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Complete Comparison of Special Edition Visual Changes — Page 31

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So, I did an experiment last night with ANHSE by making a spreadsheet cataloging the changes. I used 005's changes album as the reference, but there were shots in the saber duel that he didn't include (an other shots had multiple pics for a single shot) so I had to go through that shot by shot myself to get each cut; there were a lot. I suspect this may also be the case with the trench run regarding some of the cockpit BG replacements, as the changes album only includes the one shot of Luke. So, my spreadsheet might need to have more added. The 2011 changes aren't included, but I did note when the 2004 version introduced something or modified something, but I didn't include the 1981 crawl as a change.

Anyway, the way I did it was that I had 4 levels of alterations.

The first is Level 1. These are invisible fixes, mainly re-done wipes, but also recomposites where it resembles or basically resembles the original image but just is cleaner. I also included a few background things that no one tends to notice unless it's pointed out, like the redone prison hallway (I debated about this one) or the new holograms composites, or the continuity fix on the background when Luke discovers R2 is missing (I debated this one too). It's basically the stuff that some people ask to be "fixed" if they got an OOT, and the stuff that if this was all the SE ever was no one would care about the original.

Level 2 were minor additions or modifications. This includes stuff like adding a ronto to a background, or replacing the background matte to the sandcrawler approach, or adding the floating droid to the sandtroopers. This includes Greedo shooting first, which maybe seems unfair but I am just going by superficial modifications and not their impact on plot, character, etc. or how well they integrate. There actually weren't a lot of these.

Level 3 is a change where a shot has been nearly totally redone (like Han chasing the troopers or the ronto with Jawas) or has been totally redone (like most of the x-wing shots). So it could include all-CG shots as long as they were represented by model/matte shots in the original version.

Level 4 were shots that never existed editorially in the first place. This mainly includes the Jabba scene, but also some of the dewback search, Biggs, and the Falcon escaping from docking bay 94, etc.

In total, these were the findings, and they could increase as a more complete list is created for sequences in which there are repeat cuts.

There are a total of 276 altered or new shots in the film.

Of these, 199 are Level 1. Mainly re-done wipes and re-done optical composites, but also the odd "invisible" fix for continuity or inconsequential background stuff. A very large amount of these were introduced in 2004 when they re-comped the saber fight.

There are 24 Level 2 shots, where minor additions have been made, usually enhancing a matte or adding a notable CG element to the image.

There are 37 Level 3 shots, where a shot in the original edit has been nearly re-done or totally redone. Most of these are in the trench run, but there are a few others like Ben's hut.

There are 16 brand new shots introduced into the edit. Exactly 8 of them are in the Jabba scene.

The 2004 SE introduced a whopping 103 new shots, but they are all Level 1 fixes. Mainly the saber duel (60-something shots) and the prison shoot-out (about 20).

The 2004 SE modified 9 shots already altered in 1997, about half of that figure being replacing the Jabba model.

Just thought people would be interested in this. It's an awful lot of changes, and we haven't even gotten to 2011 BD yet!

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zombie84 said:


So, I did an experiment last night with ANHSE by making a spreadsheet cataloging the changes. I used 005's changes album as the reference, but there were shots in the saber duel that he didn't include (an other shots had multiple pics for a single shot) so I had to go through that shot by shot myself to get each cut; there were a lot. I suspect this may also be the case with the trench run regarding some of the cockpit BG replacements, as the changes album only includes the one shot of Luke. So, my spreadsheet might need to have more added. The 2011 changes aren't included, but I did note when the 2004 version introduced something or modified something, but I didn't include the 1981 crawl as a change.
NICE! This is great, I love solid fact numbers. Sorry about the duel, I wanted to get all of the saber shots AND all of the flashes where you couldn't see the sabers very well, so there was a lot of doubling. You said I missed some though? And the cockpit backgrounds?

I noticed that several of the "we had to go through all of the trench footage to find the ones to recomposite suchandsuch shot" shots have never been pointed out as being changed from our nearly frame-by-frame analysis. We notice the ones where they reposition the ships ever so slightly, but what about the ones they actually did perfectly?

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I could be mistaken about you missing some of the duel shots. I was going shot-by-shot in order and I noticed that the album didn't match the film. This could just be because there is a shot or two that you listed out of order, as this happened at least once earlier. Rather than figure it all out, I just decided to stop using the album and just catalog each shot myself using the film. I ran into this with the prison shoot-out too but I think in that case I was just confusing myself and had to do lots of album-to-film comparisons as I went to make sure I was on the right page.

