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Proof OOT has been restored? + DVD quality Pre-ANH footage!

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Got my boxset today, and noticed instantly that during the Empire of Dreams doco we see considerably cleaned up footage, and yet unaltered of the original trilogy. And yes at times we see the new fx shot versions, but the main point I want to make is:

Footage of the original 20th century fox logo, LUCASFILM logo, and Star Wars crawl is shown, where the Episode IV and a New Hope Text is missing.

I figured this would be perfect to be incorporated into Magnoliafan's Pre-ANH that he said he would be putting together, as I believe originally he was going to use a VHS source of some age.

Sorry if I've waffled on, or stated the obvious, but it was just nice to see.

Furthermore while alot of 97 and 2004 edition shots are shown during the doco, and the other featurettes, there is a substantial amount of footage that is clearly OOT stuff, and it seems to be as clean as the 2004 DVD shots. So if this enough to think that yes Lowry have restored the original cuts too.

RATLSNAKE
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Lowry would have wanted to work from the most original source possible. The SE stuff was done digitally so in order to bring out the most detail in the underlying photographic image (in scenes where digital stuff had been layered on top of original photography, and in scenes where photographic elements were digitally recomposited) they would have wanted to work with the original, non-SE negative, and then ILM would have had to recomposite newer digital effects onto Lowry's HD remaster. That, however, would be a lot more work than using the "1997 SE master" as the starting point.

It gets completely insane if you think about what "negative" really means in the context of the most complex FX scenes that were originally assembled with ILM's old optical printer. A space battle scene would have a background plate negative, then there are negatives for each effects element, and all their mattes. If you digitize each element's negative separately, you then have to reassemble all the layers of the scene and match the original registration and color correction of each element. They did NOT do this, or there would be no matte boxes anywhere in the DVD, and there are. Truly rebuilding the film digitally from scratch (in a way that preserved all the original photography) would be a staggeringly monumental undertaking.

Because everyone's saying the SE scenes look better blended with the original film now, it might sound like they did it the hard way, but on the other hand they've talked about not having enough time so that would suggest doing it the faster way. The faster way would be restoring the SEs rather than the O-OT. They may have used a combination of techniques, though. For FX scenes that aren't as complex as, say, ROTJ's space battle, they may have gone back to the O-OT for the negative and then recomposited the FX on top. And clearly, the O-OT was completely digitized at some point, if not for the DVD then for the SE.

I think I read that the bonus materials were made simultaneously with Lowry's work to meet the DVD release date, which means the bonus materials are NOT made form Lowry's restoration because it wasn't available yet. So you're probably looking at the O-OT footage as it was remastered for making the 1997 SE. That wouldn't explain the pre-Ep. IV opening crawl's restoration but maybe they just had that done separately for the DVD.

It would be interesting if someone in the know would dissect it all in an article sometime.
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Lowry talked about further restoration to the point of HD with these discs, but he was not allowed to go that far. As good as they look he said he could have pushed them more. Both Lowry and Kershner have alluded to work being done on their high def release probably by the 30th anniversary and mentioned deleted scenes being put on that package.
16 years I wait and this is what I get???
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Considering the amount of time they were given I would have thought they would have restored the negative that ILM created for the 97 release, which is silly as it is like a second hand negative, as it went into the computer, and came back out.

Hopefully this information will be released in an article.
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Yeah, if we can get him copies of the PAL discs (I hope I'm not going to be left with that job).
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"there is a substantial amount of footage that is clearly OOT stuff, and it seems to be as clean as the 2004 DVD shots."

Not that I wouldn't mind having that footage for my DVD, but the O-OT footage was not DVD quality.

"They did NOT do this, or there would be no matte boxes anywhere in the DVD, and there are."

Surely, it wouldn't have been so difficult to at least remove the matte boxes...?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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It's close to DVD quality, I know the Pre-Anh crawl is incomplete, but some of it's still there.
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"It's close to DVD quality"

Not with the bloops and splotches that I saw...

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>