StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 49

For a reconstruction, I would agree, for a preservation, I would leave them in at a low level.

There is no doubt that they would not have wanted them to show, but they are pretty clear on every print I have seen, and were documented at the time, so they are an artifact of the film making process circa 1977, just like bad comps, frame jumps, coma on the stars and other issues.

For a version I would want to sit down and watch today, I'd rather them gone, but for a preservation master, I would be leaving them in.

Decisions like this are what make preservation and restoration a tricky beast.

Quick semantics point: I can't call Legacy a preservation.  Only someone given the original negative and officially charged with preserving the film could say that.  I probably shouldn't call it a restoration either, for that matter; it is not an official project tasked with restoring the film.  Maybe reconstruction is the right word, who knows.

Either way, let's be clear that I don't clip out a single pixel of data, ever.  Everything that was in the original scan is get-able after the fact; it's just a question of where they sit in the values.  Now, regarding the garbage mattes, if they were visible 100% of the time on 100% of prints, like the artifacts under the landspeeder, I'd say they should stay.  But that's not the case.  And more importantly: when I set the pure black of space to 0, the ship mattes fall below visible black in P3 naturally, anyway.  I don't have to adjust them out.  So I'd say that ultimately, I'm leaving them in, but because my black is pure black, you just won't see them.

It's all semantics at the end of the day, everyone doing this stuff has different aims and different parameters. I haven't seen a screening yet where I can't see the mattes, so I am personally leaving them in on the work I am doing. For a version that I want to sit down and watch and enjoy, they are being corrected out. On another film I am working on the wires holding a model are just barely visible, I could correct them out just with colour controls, but I decided to leave them in. It really does come down to personal preference. We have no client, so can do whatever pleases us for once in our lives!

[For my own enjoyment I am making a version that is how I 'remember' the films, (i.e. better than they look on the prints) with many of the shitty comps, mattes and glitches removed, but that is a different project altogether]

Just out of interest, where the mattes sit over the top of lighter items and are still visible, are you correcting those out as well?

I've done it both ways, just wondering which way you are going with those?

You mean like ships over explosions?

Also:  Massassi Temple

I was more thinking of ties flying past the falcon.

Oh, no I don't spot correct those.

I'd say it's because in the raw scan, the whole thing has a bit of a tint, so it looks more uniform but mainly I'd say it's because in the raw footage neither of the three layers has true blacks, whereas in the restoration, the foreground elements do have much darker blacks than the painting, which makes it look more fake (you could argue it's supposed to mimic atmospheric distortion but it's too different to look real).

Yeah, I posted before I read your answer :-)

You guys are at least half right; I'd left a node on that should have been off.

But it's probably not the black levels, it's that the garbage and grain and shake hide everything.  As soon as you can really see the flat tone of the painting, it looks like a painting. To me the big rock on the right side is a far worse offender, but again...  Apparently, George didn't like this painting either; part of why the foreground stuff was added.  From a compositing standpoint, the painting's luminance is mismatched from the live plate - it would need more contrast in just the painting elements, the foliage needs a change in tone, etc.  It's not a great comp, no question about it.  Harrison is reviewing now.

Does this forum not autoscale images or...?

It displays them at full resolution.

But you can resize manually, like so:

and then you can add a hyperlink to the full sized picture, like I've done.

Forum software fail.

If you guys would like to play with a full-res, uncorrected still, here it is:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gay45s862low64g/Massassi_Still.tif?dl=0

Hmm...  

"Harrison Ellenshaw One of MY favorites! Mike Verta, again you have done an amazing job. Great credit goes to Ralph McQuarrie for his beautiful production illustration that was the inspiration for this shot."

See, I get nervous about going against the artist's feelings, and he's been quick to give direction on shots in the past.  Still, let's give it another run, shall we?

Well, they are two different things. On the one hand, for the archival master purposes, yes, you want everything in the scan to be preserved. And as Mike has pointed out, it's all there and recoverable and so on, so that angle is already taken care of.

Then there's the fully restored version that you sit down on your couch and watch on a normal 1920x1080p HDTV and looks just the way it was intended as Lucas sat there going over preview screenings getting the film ready for release (or as close as possible, given the sources available, uncertainty about exact color timing on certain shots and so on). With space being inky black and these mattes and such not visible at all even in a very dark living room viewing environment, etc. That's certainly the version I look forward to seeing in any Star Wars preservation/restoration project when I actually watch it for real in front of my HDTV with some popcorn and an ice cold Coke. :)

Throne Room! 

And...

X-Wings Roll!

towne32: Yes, but when I'm using the word, it's in the strict sense of what it was supposed to look like at that time, not something George comes up with on a whim years later, haha. :) And, of course, we're merely talking about the proper visual presentation the way it's supposed to look in the theater, not changes to the movie of any kind.

Hey, guys - just a curious point about the X-Wings Roll shot - it's one of the shots on the Reliance reel and as I was doing my restoration I noticed two things about their version:

1) It cuts short exactly where the Special Edition's version does.

2) They painted out the Y-Wings.  Not cropped out; painted out completely and/or didn't recomposite them if they managed to go all the way back to the elements.

All of that is either conspicuously deliberate or good evidence it's not only Special Edition, but a Special-er Edition.

_Mike

Well there are two shots in the film that use the same three X-wings. The first shot just adds another one and the Y-Wings. I assume that Reliance shot is of Luke's trench run.

JEDIT: It cuts in the same place as in the original for the shot of Luke and co.

Speaking of, do you ever recruit detail from different shots that nevertheless have copied elements, such as this one?