CatBus

Also, if you're willing to wait not so long, version 2.5 will have every damn thing...

TV's Frink said:

CatBus said:

Do you mind, Frink?  We're trying to work here.  This thread's not gonna derail itself, you know.

I think it would, actually.

Point conceded.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Just that what's out now will soon date. As you said the over saturated visual eye-sore like films like 'The Kings Speech', 'Skyfall' etc will date very quickly. Digital Graders are just excited by their new toys and will learn to not tinker wih every shot til the faces are half orange/half blue in time.  They'll realise that the rich, wam and realistic palettes of 70s and 80s films like SW, 'The Godfather' and 'Raiders' are infact timeless.

Maybe.  I've been waiting a long time for 70's film pacing to come back, and my conclusion is it's gone for good.  Maybe a single film will get close (Lone Star had great pacing, for example).  But you're right--some of these things are certain to lose their novelty in the long run.  I just can't be sure which ones.  I certainly hope "films with more than two colors" isn't a description used in history books to describe how films from the latter twentieth century are visually unique...

Ryan McAvoy said:

I always thought the OT was pretty timeless, it was concieved that way.

I don't think timelessness is an easy thing to plan.  Sure, you can avoid references to pop culture (use a classical score, don't play the Bee Gees in the cantina), but some things fall in and out of fashion that are hard to control for.

You've got two main characters who are robots.  Not little background utility robots, but central characters.  And neither of them has superhuman strength or any sort of built-in weaponry.  Clearly this film predates the nineties.

The movie is called Star Wars, but it takes about an hour for them to get off the planet and actually into the stars where said wars are happening.  Films stopped meandering this much by the eighties.

The color hasn't been manipulated very much at all.  The sky doesn't look very green, Luke doesn't look very orange.  Clearly this movie was made before The King's Speech.

The film takes place in roughly chronological order.  Postmodernism hadn't had a huge impact on film quite yet.

The above are all things I like about Star Wars.  Just because they date the film doesn't mean that they are bad.  It's a representative 70's film, IMO.  And it's great.

EDIT: Good call on Raiders, Bingo.  That's probably the closest we're going to get.

imperialscum said:

In my opinion, nothing ever came close to Star Wars OT.

Yeah, I agree, but not because Star Wars is so great nothing comes close, but because Star Wars managed to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of 1977.  It was an adventure movie before adventure movies became absorbed into action movies.  It was (space opera) sci-fi before sci-fi became just another demographic target.  If Star Wars were released for the first time today, it would seem weirdly retro in a lot more ways than the special effects--the pacing, the cinematography, everything would scream 1977.

Firefly was what Star Wars would have been if it were unhitched from the 70's, swapped some adventurous spirit for character study, and given a lot better dialogue.  It's not the same thing at all, really, IMO.

Then again, maybe Star Wars is only tied to the 70's in my mind.  Someone watching Star Wars for the first time today probably gets a totally different feeling from the movie than I do.

johnlocke2342 said:

Huh? Seriously? I really thought it was the least changed movie of the OT. Sorry for misspeaking then.

Least noticeably changed, yes, but there are tons of barely-noticeable recomps.  Which doesn't make it any easier for Harmy, but it does mean if he doesn't fully despecialize every last one, we're less likely to notice.

Nice!  Is this your first color correction pass?  What did you settle on as a reference(-ish)?  Whatever it is, I like it!

If it helps, Bingo, there seems to be an American take on the word "opinion", which I've also heard, less frequently, in other countries.  In this American sense, an "opinion" is completely disassociated from facts and thus is impossible to objectively measure.  It also, in my opinion (ha!), makes the word utterly meaningless.

The traditional meaning of "opinion" is only reclaimed by adding qualifiers, such as "professional opinion", "doctor's opinion", "the court's opinion", etc.  Then, suddenly, people understand that THIS sort of opinion is tied, to some degree, to facts, expertise, etc and can be measured as better or worse than other opinions.

It's maddening, I agree, particularly because the new sense of the word is so useless.  But there you have it.

Mavimao said:

Darth Lucas said:

Thank you all for the opinions.  I'm going to check out Dark Jedi & You_Too's v3.  Seems to be what I'm looking for as the main problem I have with Harmy's Despecialized Editions is color correction.

The color correction in Harmy's depecialized is the original 77 color timing. 

 

Only for Star Wars.  For Empire, for example, I'd choose DJ/U2 if color was my primary concern too (it isn't in my case).

But there's no reason he can't mix-and-match.  Get Harmy's Star Wars, and then Empire and Jedi elsewhere.  The best of breed for all movies.

Re: color timing. The short answer is yes.  The long answer is it's complicated.

This color timing is based on a professional scan of a high-quality low-fade print, so it's closer to '77 colors than anything else you've probably seen since the 70's.

