logo Sign In

The Phantom Menace on 35mm (* unfinished project *) — Page 10

Author
Time

Bobson Dugnutt said:

Damn shame about this print, any chance you could get your money back or something as I’m sure this was a big investment for you and the backers.
I’d say that if you could get the exclusive footage from the theatrical cut like the Naboo Bridge or the human senate aides then do it, but if it’s toxic and could kill you, then don’t worry about it. Your health is more important to anything to us Potia. Hopefully the Attack of the Clones print doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Let me know which reel that would be on (Reels are approx 20 minutes long) as I am not familiar with the movie itself at all.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

Author
Time

I really don’t think it’s worth worrying about doing that footage, not simply for a reconstruction of the theatrical version, better that we get another print and start fresh.

I can encode a theatrically accurate reconstruction with that footage upscalled from LD capture, it doesn’t look great but that footage is dark and low resolution and only a few seconds anyway so it doesn’t matter too much, it certainly doesn’t look as bad as the footage inserted into the Hellraiser III bluray or the footage inserted into Exorcist III director’s cut bluray. It’s really not worth getting just that footage from this print IMHO.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

The Senate offices shot and the surrounding transitions are probably more important than the bridge shot for just that reason.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

I really don’t think it’s worth worrying about doing that footage, not simply for a reconstruction of the theatrical version, better that we get another print and start fresh.

I actually think they would be valuable because the footage from the 35mm can be combined with the existing SD footage to make it blend in way better with the HD footage in a reconstruction.

Jedit: Maybe ZigZig could help clarify if it’ll be useful or not since he’d be the one doing the merging

The user formerly known as “Trillary Dump” (it was the 2016 election…)

Author
Time

poita said:
Let me know which reel that would be on (Reels are approx 20 minutes long) as I am not familiar with the movie itself at all.

Here’s the timecodes for the changes that would be needed to be scanned if you chose to do so:

01:19:14 frame 6 - shot of Qui-Gon’s “much more complicated” line and wipe transition to a shot of Palpatine’s quarters
01:25:40 frame 17 - Orn Free Ta’s human aides
01:33:26 frame 11 - hyperspace jump and the wipe to the Theed palace

It all could be on reel 4 and 5 or just 5. Hope this helped and hope that you’re feeling better!

The user formerly known as “Trillary Dump” (it was the 2016 election…)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

^This.

There is also the night shot on Tatooine (on HDTV, DVD and BR, it was transfered directly from the digital shot, with other colors and contrasts than on the 35mm prints), and the missing parts of the podrace (but they can be found in the bonuses of the Digital Collection release).

But in fact, the entire film deserves to be scanned: indeed, the HDTV (and DVD) transfer suffers from a general overscan (with several panned scenes), a slight parallax and, especially, a lenticular deformation in the center of the screen (which is very easy to detect when compared to BR or 35mm scans).

As mentionned by several people, there is also lot of digital artefacts on the HDTV transfer (edge enhancement too strong, colors and contrasts very degraded), plus the lack of subtitles, so the HDTV transfer is better than nothing, but it is still a poor transfer, and the scan of the entire 35mm reels is probably essential.

Finally, the poor quality of those Russian reels will probably make it difficult to use the result.

Even if we are many to wish it (Chewie, Bobson, Trillary, me…), I do not think that it is worth it to put the health of Poita in danger, or to transform his house into a Russian mushrooms invasion, if the result is a damaged scan that won’t fit a damaged HDTV transfer.

In short, IMHO, it is better to throw these reels in the trash and consider a complete scan when the opportunity will arise again.

Anyway, thank you SO MUCH, Poita, for everything you do!

Author
Time

ZigZig said:

As mentionned by several people, there is also lot of digital artefacts on the HDTV transfer (edge enhancement too strong, colors and contrasts very degraded), plus the lack of subtitles, so the HDTV transfer is better than nothing, but it is still a poor transfer, and the scan of the entire 35mm reels is probably essential.

Well the print looks a lot more like the HDTV version than it does the Bluray. But yes it was a poor transfer. At the end of the day having those shots scanned in 4K is not going to solve the problem.

Even if we are many to wish it (Chewie, Bobson, Trillary, me…), I do not think that it is worth it to put the health of Poita in danger, or to transform his house into a Russian mushrooms invasion, if the result is a damaged scan that won’t fit a damaged HDTV transfer.

There are other issues as well. You can’t just scan a few shots when the scanner isn’t being used, as the film is hazardous everything it touches would need to be thoroughly cleaned immediately after use, the fluid to clean the film probably can’t be reused (and it’s very expensive which is why it would typically be filtered and reused), everyone will need to wear hazmat suits, etc. It’s just not worth all that.

In short, IMHO, it is better to throw these reels in the trash and consider a complete scan when the opportunity will arise again.

Anyway, thank you SO MUCH, Poita, for everything you do!

