AllAboutThatSpace

Shuggy said:

Just curious, Williarob: is there any overlap between this project and the Team Blu / Poita restoration effort? This would seem to be the ultimate preservation of SW77, will it render Poita’s project moot?

I’d also like to say that, even if The Mouse House embark on their own 4K reissue I still believe yours to be a very worthwhile and essential effort. Disney will still go back to the negative and may well foul up the color timing again while digitally scrubbing the movie within an inch of its life. I love the grain I see here; the mild presence of dirt, the subtle picture weave that speaks directly to my memory of what Star Wars - and film-going - was like in '77. That’s something a glossy modern transfer is very unlikely to achieve.

Great comment! I’d like to echo the question above, but also, there were some stunning Tech IB segments in the SSE 1 and 1.6 (supremely colourful and sharp). Is it likely that they’ll make the transition to this project, or is your Eastman source even better? All the best and thanks as always 😃

Beautiful. Grain all the way!

Thanks for the reply Williarob!
So it’s going to be mostly Eastman with some Technicolor and some of the old Spanish LPP?
Really look forward to seeing more. 😃

Wow, brilliant news!
Why shots from the blu ray though? I thought all your print scans are basically better in detail and closer to the original. Regardless I’m very excited 😃
Are you thinking of this as a step up from the SSE? How much will it improve on the SSE when viewed at 1080p?

Haha, I wish! Others are better in the know than me, but in the UK at least, a 70mm print of any film comes along only once in a blue moon. In the US, there are wealthy industry insiders and collectors who have good condition prints of SW 70mm. There’s a blog post about a private screening in 2008 for example. It’s a moot point whether the image quality would be better than the pretty sharp Tech IB’s of Star Wars, or the Fuji of Empire. 70mm draws more information from the internegative, so there’s a bit more detail and finer grain, but because they were all printed on Eastman, any not kept in cold storage will be faded red by now, and although some of the colour is recoverable, it’s probably not great.
The real benefit of a 70mm print would be the lovely, bassy 6 track surround mix. I’m not sure what the big beasts on this forum think, but to my mind, a print will only come from a wealthy collector who stumbles upon this community somehow, or who is contacted directly.

For now, this is the most you’re gonna get 😉
http://thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2016/02/04/70mm-Empire-Strikes-Back-in-4k

Wow, this whole generational issue must be a much bigger deal in the US. I feel justified in going back to the already off topic numbering convo, because it’s so much more on topic than the last page. I’m 25 and I never got the saga numbering. When I was a kid I ignored it, it annoyed me when I was a teen and it just baffles me now. It’s a tonally unnecessary effort to reverse engineer some cohesion between two tonally incompatible trilogies. We didn’t need the numbers to understand the chronology and no-one I know refers to them by number. Now you can see why they like it because LucasFilm can refer to episode IX even though it doesn’t have a name, and it can be hyped in the press. But I have to say the only fan edit I would accept on a restoration would be to take the V and VI out of the Empire/Jedi crawls.

Thanks so much for this, your hard work is massively appreciated!
I’d like to join the voices calling for a try at myspleen (I realise it may be taken down quickly) but it’s gotta be worth a punt at least.

“Boy am I glad to see you!”
“Be glad I can do a dragon”

Should have been in the film

Excellent news

Very excited your SW will use IB prints. Hopefully for the majority of the film! 😉
I know you’re off so this question can be left, but some of what you describe of your process sounds a lot like Mike Verta’s, i.e. trying to get noise out of the image by using multiple prints. Assuming that he’s doing that, I would say it isn’t necessary for you to do that so much.
Here’s my reasoning. The Star wars blu rays are bad to watch, not for most people, most people don’t care, but bad to watch if you do. Harmy’s are good to watch, as a halfway house between the blu rays and a future restoration. They’re good Home Video versions. I would say that Mike’s project, if it sees the light of day would fall into that category - a great, polished, super clean, “new” looking restoration.
TN1 on the other hand, have introduced us to something a little different, which is the pleasure of seeing a 70’s/80’s film, demonstrably from a film source, which a lot of the hallmarks of film intact - scratches, jitter, cigarette burns etc. The SSE is a very good version of SW, but suffers from the softness of the Spanish print (your new scan will help that a lot.) The portions of Tech IB that most of us have seen - 12 minutes of reel 5, and the end of reel 3 (the remote training scene), plus a few inserts here and there, demonstrate an extraordinary level of colour and detail (whether they have accurate colours or not). I think there’s a real gap between Verta and the SSE that can be filled by a Tech IB version that brings the prints to life in the way we’ve seen. Sure, it wouldn’t be colour accurate, but it would be extraordinarily colourful; it would have film artefacts and the feel of film, but with egregious damage toned down, and it would have the detail density that only Tech IB’s can provide.
Just my two cents. I’ll see if I can help you out with drives in the next month or so. 😃

I’ve always thought Curiosity Edition would be a good name for a SW restoration, and it has the benefit of being anti-litigeous, saying that the restorations are curiosities, rather than rival releases. It’s also definitely a Mars rover, which is a problem. 😉 Great work! Question, is this the same print of Empire as TN1 have, or another?