That said, there's a little variation in different types of prints, how faded or abused they got over the years, different projector bulbs, etc, making every theatre viewing unique, even in '77.  Also, Harmy was starting most of this from the Blu-ray timing and sometimes he might not have been able to approximate the '77 timing perfectly from that source.  But it's damn close.

Yes, but it will take time.

When I first saw that stretch, I thought I found some weird artifact from the Blu-ray--but I checked the Laserdisc and it was there too.  I think part of the problem is that when the image is all low-res, dirty, and shaky, a little stretching every now and then doesn't stand out so much.  Now it does.

As for the compactor scene, I felt that way too and even PM'd Harmy about it, but if it's that way on the Tech IB reference, well I guess that's that.

The key word is "satisfactorily".  Robert Harris would barely stoop to using a projection print at all.  His standards are a bit high, and I think the statement reflects the fact that film preservationists usually have a lot of other resources available to them that have fewer problems than a tech IB would.  If you had the OCN, why on earth would you bother to use the tech IB?

Nevertheless, it's interesting that he says it's only good for a color reference and that's, in fact, what it's being used for as far as most people are concerned.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I will be hand-delivering the raw ROTP captures to Harmy in Prague in the second weekend of June.

Could you at least pretend to do a dead-drop at some anonymous park bench?  It'd be a shame to get so close to being a spy thriller and miss out on the finer points.

CatBus said:

Harmy, we're bottling up all our color memories and preparing to dump them out in your Empire thread.  You have been warned!  Hoth is white!  Hoth is blue!  Hoth is teal!  Hoth is cerulean!

Some background on this comment: Harmy does not (yet) have a good objective color reference for Empire like he does for Star Wars, and the color of Hoth has proven the decisive color controversy in the film.  So there will be much arguing, and Harmy won't be able to close down arguments by saying "I've got a professional scan of a top-quality low-fade print and this is just how it looks" anymore.  His color choices will be educated guesses.  Again, not intended to belittle anyone--intended to contrast the our confidence in the colors of this restoration with the chaos coming up for the next one.

Harmy, we're bottling up all our color memories and preparing to dump them out in your Empire thread.  You have been warned!  Hoth is white!  Hoth is blue!  Hoth is teal!  Hoth is cerulean!

No offense intended. Just stating that this project is lucky to be using an objective color reference so that it can't be affected by the vagaries of color memory.

Luckily we don't have to rely on anyone's memories for this one.  We just use color references and if they don't match your memories, well... that's okay, I barely remember what I had for lunch today.

No, it's a good point to discuss.  Honestly it's the first time many of us have really seen something approaching the film "as it really was in '77" in decades, if ever.  Things like colors and details will occasionally look unfamiliar and maybe even wrong, because the old video transfers were washed out and lacking detail, and that's what we're most used to.  It takes a while for your brain to get used to the idea that thirty years of memories are not actually as historically accurate as something you saw for the first time this year.

Artificial lighting plays hell with whites.

It's not like you have to have it on your shelf next to your other movies.  It works as a boat anchor, chicken coop floor, toilet-tank-water-saver-brick, you name it.  It does not have to be in playing condition in order to fulfill its function (allowing fan edit ownership).  Pitch it as a water-saving device, you'll probably be more convincing.

Let me go check my couch cushions.  BRB.

pushad said:

So hold off on ESB/ROTJ then...

Well I guess I can stick to those theatrical DVDs from '06...

What? No! That's not what I was trying to say, if you got that from me.  I'm saying that ESB and ROTJ 1.0 are much, much, much, MUCH better than the 06 Bonus Disc version, VHS version, Laserdisc version, or what-have-you.  They're even better than the Blu-ray versions if you consider those to be the same films.  They are the best things to ever hit any video format, officially or unofficially (IMO, YMMV).

This project is well past the point of trying to make the best home video presentation.  Been there, done that.  Now it's trying to be competitive with 35mm film.  Star Wars 2.x is already there.  ESB and ROTJ 1.0 are not, but that certainly doesn't mean they're not way better than those damned bonus discs.

pushad said:

Thanks for the reply ...

2.5 eh? (facpepalm) Guess I'll cross the slow-download bridge when I get there lol

And from what I've read Empire & Jedi are worth it correct?

IMO they're arguably the best video presentation of these films to date (certainly ESB IMO, ROTJ has some noticeable problems).  But, unlike Star Wars 2.5, you just don't feel like you're watching it in the theatre again when you watch ESB and ROTJ 1.0.  It still feels like home video in far too many ways (color, detail, etc).

For now.

doubleofive said:

Team Negative 1 has a homemade scanner that gets pretty good results, but that would involve shipping your reels to them.

^ I'd add that this option is probably your only realistic option for having a good scan done in a reasonable timeframe (still could take years, they've got other stuff going on).  If you're serious about getting it scanned, this is the way to go.