CatBus

Well I can't help thinking that with all the rights to the franchise still in certain hands, any reboot would be tragic.  So here is my list of "tragic" casting choices.

Luke Skywalker: Daniel Radcliffe
Princess Leia: Lindsay Lohan
Han Solo: Seth Rogen
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan McGregor
Darth Vader: George Lucas (because the trilogy is all about him)

C-3PO, R2-D2, Yoda, and Jabba would be CGI, of course.

ray_afraid said:

THIS. People laugh with Rocky Horror. People laugh at Phantom Menace. BIG difference.

So TPM is exactly like Showgirls, then.

vbangle said:

Catbus, if you have been reading this thread at all DarkJedi has said over and over again he doesn't do that. You'll have to wait like the rest of us.

Sorry, I see now that the previous screencap teasers were from You_Too, not DJ.  Does this mean there will be no more previews before the final product is released?

kilik64 said:

But what if we make fun of it and have a good time doing that? Make it ok then?

It just makes it equivalent to Showgirls or Rocky Horror, that's all.  The only thing wrong with that is that there are probably still a handful more people with genuine non-ironic interest in seeing TPM than Showgirls, and you might bug them.  But really if you choose your venue right or wait a little longer, you won't have to worry about that either.

I do feel kinda bad for people who genuinely like Showgirls though.  There simply aren't any non-ironic showings anymore.

Harmy said:

The colourtiming process was much more difficult then than it is today with digital technology and that's why it couldn't be as perfect as today.

If, by "perfect", you mean "cyan and orange"...

Part of the appeal of pre-digital movies for me is that colors vary almost entirely because of the lighting, just like the real world.  Sure some weird lighting can occasionally make skin tones look greenish or grayish, but that's just like the real world too.  I actually enjoy that.  It's much preferable to having consistent skin tones inside, outside, under flourescent lights, standing next to a big red banner, etc.

Darth Bizarro said:

Almost as bad as the transfer were the fans in attendance.  I'm not sure who was more annoying, the group of hecklers in front of us who spent the whole film running their mouths and cracking jokes and before the movie started, got up in front of the theaters and asked people if they actually liked this movie they were about to see then started asking questions straight out of the RedLetterMedia reviews.

I think what you're seeing is that TPM is finally becoming Showgirls.  There are certain films that are simply EXPECTED to be terrible, and they are shown at midnight so that people can pay money to make fun of them and be rowdy when nobody else is awake.

I'm sure people also complained that they wanted to quietly enjoy the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  But it was a midnight screening of a terrible movie.  This sort of audience is what it's made for.  I'm afraid you'll probably be seeing more of this.

dark_jedi said:

...

Star Wars is rendering right now, it will be done in a couple hours, then we(You_Too & I) will fix some of the bad frames, then I will go to work on the audio, then we are going on to Jedi, it has less bad frames, Empire is by far the worst so we will do Empire last.

 

Are we approaching the time when we could see some screencaps?  I'm excited to see the new colors (and the burnt-in subs, but that's just me).

If I had a penny for every time this workprint made me crap myself, I'd be able to buy a new pair of pants.

That's my way of saying don't you dare change a thing.  Or maybe I ate some bad shrimp.

That boy was our last hope...

Harmy said:

WILL YOU FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT THE FUCKING COLOURS!!! JUST HEARING THE WORD SKINTONE MAKES MY OWN FUCKING SKIN CRAWL!!!

I knew this would happen someday.  We broke Harmy.

We are so screwed now.

I am now solidly pro-shake, but still moderately anti-burn-mark.

Harmy, you could leave the shake as-is and I'd be perfectly happy, depends on how much more tweaking you can stand.  TServo's suggestions sound reasonable.

dlvh said:

Did someone mention here, that there was "outtake video" of this instance? Or was it just talk that they decided NOT to put it in, do to time restraints, or what-not? My theater had it in, but perhaps My theater had a very early copy that later version s left it out...?

No, they decided not to film the missed throw, as the idea had not yet come to the writers of the novelization to make its way back to the scriptwriters.

I think your theatre ran a Sweded version.  That's the only possible explanation that does not involve mixing up the film and the novelization.

dlvh said:

Does this mean that you are going to find this "missed throw" clip somewhere and insert it to where it should be in the movie also...for the people who saw it in the theaters when it was introduced in May-July (or later) of 1977?

That would be great for all the fans that originally saw it, and know it was in there, in the summer of '77

As soon as some hard evidence of the missed throw materializes, he'll be right on it.  However, it's not on any of the original 35mm reels anyone's ever gotten their hands on (badly faded, but usable enough to in/validate this claim), nor on any in-theatre video recordings, or anything else.

Top Men.

digitalfreaknyc said:

I dunno. I just feel like stretching anything will introduce artifacts. I know it does with sound.

The frames are identical.  They are just played back faster.  Like a flip-book.  You can slow down the framerate if you really want, (visually) losslessly.  But it's just a workprint, so why bother?

dark_jedi said:

CatBus said:

digitalfreaknyc said:

I'm confused. Why would you do it in PAL to slow it down to NTSC??

PAL timecodes are unambiguous when reporting problems.

WOW, I did not know you can't use timecodes with 23.976 FPS, learn something new every day.

