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StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 95

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You mean because it wouldn’t be a perfect restoration? I personally think it is good as long as the actual restoration (i.e. without additional fixes) is properly preserved and/or released for future usage (that is, unlike what supposedly Lucasfilm did with their '93 restoration 😄 ).

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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poita said:

It certainly won’t have more detail than the original negs, I don’t see how that could be possible as the prints are derived from them.

If they had more detail then I think we would be breaking some fundamental laws of physics 😃

Depends, it’s well known that the original negs are really beaten up. The prints are derived from it, sure, but they were derived from a nearly 40-year younger, pristine negative. At least, that’s how I imagine those claims make sense. I recall Mike saying something along those lines before.

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I found it at 27:52. I’m going to quote here what I heard, but do understand that English is not my native language 😄

Mike Verta said:

I had softwares, techniques developed over the last 15 years, a unique process recruiting data from multiple scans, across multiple frames, so I can recover color and detail that was never seen on any print. And in some cases it’s probably approaching the negative, and in some odd and unusual cases it’s surpassing the negative (for reasons).

My guess is that the odd and unusual cases he means are, for example, the infamous sandcrawler and landspeeder shots and maybe the “Red 5 Standing By” shot, that is all those shots affected by noise and channels misalignments.

The Original Trilogy’s Timeline Reconstruction: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Implied-starting-date-of-the-Empire-from-OT-dialogue/post/786201/#TopicPost786201

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yotsuya said:

For the SE, they went back to the camera negatives, the raw footage, to recomposite most (but not all) of the shots. I’m not sure to what extent they did this with the composited effects shots (which were all done in VistaVision so the final composite would not have increased film grain over non-effects shots) or whether they kept the original composited elements.

They did this extensively, at least in the first film. The whole reason for the garbage mattes disappearing isn’t because they tweaked the black levels, it’s because they re-composited the foreground elements against the background elements. In all space shots you will notice the positions of the elements are slightly different. I’m under the impression that all re-composites it were done digitally rather than optically, but whatever they did they did it to every shot with compositing in SW as far as I can tell anyway.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Does anyone know if Mike showed his project to the executives?

I have a bad feeling about this…

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Han Frugrohl said:

Does anyone know if Mike showed his project to the executives?

I believe Mike had something planned near the end of the year if I’m not mistaken.

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The last thing he said back in April was simply that the screening/pitch was “slowly moving up the chain.”

But he’s been quiet for the last 3 months, so I am REALLY anxious at the moment for any kind of news.

“In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.” - George Lucas

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RU.08 said:

yotsuya said:

For the SE, they went back to the camera negatives, the raw footage, to recomposite most (but not all) of the shots. I’m not sure to what extent they did this with the composited effects shots (which were all done in VistaVision so the final composite would not have increased film grain over non-effects shots) or whether they kept the original composited elements.

They did this extensively, at least in the first film. The whole reason for the garbage mattes disappearing isn’t because they tweaked the black levels, it’s because they re-composited the foreground elements against the background elements. In all space shots you will notice the positions of the elements are slightly different. I’m under the impression that all re-composites it were done digitally rather than optically, but whatever they did they did it to every shot with compositing in SW as far as I can tell anyway.

There were some matte boxes in the 2004 DVD that were extremely noticeable that were removed for the BD. I don’t think they recomped for this.

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The latest news is that he should be hearing back by the end of August about the presentation (so it hasn’t happened yet). He mentioned this on his Twitter.

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The end of August has come and gone, so one can only wonder whether it’s good or bad news that we haven’t heard anything.

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I wonder, even if they were to get back to him in a timely matter, if he would even be allowed to tell us anything.

I would think Lucasfilm would want to announce something as big of a deal as an unaltered Star Wars '77 restoration on their own terms and not let the news just get out there via unofficial means.

We all remember how the blurb on RMW’s website about a 4k OT restoration just mysteriously disappeared not long after we heard about it.

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My guess is if anything is happening, that they’re scratching their heads on what to do. They’ve spent decades releasing the OT together - now it’s the 40th anniversary of SW, but they only have one restoration ready. I can imagine the argument whether to try and rush the other two restorations, or release the original theatrical versions “from the vault” for a limited time on each of their 40th anniversaries, culminating in a 4k Trilogy rerelease at the same time Jedi is released on blu.

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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That’s assuming Disney wasn’t already working on its own release by the time Mike came to them. Haven’t their been a few reports over the past couple years from folks claiming to have insider info that a restoration completely independent of Legacy was in the works?

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joefavs said:

That’s assuming Disney wasn’t already working on its own release by the time Mike came to them. Haven’t their been a few reports over the past couple years from folks claiming to have insider info that a restoration completely independent of Legacy was in the works?

There have been whispers. I personally know a few people from inside Disney who have told me a trilogy restoration is in the works, but none of them are directly involved in the restoration department so it’s possible they just misunderstood a new bluray release or something. Then of course there was all that Reliance Media stuff that popped up a while back.

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It could have been some sort of work-in-progress thing, before the final color pass.
I think, if they used Mike’s for SW and Reliance for the other two, it’d be fine.

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Harmy said:

It could have been some sort of work-in-progress thing, before the final color pass.
I think, if they used Mike’s for SW and Reliance for the other two, it’d be fine.

Yeah I guess they could do that but wouldn’t it be awesome if they gave him the resources to complete ESB and ROTJ, I understand that this would be asking too much from Mike as he already has made what I consider the greatest restoration ever, But a man can dream. Lets just cross our fingers and hope we can see Legacy.

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danielp103 said:

he already has made what I consider the greatest restoration ever

Okay, I’m as excited for the day Legacy is released but take it easy. None of us have seen it. I think even he would say it’s a little unjustified to make that call before actually watching his restoration.

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ray_afraid said:

I think we’ve seen enough of it and know enough about his sources and his methods to say that this is the best restoration of Star Wars anywhere.
After watching his videos, I don’t see how anybody could even argue that.

I think the main reason is that it doesn’t have any competition. Reliance and TN1 (as great as it is, it’s not really in the same tier from what we’ve seen).

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Despecialized is the best because I can watch it.

Legacy is theoretically better but it doesn’t exist until I watch it. Basically it’s the Schrödinger’s cat of Star Wars restorations.

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towne32 said:

ray_afraid said:

I think we’ve seen enough of it and know enough about his sources and his methods to say that this is the best restoration of Star Wars anywhere.
After watching his videos, I don’t see how anybody could even argue that.

I think the main reason is that it doesn’t have any competition. Reliance and TN1 (as great as it is, it’s not really in the same tier from what we’ve seen).

And Reliance isn’t an OOT restoration, which makes it inferior to all of the above.

I like Frink’s “Schrödinger’s Film” description of Legacy. Star Wars is both saved and not saved until you watch it and the wave function collapses.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)