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Phantom Menace '99 - HD Theatrical Version by Chewielewis (a WIP) — Page 5

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No, the subtitles are likely to be on the prints that were cut up to put in the collectors edition VHS box set.

There are a lot of sealed ones on ebay for not much, could be a good idea to buy one and scan it as a color reference, I think a lot of the opened ones are yellowed by time.

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Ah, okay, I see what you mean now. Mine weren’t from any subtitled scenes, I think they were from the Trade Federation ships landing on Naboo at the beginning.

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Imgur

A few months ago I had a conversation with ZigZig about this project and what I could be doing better. As it turns out I was totally off base with my assumptions on color. I had assumed from other posts on the topic that the only change in color from theatrical to DVD was a general pink wash that was easily removed with the THX reference.

As it turns out this could not be further from the truth. Throughout the whole film many scenes have been entirely regraded to look very different. Often to balance the poor color grading of the original release but also to brighten or darken a scene to enhance the mood, or to boost skintones where they had been washed out. Many scenes needed this treatment, the pod hanger, jedi council, senate chamber, but often the colors would become unnatural or video like. It was a rush job to fix a rush job, interestingly the bluray reverses a lot of these changes but introduces its own shitty grading decisions.

Restoring the colors shot by shot was an exhaustive process that took around a month an a half of full time work (as a freelancer I have plenty these days), I created over 1700 individual lut files using Dr Dres color matching tool. The HDTV was matched exclusively to the ORF1 SDTV release. As of now I’d say the colors are 99% accurate to the Theatrical Telecine which is a standard I am pretty happy with. It’s is certainly more pleasing to the eye.

Subtitles have also been adjusted. RU.08 suggested that the shadow on the subtitles goes directly down like in AOTC but on closer inspection of the Z bootleg they appear to go down and to the right.

I expect to have a preview out in the next 24 hours and if everything goes well it will be ready for public release soon. I’m eager to get this done and dusted as I have many more projects to work on.

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Fantastic update! So the subtitles should be final now? That seems to be the biggest hurdle till all the color grading.

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Yes. Burn in subtitles are there, general english subtitles I haven’t done yet but will get onto it.

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Glad to read that you finally took into account some of my remarks (I hope you did for subtitles too) 😃
Good luck anyway with your forthcoming release.

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I don’t know if I’d agree with your conclusions about the drop shadow on the Z bootleg. It never looked like anything but vertical to me. The resolution is so low that any deviation could easily just be due to aliasing.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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schorman13 said:

I don’t know if I’d agree with your conclusions about the drop shadow on the Z bootleg. It never looked like anything but vertical to me. The resolution is so low that any deviation could easily just be due to aliasing.

I agree with this from my attempt at a similar project a while back.

Excited to see what you’ve cooked up though, especially in regards to the color timing!

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According to the 35mm scans that I have, ChewieLewis is right: shadow goes down and right (and it has a gradient shadow slightly shaded).

But it is not a standard font, and spacings are variable from one word to another.
IMHO, the only way to achieve a result similar to the theatrical subtitles, is by creating a specific font and then composing every word letter by letter (anyway, that’s what I did in my project). Otherwise, you’ll get a subtitle which is not the theatrical one (and so what is the point to add such a subtitle?)

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I stand corrected. And it’ll be nice (IMO) to have a “near enough” to theatrical subtitle until we have actual 35mm scans of all the subs when Poita is able to get his print scanned, even if they aren’t 100% exact. Much like the subs in early versions of Despecialized before Harmy had good 35mm scans to work from.

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OK, sure.
I’m just saying that actual 35mm are currently available (otherwise how could I use them)…

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ZigZig said:

OK, sure.
I’m just saying that actual 35mm are currently available (otherwise how could I use them)…

Did you offer them to Chewielewis for use in this project? Or did he ask you if he could use them?

I don’t see why you’d just criticize his handling of the subtitles like that when you apparently have the solution in hand.

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ChainsawAsh said:

ZigZig said:

OK, sure.
I’m just saying that actual 35mm are currently available (otherwise how could I use them)…

Did you offer them to Chewielewis for use in this project? Or did he ask you if he could use them?

ChewieLewis and I had long discussions about how best to collaborate, but it turned out that we did not have the same idea of sharing at all, and our two projets are not the same at all (anyway, when we talked, ChewieLewis said that he didn’t want to make a full color regrading, while I told him that it was important to me and that I worked actively on my side on a shot-by-shot color regrading. I realize today that he obviously did not say everything about his project, or that he eventually took my ideas…)

However, we exchanged good advices, and it is not excluded, ultimately, that our two projects merge.
ChewieLewis absolutely wants to publish as soon as possible but, for my part, I need to take all the time that I think is necessary (for example time to find and import a 35mm scan with subtitles, which was not easy neither cheap) .

