Yotsuya's Saga Color Regrade (* unfinished project *)

I’ve been working to achieve color restorations of the various versions of the OT and SE available and I think I finally have decided on what the final format should be. I am still working on the color corrections/regrades so I have no completion estimates and at the moment I don’t have many screen shots to share, but I hope to fix that before very long. I have been greatly influenced by Mike Verta’s and DrDre’s work, but I am taking my own approach to this.

First off, this is to fix the colors on the blu-rays, not to reverse the often questionable edits. I’ve never really been able to sit down and judge A New Hope because of the horrible color choices they made for the 2004 DVD edition and never fixed after that.

I truth what I have settled on might be considered a hybrid as for the OT I would like to preserve the 2011 blu-ray audio but stick to most of the DVD video (except where needed - like Han/Greedo - to match the audio). For The Phantom Menace it will strictly be the blu-ray, but for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith I have not decided. I have not decided on the exact format, but at the moment I’m leaning toward a similar compression as the original blu-ray discs but with only English audio (I detest audio dubbing except as a novelty) and the original subtitles tracks and then use the extra space for some bonus features.

Disc 1
The Phantom Menace
Bonus features - deleted scenes, Original theatrical cut (480p widescreen DVD quality with DTS audio), trailers

Disc 2
Attack of the Clones
Bonus features - deleted scenes, trailers

Disc 3
Revenge of the Sith
Bonus features - deleted scenes, trailers

Disc 4
A New Hope
Bonus features - deleted scenes, Original 1977 theatrical cut, 1981 rerelease cut, 1997 SE cut (all three in 480p widescreen DVD quality with multiple audio tracks), trailers
(basicly the main feature will take up 35 GB leaving 15 for whatever else. The 77 and 81 versions will be GOUT sourced and the 1997 SE will be GKAR & TB sourced - neither source lending itself to much more than DVD quality anyway, but I’ll be using the higher compression blu-ray compatible format instead of mpeg2)

Disc 5
The Empire Strikes Back
Bonus features - deleted scenes, original 1980 theatrical cut, 1997 SE cut (both 480p widescreen DVD quality), trailers

Disc 6
Return of the Jedi
Bonus features - deleted scenes, original 1983 theatrical cut, 1997 SE cut (both 480p widescreen DVD quality), trailers

Disc 7
just leaving this blank for now, but including it in my plan.

Where possible I want the deleted scenes to be 720p, color corrected, cleaned up, with a few seconds of the proceeding and following scenes to give an idea of placement. Ones with temporary animation probably won’t be included. I intend to include the the most notable trailers and I intend to create a new trailer for the first 6 films using the color corrected film.

One of the goals is to establish some consistency over the films. Such things as skin tones (not just human), light sabers, droid colors, etc. should not vary any more from film to film than they do within a film.

To arrive at the color correction for the blu-rays, I am first color correcting the GOUT. Some of DrDre’s work indicated that might not be as far off some believed. I am not including the 35 mm film scans in this project, though I will be attempting to color correct them at the same time. Then I am color correcting the TV broadcasts of the 97 SE trilogy and TPM. I have only really worked on A New Hope and the results have been enlightening. Comparing these two and the variation of color from scene to scene will help in color correcting the DVD/blu-ray version. My goal is to find some key matching scene and do a fairly global color correction of each version that brings those key scenes into close alignment. That will preserve the scene to scene unique color grading of each. I have not fully examined the DVD/blu-ray of The Empires Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, but I do not expect they will have nearly as many issues at A New Hope. So far I have identified about 50 things that need to be fixed in A New Hope that the scan and subsequent work on it created color anomalies that were not there in the original theatrical version or the 97 SE. A few of note some red that literally glow, explosions that are muted, the display showing the approaching Death Star, the display on the Death Star showing the approach to Yavin, several sections that are over contrasted, and a strong magenta tone that pops out frequently. A New Hope will have a lot of restoration work as well as color correction to bring out the image as the previous two versions show it.

I will be taking a few pieces from Schorman’s 1080p DVD version, specifically for at least one scene in A New Hope and Return of the Jedi respectively. Possibly some other places.

