Overall, I like the tech colors too, but on tatooine everything is over-yellow and sometimes over-red to the point where it’s distracting and personally takes me out of the movie. I don’t mind the sand being on the yellower side, but r2d2 is white, silver, and blue, not yellow, green, and black.
Harmy’s probably isn’t even 100% accurate to the tech in that scene anyway, as he’s stated that his source wasn’t fully corrected, giving 2.5 some problems.
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.
As I said I would, I’m posting a sample of my WIP of the Mos Eisley entry scene. It’s tricky as hell for some shots, and not terrible for others.
Here’s the video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3o6a6i_special_auto
edit: and here’s a comparison video of a larger section of the film: http://we.tl/uJCZ7liTee
I’ve been leap frogging back and forth between working on the color correction and working on recreating the 81 crawl/flyover. Working from Harmy’s Despecialized, I’ve been painstakingly rotoscoping each individual element (the ships, the laser bolts, the planet, the moons) and putting them on their own layers separate from the starfield. I will then recreate the entirety of the 81 starfield based on either TN1’s 81 scan or a laserdisc capture, both of which I have at my disposal. Then I’ll map the new starfield onto the background and recreate the camera move. Here’s hoping everything works out well.
This project looks really cool, and I’m quite interested. Also, after reading you and others talk about what to call the different SE’s, I just thought, wouldn’t it be best just to call them:
Special Edition (1997)
Special Edition (2004)
Special Edition (2011)I’ve always been bothered by the use of weird differentiating terms like ‘redux’. It makes it sound like a cheap fanedit, and the SW SE’s have never officially even had any sort of ‘redux’ or ‘director’s cut’ tag on them. Though I am fine with the term ‘director’s cut’.
I hope your able to finish this project, as many people will be very happy with it, I’m sure, and that includes myself.
I’d call the 1997 Special Edition the 20th Anniversary Special Edition, the 2004 the DVD versions, and the 2011 version the Blu-ray disc release. If it were me.
But… The 1997 version was the original Special Edition. And it was just called the Special Edition. Just call it that.
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.
As I said I would, I’m posting a sample of my WIP of the Mos Eisley entry scene. It’s tricky as hell for some shots, and not terrible for others.
snip
Alright, so I’ve gone and expanded on this for some reason. So, let me know if I’m polluting your thread, I just didn’t want to start a new thread about “correcting” anything of Harmy’s, since people will get offended on his behalf. And it’s somewhat on topic here!
I always assumed that Harmy’s 1997 Respecialized had the exact same color timing as 2.5, aside perhaps from the CGI SE scenes. He was, after all, still emulating the IB Tech look, and never said much about improving the color. But he recently pointed out that, even so, he did refine the color timing a bit. Some shots are still too green/yellow for my taste. But others are improved quite a lot. The luma curve is better all around.
So, using that source for some of the not specialized shots, I went about trying to re-color Despecialized 2.5 using a combination of Harmy’s versions and manually adjusting the color. If anyone wants to take a look, or even provide feedback, I’ve made a comparison video of part of the film, temporarily hosted here: http://we.tl/uJCZ7liTee
Some of the shots are greatly improved, in my biased opinion. Others need work, and a couple others I think I’ve mucked up. 😃
Don’t worry about cluttering the thread. I’m totally ok with any discussion related to the project 😃
Especially when I’m short on updates of my own.
Somebody asked about disc labels? (Final will not have the white guides. That is just to show how it looks as a disc)
Each of the discs will feature a different piece of Ralph McQuarrie artwork.
Also a question about distribution. Each of the discs will probably snugly fit on a 25gb disc. At 4 discs, that’ll be around 100GB give or take to download.
Would it be preferred to release each disc as its own torrent, so everyone can download disc by disc as they see fit? Or would it be preferred to just release it all in one massive torrent?
There’s also the factor that one disc might be ready long before another. The bonus materials will probably take the longest to get together.
Each of the discs will feature a different piece of Ralph McQuarrie artwork.
Also a question about distribution. Each of the discs will probably snugly fit on a 25gb disc. At 4 discs, that’ll be around 100GB give or take to download.
Would it be preferred to release each disc as its own torrent, so everyone can download disc by disc as they see fit? Or would it be preferred to just release it all in one massive torrent?
There’s also the factor that one disc might be ready long before another. The bonus materials will probably take the longest to get together.