With the trench run, I really have no idea when it comes to replacing the background for the cockpits. It's too hard to tell because the video we have is so bad, looking for signs like matte lines is such fine work that it often is difficult to see in video from the 1990s. It doesn't help that I was using Puggos 16mm either. I guess what you could do is look at each shot until you can find some clue you can use as a reference, like a transparency or a matte line around the actor, then go check that against the SE and see if that reference clue is still present, and if it's not then it means it's a recomp. You can sometimes tell if they haven't recomped because the colour of the background is a little off, the Death Star sometimes prints as a mild blue or purple and the space and stars sometimes print blue.

It's such a headache I just listed that one shot of Luke that you did and called it a day. :p If more are ever identified I will add them.

I also noticed the Kenobi tractor beam matte was not listed as a re-comp. I wasn't watching the SE, but I thought that was re-done. Or did the black crush just make it match better?

Here's a question: is there a single visual effects shot in the film that isn't changed?? When I was going through the list the only ones that I noticed were missing was the "Here they come" scene and a couple of cockpit point of views. You don't list the shot of the SD going towards the DS, but I don't remember seeing any matte lines on that in SE, but maybe I'm just not remembering it correctly. It would be interesting now to catalog the shots that have not been re-comped or touched in any way. There's probably only a handful of them! This would be an interesting analysis to use in that you can scientifically say that 90% of the Oscar-winning visual effects have been removed (and yes--to me, the composite is the effect; a model against bluescreen is not the visual effect, anyone can film that, it was the way they were put together that was pioneering).

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Agree this is great.  Been wondering how to classify or create a percentage of what's been modified over the years, with the idea of using those numbers to compare to GL quotes where he goes, "the films were x% complete".  Then do the math to see if we are getting closer to that 100% mark.  (...or if the 2004 set pushed it past the 100% mark...)

Has anyone come across the number of shots there actually are in these movies?  Remember reading random talk about modern movies having so many quick shots that a movie could get into the 1k-2k range? (seems high)  If that's the case, with 276 SE changes, that's a quarter to an eighth.  So if the original film was 70% then modifying a quarter means the 97SE was in the upper 90's%, then the 2004 rejiggering should push past the 100% mark...

(aside: was interesting to see in some of the recent BR deleted scenes from Lowry how the counters document how long the shot lasts.)

Could we get this excel doc?  Or have a version everyone could update: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/spreadsheets/

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zombie84 said:


Here's a question: is there a single visual effects shot in the film that isn't changed?? When I was going through the list the only ones that I noticed were missing was the "Here they come" scene and a couple of cockpit point of views. You don't list the shot of the SD going towards the DS, but I don't remember seeing any matte lines on that in SE, but maybe I'm just not remembering it correctly. It would be interesting now to catalog the shots that have not been re-comped or touched in any way. There's probably only a handful of them! This would be an interesting analysis to use in that you can scientifically say that 90% of the Oscar-winning visual effects have been removed (and yes--to me, the composite is the effect; a model against bluescreen is not the visual effect, anyone can film that, it was the way they were put together that was pioneering).
Beats me. Like I said, they said they recomposited everything, and the pictures given in some of my SE research are IDENTICAL to the original. Either this is like the "say that snowspeeder transparency has been eliminated by showing a shot where they clearly haven't been", or we're missing a lot of even more subtle changes.

none said:


Could we get this excel doc?  Or have a version everyone could update: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/spreadsheets/
Yes, Google Docs...

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zombie84 said:

(and yes--to me, the composite is the effect; a model against bluescreen is not the visual effect, anyone can film that, it was the way they were put together that was pioneering).

I thought a large amount of the innovation was the really good motion control system they built, which relates more to the actual filming of the individual models than it does the compositing?

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Motion control of a model on a bluescreen is nothing. The reason they did motion control was so that they could do really dense layers in the composite. It was all about the composite, otherwise you'd have ten shots of single models on bluescreen with the same camera movement. The effect is when you put them together and they all exist at once and move with the camera the same so it looks like they are all filmed together.

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Before I post the spread I just want to clean it up a bit. I also have a couple questions

-Ben at the tractor-beam matte painting: unchanged in the SE?

-Greedo and Han: is it just the one shot of them firing, or did they delete, shorten or alter the shot of Greedo exploding? The album just lists the wideshot of them firing but I thought there was more.

-Finally: we really only identified that one shot of Luke in the cockpit? Isn't that shot repeated twice?

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zombie84 said:


Before I post the spread I just want to clean it up a bit. I also have a couple questions

-Ben at the tractor-beam matte painting: unchanged in the SE?

