4K restoration on Star Wars — Page 30

TMBTM said:

I don't even understand why someone would want to "de-canonize" the PT or the Clone Wars. It would just add more mess to the whole thing in the mind of the audience. It would look like they do not know what they're doing. They'd de-canonize some of the movies of the series to remove some concepts that some fans don't like so they could...what? It does not make any sens. Not only from a marketing point of view but also from a storytelling point of view. You can't tell the audience a tale, then, when you arrive to some chapters, sundenly say "wait, no, forget about those early chapters I told you before. What I really wanted to tell you is THIS." It would look so unprofessional... So bad. It would be WAY worse than keeping the PT the way they are and find good stories to tell anyway. THAT would look professional, and maybe working with some concepts that you don't like much can lead to some creativity.

 Not to give too much credence to this "de-canonize" line of thinking, but in all fairness, how is this not what Lucas did when he made the PT?  If something didn't jive with the OOT, he'd just throw in new dialog to the SE's to cover the differences, and continue on like nothing was wrong.  Well, everything he did since the mid-90's seemed unprofessional and lacking in creativity... so I guess you're onto something.

yoda-sama said:

TMBTM said:

I don't even understand why someone would want to "de-canonize" the PT or the Clone Wars. It would just add more mess to the whole thing in the mind of the audience. It would look like they do not know what they're doing. They'd de-canonize some of the movies of the series to remove some concepts that some fans don't like so they could...what? It does not make any sens. Not only from a marketing point of view but also from a storytelling point of view. You can't tell the audience a tale, then, when you arrive to some chapters, sundenly say "wait, no, forget about those early chapters I told you before. What I really wanted to tell you is THIS." It would look so unprofessional... So bad. It would be WAY worse than keeping the PT the way they are and find good stories to tell anyway. THAT would look professional, and maybe working with some concepts that you don't like much can lead to some creativity.

 Not to give too much credence to this "de-canonize" line of thinking, but in all fairness, how is this not what Lucas did when he made the PT?  If something didn't jive with the OOT, he'd just throw in new dialog to the SE's to cover the differences, and continue on like nothing was wrong.  Well, everything he did since the mid-90's seemed unprofessional and lacking in creativity... so I guess you're onto something.

That's it, I don't want the ST to do the same mistakes as Lucas did with the PT.

(Did not want to hijack this thread that much by the way)

Oh, a couple more things.  When everyone talks about how Clone Wars is canon, so the PT should stay canon; or ignoring the PT is fine as long as Clone Wars is still canon, etc., what version are you referring to?  There's the Genndy Tartakovsky series, which actually bridged the gap of what happened immediately before Episode III (how Grievous got injured and Palpatine was kidnapped), which surely makes it canonical to that related film, and then there's the still running or wrapping up CGI Clone Wars series (I haven't watched that at all, but I have to wonder if it covered that same material relating to Episode III).  Which one of these are you talking about as being canon?  None of the wording has sounded like both are being talked about, so, would this be an example of one thing replacing something else of the same name as canonical?  (I don't support that idea, but, still, it sounds like you may have let that already happen without realizing it.)

The other thing is, The Holiday Special was mentioned.  I rather doubt that crapfest would grace/sully a set finally showcasing the OOT in HD glory, but that doesn't mean the "special" (I say it that way because it is both not particularly stellar, yet also embodying the mentally handicapped connotation of the word) isn't being treated more favorably than it used to.  While not in great quality, the "special" has actually been made available for sale, with non-optional Rifftrax commentary directly through Rifftrax.com (trust me, you don't want to watch it without Rifftrax, no matter what you say about historical anything, you don't actually want to watch it that way).  A few years ago, such a thing would NEVER have been allowed to happen.  I'm not sure what extent and quality of a release The Holiday Special has in front of it, but the door isn't as firmly shut on it as it once was (but, dear God, don't let them dare put it out officially without at least optional Rifftrax in the future).

moviefreakedmind said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Its not like Song of the South is it?

We restored the movie in HD and then we sent it to a vault to never be seen again.

I know its an altogether different thing but what are the chances a pristine oot has existed since the 1990's and Lucas just did not want it out there.

They undertook a multi mission dollar restoration yet they have no good prints or elements, i think there is something wrong with this picture.

 I've always wondered that too. Like, Lucas did restore the OOT so it wouldn't be lost forever (or it was restored before the SE ruined the negative), and then he hid it away so no one could ever see it. 

 Well, it depends on the details of the 20 million dollar restoration. Did Fox restore all three movies, and THEN Lucas shat on them for the Special Edition? Or did they remove the parts Lucas didn't like and then only restore the remaining parts of the movie while the cut parts were left to rot?

Didn't many of the cut scenes still end up in the film, just in an altered form?  Such as the Mos Eisley sequences and the Jabba sequence?  Those scenes had to have been restored in their original form before they were "enhanced" with CGI.

WedgeCyan said:

yoda-sama said:

 Which one of these are you talking about as being canon? 

 The 2008 Clone Wars computer animated series is the one still considered canon. As someone who has watched both series in their entirety... I hate to admit it but the CG series somehow managed to capture more of the OT spirit, with tons of character development, particularly of Obi-Wan and the new character Ahsoka. The Gendy series was just Samurai Jack in space.

As Samurai Jack or Dexter's Lab as it was, the Genndy Tartakovsky version did originally tie in with the movies, quite directly.  So, in your opinion, the later CG "reboot" of Clone Wars felt more like what it should have been, so it is "still considered canon" as opposed to the non-canon status you most likely are applying to the original series...  That actually defends the position that if something "better" came along with the same names as the movies of the PT, that they could be supplanted.  (Again, not my opinion that that would happen, but it is interesting to see it occurring under your noses with a related property.)