Separate discs will probably be best for re-seeding requests and general torrent shelf life.
That’s what I was thinking. It just dawned on me today how large the size would be of the entire package.
I’ll release each disc individually with its label. The cover art will be packaged with the first disc.
Also, I’d say the color correction is roughly 85% there. It’s really just a matter of putting the final touches on that, and finishing work on the '81 crawl and pandown, which is only about 40% there I’d estimate.
Empire is still quite a ways away, but I did some experimenting today to get away from the mind-numbing rotoscoping for the 81 crawl for a while lest my mind explode.
Might I suggest you move the artwork around a bit so it isn’t hidden by text and logos. Something similar to this.
“You know, when you think about it, the Ewoks probably just crap over the sides of their tree-huts.”
HAHA! Finally I have all of the elements of the flyover isolated in After Effects! Does anybody have any idea what would be the best source to pull the '81 starfield from? I’m thinking a laserdisc transfer with levels adjusted to improve the contrast between the stars and space, but does anybody know of a transfer with the stars relatively clear? I did a test with the X0 transfer that was recently posted to Myspleen but during the pandown they do this strange smearing thing, and once levels are adjusted, a lot of the stars disappear into black.
Any ideas?
Also, I realized I must’ve accidentally deleted Schorman’s HDTV transfers off of my harddrive at some point in the past few months so I’m attempting to download them again off the spleen. If anybody has Episode IV could you please seed? Its going to take an eternity at the rate it’s going now.
JEDIT: Alternatively, it would be incredibly cool if someone were to upload it somewhere privately for me :p
HAHA! Finally I have all of the elements of the flyover isolated in After Effects! Does anybody have any idea what would be the best source to pull the '81 starfield from? I’m thinking a laserdisc transfer with levels adjusted to improve the contrast between the stars and space, but does anybody know of a transfer with the stars relatively clear? I did a test with the X0 transfer that was recently posted to Myspleen but during the pandown they do this strange smearing thing, and once levels are adjusted, a lot of the stars disappear into black.
Any ideas?
Maybe you could see if the stars are salvageable in TN-1’s partial clip from the silver screen edition.There’s got to be some in there. Alternatively, you can see if there’s a usable shot from Empire’s starfield that you could use.
I actually have already tried with TN1’s. Some of the stars are salvageable, but I haven’t had much luck getting it to look anywhere near decent. What I’ve been trying with laserdisc transfers looks worlds better.
And actually, you would think you could just plop in Empire’s starfield, but while you can clearly see it is the same starfield is used by matching up certain star formations, it is shifted to the right dramatically. So much so that much of the 81 ANH starfield actually isn’t visible at any point in Empire, because it’s been cropped at the sides or something. It’s really strange and I don’t know why they would have made a starfield that overly wide.
Although I’ve been scrubbing through empire and I’m realizing I’m seeing the same star formations over and over again. And of course I’m an idiot that didn’t realize that OF COURSE they just made one big starfield and reframed it for every shot. I am going to look through Empire and with a frame of the '81 starfield as reference to see if I can’t find a match, or at least a shot with all the side detail that’s framed off from the left side of the Empire crawl.
Have you asked -1 if they have a scan of the 81 crawl & opening? I’m sure I read that they did…
They do. It was released as an extra with the silver screen edition. However it is in much too rough shape for me to use in this instance.
Doesn’t matter either way because I think I’ve got the whole thing figured out now. I expect the crawl/pandown/flyover to be done in the next couple days. I’m about 90% there piecing together the star field from bits and pieces in Empire.
Don’t ever go looking for patterns in the stars with these movies. You can never unsee the reusing of the same starfield over and over just cropped slightly differently.
I was able to piece together the entire starfield from different parts of Empire apart from one small area in the lower left corner after the pandown, which I painted in by hand in photoshop based on a laserdisc transfer. I am currently working on recreating the camera motion of the pandown in after effects and making sure everything lines up correctly. The '81 crawl/flyover may be done sooner than I thought.
Either today or tomorrow depending on when I have time I will post some screenshot comparisons for the color correction of Mos Eisley.
Sounds good. Have finished my own color adjustment of the film and would definitely like to compare.
Don’t forget to remove the extra frame before the Battle of Yavin to bring it back to GOUT sync. 😃
Alrighty guys, here are a few select shots from the Mos Eisley entrance sequence. I tried to choose the shots that are the most difficult shots and that show the color grading best.