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I still contend that I was posting on topic in the original thread; as I was expressly about the X0 preservation.
If I didn't see the glitches at normal playback speed, I wouldn't fix them - I'm not bothering to fix any glitches I don't see in normal playback.
To put it simply, today's audience is spoiled by newer movies with more advanced effects, using the latest technology. And the average cost of producing a Hollywood movie today is much much more than it was in 1977. But in 1977 viewers had never seen the effects we now have today, and so seeing problems like matte-lines were second-nature. Today though it would be considered below par if a film was made which had obvious black matte lines. Therefore it is now second-nature to think of older films which have these defects in them as being "below par". I wonder if anyone will ever really be happy, if all they ever think about is "this is how it was meant to be"; and I wonder if the movie was really was "how it was meant to be" the first time, would it have been as grand a masterpiece as it is?
It isn't about making it acceptable to today's audience like colourisation. You seem to have a bee in your bonnet that colourisation is the same as removing a garbage matte.
It also isn't about making a movie "as it was meant to be" if they had unlimited technology. It is about taking the movie that was actually made and fixing some errors - and even that only *after* a straight untouched preservation is completed.
The problems I see in the film are the same ones that were noticed by people when the film was released. As I said before my personal version is about removing problems that jar *me* out of the viewing experience. They jarred me out of the film in 77 and they still do today. It is not about changing the film to suit a different taste, a different audience or updating to a particular fashion (like crushing the blacks on the SEs to make it look like a current film, or colourising a film to suit a new audience not used to watching B&W)
Also, one point seems to be repeatedly missed, the difference between a preservation, a restoration, a personal restoration and a fan edit.
Backing up the laserdisc is a preservation effort, which we have done and completed. As far as the DC version of the discs go, it has now been madde somewhat obselete by the release of the GOUT, although it didn't preserve the opening crawl from the laserdisc version. Backing up the SC of ANH is also done. This is still very relevant as it is the only consumer copy of the OUT with no DVNR screwing up whole scenes in the film.
So to repeat, those archives are *done* so no-one needs to stress about it. The first aim of the X0 project was successfully completed.
As presevation goes though, if you stop at that point, you have only preserved the laserdisc, not the experience of seeing the film, or in effect the film itself.
What I mean by that is the laserdisc has artifacts that were not in the film, or at least not in a good first run print of the film, it has the DVNR, has lots of dust and scratches, droputs and film damage that is not going to be on the negs or a first run print.
It also has considerably different colour. The garbage mattes are much less visible on the film prints also, and there are a lot of subtle differences between the LD versions and the theatrical prints.
By then going beyond a straight LD archive and undertaking a 'restoration' effort, you can take the various source footage available, and match it back to a theatrical print.
In effect bringing the laserdisc versions much closer to the film itself - undoing some of the problems created in the transfer to laserdisc in the first place.
People might think cleaning up the film damage is somehow 'not original' but every film print struck will have differences.
When restoring old paintings in Museums sometimes new paint has to be added to get it back to as close to original as possible - a pure restoration project is a similar process.
Adjusting the colours to a known print, and removing film damage is just getting it back as close as possible to original.
This process is regularly undertaken when archiving films for the AFI etc.
Then you get into the area of a personal restoration effort.
If the original is archived, then you are not taking anything away by doing a personal restoration.
I consider a personal restoration effort that includes fixing matte lines, garbage mattes and other glitches to still be a restoration, albeit one of a slighlty different type.
Fixing items that are purely post production errors or glitches differs from a reworking like the SE in one major area.
For a 'personal restoration' The 1977 theatrically released film becomes the script for your project. You are not changing any dialogue, any character interaction, any creative decisions, removing or adding any scenes. You are not adding characters, changing music or sound, or altering the mood through colour correction.
Colourisation however is akin to an SE style change as B&W shooting requires you to make particular choices about how the movie will look, and to colour them arbitrarily later totally changes the movie.)
In short for a preservation the film's story, pacing, characterisation, length etc. etc. remains unchanged,( mess with any of that stuff and you have a fan edit).
For your preservation you are taking the finished product and purely fixing errors. This is different from trying to 'guess their intentions' about a scene. It is easy to know what is a glitch and what isn't. Trying to guess how they *might* have shot a scene, or what they *might* have added to a scene if the tech was available is a totally different thing.
The limitations of the technology made the film be shot in a particular way, certain camera angles used and so on.
A personal preservation effort doesn't try to change any of those things as they make up the way the movie was shot, and no one can say how the movie would have been different if those limitations were not there.
It keeps the film locked into the way it was shot, but removes any technical errors.
One way cleans up glitches out of a movie but leaves the movie itself unchanged, the other changes the story and it becomes an entirely different movie.
Then of course you get into the grey area of fixing other types of errors, like continuity problems (like the disappearing/re-appearing cloak in Kenobi's house), like the R2-D2 being blue when seen behind Luke, but black in the next scene, the jump cuts for some of the lightsabre on/off scenes and so on.
I still think this belongs more in the restoration camp than in a fan-edit category as once again you are not changing any part of the story, characters etc. You are changing it from the original in that you are removing or colouring elements within a particular scene, and you have to really do your research to ensure that you are not changing something that was meant not be there (for example researching to find out that R2 was only black because of the bluescreen, that he wasn't black because he was 'in space'. That the green blobs are unwanted garbage mattes, not 'shields' on the ships).
People's opinions will always differ on this sort of stuff, but the idea is to be as careful as you can, and if you can't be *sure* then to leave it how it is.
Then you end up with the same movie, but distraction free.
A project definately moves out of the realm of a preservation effort once you start 'editing' the film. Cutting or adding different scenes, or changing the grade to change the mood (like making the tantative very cold and blue), putting in new characters and so on really becomes a re-edit, or a different cut of the movie, and belongs in the realm of a fan edit.
All of this is semantics anyway, people will always have different ideas of how to categorise something, (and could argue it forever) but to say fixing a garbage matte is the same as colourising a movie, or the same as doing a total re-edit like the SEs is beyond stretching an analogy.
I will state again to make sure there is no confusion.
1. The X0 project was about archiving the footage first (done) and then creating our own preservations second (in progress).
2. The laserdiscs are not exactly what you saw at the cinema.
3. Different prints abounded even in the 70s so there is no single, definitive ANH as such, but they all were essentially the same and nothing like the SEs.
4. Our preservations are being matched to a set of theatrical prints to get as close to the 1977 cinematic release as possible.
5. The GOUT and the DE LDs are a long way from the theatrical prints I have seen both in colour and of course the massive loss of detail and artifacts caused by the DVNR process. The SCs are much closer to the prints.
Arguing what category a particular effort falls is somewhat pointless as anyone can call them what they like, and belongs in threads like this rather than clogging up project threads with endless arguments.
I don't think I (or the X0 guys) have ever tried to muddy the water as to what we are actually doing though.