ChainsawAsh

rockps3avchd said:

not sure what bad CGI your talking about.   Tell me what scene and I will let you know

The shot where the Nazi car flies off the cliff.  Somewhere around here, there's a comparison image of the theatrical/DVD version and the new version.  I believe it was taken from a SciFi channel broadcast, and it was assumed that (given Lucasfilm's track record) this would be the "definitive" version from now on.

Hey, like I said, I've only read the Herbert novels.  I have no idea what any of the Anderson novels are about.  I was just going on what I heard.  :-)

I had been hoping to get it out by the end of the year, but since I've been so insanely busy with school, that's not a possibility.  However, I do have a month and a half of NOTHING ELSE to do from mid-December to the last week of January.  And I'm getting a $300 pair of Sennheiser mixing-quality headphones for Christmas from my parents, which will allow me to really smooth out the audio problems (I'm also learning more about how Avid works in my Edit II class - I'm now 99% confident I can make the audio shifts seamless if I have good headphones).

Most of the work left to do is just frustrating and time-consuming, but when I have nothing else to do, I'll be focusing on this project entirely.  (Plus, the most tedious things - the crawl, subtitles, and credits - I can save the After Effects files for and use them as templates for the next two films, speeding up that part of the process quite a bit.)

If I had to guess, I'd say February or March 2010 for Star Wars.

skyjedi2005 said:

So is there frame weave and jitter in the gout, when i was watching star wars even during the roll up, it was all shaky.  Or is that a part of the 77 original because it had to be filmed that way?

Yes, there is frame judder in the GOUT, and on the 93 LD.  It's from the film shaking in the telecine machine when they made the transfer.

skyjedi2005 said:

I think it is also dishonest to say the non anamorphic transfer is the theatrical presentation since the films were shown in anamorphic widescreen and were shot that way, or that the limited resolution of a laserdisc master somehow resolves all the detail that was even on a print in bad shape like the gout star wars is.

DVD anamorphic and film anamorphic are two completely different things.  They share similar concepts, but saying that because a film was shot anamorphic and the DVD isn't anamorphic, that means the DVD isn't the original version, is a load of horseshit.

Anamorphic on film means that an oval lens squishes the light to fit the whole 2.39:1 (or 2.35:1, 2.55:1, and, for 70mm, 2.76:1) frame into the 1.33:1 frame on the negative.  When projected, another oval lens "unsquishes" the image back out to its intended 2.39:1 aspect ratio.  Spherical lenses (that's 1.33:1, 1.44:1 [IMAX], 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.2:1 [70mm spherical], and 2.39:1 if shot using the Super 35 format) use a lens that is, well, spherical, and it either A) fills the 1.33:1 frame completely and the top and bottom are matted out later ("soft matte"), or B) the aperture gate (or something similar I, can't recall) mattes out the areas that wouldn't be seen in a theater, so they're never recorded ("hard matte").  The film is projected with a spherical lens as well.

With DVD, you're just making it so you get the fullest resolution (this way less bitrate is wasted on black bars), regardless of whether you're watching on a 4:3 or 16:9 TV.  It has nothing to do with whether the film was shot anamorphically or spherically.  In fact, on Blu-Ray and HDTV, there's no such thing as anamorphic - 1920x1080 and 1280x720 are both natively 16:9 with square pixels, and they're never intended to be seen on anything other than a 16:9 screen (since no one has a high-def 4:3 screen), so anything slimmer or wider than 1.78:1 just gets black bars on it.

So there are plenty of movies that aren't anamorphic that are on DVD, and there are plenty of films that are anamorphic that aren't on Blu-Ray.

I don't like that for Dagobah at all, but I do like it for Endor.

G E Predator said:

Bingowings said:

So it's up to the editor and the viewer.

So in other terms, it's all depends on a certain point of view?

Yes.  There's nothing in the OT that dictates a specific length of time between films, and I won't be adding anything of the sort, so if your "point of view" is that it's 3 years between Star Wars and Empire and a few months between Empire and Jedi, that's up to you, and there will be nothing in my edits that will contradict you.

But that's not my personal "point of view" on the matter.

Very sorry to hear about your mother, Ady.  I wish I could donate a bit to help make things easier for you, but Chase decided to hit me with upwards of $80 in overdraft fees, so I'm even more broke than I was last week.

I hope all goes well.  Take as much time away from Star Wars as you need - no one here will hold it against you.

Vaderisnothayden said:

There's really one classic Dune novel and it's best taken as a standalone.

Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head there.

I might tackle this when I get the DVD.  NO PROMISES, but I really liked the movie and would like to see some of this stuff in the context of the film.  It wouldn't be a "This is what I think the film should have been" edit (like my planned Watchmen cut); more of a "Look what it could have been.  Interesting, eh?" edit, like the Special Longer Version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but with the new Star Trek.

