StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 45

Plus, there sure as hell were no huge numbers rejecting the BD release (it's in the top 50 best selling BDs of all  time) and that was a terrible release not just for the changes - if they marketed the SE in 4K with fixed colors, they'd almost certainly have a huge seller on their hands and then they could at some later date double-dip with the OOT. I certainly don't wish it to happen this way but it's a distinct possibility.

Wazzles said:

mverta said:

It would take more time, more people, more money than I've ever heard done to a commercial release... I mean, there's no way around it. Even with original elements, the hardest shots are shit-tons of work. I dunno... we have no reason not to stay hopeful and positive, but also no reason not to hedge our bets.

What about other restorations of films from the 70's like Jaws or The Godfather? Both of those were relatively worn to shit and they have some great restorations.

Those films doesn't contain optical effect sequences about every minute. A better alternative for comparison would've been Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Superman. The word "restoration" also means many different things to different people. The way I understand it, Verta isn't trying to restore what was seen in the cinema in '77, he's trying to go beyond that, most digital restorations do that all the time but where those have access to the negatives etc, he is working with release prints. The one major difference is that studios doesn't and often cannot approach the material in the way Verta does in this case. He also have the passion and time.

If you would only restore the films to what was on the prints in '77 (my personal preference), I'm pretty sure most of those who now beg and clamouring for the original films being restored would whine about how grainy, dirty and soft some of it looks. Personally I would fucking love it but I know I'm in minority. People nowadays are so used to stable and grain free images they would have a hard time accept how this film looked back then. Seeing Star Wars at 4k directly from the negative might be interesting and fun and also makes a multitude of corrections absolutely necessary but the actual film was never intended to be seen that way. Every little flaw in the original photography gets magnified to the max.

Just take the iconic binary sunset sequence - it bounced around all over the place in its instability. Back then I recall being completely blown away by that shot, about two years ago when I had the luck seeing it projected again I immediately took notice of the unstability of that shot due to the compositing. In the theater it's perfectly acceptable, especially it was back then but nowadays when everyone have their high-res home cinema it simply won't fly, hence stabilization, degraining and on and on... unfortunately studios most of the time take shortcuts to make old films presentable to a modern audience. As we can see from Mike's video samples, he approaches every shot differently because they demand it.

I am curious, Mike, how do you treat the sequences in the film that are dupe elements right at the source to begin with, do you hunt for possible detail in the Special Edition prints where they went back to the neg for those shots?

It's interesting that Lucas' tinkering was wasted on effects that didn't actually need it, and special effects that could've done with an update, were left untouched. I probably wouldn't have been so against the Special Editions if the goal was to make the effects better, but there is not one single thing added that was better than what it replaced.

Speaking of rough shots...

Moving Along

Beautiful work! And you also answered my question in that video but only in a half-way. Was thinking more of... do you hunt for possible detail in the Special Edition prints in those shots intentionally degraded for the original film? Some of the shots in the desert between wipe and skeleton just have to be dupe material, the same with certain shots in the falcon on their ways to Alderaan.

Anyway, it's great that some can finally get to see that this shot always was dirty and grainy right at the source. We discussed this shot a few years ago here and some people obviously shook their heads at me when I tried to describe it: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Best-source-for-the-Mos-Eisley-speeder-pass-by-shot/topic/13924/page/3/

Tservo posted a great interview with Edlund of how the shot came to be...

How do feel about George Lucas going back to the old Star Wars movies and replacing some of your old special effects with new computerized improvements?

When I went to the premiere of the Special Edition at the Fox Village Theatre, George was there. I told George: "I've heard you changed a lot of things and there's all these rumors about reshooting the opening shot... It's your movie and you can do with it what you want. It's not like someone coming around 40-50 years later, colorizing Shirley Temple." and he said: "You know Richard, there's that shot of the landspeeder..." and he didn't have to say anything else, because there's this one shot that's such a stinker in Star Wars and I can't stand it. Gary Kurtz shot this plate of the landspeeder taking off in the desert and you could see the tires under it. We had to get rid of the tires. This is pre-digital and I tried to rotoscope the tires underneath it and tweak the animation of the rotoscope so it didn't vibrate. Then I very carefully repositioned the sand area adjacent to where the tires were supposed to be and put that in the area. I almost had it perfect. If I'd done two or three more takes it would have been perfect, but George had sent it to Disney and had them rotoscope it. They tried doing a color match but didn't quite get the match; it was a little on the pink side, but that's what wound up in the movie. I'd nudge anybody who I'd see the movie with at that point, so they look away from the screen.

I personallly find the entrance shot much worse (but only artistically of course)

I don't pull detail from anything outside of the print(s) themselves, regardless of the condition of the shot.  Believe me, if I didn't do it for this one...

That's awesome, especially when it really must be tempting doing so.

EDIT: One thing's for sure, your son is going to see one of the best (if not the best) prints ever seen of Star Wars. I want to say - the guy don't know how lucky he is. ;)

I really enjoyed that last video Mike.  It's awesome to see such an improvement on such a notoriously problematic shot.  My hat's off to you for not only being able to ameliorate the shot as much as you did, but for sticking to the spirit of this project and avoiding the temptation of incorporating the blu-ray's footage.  With the various preservation and restoration projects on this site, and their varying use of source material, it's good to know this project will remain 100% sourced from original elements.

Wow - that's really cool.

Tobar said:

I was fascinated with this shot in the SE because of the sudden new detail. The story always was that they had smeared vaseline on the lens while shooting to help hide the mirror covering the tires.

But it's looking like the blur was only added in post.

 I will partially disagree, in fact the vaseline is probably the first thing I noticed in Mike's video, even in the raw version of the shot. I don't think I was able to see it on any other video transfer, but now there it is, plain as day.

This demonstrates the quality of Mike Verta's work, that I was able to see the vaseline on Vimeo, on a crappy display such as my monitor, and with my bad eyes.

Woops. I misread, sorry.

Yes, I just got word and it was just confirmed as Vaseline smeared on the lens.  :)

(I did not tripe-post this - no idea what happened there)

Yes, I just got word and it was just confirmed as Vaseline smeared on the lens.  :)

Yes, I just got word and it was just confirmed as Vaseline smeared on the lens.  :)

Don't worry, multiple posts are a natural occurrence around here.

The SE makes it seem like the Vaseline was not on the original plate.  Was it done in the optical printer?