opinions on film restoration/preservation and how it applies to Star Wars - what do you think should/should not be allowed? — Page 5

CP3S said:

skyjedi2005 said:

For some Reason when Bob Z did the release for Back to the Future on DVD and blu ray however he refused to have the noticeable things like wires holding up marty mcly painted out. 

I didn't know about that. I think I just fell in love with Robert Zemeckis. The first Back to the Future DVD set was fantastic and used to be what I wished the a Star Wars boxset of the OOT would be. Since then Blade Runner has replaced it at the top of my list of most amazing DVD sets of all time. Sounds like the trend is continuing into the BD realm. 

Yep. In the Q&A commentary track, Laurent Bouzereau asks Zemeckis if he would be updating the films for the DVD release, and he point blank says that he hates when filmmakers do that.  And that is the moment that I fell in love with him.  In fact, for the DVD set, the Bobs purposely tried to bring it back closer to the theatrical print than the VHS releases had.  They removed the "To Be Continued..." and subsequently retimed credits from the first film.  There was an ADR of one of Doc's lines instituted for the VHS release that was reinstated to its original reading on the DVD.  And they threw in the trailer for Part III at the end of Part II.  Truly these are guys who know how to properly respect a film.

xhonzi said:

This is kind of my thought process.  To the outside world, we are an unsatiable group what will never be happy no matter what Lucas releases.  The GOUT was obviously meant as a slap to the face, so we took it that way and weren't satisfied.  But if something that looked and played like the originals was released- without it meeting every point on our list of demands, and we (the OOT demanding community) still demanded more-  Well, I can hear the response now.

I think that's probably why we're taking this so seriously.  I mean, think about it.  Assuming that one day, Lucasfilm finally decides to cater to us, we're really only going to get once chance to have it done right.  So the minutae is very important!  I mean, think of how many (ignorant) people got on our cases for complaining about the GOUT.  I mean, that's how it looked, right?  They didn't have anamorphic back then, right?  They wanted it untouched, right?  So imagine they do cave one day and "restore" the trilogy... but recomposite everything.  And, yes, I will be one of the many people bitching about it.  And, of course, those same people will still just not get it.  They said they wanted it restored!  It's restored, and now they're bitching that it's not the original!  Well, isn't that what they were complaining about with the 2006 DVDs? 

As far as I see it, if they do it for us once, that's all we're going to get for the forseeable future, so it has to be right.  And as far as I'm concerned, what anybody wants it to look like needs to take a back seat to simply making it as close as possible to how it did look like.  The recomped shots already exist.  If you really need those versions, you can always make an edit.  But right now the greater need is for the REAL versions.

And now, something tangentially-related that I was thinking of last night:  what about the subtitles?  Lucasfilm's policy on those has always pissed me off.  Why make them player-generated, aliasing-looking pieces of crap?  Why place them outside of the frame?!  For a true restoration, the subtitles need to be hard-coded into the picture, in their original font.  It's amazing how Lucas can screw up even the simplest things...

And RE: S_Matt.  I just want to make it clear that I at least am not intending any hostility towards you.  With so many engaged in this discussion arguing against you, it can somewhat seem like you're being ganged up on, but that's not really the case.  Like Harmy, though, it does really make me sad to think that this is what the term "film restoration" means to some people, and it does fill me with fear that we might get an announcement for a true release of the original trilogy, only for it to be filled with redone special effects.  And then, more than ever, people will be convinced that this is what those groundbreaking special effects actually looked like.

I wouldn't have anything against such tastefully upgraded version, if the original existed as well.

The problem with such a thing is that it is impossible to say what is within the boundaries of tasteful as it depends on personal opinion. Some people would consider only recomposited FX to be a tasteful update, some would consider the windows in cloud city to be a perfectly tasteful update. Some would even like to see the CGI fighters in the battle of Yavin. And there are even those who think that Rontos and Dewbacks and CGI droids are perfectly adequate and tasteful additions.

Simply put, there could be a million different enhanced editions and for each of them you'd find someone who would think it's tasteful and respectful. But there is only one true original and that is the STAR WARS that people saw in 1977 on opening day, it's that simple.

Well, I know that the final cut is generally considered superior but I actually prefer the original international cut -  I saw the DC first and I thought it was ok, but I only fell in love with the film when I saw the original (In a crappy LD transfer at the time). I like the narration and I prefer the original colour palette. Hell, I admit, I even like the original happy ending. And I like the original FX.

