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Team Negative1 - Star Wars 1977 - 35mm Eastman Vs Technicolot Theatrical Version (* unfinished project *) — Page 10

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77FN said:

Darth Lucas said:

Plus, it’s not like it would be hard to digitally add extra layers of grain on top of it to simulate the grain that would be present on a 35mm print in 77, if that’s what you really want.

To me adding in digital grain is a HUGE no-no. Because one is then at the mercy of the judgement call of the person adding it back. And it’s fake. It’s an addition. No matter how well done. Mike’s is a unique process of course as he’s not degraining, but by combining multiple prints the ‘gaps’ between film grains are presumably being filled in by the other ‘layers’ of film scans, to get closer to how the original neg. would likely look. I’m cool with that for an ultimate version of what Star Wars could look like, but part of me would prefer an honest representation (albeit cleaned up) of a 35mm print, with the original grain intact, extra grain & contrast anomalies on the FX shots when more elements are added in the shot, etc. But I guess we have Silver Screen for that (which I’m very thankful for!). I think my own personal holy grail will be the Tech scan, if that ever comes to light.

Co-signed.

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77FN said:

Darth Lucas said:

Plus, it’s not like it would be hard to digitally add extra layers of grain on top of it to simulate the grain that would be present on a 35mm print in 77, if that’s what you really want.

To me adding in digital grain is a HUGE no-no. Because one is then at the mercy of the judgement call of the person adding it back. And it’s fake. It’s an addition. No matter how well done. Mike’s is a unique process of course as he’s not degraining, but by combining multiple prints the ‘gaps’ between film grains are presumably being filled in by the other ‘layers’ of film scans, to get closer to how the original neg. would likely look. I’m cool with that for an ultimate version of what Star Wars could look like, but part of me would prefer an honest representation (albeit cleaned up) of a 35mm print, with the original grain intact, extra grain & contrast anomalies on the FX shots when more elements are added in the shot, etc. But I guess we have Silver Screen for that (which I’m very thankful for!). I think my own personal holy grail will be the Tech scan, if that ever comes to light.

I’m not saying you SHOULD haha I agree it would be dumb to do so, I’m just saying if the extra grain is really that important to someone, it could be done.

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Colson said:

Harmy said:

Actually, in that particular shot, the channel misregistration is different on the models and on the background, so it was clearly part of the original compositing and in order to fix it, Mike had to cut everything out of it’s background and shift each element separately, thus literally re-compositing the shot.

Any chance you can point me to what shot you’re referencing? I’m watching the legacy videos on Vimeo looking for it.

Edit: I believe I found it. Is it the shot of the X-wings on top of the Death Star? The original version has a stain in the top left corner that he fixes.

https://vimeo.com/117582796

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Dek Rollins said:

I would say that my only things to pick with what I’ve seen of Legacy are as follows:

  1. The grain reduction. I prefer 35mm grain over the negative, and even when he’s using 35mm prints, he’s reducing the grain to achieve a near negative medium.

  2. The opening crawl. After I saw the crawl preview on his vimeo, I just thought, Why would you do that? I mean, the crawl losing detail as it goes further up the frame is the natural fade into black. He even said that he doesn’t want to change anything internally, and I would say that is doing exactly that.

Other than these nitpicks, I am really liking how the previews look, aside from the color grading of course, and I am looking forward to more news.

…as for #2…reread the forum thread about the fade, Mike already said it would be reintroduced on final. Remember that the vimeo vids are part of the WIP…not representative of the final…

http://www.starwarslegacy.com/forums/index.php?threads/r1s0005-episode-crawl.87/

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 (Edited)

Harmy said:

Colson said:

Harmy said:

Actually, in that particular shot, the channel misregistration is different on the models and on the background, so it was clearly part of the original compositing and in order to fix it, Mike had to cut everything out of it’s background and shift each element separately, thus literally re-compositing the shot.

Any chance you can point me to what shot you’re referencing? I’m watching the legacy videos on Vimeo looking for it.

Edit: I believe I found it. Is it the shot of the X-wings on top of the Death Star? The original version has a stain in the top left corner that he fixes.

https://vimeo.com/117582796

Thanks! Based on what he says in the video, he seems to ideally only want to remove the chanel errors introduced by the prints. It seems like if he had access to the negatives, he’d know what errors were original to the negatives.

Given the sources he has, I think he made the best choice.

As far as wanting it to look like a 35mm print, I’d fall on the other side of the fence. I want the movie to look as great as possible with only errors present in the original negatives to remain (but I would want all of those errors to remain).

“You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you?” - Juror 8
“Silence, Earthling! My name is Darth Vader. I am an extra-terrestrial from the planet Vulcan!” - Calvin “Marty” Klein

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TV’s Frink said:

And from someone who should know better?

Are you sure about that? =)

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I love what Mike is doing, but I don’t consider a lot of it to be restoration. I’d almost call it Mike’s cleaned up edition. The tech prints don’t have much grain to speak of because the technicolor printing process doesn’t introduce any grain. So he hasn’t removed any grain from the image. But he is cleaning up things that go back to before the master negative. He’s found the same dirt on the Tatooine scenes as Lowry did. He has not removed the filtering effects that Lucas had Lowry clean up. So his work is closer to the original than the end product that Lowry delivered, but it is not a faithful restoration of the theatrical version. A lot of the things he has cleaned up should be left intact. I would like a collection of versions and one of them is the pure tech print - green tone and all, just cleaned up to look like a pristine print. I am disappointed that the TN1 work has stopped, but word is it will restart from a fresh scan of a tech print, so there is hope that the version I want might yet appear.

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yotsuya said:
I am disappointed that the TN1 work has stopped, but word is it will restart from a fresh scan of a tech print, so there is hope that the version I want might yet appear.

Oh awesome. Are you confident about that? How far did they get?

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@yotsuya. All film has grain. Plus release prints have 3 generations of grain embedded in the image itself.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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  1. There is no “we” anymore.
  2. Individual members are still perfectly capable of responding to questions.
  3. Why should we not be allowed to discuss the project anymore just because TN1 disbanded?
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Nice. I’m looking forward to th next part of this interview. 😃