poita said:
On home video, they will be more visible on some TVs than others, as many people don't calibrate their TVs.
Oh my! I never thought about how bad they would look in the default "torch mode" for most TV's. Or that the whole film might even be extra-widescreen from the stretching 4:3 letterboxed content to 16:9... yergh!
Laserschwert said:
That's true... I'll keep watching Harmy, no matter how uncomfortable he gets.
I watch a life-sized Harmy-doll I've made. That way it won't make him feel uncomfortable at all.
chyron8472 said:
Re: blobs and matte boxes--Harmy, I thought you said that the contrast in the original theatres should have been properly adjusted so that they wouldn't have been visible to the audience, and consequently, having them appear would not fit to the actual intent of the project.
Some matte boxes are more visible than others, depending on the brightness of the background (there's one against a Star Destroyer in ESB that's pretty front-and-center). It's a matter of degree--most of the matte boxes may have been barely visible in the theatres if you looked for them, rather than jumping out at you like they do on the home video releases. Having them be as obvious as the home video releases would certainly not fit the intent of the project, but so would erasing them altogether. But there's a few pretty obvious ones that were likely always pretty obvious.
Nobody has any special inside knowledge.
There's been roughly 500 rumors about an upcoming OOT home video release over the course of the last 20 years, and every single one of them didn't pan out. But hey, maybe this time around it's totally different...
You want to go on that ride again, go on ahead, but without me.
Darth Baroque.
Danfun128 said:
Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, is about to hit Sweden's cinemas in 3D, dubbed into Swedish, a move which has infuriated die-hard fans and prompting them to lobby for a boycott of the film.
At first I thought the boycott was because it was TPM, even though it's my favorite of the prequels.
I don't understand what's wrong with dubbing when it comes to kids/family franchises, and Star Wars is just that. I'm sure the subbed version will still exist. Besides, what if the dub is very good?
A little late in answering, but if I understand the issues correctly, I believe it goes something like this (I don't necessarily believe ALL of this dogmatically, but I'm at least sympathetic to the arguments):
Point 1) Dubs (even good dubs) destroy artistic integrity. While both dubs and subs rely on translation, which loses all kinds of nuance, dubs actually erase the original vocal performance--aside from the words, the vocal characteristics, tones, and cues that separate acting from simply reading a script. In this sense, Eastern bloc-style voiceover dubs are better than traditional dubs because they preserve the original performance, and voice it over with something "neutral" that doesn't attempt to replace that performance.
Point 2) There's a little pride among people and places that don't do dubs. Reading subtitles isn't actually that advanced a skill beyond just reading--it just takes some practice. So all but the youngest children can watch films with subtitles just fine (assuming they're onscreen long enough)--dubs simply provide a crutch that delays the age at which they will learn the valuable skill of reading subtitles. Or learning another language.
So, to the boycott supporters, showing TPM dubbed is both destroying art and dumbing down their children. And then there's the dubbing too! ;)
poita said:
Image registration is a massive task
That's exactly why I want a simple click-and-drool utility to do it for me ;)
Sì, le marionette ci sono.
TV's Frink said:
What?
It's a bonus feature only available in the Italian edition.
So now that we have 1.3, what we need is an autocrop function that automatically crops one image to match the cropping of another image, or crops them both, if there's incomplete overlap.
Actually I think a Garanimal-based system would be fairest. Llama movies are great if you're a pigeon viewer (i.e you like broad, slapstick farces best), but would be a terrible choice if you're a sturgeon (i.e. you like documentaries best). It would take a while to map out all the taste categories and overlaps, but I'm pretty sure Netflix secretly uses this system internally already. So I think TFA might get three lobsters and a whooping crane. Maybe if the writing is tight, it could net a badger. But I'm under no illusions that, badgers or no, there's any chance on earth it will be in armadillo territory like the OT.
Lord Haseo said:
5/10 is mediocre verging on bad. 6/10 is more or less your description.
Mine goes up to 11.
AntcuFaalb said:
CatBus said:
As to colors, there is no "maybe it would look better if...", there is only "it looked like this or it didn't". Harmy had a very good color reference, and he approximated those colors from the Blu-rays the best he could.
You might have missed the drama that called the accuracy of MVerta's reference frames into question. I can't remember which thread it was in at the moment.
No I didn't miss it, I just didn't want to get bogged into details for what could be a short answer. Basically references can have problems too, but the solution is to aim for a more objectively accurate reference (i.e. counteract the green bias on the Technicolor print), not to just wing what you think looks good.
But yes, the reference wasn't perfect, and Harmy's attempt to match the Blu-ray colors to that reference wasn't perfect either. The objective, however, had nothing to do with natural or unnatural--it's making it the way it was.
The Blu-ray does have lots of oversharpening artifacts and some nasty color boosting, it's the primary source for this, so that's likely some of what you're seeing. The downscale to 720p mitigates some of this, the color correction a little more.
As to colors, there is no "maybe it would look better if...", there is only "it looked like this or it didn't". Harmy had a very good color reference, and he approximated those colors from the Blu-rays the best he could. Certainly he might have done a better job here or there, but the point is that it's ultimately not a subjective idea of what looks better--it's only a matter of what it actually looked like in 1977. If it was also too natural then, well, mission accomplished.
