team negative1 - star wars 1977 - 35mm theatrical version (Released) — Page 31

Joel said:

Fair point, when the O-neg is damaged and they have to go back and look at original elements, that particular O-Neg does have to be reassembled. 

I took your question re: O-Neg not having SPFX as a general attribute of original negatives.   

Ah, I understand. That's my fault. I should have written more clearly.

For the record: I meant Star Wars, specifically.

Joel said:

msycamore said:

Do you really want a film look like a 4k scan from the original negative, when nothing close to that was ever seen in theaters? The generational losses that occur in the stages from original camera negative to release prints works miracles for sets, costumes, models and special effects. I fail to understand why anyone would like to see these films straight of the negatives when they were never made to be seen that way, that's making the films a huge disservice. You would see mattepaintings, make-up and effects work for what they really are instead of blending in nicely with the rest of the footage.

 

There is an assumption here that the print is the intended product, which isn't totally accurate. Just because people don't see the O-Neg in a theater doesn't mean that the print is the ultimate viewing experience.

The O-Neg is the intended finished product, not an unfinished product waiting to be somehow "corrected" by generational loss. 

To make an audio analogy, HD audio releases come from the master tapes because that is as close to the original event as possible. They don't come from a recording of the released vinyl or cassette whether those were the intended release formats or not.

So to answer your question: Yes - I, personally, want to see the O-neg scanned in 4K because I want a document that is as close to the original event as I can get and that has suffered as little generational loss as possible. 

 

That's not an assumption, the theatrical release prints was the finished and intended product. Home-video and its future advancements wasn't on anyone's mind when making films back in those days. And this generational loss was very much something you took into account when making films back in those days, especially with effects laden films. An artform in itself. And I'm not arguing that you shouldn't scan the negative in 4K or 8K, that's great if it's done.

In the end this is a matter of opinion and taste I guess but do expect to see stuff that was never intended to be seen that's visible on the O-neg but was never visible on prints. This is something studios recently have realized when releasing some of their classic catalog titles, where they instead aim for something that is more representative of what would have been seen in theaters instead.

msycamore said:

In the end this is a matter of opinion and taste I guess but do expect to see stuff that was never intended to be seen that's visible on the O-neg but was never visible on prints. This is something studios recently have realized when releasing some of their classic catalog titles, where they instead aim for something that is more representative of what would have been seen in theaters instead.

Generational detail loss is fairly easy for the end-user to simulate.  If I'm ever watching a movie that appears too sharp, I can switch my player's output to 720p or even 480p.  That blurs up the picture pretty nicely--not necessarily to EXACTLY the same level as theatrical prints of that particular film, but pretty close.

There are some advantages to going back to sources earlier than projection prints other than more detail.  Assuming nothing else goes awry with the Blu-ray, I think OCN-based transfers are usually a good choice for the studios (but there are always exceptions).  It's much easier for the end-user to "fix" a too-detailed Blu-ray than a wrong-colored/DNR'd Blu-ray.

msycamore said:

That's not an assumption, the theatrical release prints was the finished and intended product.

Theatrical variations notwithstanding, of course

I have a feeling that the o-neg vs. print discussion shifted quite a bit from what it was originally about - the original question was whether the SW BDs yield better detail than a scan of a 35mm print - and IMHO, the answer is yes. Whether or not that is desirable or even important is of course a question of personal preference.

Joel said:

msycamore said:

Do you really want a film look like a 4k scan from the original negative, when nothing close to that was ever seen in theaters?

There is an assumption here that the print is the intended product, which isn't totally accurate. Just because people don't see the O-Neg in a theater doesn't mean that the print is the ultimate viewing experience.

The O-Neg is the intended finished product, not an unfinished product waiting to be somehow "corrected" by generational loss. 

To make an audio analogy, HD audio releases come from the master tapes because that is as close to the original event as possible. They don't come from a recording of the released vinyl or cassette whether those were the intended release formats or not.