Smartass ;)  That's the reason given, I'm just repeating it.  I'm assuming not all playback software does fractional seconds very accurately, in which case you wouldn't know which exact frame you were dealing with.

bkev said:

I am curious as to why the decision was made to add it at all.

It was shakier in the theatre, but we don't have much in the way of usable references for that.  It's a best effort.  I'm not sure it's good enough either but I trust Harmy to make the call.

digitalfreaknyc said:

I'm confused. Why would you do it in PAL to slow it down to NTSC??

PAL timecodes are unambiguous when reporting problems.

Harmy said:

Yeah, it's kind of funny that we're having this heated debate about something that covers about 2% of two frames :-)

The nitpicking is just going to get worse the closer this thing gets to perfection.  It is inevitable.  It is your destiny.

How's this for framing the burn mark choice?

I think everyone agrees that if Star Wars were ever subjected to a proper studio restoration, the burn marks would not be in it.  I think the LACK of a proper studio restoration of these films is a burning issue for everyone here, and the primary reason this project exists in the first place.  And some of us want Harmy's project to be a substitute for that nonexistent proper studio restoration.  But the simple fact is it isn't a studio restoration--it's its own project with its own priorities.

Damn it, I just argued against my preference.  I gotta stop doing that.

Cobra Kai said:

For me, it's simple.  These marks were not captured on film, and thus do not truly represent part of the finished product that the crew worked so hard to achieve.

Well sure, but someone also went in with a black marker on a few shots too, to correct some things.  Now I agree with you, but there were changes even after the film was put "in the can" so to speak.  Some, like the black marker stuff, was intentional.  This was not.  I agree only intentional changes to the "in the can" print should be restored, but people never really saw the "in the can" print either.

I think part of the problem is that I wish I could have seen it! ;)

Harmy said:

The thing is, even though it may have happened by accident, that accident is a part of the history of the film, since this particular damage was most likely on the original negative, so it's not that easy. It's like 99,9% of dirt in Puggo Grande is specific to that print but these burnmarks are something that all the prints had in common.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I definitely will restore them, I'm just trying to explain why I'm even considering it.

Yeah, I get your point and I dont envy the responsibility of making the choice.  You're essentially trying to answer "What is authoritative?" and... there is no answer.  You're just going to have to pick one and run with it, and some people won't like your choice.

I don't think it fits, overall, with the rest of your project--and I agree it's absolutely a good fit for Puggo.  But everyone has a slightly different idea of what your project is trying to be and ultimately your idea of what it should be should rule the day.

Harmy said:

The burnmarks are something I'm not quite decided about 

Okay, well I'm inclined against them, for what it's worth.  The rest of the print has such a "cleaned up" look that they stand out more than they would have in a normal dusty, scratchy theatrical run.  And as others have said, any normal restoration (Criterion, anyone else) would remove them.

As for the shake, I like the idea, but it still doesn't quite work for me in its current state.  I suspect that the extra shake plus high compression makes the blur look worse than it would in the final product, and I might like it right now with less compression, who knows.

TServo2049 said:

From what I can gather, the burns were on all prints in '77. The source used to make the video transfers in the 80s was burn-free, but then the source used to make the '93 transfer had them again.

They are part of the '77 theatrical version for sure, but I'm on the fence about whether it's necessary to put them in the DEED. It's kind of jarring seeing them appear on an otherwise clean image, as opposed to on a print that already has other noise...

And looking at the blur that Harmy added to the camera shake, I see what he did. The camera shake effect in the SE looks different than in the original, where the image shakes longer and more violently. Since it's not a different take, I'm guessing that means that the shake was indeed a post-production effect, or that more shaking was added optically and what we're seeing in the SE is the original in-camera version. It looks like Harmy was trying to simulate the shaking effect from the original version. It still doesn't look as "rough" as the original, but unfortunately, there are no high-resolution versions of the true original, so I guess I'm fine with Harmy's new version as a compromise.

I don't know, I'm still with You_Too that the burn mark is the joke of the day.  It just doesn't seem consistent with other choices Harmy's made up-to-now.

There are things, like subtitle shake, etc, which were technological limits and perhaps even mistakes but they were made during an intentional process of making the film.  Then there are other technological limits and mistakes that were NOT part of the intentional process of making the film, and those were left out.  Specifically, I'm thinking that if you want a real theatrical look you'd need to crop out ~30% of the current image, because nobody ever saw the edges in the theatre.  But there's a reasonable expectation in the home video front that transfers will include a larger frame and will even be cleaned up, and up 'til now Harmy's gone that route.

We'll see what his take is but I'm thinking JOTD is a fair assessment.  It has a historical basis, yes, and only Star Wars fans would really get it, but it's not for real.  Then again...

You_Too said:

Joke of the day. :D

Anyway, that WP3 looks great otherwise, and I skipped through the WP2.3 a bit and it looked stunning as well.

Great job! As usual. :)

Glad to see StinkyDinkins' contribution making its long-awaited appearance.  I was afraid Harmy had forgotten.

I like Gaupol for editing (text only), easySUP for rendering to graphics.  But really there are tons of editors on the text side.  Let's not derail this too much--You_Too actually prefers simple text files and he will render them himself.