Star Wars Prequels 35mm 4K Filmized Editions by Emanswfan (a WIP) — Page 12

What a great color grading! This movie now looks older than ANH.

I just think that Padme's face is a little overexposed in some shots and a bit too orange.

But overall: it's gonna be great!

bttfbrasilfan said:

What a great color grading! This movie now looks older than ANH.

I just think that Padme's face is a little overexposed in some shots and a bit too orange.

But overall: it's gonna be great!

Thanks.

Skintones are bit off still, and the overexposure is a source issue, her face is overexposed in the original version.  I reduced it a bit, but a little work on reducing the bright highlights is needed.

emanswfan said:

Here's that Obi-Wan technicolor shot in motion (full scene w/out audio):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E15Oa6V6CCI

Youtube Description:

"Here's another technicolor sequence from my preservation projects, still making tweaks to the skintones, saturation levels of certain colors, the overblown highlights (the occasional source issue), and trying to correct some of the flicker from the film grain scan I use."

This reminds me a lot of the convo between Han and Leia in cloud city now.

.....Is this still happening?

I never even realized how awful these movies looked, jesus.

I really like your work but I think your grain is a little too over the top sometimes, unless you're going for a 70's style grain or a 2000's style 35mm film, i'm not sure.

Darth Lucas said:

.....Is this still happening?

 Still very much is, I've just gotten extremely busy in my personal life, mostly my job really.  I'm looking to start back on this as soon as I can, which I'm not exactly sure when will be, not too much longer though hopefully.  I just don't want to give out some random date by which I'll be back on this.

But when I do, I don't think there's that much work to do in terms of figuring out the logisitics, though I still feel my versions don't look  close enough to the OT for my taste, though I feel I've gotten at least good enough to make it not digital looking anymore.  I'm sure Ady's PT color correction for PT:Revisited will still look far better than mine.

If I have time, I might (and that's a big might) post some new screenshots soon.

EDIT: Old screenshots I never posted.

Deleted Scenes Upscale TEST (NO CC): http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/45634

Unfinished ATOC screenshot (removing the ugly greenish purple tint): http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56163

emanswfan said:

Darth Lucas said:

.....Is this still happening?

 Still very much is,

 This is very good.  =)

emanswfan said:

Let Naboo shine with technicolor color schemes and retro 35mm.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/40371

Wow, wow wow.  Emanswfan, I have zero love for the prequels but your work is nobly impressing the bejeezus out of me.

Question on making things "filmic":  My eye and general knowledge of film effects are not the best but isn't part of the problem in resolving the fakeness in these films that the CG animated elements will always appear distinct from the other elements due to the lack of motion blur as these elements are not actually filmed?  Almost akin to a frames per second issue but not necessarily even tied to more frames per second but simply that the CG is always crystal clear at any given moment.

If that supposed understanding is even ballpark accurate are there plans to better integrate these overly disparate elements?

No matter, the stills and the Youtube clips (the ones that haven't been removed at least) are proof enough that mere color correction, grain, etc. go a long way in improving the viewing experience.

choklitjeezis said:

emanswfan said:

Let Naboo shine with technicolor color schemes and retro 35mm.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/40371

Wow, wow wow.  Emanswfan, I have zero love for the prequels but your work is nobly impressing the bejeezus out of me.

Question on making things "filmic":  My eye and general knowledge of film effects are not the best but isn't part of the problem in resolving the fakeness in these films that the CG animated elements will always appear distinct from the other elements due to the lack of motion blur as these elements are not actually filmed?  Almost akin to a frames per second issue but not necessarily even tied to more frames per second but simply that the CG is always crystal clear at any given moment.

If that supposed understanding is even ballpark accurate are there plans to better integrate these overly disparate elements?

No matter, the stills and the Youtube clips (the ones that haven't been removed at least) are proof enough that mere color correction, grain, etc. go a long way in improving the viewing experience.

 Thanks for the nice comments.

When it comes to CGI, that is actually true a lot of the time, though I'm not really sure if it applies here.  I might look into as I know how to reconstruct motion blur to proper levels, which involves removing most of the natural motion blur and then adding motion blur back in for the actors and CGI motion to match.  Did that trick on my personal edits of the Once Upon A Time TV series, helps that shows horrifically b ed CGI infinitely.