One of the interesting things about working with the GOUT, the GKAR and TB 97 SE, and the blu-ray is that I’ve noticed a lot of changes implemented in the blu-ray that may have escaped notice. I’ve also come to the conclusion that the 97 SE has the worst color of the three. Meaning it is all over the place. I can pretty well align the GOUT to the blu-rays, it doesn’t work for every scene, but in general it gets close. But for the 97 SE, in particular for A New Hope, there are fewer scenes that match up and some of the scenes are way off. So while the end result of the DVD/blu-ray transfer is something garish, at least the original scan seems to have been done with an attempt to get close to the original colors. The f*** ups seemed to happen after that point. It gives me hope that I can bring it close. Also, some of the magenta and blue issues I have with the ANH BR have the same problem in the 97 SE, so I think I am right that it is a fading issue that hasn’t been, or can’t be, properly corrected for.

Where I’m at right now is that I think I have the best correction for the GOUT versions (and it is mostly toning down the red and converting it from the VHS/LD/Broadcast Master we have on the 2006 bonus discs to a more modern digital image with darker blacks and more vibrant colors), a close pass on the blu-rays, and my first full attempt at the 97 SE.

Why the GOUT when we have the 35 mm versions? Well, the 35 mm versions have their problems (missing frames and such) and as I am going for color correction and not image quality (intending my GOUT color restoration be a bonus in a larger project) and with the nature of the release of the first movie (the whole issue with Team Negative 1), I though it best to just not use that. My main focus is the blu-rays anyway. Also, I based my correction on some of the 35 mm work. DrDre did a very nice version of the majority of reel one using his automated color correction tool and it came out very close to what I was doing with the GOUT. That, along with the age and quality of the prints both come from put the GOUT as a better choice for me to use for color correcting.

I should have some frame captures in a few days after I have Return of the Jedi SE processed. That will just leave The Phantom Menace, which I worked on before, but will need to revisit.

The Prequel screen shots

A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi

I have been playing with the saturation on the blu-ray to make sure there aren’t any unwanted color artifacts. I haven’t finalized any of the versions, though the GOUT is probably nearly there and I’m using it as a guide for color correcting the SE and BR versions and the prequels (R2, Threepio, Tatooine, sabers, skin tones, etc).

make the colors they look like in real not some print or releases.

Hal 9000 said:

I’m particularly interested in your regrade of AOTC. Looks pretty good from the screenshots. Any idea for releasing that one?
Was there a universal setting applied for AOTC you can describe, or scene by scene?
Thanks, and good luck completing what looks to be an ambitious but very nice project!

I’m starting each one with universal settings. ANH is going to require the most work because somewhere between the recompositing for the 1997 SE and the 2003 scan, they screwed some things up royally that I intend to fix. That is why I’m trying to start with some of the public work DrDre has been doing, color correct the GOUT with that in mind, color correct the 97 SE with that in mind and then address the BR. That way I will have two versions to compare to to see what changes they made to the settings for the 2003 scan. I have been tweaking my universal settings for ANH and I think I have eliminated the need for a few of the additional corrections. But some are still needed. The early blockade runner scenes are over contrasted, there is a blotch under C-3PO’s arm when he is standing in front of the skeleton. Some of the flowers are bleached out at the Lars homestead, in the Veder/Kenobi duel the light sabers change colors, several of the X-wing and Y-wing explosions are muted, the Death Star status screen showing the approach to the rebel base is blue, the rebel base screen showing the approach of the Death Star is washed out around the border. There are a couple of things in TESB and ROTJ as well, but not nearly so many. The universal settings for the PT are a bit better, but suffer from some inconsistencies. I think I have TPM nearly done and the other two are close. I just haven’t determined if I need to make any specific scene corrections. AOTC may require some in the Sand People village as the shots aren’t a consistent color and I might tackle the blockade runner scenes in ROTS separately so they can be closer to ANH without impacting the rest of the film.

Oh, and as I said before, my goal is something closer to the DVD version because some of the visual changes they make for the 2011 DVD irk me the most. The rock in front of R2 and the door to Jabba’s palace are the big ones and I’m not sure about the ewok’s blinking. The humans on film don’t blink that much. But the sound will be fully from the BR version because it is a better mix and any visual changes that affect the length and the sync to the BR sound will have to remain. That means the BR version of the Han/Greedo scene which is the least objectionable of the 3 SE versions (I’m definitely in the “Han didn’t give Greedo that chance to shoot” camp, but the BR version is tolerable) and from a saga perspective Vader saying “No” in ROTJ isn’t that bad (the “No” fits with seeing Hayden at the end - I prefer no “no” and Sebastian at the end).

