bigger, brighter, shinier, more colorful," since then. Gritty realism more or less ended with the first film.

_Mike