A theory about the coloring on the 04 DVDs. — Page 2

Think about Octorox,

    If Lucas was really trying to make the films look truer to Ralph McQuarrie's original art, He would have replace things with CGI models more like Ralph McQuarrie's original art. also If Lucas was really trying to make the films look truer to the color of the Ralph McQuarrie's original art, He would have use a CGI lighting program like "shake" to change the color and lighting.

    The real reason for the bad color in the 04 DVDs is to hide things.
Just go into photoshop (which seems like the program Lucasfilm used on the 04 DVDs) and lighten up some scenes of the 04 DVD and you we see it is the same cleanup as the SE 1997.
The 2004 DVDs is just the 1997 SE with somethings added.
Lucas just messed with the color to make it look newer.
It was NOT to make the films look truer to Ralph McQuarrie's original art.

The 2004 DVDs are just a cheap photoshop made rip-off.

AxiaEuxine said:

You explained to me why filmgrain exists but, not why it shouldnt be removed to make a clearer picture.

Can you cite an example of this? Because it is my understanding that such a thing would not be possible.

What I don't understand is why people seem to care so much - Sitting more than a few feet away I don't even notice the grain.

The [blue tint] colouring on the '04 DVD's on the other hand is noticeable no matter how far away you sit.

AxiaEuxine said:

No I can't I was responding more to one of the quotes above than any actual experience with it. If filmgrain could be removed in a way that would enhance the picture I don't understand why anyone would be against it.

That's the point - it can't be removed without destroying visual information.  The only way to remove grain is to blur the image and resharpen it (anyone who tells you different, saying they're using an "advanced" or "experimental" technique is feeding you a bunch of bullshit), and by doing that you destroy fine detail.  It gives everything a plastic-like look, and destroys the intentions of the director and cinematographer.

Grain is not a bad thing, at all.  If the cinematographer or director wanted there to be no grain at all, they'd use a very fine-grained film (believe it or not, there is film that's "fast" enough that you pretty much can't see any grain at all, though it's still there - you'd need an incredibly sharp eye).

People like to say that the "that's how the cinematographer wanted it" argument isn't legitimate because if cinematographers had the option of grain or no grain, they'd go with no grain.  That's not true at all.  Being in film school, I know several cinematographers and many more people going to school for cinematography, and I don't know a single one of them that A) want a grain-free film, or B) is happy that film itself will be replaced by digital in the near future.  In fact, for a music video I edited that was shot digitally, I was specifically told to add film grain that matched a particular B&W film stock.

Grain is not bad.  It's what physically makes up the image, so removing it in any way will inherently destroy said image.

Here's a good example of grain removal techniques - you'll notice that ALL attempted techniques resulted in a blurred, less-detailed image:

ORIGINAL (no grain removal):

Grain Removal version #1:

Version #2:

GOUT has too much because it's not just the camera-negative's grain.  The GOUT was transferred from a print that was several generations away from the source, and thus had extra grain.  Basically every time it's printed onto new film, the grain from the film it's being transferred to is ADDED to the grain that's on the original, so you have double the grain (a very simplistic explanation, since different film stocks have different levels of grain, so it'll never be a straight doubling, but you get the picture).

The GOUT looks like it's been copied at least three or four times, so it has about three to four times the amount of grain it should have.

Good transfers will use either the original camera negatives or the interpositive made from those negatives (if there were a lot of optical effects, or if the original camera negatives are unusable for some reason).

So no, grain in itself is NOT bad, but extra, unnecessary grain that wasn't meant to be there IS bad.

Unfortunately, the original negatives have been destroyed to make the SE.

So they claim.  My opinion on that: they say that just so it gives them a good reason not to release the OOT in decent quality.

All that was changed were effects - there's quite literally no reason whatsoever why any negative would be damaged in what they did for the SEs.

Even if this is the case, there's still the master interpositive that was made from the original negative, which was used to make release prints.  If the GOUT is anything to go on though, it appears that this copy may have been lost or destroyed prior to 1993, forcing them to use a copy of *that*.

Then there's the copies of all three originals (pre-ANH for the first one!) that sit in the national film registry preserved as best they can be.

Then there's the 3-strip archival copies MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL NEGATIVES that Lucas himself has in his vaults (he has personally said this to be true).  That would be the BEST way, period, to restore the OOT.