So to answer your question: Yes - I, personally, want to see the O-neg scanned in 4K because I want a document that is as close to the original event as I can get and that has suffered as little generational loss as possible. 

 

Actually, the assumption is correct.

This is why Leia looks like she had the make-up gun set to whore in the bluray releases and why we have lobster-men and other weird colour anomolies.

In the 70s and 80s when working on film, we were conscious of what film stock we were using and what stock was expected for the theatrical prints and how many generations down they would be.

So makeup had to 'overdo' the makeup by a known quantity (talk to any makeup people from that era and they will now all about exactly how that red colour rouge will end up looking like pale peach on a release print), the costumes were chosen for how they would look on the release print, not how they would look on set, as was the lighting and props and everything else.

The good crews would know that everyone in this shot needs to look a bit candy coloured to achieve the required colour pallete on the theatrical print. They also know what detail will be lost, so where detail is important, where extra detail is required and where it can be softened down.

The answer print was often what they were working towards, but good DoPs and crews would often work towards the theatrical print as being how they wanted the film to look, and shoot accordingly.

Enter film scanners and computers that can extract *all* of the data from the neg, and change its characteristics endlessly and deliver that colour gamut and sharpeness directly to a digital screen, and what the original film-makers intended to be seen vs what *can* be displayed changes immensely.

It is exciting in some ways to see detail that has never been seen before, and interesting. It is also not what was seen at the film's release or even in the director's screening room.

This leads to interesting problems, leia looking like a hooker, Luke looking like a wax dummy, some effects shots looking dodgier because you can now peer into the shadows etc.

It is difficult from a restoration point of view, that information was on the negative, so should be preserved, but it may never have been intended to be seen, or at least seen that way.

Much like Jurassic Park which was shot open matte. The effects shots are all in wide, but the live action is full frame. The film was never meant to be viewed that way, but if you scan the neg, that is what you get.

It is interesting to watch, but it isn't how the film was shown at the time, or intended to be.

Both are great to have, but for me personally, the best viewing experience of Star Wars would be a scan that was cleaned up to the point that it would be equivalent to a first day screening on a really great print.

As Harmy said, in some ways the BD has more detail, but it is also missing a lot of detail from the original movie, the grain, the correct colours, the correct gamma and the 'look' that the original movie was designed to have. There was a resurgence in the late 70s to go for that softer 1930s look in film, the crews on Star Wars were trying to achieve that look (it is mentioned in many crew interviews) and that 'detail' is totally missing from the BDs.

poita said:

This leads to interesting problems, leia looking like a hooker, Luke looking like a wax dummy

Oddly, in the Holiday Special, it's Leia looking like a wax dummy and Luke looking like a hooker.

timdiggerm said:

msycamore said:

That's not an assumption, the theatrical release prints was the finished and intended product.

Theatrical variations notwithstanding, of course

Exactly, despite my poor grammar in the above statement, only if you have the same or a similar mindset as George Lucas, it's not. A new variation doesn't make the earlier one unfinished.

poita said:

Actually, the assumption is correct.

This is why Leia looks like she had the make-up gun set to whore in the bluray releases and why we have lobster-men and other weird colour anomolies.

In the 70s and 80s when working on film, we were conscious of what film stock we were using and what stock was expected for the theatrical prints and how many generations down they would be.

So makeup had to 'overdo' the makeup by a known quantity (talk to any makeup people from that era and they will now all about exactly how that red colour rouge will end up looking like pale peach on a release print), the costumes were chosen for how they would look on the release print, not how they would look on set, as was the lighting and props and everything else.

The good crews would know that everyone in this shot needs to look a bit candy coloured to achieve the required colour pallete on the theatrical print. They also know what detail will be lost, so where detail is important, where extra detail is required and where it can be softened down.

The answer print was often what they were working towards, but good DoPs and crews would often work towards the theatrical print as being how they wanted the film to look, and shoot accordingly.