In short, I did not offer ChewieLewis to use my 35mm scan in his project - and I didn’t have that scan 2 months ago - as he did not offer me to use his “private” HDTV source for my project.

(I say this really without any reproach or disguised criticism: ChewieLewis was very cordial and correct in all the exchanges we had. Simply, it appeared that we do not pursue the same objectives at that time, these are things that happen …)

At the end of the day, if we come up with two quality projects, the entire OT community will benefit!

ChainsawAsh said:

I don’t see why you’d just criticize his handling of the subtitles like that when you apparently have the solution in hand.

I certainly don’t criticize anything, I am simply referring to our private messages and I say that I hope he took into account my remarks made in private. where do you see a criticism ? I even wrote about subtitles “ChewieLewis is right: shadow goes down and right”. So no criticism from me.

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I probably got that impression from this “why bother at all?” snippet at the end of your post about the subs:

ZigZig said:

…so what is the point to add such a subtitle?

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Well, giving my opinion and criticizing are two different things. I started my sentence with “IMHO” (but you forgot to take this part in my quotation).
Otherwise, you could also say that Schorman made some criticism when he disagreed about the shadow of the subtitles. But no, he didn’t criticize ChewieLewis, he just gave his opinion.

So, good luck to ChewieLewis, I sincerely mean it. That’s it.

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I suppose it was down to the way it was phrased then, because that’s not how I read it at all.

At any rate, sorry for misinterpreting your post(s). I’ll stop cluttering up Chewielewis’ thread now.

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Well the offer I made in our private thread still stands.

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Chewielewis said:

Well the offer I made in our private thread still stands.

Thanks Chewie, the offer I made in our private thread also still stands: you may use my rebuild HD scenes (if you want) as soon as they are done… but you’ll have to wait a few more months, which does not seem compatible with your agenda. I respect that.
Especially since my project is a bit more late than before because I tried to reorient my way of doing (new sources, new techniques, new schedule) so not to compete with you.
So once again: good luck. And I’ll be happy to discuss again with you about techniques, subtitles and weird sources in a private thread, so that I won’t pollute this public one anymore.

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Seems silly to call this a competition. If there are any more sources out there that I don’t have I’d love to have them. This is a community effort.

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Awesome to see an update. I’m glad this is getting closer to release because that means Chewielewis will win the competition we’ve all bore witness to since May (kidding, of course). Thank you for the tremendous amount of work you have put in thus far. Can’t wait to see the final result.

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ZigZig said:

Chewielewis said:
Seems silly to call this a competition.

I agree. Who said “I want to be the first to release” ?

ZigZig said:
Especially since my project is a bit more late than before because I tried to reorient my way of doing (new sources, new techniques, new schedule) so not to compete with you.

To ‘compete’ is to call something a ‘competition’, no?

Best of luck to both of you - the community benefits either way, and each creator get’s the level of satifaction that they want from their respective project.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Thank you DVD-BOY.

DVD-BOY said:

To ‘compete’ is to call something a ‘competition’, no?

Indeed. Thus “not to compete” (as I wrote) is to call something a “no-competition”, no ?

Well, I don’t want to compete, and Chewie thinks too that it is silly to call this a competition.

So could you please stop talking about competition between Chewie and I, since Chewie and I agree that there is no competition? Both projects are different, with different sources, techniques, goals, results and even schedule (mine won’t be release before several months, while Chewies’ will probably be released within a few weeks).
If this “competition” is such an important matter, then please make a new thread about this crucial question, and let Chewie’s thread talking about Chewie’s project…

Plus: is there a competition between Williarob and Poita? DrDre and NeverarGreat? Derann and Puggo? Adywan and Harmy? The obvious answer is no.
So why would there be a competition between ChewieLewis and me?

PS : in my last PM with ChewieLewis, I offered to share my new sources with him as soon as they are sorted, cleaned and scanned. So no competition, OK?

DVD-BOY said:

Best of luck to both of you - the community benefits either way, and each creator get’s the level of satifaction that they want from their respective project.

I couldn’t agree more.

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Hi all

I’ve just finished what I hope to be the final render of this project. New grading, improved missing scenes, better encoding.

Im still not 100% on which audio should be default, the Cinema DTS or the nearfield mix from the Laserdisc, both sound real good. I have Cinema First but keen to hear your input.

Subtitles still need to be done so if I have time I’ll work on that. Not something I’m too familiar with so will probably just edit an SRT file from somewhere. I do know that the subs are rather inaccurate on the DVD and improved on the Bluray.

If you would like to QC the preview version please PM me and I’ll send you a Resillio key.