Yep!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time
 (Edited)

trillary dump said:

01:33:26 frame 11 - hyperspace jump and the wipe to the Theed palace

To give you an idea this is how I already have that shot looking:

I never finished it but it isn’t hard to do just very tedious manual work to make a mask for each frame (I should point out for anyone unfamiliar with it that it’s 65 frames or so we’re talking about, so not very many and manageable). There’s no point in scanning that just for the small improvement in quality, that frame is about 96% HDTV and 2-3% unpscaled laserdisc with the rest blended pixels of the two.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

Author
Time

I say kill the toxic print with fire and just continue restoration on the altered and unaltered prints of Star Wars.

Author
Time

Yeah.
Wipe them all. All of them.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

As a form of self-torture–watching a partial of a print that I’ll never see as a whole, I’ve sync’d both the 5.1 Cinema DTS and the 6.1 DTS ES sound mixes to Reel 5 and watched them on my 51.5 inch screen TV.

Here is a folder of these DTS bitstreams sync’d-up to Reel 5. All the streams have been edited to fit this reel, as it is missing 14 frames—not counting the first and last shots of the reel.

https://fex.net/376695969795 (Now deleted. See my 21-Oct-2018 post, below)
Note: Since the MKV file that RU.08 provided us is set at 24fps and the DTS bitstreams are sync to 23.976 fps content, the mkv file has to be formatted from 24 fps to 23.976fps before muxing.

After viewing it, the colors do look faded, but having watched films in my youth during the 1970 through the 1990s, that is common. I haven’t seen TPM in a long while and my last viewing was the Blu Ray, so watching this grindhouse version with digital surround sound was refreshing.

If I were given one wish of another scene to keep from that print, it would be the first 10976 frames, (approximately—to consider missing frames) of reel 4 which would be the latter end of the pod race sequence. Yes, the sequence would be incomplete, but it would be the bulk of the scene and I would be grateful for that.
(EDIT: Yes, I am referring to the Theatrical Cut, not the extended Blu Ray cut)

The first shot that appears in Reel 4 would look like this:

Scanning could stop at this shot:

After this transitional-wipe shot:

Having that said scene and Reel 5 would keep me happy until a better print comes along. For me, enjoying these select scenes would be like an HD equivalent to those home Super 8mm, condense versions of Star Wars and ESB from Ken Films.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Online-8mm-Preservations/id/13949

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-on-Super8/id/15797/page/15

There are some other ways that us, members, can use these incomplete scans:
• As a christening for a newly-purchased home theater system, with those audio bitstreams sync’d-up
• As material to further ones skills in film restoration.

Author
Time

alexp120 said:

If I were given one wish of another scene to keep from that print, it would be the first 10976 frames, (approximately—to consider missing frames) of reel 4 which would be the latter end of the pod race sequence. Yes, the sequence would be incomplete, but it would be the bulk of the scene and I would be grateful for that.

I don’t think there is any need to do that as we already have the theatrical Podrace in HD from the 2015 Digital Film Collection. The bare essentials that we would need from this (or any 35mm print) would be the Palpatine’s Office establishing shot (and surrounding shots) and Orn Free Taa’s senate aides.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

Poita said OK so here it is-

https://we.tl/t-eyzjTRA6Nq
https://we.tl/t-QbGtJE4xya
https://we.tl/t-uJp2DkyP3u

1080p at bluray bitrate. It’s 7-zipped with no password and a checksum file in case you get a bad part.

The MKV file is labeled…

 tpm r5

I thought it was Reel 5, but it’s actually Reel 6.

Here is a visual breakdown of the reels. Left picture=First shot of the reel. Right picture=Last shot of the reel.
Reel 1

Reel 2

Reel 3

Reel 4

Reel 5

Reel 6

Reel 7

I’ve based this information on the CinemaDTS discs. Each .AUD file represents a reel. The file is labeled “R1T5” for Reel 1, “R2T5” for Reel 2, etc. I listened to a snippet of the beginning and end of each audio file, opened the theatrical-cut video file and identified the audio within the video file by the aid of the running time of each .AUD audio file.

Author
Time

alexp120 said:

As a form of self-torture–watching a partial of a print that I’ll never see as a whole, I’ve sync’d both the 5.1 Cinema DTS and the 6.1 DTS ES sound mixes to Reel 5 and watched them on my 51.5 inch screen TV.

Here is a folder of these DTS bitstreams sync’d-up to Reel 5. All the streams have been edited to fit this reel, as it is missing 14 frames—not counting the first and last shots of the reel.

https://fex.net/376695969795 (now, deleted)
Note: Since the MKV file that RU.08 provided us is set at 24fps and the DTS bitstreams are sync to 23.976 fps content, the mkv file has to be formatted from 24 fps to 23.976fps before muxing.