Progress report:

I’ve been working on ANH. I think I may have a tweak for the GOUT. SE is not finalized at all but is good for comparing any changes between it and the blu-ray. It is impacting my corrections to the blu-ray in fun ways. Sometimes it means I don’t correct something and other times it forces me to correct something else. Fortunately I’ve done a lot of the work before on a previous draft and my efforts were not wasted. I also stumbled on an excellent way to fix the Falcon’s engine effect (which on the blu-ray is white with a deep blue halo. I found a way to enhance the glow and produce a blue halo in each of the effected shots. I only detected it in the last 4 shots, but I used the effect for all 6 times we see the engine glowing at full power (we also see it a couple times where the engine revs up and I didn’t touch those). I tackled Red Leader and Porkins. Red Leader had a color changing helmet which didn’t exist in the GOUT or SE. Porkins’ shots were all washed out compared to most of the other pilot shots. I also did a quick correct of the explosions (using my previous correction overlayed with my new color colorection using a color key to mask the explosion). It is the same technique I plan on using, but I need to finish my correction of the SE before I finalize those. I still have some pilot shots to fix (some are yellow and others are washed out). So the Death Star battle is a big more work with this color correction, but I didn’t have to touch most of the Tatooine shots like I did last time. There are some things I know I need to fix still, but the major ones have all been addressed. I might post some samples depending on how it looks when I render it and watch it. I tend to see new things every time.

The more I dig into the ANH blu-ray the worse it gets. I started with the highlights - scenes I have had my eye on that needed something extra. As I compare the blu-ray to the GOUT, 97 SE, SSE, and other sources, I keep finding that the scene by scene colors in those other versions remains remarkably consistent from copy to copy and the blu-ray is off. I begin to get a picture of what happened. The horribly faded master negative was scanned, ignoring all the color timing. In fact, I can’t see where they paid much attention to the color timing. I also can’t figure out how they could so screw up the colors in a scan or processing. I don’t think their scanner was properly calibrated. But I am getting closer and closer all the time to a better result. But every time I watch my test render I keep seeing more scenes that are off. The latest was the scene where C-3PO finds Princess Leia finishing her hologram recording with R2-D2. The reds in those scenes are not consistent. Some are pink and some are orange. Since I am trying to excise the overt magenta tones, I went with the more orangy-red.

The first reel is the worst. I read the they used noise reduction to clean up the images and as a result a lot of the smoke haze vanished. I don’t think that is the case. I think those scenes are over contrasted and over saturated. By revering both I brought it back to something that looks better. Some things I can’t fix. After R2-D2 and C-3PO land on Tatooine, those desert shots have been scrubbed of grain and filter effects. According to some sources, the grain was actually tiny grains of sand embedded in the negative and from the various other attempts to clean up those same scenes and the odd yellow or brown artifact they have found I tend to agree with the sand theory. I will try to at least get the colors back, but they will be clean and crisp and lacking grain.

But it just goes on from there. How many colors can Red Leader’s helmet be? The answer is almost as many clips of him as were used. Almost no two are off exactly the same.

With the 97 SE as my guide, I am not fixing every problem I find. Some were inherent to the optical restoration done to the film at the time. As this is the enhanced SE I am working with, I feel it is more appropriate to leave some of these things rather than attempt to fix them. Especially when one of the things I have concluded is that information has been permanently lost due to fading and there is no way to get it back. The only hope for recovering that information is if they were to do a proper restoration from the 3 color separation masters which essentially would create a new master as good as the original negative was in 1977 and probably better than it is today. It would also restore the original theatrical version and they could remaster the SE changes from the 1997, 2004, and 2011 sources.

The good news is that I have watched my color correction with many of the changes in place and it is the first time I have really enjoyed the movie outside of watching the GOUT in a long time. ANH has to be the worst DVD/Blu-ray transfer of a film I have ever seen. So messed up and it is taking a lot of work to fix it. It has taken me nearly a year of trial and error to get to a point where most of it looks good and I just need to tweak some scenes (a little less magenta here, a little more there, contrast down, saturation down, nudging a color here or there, etc.).