Did the canonical status of the original Clone Wars series officially get stripped?  If so, did it go out the window with the Expanded Universe, or sometime before that (in short, explain this canon purge)?  Also, does the CG Clone Wars series ever deal with the events directly leading up to Episode III?

moviefreakedmind said:

unamochilla2 said:

Didn't many of the cut scenes still end up in the film, just in an altered form?  Such as the Mos Eisley sequences and the Jabba sequence?  Those scenes had to have been restored in their original form before they were "enhanced" with CGI.

 Well, did they restore the mos eisley scenes and then destroy the negative by printing the CG directly onto the old film? Or did they restore it, digitally add the changes and add new parts into the negative and put the real parts into storage?

According to savestarwars.com, the original pieces are most likely in storage.  Therefore, the scenes were altered digitally.

The original pieces removed for the CG-enhanced shots are no doubt in storage. The original negative was fully cleaned and restored starting in 1995, and because parts even then were damaged or unusable had to have certain parts replaced with interpositive and separation master dupes, as well as having the optical transitions redone.

This is kinda random, but one of the HBO channels was just now showing The Abyss in actual HD. I'm dog sitting for my grandfather's caretaker this week while they're with my aunt and uncle at their beach place. I checked to see if they were subscribed to HBO and just happened to notice The Abyss in the lineup thinking it would just be the usual 4:3 SD master upscaled, but nope, much to my surprise it was actual hd and 2.35:1. To my knowledge there's no previous hd transfer of the movie, which means this is undoubtedly the one RMW worked on that will be used for the blu-ray.

I must say it looks great. It's got all the staples of a modern 4k/2k transfer with lots of fine detail muddied only by the broadcast compression. There's a very slight teal push but it's nothing egregious and all of the other colors are still there.

If I could watch the OOT like this I'd be thrilled.

Well, we do know for a fact that RMW was or is working on a 4K restoration of the entire trilogy, and that's information straight from their website. The 20 million dollar price tag doesn't sound right, but I'm sure Mr. Wielage knows much more than I do about these things, and even if it is a 20 million dollar project, Star Wars will make much more than that. What I find interesting is that, if I'm understanding this correctly, none of the Special Edition changes are capable of being scanned in 4K, so would that mean they'd have to scan all of the unaltered scenes back in and restore them before sh#tting on them again by re-adding the SE changes? If that's the case then this could potentially be a way for them to simultaneously restore the OOT and recreate and re-release the SE's right? The only exceptions would be the scenes that were reshot like the new wampa, the dance lady in ROTJ, and... I think that might be it, right?

Mike O said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I saw someone post this on hometheaterforums.com today. Not sure if this is completely accurate but I thought i'd post this here since it sounded interesting and has to do with the 4K restoration. I personally don't know what to believe because Wielage said that they wouldn't do a 4K release, but RMW did have on their website (not anymore) that they worked on 4K, so there's no way RMW would lie about that, which begs the question of when Mr. Wielage actually wrote this.

"I thought I would pass this information along.
 
Marc Wielage, who worked on the 2004 Star Wars masters, and has 35 years of video mastering experience within the industry (also having worked for Technicolor and Kodak), recently commented on AVS to my question of whether he had any knowledge of any 4K Star Wars work.  I won't post the link as I am not sure if that is allowed here, but he replied to me.
 
To my knowledge, no -- it was all 2K. Note that Episodes 2 and 3 were all shot on HD with 2K visual effects, and none of the VFX in any of the Star Wars films were more than 2K. Some of the early digital stuff in the 1990s wasn't even HD.
It's an interesting thought as to whether they'd consider rescanning 100% of the live-action film footage in Star Wars and recomping all the VFX in 4K. That would be a monstrous expense -- I'm guessing as much as $20M -- so my gut feeling is it's not gonna happen. 
People get very wrapped up in 4K, but I'm not convinced it's the be-all / end-all. I think 4K can look great, and I'm all for people shooting in this format, but the post process for 4K is so torturous and expensive, I'm not sure if the world is ready for it yet. I think it can work, but when you're looking at a project with upwards of 1200 visual effects, and each one takes 2 or 3 days to bounce around to different facilities (in 2K)... multiply that times 4 and tell me what it does to the schedule. 
Having said that: there are more and more TV shows shooting in 4K. Sony showed some 4K demos of The Blacklistback in April at NAB, and I thought it looked fantastic. But that's not a show with 200 effects per episode."

 In other words, so not happening. We'll probably get 2K scans of the SEs at best. 

According to him yes, but we have no way of knowing when Marc Wielage said that, it may have been before the RMW news, or he may not have heard about the RMW issue. Remember, that's just his own speculation, albeit he definitely knows more about the subject then most. However, unless RMW were lying (which, let's be real, why would they?) then they definitely are/were doing a 4K restoration of the original trilogy. There's the possibility that Disney cancelled the project but I don't think they would because I'm sure Lucasfilm already paid for it when they started doing it.

That guy is making a huge leap about recomping all the shots again. Of course they aren't doing that. They'd just scan the neg at 4K like they did with JAWS and we either get the 97 version or the 97 version with a side of extra crap dumped on it at the later digital level.

Baronlando said:

That guy is making a huge leap about recomping all the shots again. Of course they aren't doing that. They'd just scan the neg at 4K like they did with JAWS and we either get the 97 version or the 97 version with a side of extra crap dumped on it at the later digital level.

 Can they scan the SE CGI at 4K?

Yeah they just scan the finished piece of film like any 90s movie.