By chance, I went to the said link and I noticed that the file size of each file reads ‘0.’ So, if any of you have downloaded these files and found nothing in the .dts contaniers, I apologize for that.

Here is the new link for these files, that totals 607MB

https://fex.net/687220727885

Funny how none of you called me out on it, earlier. Oh, well.

Author
Time

Are the reels still up to download anywhere?

Hello, although I have uploaded many things in the past, my Mega account was taken down recently. If you are looking for something I’ve previously said I uploaded, I may not have it anymore or know where it is. I’m sorry

Author
Time
 (Edited)

sorry, wrong thread, was supposed to be going
in the update for preservations.

continue on.

Author
Time

deathstar1138 said:

Heres the link for 4K83, Return of the Jedi:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/4K83-Released/id/63513

I don’t see how that’s relevant to this thread.

Army of Darkness: The Medieval Deadit | The Terminator - Color Regrade | The Wrong Trousers - Audio Preservation
SONIC RACES THROUGH THE GREEN FIELDS.
THE SUN RACES THROUGH A BLUE SKY FILLED WITH WHITE CLOUDS.
THE WAYS OF HIS HEART ARE MUCH LIKE THE SUN. SONIC RUNS AND RESTS; THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
DON’T GIVE UP ON THE SUN. DON’T MAKE THE SUN LAUGH AT YOU.

Author
Time

Yooo what happened to this project? Did it die down or its just nothing anymore

Fate is best Anime/Visual Novel.

Author
Time

poita said:

Sadly we are going to have to find another print. The one I have has turned out to be toxic, and damn near killed me. We are yet to ascertain what the substance is on the print, but it is very bad news.

The print is also pretty bad shape.

Here is a sample.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/b389dfc6c7adc0434cc6e3ad640e857a20181009113440/6b9d705f4177f746d01dcb12ed5b9da120181009113440/7d61a8
I’m really sorry about this, I got completely screwed by the seller, I am on the lookout for a replacement.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RU.08 said:

Poita said OK so here it is-

https://we.tl/t-eyzjTRA6Nq
https://we.tl/t-QbGtJE4xya
https://we.tl/t-uJp2DkyP3u

1080p at bluray bitrate. It’s 7-zipped with no password and a checksum file in case you get a bad part.

Not available anymore… How could I get it? I tried to make a color correction of the official 2001 German PAL DVD release and recreate the theatrical version with recuttuing the Pod Race and recreate some other changes with the help of two different TV-records and the Z bootleg, but I gave it up. It would be great to have an HD Scan from your 35mm source. I would want to work with it. I would do an upscale of the German opening crawl from the 2001 PAL DVD for it. This year this movie will be 20 years old, the US premiere was in May, worldwide in August. It would be great, if I could be a part of such an HD reconstrution of it, because it was my first cinema experience of Star Wars as a 9 year old child. I saw some scenes of the original Trilogy on TV before, but this cinema visit was the beginnign of my “Star Wars addiction”. I was born and raised in Germany and still live there, but my parents are from Hungary and it’s my second home. I would want to recreate the German and Hungarian theatrical version of “The pahntom menace”. If I also could get the original DD 5.1 Sound of it, I would try to seperate the German voices from the 2001 DVD and the Hungarian voices from the Blu Ray (or 2015 DVD form the Blu Ray version) and try to mix it with the origjnal theatrical 5.1 sound.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

skywalker89 said:

RU.08 said:

Poita said OK so here it is-

https://we.tl/t-eyzjTRA6Nq
https://we.tl/t-QbGtJE4xya
https://we.tl/t-uJp2DkyP3u

1080p at bluray bitrate. It’s 7-zipped with no password and a checksum file in case you get a bad part.

Not available anymore… How could I get it? I tried to make a color correction of the official 2001 German PAL DVD release and recreate the theatrical version with recuttuing the Pod Race and recreate some other changes with the help of two different TV-records and the Z bootleg, but I gave it up. It would be great to have an HD Scan from your 35mm source. I would want to work with it. I would do an upscale of the German opening crawl from the 2001 PAL DVD for it. This year this movie will be 20 years old, the US premiere was in May, worldwide in August. It would be great, if I could be a part of such an HD reconstrution of it, because it was my first cinema experience of Star Wars as a 9 year old child. I saw some scenes of the original Trilogy on TV before, but this cinema visit was the beginnign of my “Star Wars addiction”. I was born and raised in Germany and still live there, but my parents are from Hungary and it’s my second home. I would want to recreate the German and Hungarian theatrical version of “The pahntom menace”. If I also could get the original DD 5.1 Sound of it, I would try to seperate the German voices from the 2001 DVD and the Hungarian voices from the Blu Ray (or 2015 DVD form the Blu Ray version) and try to mix it with the origjnal theatrical 5.1 sound.

Patience! There are two HD reconstructions going on right now. Wait till those are out and then do the opening crawls.