Star Wars Prequels 35mm 4K Filmized Editions by Emanswfan (a WIP) — Page 26

More work going into reworking color schemes, Here I couldn’t stand that awful orange-yellow, greenish-teal of the bluray. I’ve started rotoscoping more shots like I had initially intended to separate actors and backgrounds (since much of it is artificial anyways). There are many places like on-location shots outside where singular grading is fine, maybe some power masks here and there, or ranged HSL/secondary color work. Yet to get many remaining sections pleasing to my eye, I’m finding myself having to isolate objects, or at least foreground vs background. This shot is more indicative on how far I can push a shot, so don’t take it as a final.

JEDIT: D’oh! Looks I left flux on accident again while grading today, so there’s a cooler tint there than I meant. Oh well.

And just for the project as a whole, in my personal life, I’m looking at shifting my career field out of the media realm. It wasn’t till a month ago that I felt led to another field, and really took to thinking what was once an enjoyable hobby was becoming something else. I felt especially drained this past year and a half, that I often didn’t feel the drive to spend the time needed on this and other personal projects, as dealing with work stress typically couldn’t be done when seeking to work on tasks too similar. The reasoning behind the change has more important reasoning that goes far beyond anything here, so rather this project will simply take a positive effect from this.

It reminds me of the aesthetic of A.I. for some reason.

Short of completely replacing the background with a model or something, I doubt there’s really any way to make majority of AOTC look like anything less than actors standing in front of a greenscreen with a cgi backdrop.

I agree. Don’t get me wrong earlier screenshots looked fantastic but something about this one seems off.

Well I did emphasize this screenshot as a test to see what it can allow me to tweak. It was a from-scratch version, and I did mention that flux was left on meaning my screen was much darker and warmer than what’s good for working on that. I almost pulled it off, but just decided to leave it posted there for the heck of it.

Not to mention, I many times use 1080p compressed proxies to speed up the initial broadstroak of a shot regrade. After sufficient work is done, I replace that with the 4K chroma upsampled source and tweak the finer details. This screenshot is actually from the initial proxy.

I will, and I do mean this sincerely, post a clip of said scene with a different grade from the full quality source.

There’s been time spent learning to work with the HEVC codec, though I’ve yet to really test how editing programs handle it in comparison to h264.

emanswfan said:
There’s been time spent learning to work with the HEVC codec, though I’ve yet to really test how editing programs handle it in comparison to h264.

Is your intent to have your project non-BD compliant? From everything I’ve read HEVC isn’t BD-compliant.

Edit: Ok, it looks like Ultra HD Blu-ray discs will be encoded with HEVC.

stretch009 said:
Is your intent to have your project non-BD compliant? From everything I’ve read HEVC isn’t BD-compliant.

Edit: Ok, it looks like Ultra HD Blu-ray discs will be encoded with HEVC.

I plan to release in 9GB 1080p MKV’s for viewing and high-bitrate 1080p m2ts versions intended as replacements for the original BD source. The 2 1080p versions I mentioned will be h264, with future 4K versions being hevc/h265. The 1080p release is being mastered at 4K, and converted back down to the standard rec709 color space. I’ve decided that said 4K releases will be further in the future, so I can tweak and enhance to work into proper 10 bit HDR versions that are ultra-hd bluray compliant.

It’d be cool to see a comparison. I like the general look on the interior but outside looks a bit too bright and pink.

Holy Christ! I just read through this entire thread and I never thought that changing the color grading and grain of the PT would improve it. The stills that are on this thread that you have shown are amazing! I can’t wait to see this once it’s complete and with its completion be used in other fanedits. Keep up the good work.

I find AOTC such an ugly film that it’s genuinely hard to watch for that reason alone (as well as the bad dialogue). Every character looks like a Barbie doll. These screenshots actually give the movie real texture. Can’t wait to see the final product.

Speed Chaser clip coming later today, with explanation about further technique changes.

“Been doing a lot of research into learning more color science type stuff. I’ve been again changing my methods, mainly to bring about a more accurate, and less “look” based grade. Specifically I’ve now been using Cineform Firstlight which I use to flatten and remove the tints from the image. To be able to use the program I do all the upsampling and upscaling process as one preceeding render resulting in files that get to ridiculous 300 GB per hour. That said, the amount I can raise the shadows (and to a lesser degree the highlights) is astonishing. It’s almost like taking the blu-ray and interpolating a RAW file from it. It’s far perfect, but it solves all the previous banding and noise issues I had in CG-heavy sequences. From there I’ve gone into AE where I keep the workflow 32 bit and use numerous adjustments to give it a filmic color response. I did research into techniques used to create film emulation lut’s so that I have more control over the process (also because LUT’s are designed for specific color profiles/cameras that these movies don’t line up with). I haven’t quite nailed it yet, but I’ve been able to get a satisfying filmic appearance without drastically changing any color decisions inherent in the film.”

Here I still left the highlight rolloff, and pushed shadows only slightly up. I’ll set the highlights and shadows to better levels as I finalize the curving adjustments.

EDIT: Well that’s a first…it was blocked despite leaving out the audio track, could’ve been it was too long of a clip. Hmm…gonna have to upload to Vimeo maybe.

Made a few more tweaks, and am rendering a new version of the clip. Instead of putting the entire speed chase clip on youtube, I have a 1:30 min section of it and uploading a link to the clip download here. It’s a BD-compatible M4V, so you can preview it on your television, though I intend to use a better renderer for the final product, since Media Encoder isn’t the best.

Any updates?

Gotta say this another great read for me while I work on this, and a positive outlook for the future of “digital” filmmaking. So glad Yedlin’s the cinematographer for Episode VIII.
http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/

It reminds me that work focused on building an accurate emulation is far more useful rather than trying to simply get the film look from a completely subjective standpoint. And while I can make occasional scene/shot tweaks, the emulation for each film needs to be able to work across the entire duration.

Also to note, I’ve fully moved over Davinci Resolve now, rendering the above-referenced clip not so applicable now. AE is my familiarity, but it’s better for this project to go all out. I’m more satisfied I haven’t rushed the project, as I realize just how much it will be better when I finally release it.

And I couldn’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I am thinking about doing a staggered release with TPM being the first to release.

Staggered releases are good.