I think the acid test will be more previews. So far Mike’s Vimeo had no shots of faces, or any of the basic action. It’s just effects shots or matte paintings. So far I’m not sure his process is making a better version than just the very best Tech IB scenes cleaned and stabilised. We just haven’t seen enough yet. I genuinely hope LucasFilm commission his copy, BUT, unlike other people I don’t think that’s the holy grail of SW77 restorations. Personally a single print Technicolor scan, with minor grading and clean up would be my ideal. I hope this (although it would have less of an audience) is still possible.

Is 1.5 the version with Poita’s new scan, or just a retreatment of the current one?

Looking forward to this a lot!
I’d be very interested in using this print to reconstruct the shorter British/European cut. 😃

All sorted now. Thanks though! 😃

Hi all,
Curious to know if anyone kept hold of the “Technicolor and Empire Strikes Back Sanitised 35mm Previews 2016” folder before it was removed from the Spleen. I’ve seen the Reel 5 Tech IB preview, but would be interested to see in what ways they were able to colour correct that ESB print.
Any help greatly appreciated

2 trailers for the SSE v1 - in case anyone has a hard job getting your friends excited about 35mm. I do.

https://vimeo.com/162892965

https://vimeo.com/163694253

enjoy 😃

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

The results are incredible! Thanks so much!
Definitely putting some scenes into my personal ideal Star Wars 😃
The dark scenes go very dark, is that a feature of the early part of the process or is my screen off whack?

LeeThorogood said:

At the time V1.0 of the SSE was released it was mentioned/planned that there would be a V1.1 with some further corrections/enhancements, is this still in the pipeline? I’ve also seen mention of a grindhouse edition of SW, is this something that is actually planned?

Many Thanks

There was talk of a BD version, but I think that’s been shelved.
As far as I’m aware, the next version will use Poita’s (4K/2K?) scan of the same print, with potentially Dr Dre’s colour correction algorithm applied. I’m personally hoping for a bit more Technicolor, and in an absiolutely ideal world, a soundtrack from a print, like the ESB grindhouse.
As for a grindhouse of SW, the uncorrected scan is available, and was up on Myspleen (again, heresay, I don’t have Myspleen)
To see what it looks like, check out Dre’s excellent algorithm test on his latest thread in this category. There’s 16 mins of the scan with no stabilisation, crop, or cleanup.
Maybe if we all ask very nicely, Dre will be able to make a full colour corrected grindhouse to show off his algorithm 😉

Ah that’s a shame. Well done for scanning it though! Hopefully Williarob will be able to use some of the currently available Tech in SSE v2

This thread was a bit before my time.
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/POSSIBLY-FOUND-Star-Wars-A-New-Hope-Technicolor-IB-dye-transfer-print-random-post-on-reddit/id/15476
Does anyone remember what happened to the print? I’m hung up on the idea of Technicolor Star Wars. 😛 I know Mike’s using lots of them, but his process is going to produce a very different end product.

This all looks incredible. Well done! Really looking forward to seeing it in motion! Can I ask that you leave the frame edges in your preview? It would awesome to see the shots recoloured full frame.
All the best! And yeah, you should probably patent your algorithm 😉

Don’t have much to contribute except support.
I’ll try to donate in a couple of months when I have some more moola.
I saw this in 70mm at the Prince Charles cinema in London. The remarkable thing about film that I hadn’t noticed before is that it highlights detail you want and disguises detail you don’t. On the blu-ray, in the Dawn of Man prologue, you can clearly see paint roller strokes or cleaning marks on the back projection screen behind the savanna sets. It’s distracting and annoying and you think why would such a perfectionist and pedant as Stanley Kubrick put up with that when it’s so obvious? I was looking out for those marks on the 70mm print (because I’m a nerd) and they just plain don’t show up. The film print just ignores them. The print’s sharp as a knife alright, but only in areas of intense bunched up detail or bright highlights. Same kinda thing with Star Wars, the green screen and effects mattes just blend better in the release prints when compared to the blu rays.
In many ways scanning in high def from the camera negative is not a restoration of an old film in any way. It’s a preservation for sure, but it’s getting back to a raw material that wouldn’t ever have been seen. Kubrick didn’t pick up on those marks, because even on 70mm they weren’t a problem. That’s why these scans of release prints look so good, the generational grain binds the images together to give you an intense feeling of ‘story’ rather than ‘photography’, that’s why we like em so much 😉

Looks beautiful. Well done all involved!