While it does look more saturated than the GOUT or 97 SE, it is comparable to Mike Verta’s sample of the Technicolor print in terms of reds.

i don’t think i’ve ever seen a new hope look this good it looks like it was shot today wow that was an amazing job. hope adywan makes it look this good.

I’m on my second pass on the first half of the film. I just finished fixing the flowers. Not easy since the yellow was missing, but other sources let me recreate the colors and some editing let me layer it over the image. Not quite finished, but it looks much better.

The entire movie has saturation and contrast issues that were created by the 2004 transfer. Fortunately only the flowers in 4 clips and a couple frames of the lightsaber duel are all the I’ve found that require actual editing of the image to fix. All the others I’ve been able to use tools within Sony Vegas to enhance all or part of the image to bring it back to what my sources indicate it should look like. They more I work on the the worse job I think they did. ANH deseverd better treatment than this. Even the SE version.

Well, it has taken a year of experimentation to find the right settings to color correct A New Hope. I can’t say that I am 100% finished, no project like this ever is, but I think I can say that I am at the point of endless tweaking and the major work is done. The conclusion I have come to is that when they scanned A New Hope for the DVD release (and HD broadcasts and later blu-ray release) that they pretty much ignored the 1977 and 1997 color timing. They seem to have just scanned the negative and then taken a guess at color timing. The majority of the scenes are within a small tweak of each other, but some scenes are way off. Way way way off. Lots of mistakes were made and a lot of my work is trying to fix them. Along the way this has gone from being a pure preservation and color correction to a restoration. At the moment I have stopped with fixing the film to the point of the 1997 SE (the content is a mix of mostly blu-ray with some HD broadcast of the DVD version). Lucas seemed to have skipped having a continuity editor for the SE and subsequent versions. This film is a royal mess, probably because the negative is a total mess. Not only is it a mix of 1977 original elements, but the 1997 recompositions and changes and the later DVD and BR changes. There is little consistency. And that has been my goal, to bring this film (and all the others but this one mainly) to a watchable state from the total mess found on the blu-ray. For the first time I watched what I had done and found it quite acceptable. Samples to follow when I figure out the best way to show it.

Moving on to Empire and Jedi. Basic color correction done (so much easier than ANH) and now the restoration begins. TESB needs work on the lightsabers and the super stardestroyer engine glow. Perhaps other things might show up as I work on it. ROTJ needs the stupid overside door removed (almost, but not quite, as bad as the rock in front of R2. Looking at removing the other BR changes as well. It will depend on the sound mix. For ROTJ I might just make a new soundmix (removing certain objectionable things). But I definitely need to look at the light sabers and the explosions and Vader’s pyre. Fortunately the running time and scene alignment of the DVD and BR versions is identical (at least so far, I’m only 2/3 of the way through.

I still need to create a video, but I want to get some things edited first and I haven’t had time recently. A lot of the work I can do as a few minutes here or there, but some things require some extended time and that hasn’t been easy to find. I might be able to do some renders that would make that easier in the next week. I’ll have to see how things go.

TESB blu-ray has 3 scenes that differ from the DVD. The red on the Wampa’s arm is removed. A reflection added to the exterior shot of Leia in the tower in Cloud City. And Some lighting changes when Chewy finds C-3PO. The first one is a nice fix and is well done. The second two are clumsy and I can see the tell tale signs of what they did so they go. Neither really take you out of the film. I might reconsider that shot of Leia in the tower, but that would involve editing to remove a section of reflection that is outside the window area.

I’m really only trying to fix the flaws in the SE the have crept in since it was released. Some of the DVD and blu-ray changes fix things and some outright change things. The fixes I like to keep, the changes not so much. The only thing I want to keep is the link to the soundtrack which means going with any changes that impact the soundtrack. In ANH that includes the edit to the Han/Greedo scene. They extended it 4 frames and cut 4 frames from the end of reel 1 so the movie runs the same time in DVD and Blu-ray, but from the start of reel 1 until Greedo is shot everything is 4 frames off. Easier to leave the better cut of the Han/Greedo scene alone. Like I said, this is a hybrid restoraton. Kind of a DVD/Blu-ray intermediate. I can also turn on all the changes to the DVD and change the soundtrack and make this a pure restored DVD edition if I wanted. I’d rather make the hybrid - the best of both. I have some rendering to do in the next week and hopefully after that I can make an OT demo video.