Enter film scanners and computers that can extract *all* of the data from the neg, and change its characteristics endlessly and deliver that colour gamut and sharpeness directly to a digital screen, and what the original film-makers intended to be seen vs what *can* be displayed changes immensely.

It is exciting in some ways to see detail that has never been seen before, and interesting. It is also not what was seen at the film's release or even in the director's screening room.

This leads to interesting problems, leia looking like a hooker, Luke looking like a wax dummy, some effects shots looking dodgier because you can now peer into the shadows etc.

It is difficult from a restoration point of view, that information was on the negative, so should be preserved, but it may never have been intended to be seen, or at least seen that way.

Much like Jurassic Park which was shot open matte. The effects shots are all in wide, but the live action is full frame. The film was never meant to be viewed that way, but if you scan the neg, that is what you get.

It is interesting to watch, but it isn't how the film was shown at the time, or intended to be.

Both are great to have, but for me personally, the best viewing experience of Star Wars would be a scan that was cleaned up to the point that it would be equivalent to a first day screening on a really great print.

As Harmy said, in some ways the BD has more detail, but it is also missing a lot of detail from the original movie, the grain, the correct colours, the correct gamma and the 'look' that the original movie was designed to have. There was a resurgence in the late 70s to go for that softer 1930s look in film, the crews on Star Wars were trying to achieve that look (it is mentioned in many crew interviews) and that 'detail' is totally missing from the BDs.

Well put. In the case of the original Star Wars you even have instances of none-special effects sequences that are dupe material to make the transitions between live footage and effect footage be as seamless an experience as possible.

Take matte paintings for example, that beautiful art is almost always misrepresented on new HD-transfers, the contrast, softness and grain build up can cause a beautiful illusion, but when seen as on the negative and on most blu-rays with a lot of grain reduction applied, it is seen exactly for what it really is - a dead painting. It's interesting if you want to see brushstrokes but not if you want to get immersed in the film. I recall Raiders on the new blu-ray was quite horrible in this regard.

The argument there was that you could scale up an LD and it would look as good as film, which was nonsense. A 35mm print could resolve more detail than the current BD, it is just that the ones printed in 1977 don't, and weren't meant to show that level of detail.

If you used the same neg elements that were used to make the BD, but scanned them at 8K and then printed to 35mm via a laser process, the 35mm would have way more detail than the BD.

The existing prints of Star Wars don't show some of the details that the BD does, it doesn't mean that any 35mm prints cannot resolve greater than 1080 lines.

Plus, as said before, the prints were always designed not to have that detail, it wasn't desired. Had they wanted to, even at the time they could have made a print that held a lot more detail.

But for Star Wars, the point is moot, the prints and the BD are all we have, no one is getting a hold of the negs any time soon. Which is just fine, if you want to see how Star Wars looked in '77, you soon will.

Well, the whole debate started over the question of whether there would be any point to doing another Despecialized Edition using this as a source for the altered shots and I was just pointing out that it might be. And I completely understand that it may not be the preferred version for everyone but it could be worth the effort for the additional detail and overall cleanness - and also, since the detail on the BD isn't much beyond 720p, it isn't really beyond a really good theatrical print.

And what was also left out of the debate so far is that the ultimate release of Star Wars in '77, for which the crew must have been aiming, was not 35mm prints but 70mm prints.

zeropc said:

at the end it's still a different thing what you see on set and what you see in the finished product.

Well, exactly - and what you're seeing in cinemas, through digital projection, is pretty much what is on what would be considered the equivalent of the o-neg in digital film making, so the fact that something is scanned from the o-neg doesn't mean that you have to get lobster-men and hoe makeup if the restoration is done sensitively.

Harmy said:
And what was also left out of the debate so far is that the ultimate release of Star Wars in '77, for which the crew must have been aiming, was not 35mm prints but 70mm prints.

70mm SW scan with 77 crawl and we don't need any more movies in our lifes. That probably won't happen anytime soon though.

As for ESB, don't the team have 70mm print/prints? I remember them saying so in one of the threads, but can't find it.