Star Wars Trilogy SE bluray color regrade (a WIP) — Page 15

There actually is green in the walls in the last frame I posted. I don’t really see any clear evidence of red shifting. Most of the frames look reasonably white balanced, except for many of the Tatooine shots, that have a very noticeable yellow shift. Also, it would be some incredible red shift, that somehow makes the print look better.

Could these scans have been manipulated? I guess so, but the colors look very natural for the majority of the frames. Also, why then not correct the yellow shift in some of the frames as well, and why are the perforated edges not affected by such alleged manipulation?

When it comes to the old home video releases, the JSC’s colors are a very close match to this print:

Is that a coincidence? One thing I did notice, is that it has the A New Hope subtitle in the crawl, so it’s definitely not a Technicolor print. Could some of the color shift problems in the original 1977 release prints have been corrected for the 1981 re-release? One thing I noticed, is the green shift, that is clearly visible in the scene, where Leia gives R2-D2 her message for Obi-Wan. It’s in the Technicolor print scans, -1’s raw LPP scan, yet it’s not to be seen on the JSC, nor is blue R2-D2 when when he enters the escape pod. So, some color issues were “fixed” for the early home video releases, or could it have been earlier?

So Harmy, You’re stating that we should rely on/accept the color timing of past sources, that you’re showing in your DeEd versions…and certainly other versions, which produces these Green/Blue Death Star walls, more than that of a source that produces a more neutral Grey, but has a suspected fading or manipulated past?

I don’t necessarily think these regraded shots posted by Dr.Dre are perfect, but with a little fine tuning, Dre, and or other members on this forum, could likely produce a more reliable and refined color timing result, than the one that is currently relied on, which gives us such “suspect” color timing…especially on the inside shots of the Death Star, don’t you think?

Here is what the DeEd version 2.6 shot looks like:

And the same frame from TN1’s SSE:

I actually do see a bit of red shifting. Nothing major, but it is there. You have to hunt for the red tones in the shadows to really see them.

The walls certainly shouldn’t be perfectly grey, but just much less green than I’ve seen lately. It should read as grey but have subtle cyan or blue tones depending on the scene, since, as we’ve established, the wall color is different from set to set.

Still, as far as faded prints go, this is in pretty damn good shape regardless of if it’s tech or not. I think it’s a good reference, but as I’ve stated before, there should never be a time when we’re trying to match ONE reference alone, but rather look for what is consistent between references and try to find a natural looking medium between them all.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a BAD reference. There are inaccurate references, but since they are all derived from a common ancestor, every reference we can get our hands on can tell us something about the original colors, even if the reference itself is wildly off. No such thing as too much information to draw from.

There is also no such thing as a perfect reference. Every reference we can find could benefit from a little correction.

Original DrDre:

Corrected:

And more often than not, a second pass helps:

Darth Lucas,

What can your 2 pass system, do for this shot?

DrDre said:
One thing I did notice, is that it has the A New Hope subtitle in the crawl, so it’s definitely not a Technicolor print.

This does not prove that it is not a Technicolor print. During the 1981 re-release, the original crawl and flyover on all Tech prints were removed and replaced with the “A New Hope” crawl and 1981 flyover on regular Eastman stock. You can see this in the Senator screening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEctWVF4J_w and Mike Verta has mentioned this a few times as well.

Harmy said:

I’m simply saying, that just because this source fits what looks correct to you, doesn’t make it correct and that all other prints we’ve seen had the walls blue/green, so I don’t see what makes this one right, when it is the one that stands out among all the others.
And the JSC is definitelly red-shifted, as is the '93 THX master.

I’m not sure if this in reference to my prior posts or not. Either way I’ll address them as such. I certainly wasn’t saying these are perfectly correct. Only that if this is indeed a tech print, then there isn’t as much of a bias toward one particular color as there seems to be on other tech prints, and it backs up the idea that the walls should probably be less cyan/green than previously thought.
My personal belief is greyish with a subtle tone of cyan or blue depending on the shot.

dlvh said:

Darth Lucas,

What can your 2 pass system, do for this shot?

I wouldn’t call it much of a process. It’s basically me dropping it into photoshop and playing with the curves until the white levels look right, but:

And after a second pass. Not a big change, but still, every step counts.

Thanks Darth Lucas!

A VERY quick edit though…mine

And yours:

Thought maybe your whites were a little bit blown out.

