StarWarsLegacy.com - The Official Thread — Page 52

Great demonstration, Mike! You mentioned that you would like to look at the original elements and composite them digitally. This was already done for the Special Edition for the SFX shots that did not get replaced by CGI. 

TServo2049 said:

Yes, the recompositing was the least upsetting part of the SE. (And some of it was necessary, because some of the VFX portions of the negative we're on Color Reversal Intermediate and had faded to the point that nothing could be recovered from them.)

 Plus, given the goals of the SE (that is, not-about-historical-preservation), it completely makes sense to recomposite to remove matte lines and all that.

Wasn't Snow White scanned at 4K in 1993 or 1994?

Joel said:

TServo2049 said:

OK, perhaps SW was scanned at 4K, but I thought digital intermediates were still at 2K? Correct me if I'm wrong here.

I seriously doubt it was scanned at 4K for the SE in 1996/97. 

Snow White aside, I worked for Technicolor when the DVD masters were made and that was *right* when 4K was being widely adopted, around 2004. Also, if they already had a 4K scan of all three films why go back and pay for a new 1080 scan for the DVDs? 

 Agreed. In fact I believe that ILM was doing heavy R&D and built their own 2K scanners at the time. Truly groundbreaking accomplishments for its day, but as mverta has said, film scanning technology has come a long way since then. Which makes sense, considering it is nearing 20 years since the Special Editions have been put together. 

Good Shooting, Wedge...

mverta said:

Good Shooting, Wedge...

What is seen in the Technidisc SWE LD print definitely is an anomaly like you said, (it appears just like that on the source, so it's not a result of my poor capture or post processing doing something funny either). It happens on several instances throughout the transfer, where the luminance levels suddenly change, to me it almost looks like something tries to auto-compensate or something, the telecine operator can't have been screwing around with it so frequently.

It starts out ok but during the last half of the shot the contrast taper off significantly.

Another example of the same thing happens in the TIE-explosion right before the shot of Vader's line "Several fighters have broken off from the main group. Come with me." In this instance the low contrast stays throughout the following scene:

It's hard to tell, because those are different frames, but it looks to me like that mysterious black line is on the technidisc too. Yes?

timdiggerm said:

It's hard to tell, because those are different frames, but it looks to me like that mysterious black line is on the technidisc too. Yes?

Yes, it's there on every print of the original. You can see it in one of the 1997 SE trailers as well. This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgsMKu8oNA

Yes my question wasn't whether it was on every print or not - it is - but whether it's a tear on the negative or original elements, that is damage vs. limitation.  If it's damage, then I don't care if it's on the negative or not, it's outta here.  But as I said in the video, I don't suspect it's damage, rather limitation, which is why I have the version with it in.

In fact, here is the version with it in, and with the actual colors seen on all prints:

TIE_on_LUKE_5_GRADED

Was checking out that explosion on the Japanese Special Collection LD and it also has more detail in there in the smoke and fire similar to the Technidisc on the last few frames. Still, I guess it's detail that is normally blown out when the shot is correctly balanced. But it's weird it's not there on your scans.

Anyway, your restored versions looks fantastic! So cool seeing all these familiar shots being brought to life. Like seeing them again for the first time.

There's something more to it; I've never seen another shot quite like it, because the ratio between the starfield and the explosion is utterly different on those laserdiscs than on any film source I've seen.  Even if you crushed down the luminance on the explosion - which still wouldn't yield anything close to what we see on the LDs - the starfield would be utterly wiped out, and we know that these LD's don't have spot exposure areas.  So, ultimately, we know that on the negative, all that is in there, but it never made it to a theatrical print, and only the LDs have it - even the 2006 OT DVD doesn't have it, though it does have a yellow coloring.  It's truly unusual on many fronts.

mverta said:

There's something more to it; I've never seen another shot quite like it, because the ratio between the starfield and the explosion is utterly different on those laserdiscs than on any film source I've seen.  Even if you crushed down the luminance on the explosion - which still wouldn't yield anything close to what we see on the LDs - the starfield would be utterly wiped out, and we know that these LD's don't have spot exposure areas.  So, ultimately, we know that on the negative, all that is in there, but it never made it to a theatrical print, and only the LDs have it - even the 2006 OT DVD doesn't have it, though it does have a yellow coloring.  It's truly unusual on many fronts.

Yeah, I don't know what the hell is going on in those LD's, but it's not natural. I noticed that in the Special Collection LD, often when there's an explosion, the luminance drops. At one point in the Death Star trench when Vaders wingman hit the wall, it basically looks like someone turned off the light switch.