Again, no promises that I'll do this.  I'll just say that I'm interested in the idea, and if, when I get the DVD, the deleted scenes are of decent quality, I may be tempted to tackle it.

If anyone else beats me to it, though, go for it.  I'm just intrigued by the possibility.

65mm =/= VistaVision

Vista Vision is 35mm turned on its side.  65mm is the exact same thing as 70mm, but without an audio track (the negative that's run through the camera is 65mm, the prints that are released add 5mm for audio, which is where we get 70mm).

So 35mm is to VistaVision as 65/70mm is to IMAX.

VistaVision was originally just a widescreen filming format Paramount invented to compete with anamorphic cinematography.  (Note that VistaVision does NOT produce an aspect ratio comparable to anamorphic cinematography, it's closer to 1.85:1 than 2.39:1.)  Paramount and VistaVision lost out to anamorphic lenses.

ILM, when making Star Wars, decided to revive the format for the visual effects shots.  The reason for this was that, on top of the incredibly fine-grained 35mm film stocks then in existence, the VistaVision process was designed to minimize grain even when film stock was much, much grainier than it was in 1976.  Most films at the time (Close Encounters) used 65mm for the same reason, but VistaVision, being that it was 35mm turned on its side, was much cheaper to use than 65mm.

It worked so well that I believe most films with heavy optical effects after that used VistaVision until digital technology replaced optical compositing (this hasn't happened 100% completely yet, but it's damned close).

But Close Encounters and Blade Runner definitely used 65mm for their opticals, not VistaVision, so an 8K scan makes sense.  An 8K scan of 35mm turned on its side seems kind of pointless to me - I'd be happy with the whole of Star Wars, including the opticals, being scanned at 4K.  Which, sadly, doesn't seem likely.

You're saying that as if I've actually started my ROTJ edit.  It's more likely at the moment that I'll be altering the current opening to use the Executor, Vader's shuttle, the Death Star II, and Endor, but arranged differently than the current opening, which is a carbon-copy of the opening to the first film.

After that I'll either go to Luke on Dagobah, or to the Boushh/Chewbacca scene and then to Luke on Dagobah.  And the feeling that their "conversation just left off from ESB" is a good thing - the idea is that after ESB ended, Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie came up with a plan to save Han, then Luke returned to Dagobah to finish his training before the plan is implemented.  Leia gets impatient with not saving Han and makes up her own half-baked plan to save him, which more or less completely fails, leaving Luke, now a full Jedi, to clean up her mess for her.  This also explains the incredibly haphazard way the "plan" seems to unfold in ROTJ.

But anyway, I'm not focusing on ROTJ at all right now - I'm still finishing up work on Star Wars.  Good news here - I'm getting a very nice set of Sennheiser mixing-quality headphones for Christmas, so, in the interest of using them to iron out the Revisited-to-mono-mix transitions until I'm satisfied that the transitions aren't noticeable, it looks like this project may see a January or February release (perhaps you guys'll get a nice present from me on my birthday).

Oh, and G E, I'm not sure that I agree with the timeframe you posit there, but as I said, my edits will be just as open to interpretation as far as timeframe goes as the originals were, so I'm not going to stress about that too much.  I'm going more by "feel" than logic, though - everyone looks like they've aged much more from ESB to ROTJ than from SW to ESB, at least in my opinion.

Heh ... yeah, I remember The Glove of Darth Vader.  I also remember the first book in that Goosebumps-style "horror" Star Wars series for kids, the one with the weird holographic cover.  I don't remember the name of it, but I do remember it being awful.

Just read Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune.  They're the ones written by Frank Herbert.

Although, to be frank, I think you can just stop after Children of Dune and be fine.  Dune Messiah is pretty good, Children of Dune is okay, but the rest get progressively weirder and weirder.  I'm not a big fan of worm-Leto II, or whatever the hell he was supposed to be in the last few novels.

I haven't read any of the Kevin J. Anderson Dune novels, nor do I plan to.  I've heard far too many absolutely awful things about them.

Though Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune together form a sequel to Chapterhouse: Dune that is supposedly based on a 30-page outline by Frank Herbert, I can't see them being any better than Chapterhouse, which I really didn't like.

Bingowings said:

I look forward to a really radical reworking of the prequels (including redubbing the worst of the dialogue acting human, alien and droid).

*clapclapclapclapclap*  Absolutely.  Any attempt to make the prequels legitimately *good* will have to involve making their stories nearly unrecognizable when compared to the original versions.

I'm still very apprehensive about what will happen when Ady gets his hands on them (and ROTJ, for that matter) - I think there's a high risk of a very intense backlash against Ady if he changes "too much" about the prequels/ROTJ.

Redstar said:

good old fashioned suspension of disbelief.