Optical FX, while admittedly usually less realistic, have a kind of interesting look, which I find very aesthetically pleasing. I actually like every single of those recomposited shots that I posted before better in the original version than the SE ones, the SE ones just lack the charm and character of the originals, they just look like every other effect today does.

The subtitles out-of-frame and being activated by the player aren't too uncommon in movies in general. Gran Torino does that too, sadly. I hate, hate, HATE blu-ray subtitles. The fonts just look so strange to me.

But are we talking about language subtitle options accessible through the menu, or are we talking about subtitles that are actually a part of the film?  For the former, I don't care how they make their subtitles as they're not actually a part of the movie.  But for the latter, yes, it is extremely annoying.

I guess that is the whole point of the player generated subtitles - the foreign language versions. STAR WARS never got dubbing on DVD here in the Czech Republic but say in France or Germany, when people watch with dubbing, they have the crawl in their language and the forced subtitles in their language. And from what I hear, Lucas likes dubbing, which is why all the prequels were dubbed here in cinemas (as if they weren't bad enough on their own).

But if the crawl is in foreign languages... obviously that's hardcoded into the picture and not player-generated.  I mean, it seems to reason that you could either use alternate angles (preferred) or just have language-specific text hardcoded for each region.

Yeah, sure but it would cost more money and take more time and you can't expect LFL to do that...

But I'm just saying that if they go so far as to recreate the title crawl in every available language rather than simply going the easier route of translating them in the player-generated subtitle track, where's the logic that the film's subtitles (in its native language release no less) be in the player-generated subtitle track?

I guess I'm just saying I don't necessarily follow you when you say that foreign language barriers are the reason why the film's subtitles be player generated rather than hard coded.

RE: Subtitles

I don't think branching really works well enough for what you describe.  The crawl presents a unique opportunity to get in/get-out as far as the branching goes.  And the crawl is- what? 30 seconds?  What would be the total run time of all subtitled scenes in RotJ?  Assuming you have to do it scene-by-scene instead of shot-by-shot (due to the non-seamlessness of branching) you'd be looking at a substantial runtime.

Are subtitles not any better on BD?  I thought the increased resolution and raw computing power would allow for some nice anti-aliased/high res fonts for BD subs, but I don't think I've yet seen any subs on BD.

I don't personally think branching is necessary or even the most intuitive solution.  Just have the damned subtitles burned into the picture like they're supposed to be!  If foreign languages are included in your releases, let those subtitle translations be in the subtitle track, and let them be in the matte.  It's as simple as that.  Everybody wins.

And if I was one of those foreign viewers, I'd prefer the ORIGINAL English crawl to be there, and let the translation for it be in the subtitle track as well.

Yeah, I would have thought so too. I would have thought they could even have subtitles that could be switched on and off and yet look like the original subs on BD.

Harmy said:

^ What Zombie said is exactly what I said before but in better words!!!

And in the shots that were originally planed to be optical composites, the generation loss is absolutely minimal, because they used 70mm film to shoot the blue screen elements and then they composited all the elements one by one on one film strip. So only one generation was lost and that was compensated for by using the 70mm film. So it is quite possible that a lot of the original finished composites were just as clean as the live action photography, if not even cleaner due to being handled in lab conditions only.

This is a common mistake to make i have made it before.  Star Wars effects were done in VistaVision, they considered using 65mm but went with VistaVision.  Of course the live action footage was shot 2:35:1 with anamorphic lenses on panavision cameras using regular 35mm film.

From what i understand vistavision is 35mm on its side for a larger negative area for the composite optical effects.

I say let these guys do the restoration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugjGDgiSXO4

To clarify: yes, Gaff, it's the language spoken Hmong (spell?) language parts that are subtitled below the frame - unlike in the theatrical release, where the subs were in frame. Not referring to closed captioning.

Well i was basically reiterating what i read from John Dykstra's article in the 1977 star wars issue of American Cinematographer, a mag that also describes building the Dykstraflex motion control system, and creating the DOLBY mixes for the film, quite indispensable even today.

Really? I always thought that some of the FX in Close Encounters looked a bit cheap with all the fake looking light beams and stuff. And some of the FX in Blade Runner were really good but some were rather mediocre. I'm not saying that all FX in SW were perfect either though but that's what makes the FX in all these films interesting.

Well, that I can completely agree with. But in terms of the ability to make you believe that what you're seeing is real it is my opinion that STAR WARS succeeds better than any of those films.

Also, you're talking about how great these effects were in those films, yet you would prefer them recomposited digitally, so that in effect they wouldn't be the same original awesome effects created at the time?