-Greedo and Han: is it just the one shot of them firing, or did they delete, shorten or alter the shot of Greedo exploding? The album just lists the wideshot of them firing but I thought there was more.
I believe you can cut out the wide shot and recreate the exact original version. Which makes Greedo shooting a 4.

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True! Also, I edited my post while you were replying. The Luke shot in the cockpit: it's only used once? And is that really the only shot for cockpit recomps we've id'd?

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zombie84 said:


True! Also, I edited my post while you were replying. The Luke shot in the cockpit: it's only used once? And is that really the only shot for cockpit recomps we've id'd?
That's the only one on the official list, I looked through a few of the others, but not super-close.

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zombie84 said:

Before I post the spread I just want to clean it up a bit. I also have a couple questions

-Ben at the tractor-beam matte painting: unchanged in the SE?

-Greedo and Han: is it just the one shot of them firing, or did they delete, shorten or alter the shot of Greedo exploding? The album just lists the wideshot of them firing but I thought there was more.

-Finally: we really only identified that one shot of Luke in the cockpit? Isn't that shot repeated twice?

Yes, that is one of the few matte paintings still left untouched. It seems Mr. Ellenshaw wasn't good enough. However, the blue force field could've possibly been recomped, I don't know.

Doesn't the Han/Greedo sequence miss a few frames either before or after the spliced in shot?

Another thing that could've been recomped is the beacon/glow effect from the Sandcrawler when threepio calls for help. Haven't checked it myself.

The old pan & scan transfers could maybe be helpful when spotting the more well made recomposites.

Nice technical breakdown of all the changes btw.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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doubleofive said:

 

zombie84 said:


Before I post the spread I just want to clean it up a bit. I also have a couple questions

-Ben at the tractor-beam matte painting: unchanged in the SE?

-Greedo and Han: is it just the one shot of them firing, or did they delete, shorten or alter the shot of Greedo exploding? The album just lists the wideshot of them firing but I thought there was more.
I believe you can cut out the wide shot and recreate the exact original version. Which makes Greedo shooting a 4.

 

Well, actually, no you can't. There are some frames missing from the shot of Han saying "yes, I bet you have." So many in fact, that the "yes" had to be cut out of the SE sound mix. But it is still a 4, as it is longer than the cut out part, thus altering the length of the scene. 

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I would count that as a 1 or a 2. It's not a new shot, it's just a tweak to an existing one; they took out the "Yes" in 1997 but they added it back in, right? I might consider the 1997 version a 2 and then 2004 version a 1 for that shot.

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No, it's an all new shot, which only uses element from a completely different existing one.

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I meant the shot of Han saying "I bet you have." But the wide shot with them firing is a new one, yes.

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Oh, right, yeah, that one would be 1 or 2 in both the 97 and 04 versions.

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LOL, just so we're clear here: the shot of Han saying "(Yes,) I bet you have" is shorter by a few frames in both versions of the SE, correct? Because if it is, I haven't included it.

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zombie84 said:


LOL, just so we're clear here: the shot of Han saying "(Yes,) I bet you have" is shorter by a few frames in both versions of the SE, correct? Because if it is, I haven't included it.
Yes, it is shorter on the front part and the end in the SEs. They cut out the video for "Yes" and the screen going white in close up as Han shoots through the table.

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Added none's shots from the lightsaber duels to the 2011 Comps. The ANH ones are all brightness adjustments of the whole frame, and all of the RotJ ones saves for the Emperor cross are new cores. Check this out:

http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b-1iW-xqIrI/TnqAHg4HzGI/AAAAAAAAIsA/lQjklgPKGo4/s640/JediSaber-09.jpg

How did that happen in 04? 97 has the same bright core as the original that masks out the background.

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doubleofive said:



How did that happen in 04? 97 has the same bright core as the original that masks out the background.

You know, it's the way the colour space is treated by DVD ta-dee-da-dee-ta da-dee... or something like that.

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That's good work you're doing there Zombie.

Speaking of the Han and Greedo scene, and I'm probably jumping the gun a bit with the Blu-ray being so new, but is there video that has each version (original '77/ '97/ '04/ '11) side by side or split screen?

 

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt

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Harmy said:

doubleofive said:



How did that happen in 04? 97 has the same bright core as the original that masks out the background.

You know, it's the way the colour space is treated by DVD ta-dee-da-dee-ta da-dee... or something like that.

No, no, the way the colour space is treated by DVD can't do this sort of changes, it can only change blue to green :-)

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What's the criteria for adding to the list a reframed shot?

This is GOUT English (Top) and SWSE TB, 3po and R2 are pushed left in the SE.  The rest of the sequence does not have this noticeable a shift.