Which is exactly what I'm counting on.  ;-)

I'm doing this for myself more than anything else.  It will be released, but I don't give two shits if the FMA fan community accepts or rejects it.  I just prefer subs to dubs, which is why I'd prefer to do this subbed.

The other problem is the differences in voices between the first FMA and Brotherhood - in Japanese, most of the actors are the same, but I know Mustang is different for one.  When Funimation announced the English dub cast a few months ago, Alphonse's voice actor had reached puberty, so he's no longer playing Al - now it's a woman.  (They said they're giving the former Al another part later, which I would assume is Ling.)

The difference in voices in the Japanese version isn't noticeable enough to be a problem IMO, but I don't know if Al's voice in the dub will be too different to ignore ...

I don't mind seeing mockups at all.  I'm still not sold on the red-tint idea, but I'm definitely going to play with it and see how it looks in context.

As far as the Doc/Rorschach scene at the end, I think I should stress that up to this point everything in this project is entirely theoretical.  I won't be able to start editing until A) this semester is over, B) I finish the first of my Star Wars: The Trilogy edits, and C) I buy the Ultimate Cut DVD or Blu-Ray.  So I haven't had a chance to see what I can do with that scene, though, due to my Motion Graphics II class, I am much more knowledgeable about After Effects than I was when I announced this project, and I may be able to accomplish my goals for that scene without enlisting outside help.

As soon as I actually start the editing on this project, you guys'll be the first to know.

Ah, gotcha.  Yeah, that's most likely what I'll be doing (waiting until the episodes are on DVD in the US).  I'm gonna try to be ambitious and do a dub version and a sub version, but in all likelihood it'll end up being sub-only (my personal preference, though it'll be harder to edit, as my last Edit II project, which was entirely in Spanish, proved to me).

No, there's no way they're going to use the Youswell story or the train-hostage thing.  (I'd only include the train-hostage thing because in the absence of the Ice Alchemist episode, we lose the introductions of Mustang, Hawkeye, and Hughes, which, in the manga and first anime, occured in the train-hostage episode.)  So I will have to use these episodes, slightly edited of course.

There's also May Chang's introduction in Youswell later in the manga that wasn't in either anime (since May wasn't in the first anime at all).  I highly doubt they'll include this at any point, which is sad.

I'm holding out hope that future episodes will include more Ishbal flashbacks, so I can fill out that episode into a two-parter (I'm definitely moving Scar's Ishbal flashback into this episode, the way it was in the manga).

Good eye.  I haven't really noticed that, but I'll definitely play around with some color correction when I get to that stage.

I just checked, and the subtitles on the theatrical preservation DVD are indeed "soft" subs.

I'm still thinking about how best to approach it.  Just a few weeks ago, the Ishbal flashback episode was aired, and they condensed a full volume (4 chapters!) of manga into a single half-hour episode, cutting many important things.  The Scar stuff that should have gone there was put in as a flashback earlier in the series, so I may reorganize that to put it with the rest of the Ishbal episode (where it is in the manga).  I'll probably do the same if other characters get similar additional Ishbal flashbacks that weren't included in the Ishbal episode.

There's also Episode 27 to deal with, which was, for all intents and purposes, a useless clip show.  Why the fuck could they not have split Ishbal into two episodes and ditched the clip show?!  Ugh ...

I'll probably wait to start this until the actual US DVDs come out.  I'd still like to get it done, but I don't know exactly how I'll release it (since many episodes will be untouched beyond the episode title screen).

The crawls of the first three don't match because they were each made three years apart, with many variables such as film stock and optical compositing, which results in crawls that are slightly different sizes and colors (and ROTJ has three periods at the end instead of four, which all 5 other films have - this will also be rectified in my ROTJ).

With digital rendering of the crawls, these inconsistencies disappear - they can be made to be the exact same color and size by modifying an After Effects template (which I'll be creating for myself based on the 1977 pre-ANH crawl).  Why the prequels' crawls vary so much is beyond me - there's no reason for it since they were created digitally.

It's not so much that they occur continuously - in my mind, ESB takes place a year or two after ANH, and ROTJ about three years after ESB (implying that Luke trained on Dagobah for a couple weeks to a couple months during ESB, and completed his training over an additional 3 years after ESB).  It's more about consistency of the look of the films than the idea that the beginning of one picks up where the ending of the other left off.

I'm also not going to put specific years in my edits - that's the timeframe in my mind, but it's open enough to interpretation that, even with my edits, you can decide for yourself how much time elapses between each film.

He has two versions - there's his 1080p AVCHD that's color corrected, but it's the DVD cut, and his SD restoration of the theatrical version (DVD-9) that's also color corrected.

I don't know if the subs are hard-coded in the theatrical DVD version or not.

That's a very good recut of the Episode III opening, TheTome - I'd be interested to see what you can do with the whole film.