Neverar's A New Hope Technicolor Recreation (Final Version Released!) — Page 10

Dreamaster said:

Neverargreat the curiosity is starting to kill me. Can you show us your take on this frame from your blu ray correction?

I second this. This frame was one of the most pleasing to look at when DrDre was testing his color balancing/matching algorithms.

Life has yet again gotten in the way, and forced me to take another break. I have made some more progress, but the droid auction is still in its preliminary grade. I just went back and checked it, and I definitely added too much yellow in an attempt to counteract the magenta. That scene is next on the roster.

Here is the approximate status of the reels:

Reel 1: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 75%
Reel 2: Preliminary Grade 90% - Finalized 20%
Reel 3: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 90%
Reel 4: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 100%
Reel 5: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 93%
Reel 6: Preliminary Grade 80% - Finalized 80%
Total Preliminary: 95% - Finalized 76%

The biggest bottlenecks for me are the lightsaber composites. If those were done, Reels 3-5 would be 100%. In fact, if someone more knowledgeable about image stabilization and degraining could prep the SSE lightsaber shots, that would go a long way to helping me finish. This is one of the downsides of working in Premiere, it’s simply not set up for complicated effects work. I only need the lightsaber training on the Falcon and the hangar section of the Vader/Obi-wan duel.

However, the end is in sight!

Woooo I was looking for something like this, so it this just going to be a color correction ? don’t get me wrong I live for edits like adys and harmys but I’d still like to see the movies as they are today color corrected to stick on my shelf next to the retailer versions

The first post of this thread has pretty much everything you’d need to know about the project. Short answer is yes, this is ‘just’ a regrade, and it is going to be the basis of Harmy’s 3.0.

@Stotchy: What Towne said. Though I’m thinking of keeping some of the inconsistency of the film sources in the preliminary grade of Reel 2, since some of my final grades are extremely consistent across scenes, to the point that it looks like a modern movie. Star Wars was always inconsistent from shot to shot, and perhaps Reel 2 should reflect some of that.

NeverarGreat said:

The first post of this thread has pretty much everything you’d need to know about the project. Short answer is yes, this is ‘just’ a regrade, and it is going to be the basis of Harmy’s 3.0.

@Stotchy: What Towne said. Though I’m thinking of keeping some of the inconsistency of the film sources in the preliminary grade of Reel 2, since some of my final grades are extremely consistent across scenes, to the point that it looks like a modern movie. Star Wars was always inconsistent from shot to shot, and perhaps Reel 2 should reflect some of that.

Gotcha, looks incredible so far

Here’s probably my final grade of that shot, from the Blu-ray:

And one showing R5:

Comparison with the Blu-ray:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/195809/picture:1
So it’s quite a bit warmer than Dre’s version, with the sky staying almost gray.

JEDIT: I’ve reduced the reds in the sky, and the imbedded images have been updated. New comparison:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/195878/picture:1

UnitéD2 said:

Wow ! How did you manage to make 3PO’s color that uniform ? He’s almost multicolor in the Blu Ray…

Plus, the result of the correct encoding on the clipped highlights is very impressive in those two frames. Good job ! 😃

Thanks!

How did I get the colors uniform? RGB curves, Channel Mixer, multiple layers of individual color addition and subtraction…a long process. I was about to recruit color from another source for a while, but decided to keep adding adjustment layers and tinkering with it. This shot was borderline unsalvageable (and some gradients are still missing), but sometimes it just takes another hour of work to fix.

Dreamaster said:

Just to keep things clear… (SO MANY VARIATIONS NOW!) this is Dr. Dre’s version:

The top one in Neverargreat’s comparison was from my single pass regrade of SSE 1.5, before 1.6 was released.

Something interesting about this shot is how much of the “sky color” is reflected in the “sand color”. Getting a nice, deep blue sky nets an unusually blue sand, probably showing the sky shouldn’t be quite that blue in the shot?

Thanks for posting that shot, it’s great… in fact… it’s kind of NeverarGREAT! 😃

The sky was certainly intended to be quite gray, but in the actual photography it was probably on the blue side, like a normal sunny day. You can see the green tones in the sky of the SSE example reflected in C-3PO’s head, and on the oversaturated Blu-ray this turns him into a multicolored mess. However, it may be more true to the photography to have that blue sky reflection, it’s just that in the Tech references he’s quite monochrome in the desert because of the desolate look. I’m still not entirely happy with how red the sky is in my version, but it’s phenomenally difficult to change while retaining the proper blue of R2’s panels.

JEDIT: Reduced the reds! Updated images above.

UnitéD2 said:

Thanks to you Neverar and another question : when you recruit color from another source, does it mean you combine luminance information from the BR and chrominance from the source ?

That’s it exactly. I usually replace 50-90% of the chroma with the improved source, sometimes just a few gradients or a small part of the frame, but sometimes the entire frame gets the chroma replaced. In the first 4 reels, I’ve probably replaced the entire color of just 5 or 6 shots, but reel 6 in particular has such horrible color problems that during the dogfight it’s used on probably 1/3 of the shots. It’s surprisingly effective, but it’s essential to make sure everything is registered throughout the shot or you get worse problems like color fringing.

Some colorists say that you should grade everything for consistent skin tones, since out of all the elements in the scene, this is the most important for the audience. The argument goes that if skin tones look correct, the rest of the frame can be hot pink or neon green and nobody will bat an eye. Yet skin reflects the environment, and people photographed in a bright desert will look different than people photographed under studio lights surrounded by dark blue/green walls. So I get them consistent for the location, but I don’t worry too much about consistency over the entire film. And besides, as you said, makeup can be inconsistent.

NeverarGreat said:

UnitéD2 said:

Thanks to you Neverar and another question : when you recruit color from another source, does it mean you combine luminance information from the BR and chrominance from the source ?

That’s it exactly. I usually replace 50-90% of the chroma with the improved source, sometimes just a few gradients or a small part of the frame, but sometimes the entire frame gets the chroma replaced. In the first 4 reels, I’ve probably replaced the entire color of just 5 or 6 shots, but reel 6 in particular has such horrible color problems that during the dogfight it’s used on probably 1/3 of the shots. It’s surprisingly effective, but it’s essential to make sure everything is registered throughout the shot or you get worse problems like color fringing.

What tools do you use for image registration? Or do you do it manually? I’ve tried Elastix, some ImageJ plugins, and Photoshop’s Auto align layers usually works pretty well.