Why would that be better than using the camera negative?  Technically, it wouldn't be.  But assuming the o-neg has been lost or destroyed, then it's the best way for many reasons:

---

NOTE: A LOT OF FILM TECHNOBABBLE AHEAD!!! (Also highly speculative since it's likely that none of this will ever happen)

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First, Lucas' 3-strip archival prints would have been made from the camera negatives and printed to very, very fine-grained archival-grade film, so it would have less grain than a release print (which would have been made from the interpositive made from the negatives, adding another generation and more grain)

Second, and perhaps more important, is inherent in the way three-strip archival prints work.  They use three, very, very fine-grained black and white prints.  Each of the three is made by shining a red, green, or blue light through the negative, so there's a red print, a green print, and a blue print (though they're in black-and-white).

Making a color print from these three is simple - you run each print on top of the same negative, shining a red light throuh on the red print, blue for the blue print, and green for the green print.  What you have after is a print that is 100% perfectly color-timed the way it was originally.  There would be no color issues whatsoever.

The problem with this in the past has been not lining up all 3 exactly right, but as has been proven with the recent Wizard of Oz restoration (which was *shot* in 3-strip Technicolor - Star Wars was shot with one-strip 35mm, and a 3-strip archival print was made from that), modern restoration techniques can eliminate this problem.

The only other potental issue that could arise from this method is the compounding film grain of each of the 3 prints, but it would be nowhere near the level of the GOUT.  This could be easily remedied by applying a very, very, VERY small amount of grain removal on each of the three prints before combining them (I stress VERY small for a reason).

The ideal solution, though, would be to scan the original 35mm camera negatives at 4k and the VistaVision optical effects at 6k, and use the 3-strip print as a color reference.  That would give us the absolute best possible OOT preservation, ever.

Which will never happen in this timeline

I was much more disappointed in the sound mixing than the colors.  Pop in ANH right after the credits and listen to the music disappear over the blasts.  Happens other times in that movie, especially.

Are you agreeing with Axia, or the other way around?  (I hope it's the other way around ... )

As Chainsaw Ash said, there are two types of grain:

-dupe grain

-emulsion grain on the camera original

Dupe grain is bad. Its a foreign element that comes from replication, and resembles a mask of dirt over the image. Nearly all of the grain on the GOUT is dupe grain. Its basically like a photocopy of a photocopy--each time you replicate it, the image degrades, in the case of film you get extra grain added. This should be removed, or more importantly bypassed by going to an earlier print thats not so far generationally removed. Grain reduction software often just fuzzes it out by blurring the grain, which just degrades the image further.

However, film IS grain. This is emulsion grain thats on the camera negative. Its like saying "lets remove pixels from digital images." Its a nonsensical statement. Digital images are composed of pixels, and film is composed of tiny crystals that form an image, and are called grain. There are different types of grain, which vary by size and other factors. But this literally IS the film---the detail is made up of grain. Sometimes the grain is slightly bigger, sometimes its finer, and the grain size is deliberately chosen by the cinematographer--but its always there. This should not be removed.

However, people have this image of old movies being all grainy and shitty looking. They're not. Thats the dupe grain, because most old movies are made from old, generational prints. The 2004 SE is actually a very accurate reproduction of the camera negative. If you look at it you can see grain in the image, because the image is grain, but there shouldn't be a mask of dirtyness over it like in the GOUT, that is all foreign. I think the SE might have had a bit of sharpening done to it, but its basically a close approximation of the camera original. But this doesn't apply to all films--some films have much more noticeable grain structure, and some films actually use a visibly distracting heavy grain for purposeful effect.

Anyway, grain is good, its the image, its what the image is composed of, it has a texture, its like saying lets remove the brush stroke marking from oil paintings--well, sorry, thats what the image is composed of, its part of the aesthetic. However, I think the nastinest offenders are often dupe grain, and this is not part of the original image. Yet removing it just makes things worse, you just blur out the detail. Basically, you have to just get an original negative so that it doesn't have dupe grain, and if you can't well then you are shit out of luck. Such is the case with the GOUT. But people often still complain that Blu Ray brings out the grain in films--it sure does; thank god we can finally see films they way they actually look. Film has a texture; people just aren't accustomed to seeing it on their TVs because they've never actually seen this sort of STRUCTURAL TEXTURE, as opposed to dupe grain, before because home display has never been capable of displaying it.

As for the topic--you know, I've seen a million reasons of people trying to justify why the films are colored the way they are. The simple, painful answer is that its just shoddy workmanship and poor taste. I wish it were otherwise. Lucas wanted the films to be saturated, high contrast like the prequels, and with a more bolder color pallete, someone totally fucked up implementing this, Lucas was an idiot and said it looks good, everyone else was afraid to say it looks like shit and Vader has pink lightsaber, and voila, Lucasfilm just made half a billion dollars in video sales.