So I'll look into that to see if that helps or not.  Maybe my next clip could be a new version of the opening of III, just the long CG shot.

But, wait are some of my youtube clips actually down?

EDIT: Yes three are down, I still have the clips on my pc.  I'm going to delete those three videos soon to prevent my YT account, from being locked and banned, since acknowleding would result in three strikes and out.  It's odd since they had been up for a long time and never detected and were unlisted.

What's with all the edge enhancement they're using, I thought these movies we're already shot on 1080p cameras?

Can the techniques you use for adding grain be used in real-time when viewing a Blu-ray on a PC?  There's a lot of discs out there that would probably be more pleasing to watch if their damn DNR was mostly hidden.

Gogogadget said:

What's with all the edge enhancement they're using, I thought these movies we're already shot on 1080p cameras?

 Some earlier screenshots involved doing all my work at 4K, which ended up making the 1080p outputs a tad too sharp.

I have since then worked a proper 1080p workflow, as I am using real film scans to add the grain.  So you won't see weird over sharpness or over chromatic-aberrated footage.  All examples are not final of course.

Ryan McAvoy said:

emanswfan said:

Unfinished ATOC screenshot (removing the ugly greenish purple tint): http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/56163

I've been impressed by the other screenshots but bloody hell this one ^ is amazing. The colours are great but the definition of the shadows is just beautiful... even Jar-Jar looks like a real thing!!!!

Thanks had taken me forever to figure out how to fix the colors in that shot without making it look unnatural or ruining the skintones.  Hopefully I might use simmilar techniques to figure out if I can naturally remove the warmth from the ROTS opening battle.

Buster D said:

Can the techniques you use for adding grain be used in real-time when viewing a Blu-ray on a PC?  There's a lot of discs out there that would probably be more pleasing to watch if their damn DNR was mostly hidden.

Realtime probably not, but I have created some universal LUT's that grade digital to like film assuming you do all your desired color correction beforehand.  So if you don't desire any film grain, which I really think is an important component, you can literally take a movie and plop it into Premiere and just apply one of my LUT's, which I've considered releasing a set possibly this year, and render.  It wouldn't be realtime, but it wouldn't require any major work other than proper ripping, high quality rendering, and burning, and assuming you have some sort of program that supports applying LUT's to clips (some have plugins you can get for free.)

emanswfan said:

Gogogadget said:

What's with all the edge enhancement they're using, I thought these movies we're already shot on 1080p cameras?

 Some earlier screenshots involved doing all my work at 4K, which ended up making the 1080p outputs a tad too sharp.

I have since then worked a proper 1080p workflow, as I am using real film scans to add the grain.  So you won't see weird over sharpness or over chromatic-aberrated footage.  All examples are not final of course.

I mean in the source material for your edits, every single shot has horrible haloing, which since this is Lucasfilm i'm gonna take a rough guess and assume they fucked it up.

Either way, your work is great and actually makes this look more like a real film.

Gogogadget said:

I mean in the source material for your edits, every single shot has horrible haloing, which since this is Lucasfilm i'm gonna take a rough guess and assume they fucked it up.

Either way, your work is great and actually makes this look more like a real film.

 Interesting you say that, maybe because they were filmed in 1080p, they sharpened it to try to remove the digital softness.

ElectricTriangle said:

 VLC and MPC-HC (with addons) can both add grain in real-time. This goes a long way toward making DNR'ed stuff look slightly more watchable. Hides macro-blocking too.

 I know, though those to me look more like really fine video noise than 35mm film grain.

I apologize for the massive compression artifacts in both screenshots, not representative of final product.

First is screenshot from the ROTS technicolor duel clip, compared with my new version still WIP.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/57531

Really happy with this, finally getting rid of that ugly teal and getting even closer to an OT look.  Plus, I think this looks even less digital for sure.

Still unfinished (mostly stuff to do with skin tones and still trying to retain fine detail), but does THIS look more OT to you?

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/58324