StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 41

Well, due to the multiple generations of copying, the image gets grainier, it gets less dense, whites and highlights get dulled, blacks turn kind of gray, the whole thing starts to look mushy. (I have seen a 35mm of Jedi where we're in the Emperor's throne room, the live-action footage looks grainy and black levels are kind of grayish...but the matted-in animated computer display on the wall looks perfectly dense and jet-black.)

The image degradation with generation loss is why ILM jumped onto VistaVision as a lower-cost alternative to 65mm. It's also why they used the later-infamous Color Reversal Intermediate for the VFX and opticals, so they could skip a generation and avoid additional loss. (Part of the reason so many of the effects in the first film were recomposited was not just to get rid of matte lines and such, but because the original negatives for those scenes were in such a dire state.)

Mike, will you be able to share your restoration of Beat It with us, or are you concerned about being haunted by the ghost of Michael Jackson?

Ha, Jackson was more like Lucas than I ever realized.

mverta said:

That's funny...  throwing out the entire EU gave them credibility in my book.

So does this mean the prequels were all a dream?

It's great to see actual shots.  Post more!  Please. 

Are you keeping the grain in the film?  Maybe just reducing the grain in the opticals?  I'm guessing the Reliance version will be very grain free. 

You said you had the ability to put the grain back in after you finished. Wouldn't putting the degrained image straight to film impose a brand new grain structure? I recall you said you would (digitally?) put back the original grain structure (or something close to it).

For the sake of preserving an authentic 'feel', the grain level should perceptibly increase on opticals.  It would actually seem false to me if it didn't, knowing what I know of the processes through which the film was made.

Looking at the recent -1 release, it's obvious that the increase in grain during opticals on a projection print was quite huge.  For a source with much less generation loss like Legacy, it will be significantly lower.  But after having filtered it out via difference signal, if you put back in the grain that all your prints have in common (ie, what is on the negative itself), we'll be able to see this type of increase, and it will feel authentic while still looking much better than any version ever shown in theatres.

I absolutely hear what you're saying about doing a film-out, though.  Doing this could unify the entire movie visually and 'glue' it together as one organic, real final product—similar to how some people who mix music 'in the box' like to break out their digital multitracks into the analog world and let them be summed together and mixed down as real electricity, rather than remaining as 1's and 0's the whole time.  If it was me, I would keep the original grain and do a film-out: in this case your digital files are your 'negative', and the print becomes the sort of 'interpositive' which is more final.  (Yes, I understand that's not a perfect metaphor, since interpositives are made using different color and contrast processes, but it holds up reasonably well.)  This could even be scanned back into the computer to maintain a digital record of what the film medium itself did to the image.

Well, that's what I would do, anyway.

To me making a film back up of the digital negative makes a lot of sense. After all film is a lot more durable over a long period of time.

But it almost sounds like you want the film one to be THE negative? That seems silly if it can be avoided. Scan film, correct everything, then print it back onto the film. Only to be scanned in again at a later date?

I looked up that Dark Energy Pro software.

Its amazing.

As for Grain on optical, I would say it would vary depending on the shot.

For example the Vaseline land speeder shot, is vary bad, and mite benefit from a bit more clean up, so it would not stick out so badly.

I can understand the space ship shots having some ruff Grain.

Its there because of the optical work, but it actually ads to the realism.

It makes it look like old stock footage, like it an old war movie.

Especially when you consider this.

Star Wars: Empire of Dreams Part 5 - ILM's Challenge

Go to 1:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8nJnH-7HwY

Ruff grain is bad, but woof grain is worse.

UGH!    Ruff. Rough.

"If I had a Light saber and a time machine, I would go back and kill the guy that invented Non-phonetic spelling."

Seriously something has to be psychotic when, a word that means it's spelled the way it sounds is not spelled the way it sounds.
 Phonetic should be f??nedik. Schwa should be a letter.

Nice videos

Nice Mike! somehow missed that explosion one as well! 

-G

Out of curiosity, and I can't seem to find anywhere on here besides statements from years ago, is this still being done for an audience of one or is there going to be some kind of torrent or newsgroup release? I would hope the latter ...