Harmy said:

I’m simply saying, that just because this source fits what looks correct to you, doesn’t make it correct and that all other prints we’ve seen had the walls blue/green, so I don’t see what makes this one right, when it is the one that stands out among all the others.
And the JSC is definitelly red-shifted, as is the '93 THX master.

Fair enough Harmy, let’s just say that we agree to disagree on this point. I agree with Darth Lucas, that maybe all the walls on the Death Star aren’t straight neutral Grey, but have some Green/Blue color in them…just a bit, but to see versions out there that have all sorts of wild Blues, Purples and Cyan…among other colors…is not believable, if looked at compared to some newly-found reasonable source(s).

You Harmy, are working on DeEd version 3.0, might I ask, which coloring are you going with on that version? the more “colorful”, like on 2.5 & 2.6, or the the more neutral Grey similar to this one? in the Death Star coloring, I mean.

Here are my own white balance corrections for those frames. There are some greens in the walls, but they’re nowhere near the levels seen on the Technicolor scans:

My question is this. The JSC has a red shift. The Technicolor prints have a green shift. So, how do we know how close to neutral those walls should be? Of course there was great excitement, when people first saw scans from Technicolor prints, and everybody tried to mimic those, but the amount green that’s in DeEd 2.5, should imo not be there. Here’s how the DeEd 2.5 colors compare to the Technicolor print scan it’s based on:

DeEd 2.5:

Bluray matched to Technicolor print:

Bluray matched to Ebay print:

DeEd 2.5 is definitely more green than the print scans, which are themselves green shifted, so my guess would be that there should be a slight green shift, like this:

Harmy said:

I disagree about these scans being a good reference - we don’t know how they were scanned or how the pics may have been manipulated, but mainly, we’ve seen quite a few prints by now and this is the only one that stands out as this radically different - I think it’s just a print that’s beginning to fade and thus has a red bias.
Even the GOUT and other old home video releases clearly show the walls as green/blue when saturation is boosted - remember the time when we took the GOUT as the best reference and everyone was correcting the Death Star walls to be grey and then we saw those Senator screening photos and someone tried boosting the GOUT saturation and those same kind of colors started coming out - it was a revelation. And sure, we may have gone a bit crazy in the hunt for the Technicolor look for a while, but that was because that’s how much of a revelation that was, and now we know better than to trust one reference beyond all others and we know to use moderation and our best judgement when doing the color grading but I’d hate to see us go back too far.

Thanks.

How does this scene look for DeEd 2.6 towne23?

I’ve asked Mike Verta for his opinion on the eBay scans. Harmy and NeverarGreat why didn’t you tell me this stuff is so difficult 😉?

DrDre said:

DeEd 2.5 is definitely more green than the print scans, which are themselves green sifted, so my guess would be that there should be a slight green shift, like this:

WOW… that looks awesome… definitely gets some of the excess reds out. Now can you apply that LUT to a Tarkin scene just to see what that does? That might give us another counter reference even though I know part of the problem is inconsistent grading on the blu ray.

I would also like to hear poita’s thoughts on the scans and print if possible.

Harmy said:

Yeah, I think I’m on the record that the colors in v2.5 are far from ideal and I even said in my post above that we did go a bit crazy hunting for that technicolor look for a while, but we need to find some sort of mid-way, not just take one reference that in someone’s subjective opinion looks good and run with it - that’s just repeating the same mistakes, except at the time, we only had that one reference and there was no evidence that it may not be 100% accurate, whereas now, we have much more than that, so the mistake would be even bigger.

Yeah. I mean I get that it looks more neutral and therefore familiar (I agree and I do like the look of it). But that makes me wonder exactly how/why it exists and where it comes from. It looks more like we might expect an Eastman print to look (ish). But that’s obviously not possible. Or, if an Eastman print was in cold storage from 1977 until now and immediately was chopped up, that’s the saddest most ridiculous thing ever. But the color of the soundtrack, if I’m not mistaken, shows that it shouldn’t be Technicolor either.

I agree. Are there any 1980s re-release LPP’s in existence, that don’t have the issues that the Technicolor prints have?

There’s a restored Russian 35 mm print from 1990 for sale on eBay:

http://m.ebay.com/itm/35mm-Feature-STAR-WARS-EPISODE-IV-A-NEW-HOPE-1977-RARE-SOVIET-PRINT-1990-/331800039573?nav=SEARCH