As for blending HD and SD material, Harmy absolutely used a few tricks, for example he did add some fake grain on SD sources to make them better blend with the HD footage, etc. There's still the matter of varying detail level, and if that bugs you, I'd suggest the DVD downscales, which place an upper limit on detail, making everything blend better. They're not HD, but they still look better than any official release.
Lord Haseo said:
I came to the conclusion that seeing as how bad the prequels were no one who's in charge of Star Wars would let such a thing happen again.
I reached the same conclusion, which is why my safe money is still squarely on "meh", 5/10, fairly disposable entertainment, far and away the best thing that's happened in the Star Wars universe in over a generation, and something I may still very well opt to skip entirely.
Making money is a given, even ROTS made money. Head and shoulders above the prequels is an incredibly low hurdle, Alien vs. Predator managed to clear that one and it blew. Disney bought a property that they could completely mishandle, still make money from it and improve the long-term reputation of the franchise. A deal like that doesn't come along very often.
When you can't lose, you don't have to take the sort of risks that you need to take in order to make something great.
Ahh, the old "Disney must recoup its investment, therefore it will be good, QED" theory. The John Carter Corollary, as it's sometimes called, I believe. It could work.
Lord Haseo said:
I'd say worse case scenario it will be a 7/10 film.
As long as we're not taking the small amount of info we have and predicting the quality with any certainty...
I think the general idea is that if I actually had my respectful unaltered Blu-ray trilogy, I wouldn't even be here. In fact--and I've said this before--if it happened, I would likely close up my projects, pack up, and leave without even saying good bye. Complaining and waiting for something that won't happen, and hanging out with other people who are also complaining and waiting for something that won't happen, is something unique to the Star Wars community. I'd even say it's the foundation for most of that community. It's why there's enough of us here to talk about TFA at all. The reason there's no similar community trash-talking Paul McCartney's albums (I agree, BTW), is that good-quality recordings of the Beatles that people love are widely available, so there's no community of similarly frustrated Beatles fans to do it.
Again, I don't "know" TFA will be terrible. I think the odds aren't good, and that's not really the same thing at all. I'll wait for the reviews to come in, decide then whether to see it at all, and maybe I'll add it to my personal canon if I like it. But no, I'm not going to wait in line for it like I did for TPM.
joefavs said:
Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd rather be happily hopeful for now and potentially disappointed later than uniformly bitter and wretched for the duration.
That's a valid option. As is being cynical and disinterested, with the possibility of being pleasantly surprised later. The fact is the thing doesn't exist and can't be evaluated, so we're just setting expectations. You go your way, I'll go mine. There's no wretchedness or misery either way you choose, if you're not personally invested in the outcome.
It always amazes me how much Star Wars fans seem to hate Star Wars.
Pulled from the headlines of TFN. Star Wars is many things to many people, and for many of us, it's just a few films from a few decades ago, and we love them dearly. The rest is not really Star Wars at all and can DIAF for all we care.
I honestly think half the people here won't even be capable of registering it because they're so locked into the idea that it needs to suck.
People complaining nonstop for three decades that every new or revised Star Wars film sucks would be an indicator of a bias, if it weren't for the fact that every new or revised Star Wars film has sucked for the last three decades. For my part, I can give you my unqualified reassurances that I'm very open to the idea of something new in the Star Wars universe that doesn't suck. Going into it with the expectation that it will be good is contrary to years of experience, and, yes, I'd say naïve, but it's not a prerequisite for liking the film. Films can surprise you, films have surprised me, TFA could be a huge surprise, and I'd be delighted if it was. But my money's on meh.
EDIT: In case it needs pointing out, please note that "meh" is much better than "suck". "Meh" is literally the most value-neutral expectation a person could have about anything.
rmm2 said:
Maybe hopefully Harmy will blend them in
I hate to speak in absolutes, but that ain't happening. IIRC Harmy's actually put a hair back onto the film in one scene. The stated goal of this project is whatever it looked like in theatres, blobs and all. If someone wants to make a modified partly-specialized version from that, Harmy's fine with that.
Same could've been said with the outline blocks, or whatever you'd technically call them, that had surrounded the spaceships and star destroyers in the original purist cuts but that have thankfully been erased in Harmy's IV and V despecialized releases.
They are still there in both SW Despecialized and ESB Despecialized, but look more like they did in theatres than they did on home video. Home video releases were overly bright, making the effect stand out worse, much like the blobs. It's more subtle now (just like in the theatre, you could easily miss it), but it's still very much there, in line with the goals of the project.
EDIT: Found the hair.
You could render ROTJ PAL, render the one extra ROTJ NTSC frame, then assemble them as you like as a best-of-breed.
Mike O said:
Who cares? All I want is an OOT 4K remaster. If it can get us that, it can be a two hours of J.J. Abrams scratching his balls in 3-D. If we can get what we'd all sell our souls to Crowley for, it'd be worth it.
Well, let's not get carried away. I think asking for something more realistic like a pet unicorn or world peace would be a good exchange for a crappy TFA too, without having to entertain complete fantasies like an official OOT 4K remaster.
They don't make trolls like they used to. Created a whole new troll account for one last hurrah and couldn't even be bothered to spell the post correctly. Budget cuts, I suppose.
PM sent.